{"id":15168,"date":"2011-10-24T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=15168"},"modified":"2013-06-09T20:48:12","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T19:48:12","slug":"colombia-revisited-ultra-stability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/10\/colombia-revisited-ultra-stability\/","title":{"rendered":"Colombia Revisited: Ultra-Stability!"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Bogot\u00e1, Colombia<\/em><\/p>\n

Pick a day, like 17 October, the day of the raza<\/em>, Columbus Day, celebrated here 5 days later.\u00a0 And look at the headlines:<\/p>\n

El Tiempo<\/em>: 63 percent lack work with dignity (earning enough to survive)<\/p>\n

[structural violence hitting six out of ten Colombians]<\/p>\n

El Nuevo Siglo<\/em>: (President) Santos: Terrorist acts are increasing<\/p>\n

[direct guerrilla (FARC-ELN) and paramilitary (AUC) violence]<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, the flagrant inequity in Colombia inspired revolutions for basic change.\u00a0 Of change there has been little.\u00a0 Of violence there has been much, for decades, revolutionary and contra-revolutionary and governmental; young Colombians killing each other, sorrow, hatred; suffering at the bottom of society; kidnappings, narco-trafficking; complex interwoven pathologies all. And behind and above we hear US voices, “seek and destroy”, “never negotiate with terrorists”, “Plan Colombia”, to eliminate drugs.<\/p>\n

Last time, May 2008, invited to Pensar Colombia<\/em>, reflections on Colombia, after the Senate president Nancy Guti\u00e9rrez and the country president Alvaro Ur\u00edbe, I congratulated the latter on his economic plan–“for 40 percent of the Colombian people”, having done some homework.\u00a0 Today 37 percent, quoting El Tiempo<\/em>; 6 in 10 are marginalized.<\/p>\n

Ultra-stability<\/em>.\u00a0 Both violences institutionalized, built into the structure-culture DNA; how!\u2014could it last a century or two? <\/em><\/p>\n

Los poderes f\u00e1cticos<\/em>, thousandfolds of triples of landowner-military-clergy brothers at the top of society, that solid Iberian export-product–Franco’s pillars in Spain.\u00a0 Nowhere surviving so well as in Colombia.\u00a0 Like Spain, the other side is not winning the civil war.\u00a0 Unlike Spain, winds of change are weak.<\/p>\n

The day may come for the Final Solution ala Sri Lanka: they are encircled, killed off one by one, then by the dozens, then hundreds, butchered; at the advice of somebody, you know who.<\/p>\n

State monopoly on direct violence overshadows social justice; the class conflict over poverty-inequality is pushed aside.\u00a0 OK, eliminate FARC-ELN, they capitulate, laying down arms.\u00a0 And the whole issue remains, the abysmal inequity.\u00a0 Like the Sinhala-Tamil problem in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Like the Basque problem in Spain; ETA lays down arms, fine, but then what?\u00a0 81 percent of Spaniards want an outcome in terms of winners and losers (La Raz\u00f3n<\/em> 16 October 2011)–“with no political concessions” insists the successor party to Franco’s falange<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 And after some years the violence erupts again.<\/p>\n

Ultra-stability: institutionalized structural violence, and ritualized warfare; legitimized by multi-party democracy licensed to exploit and kill if only the parliament agrees.\u00a0 The narco-traffic finances poor and rich.\u00a0 The violence follows the flow of US arms and money, with a counter-flow of drugs, paying good commissions when the drugs change hands. End consumption mainly in the USA. Or destruction, being selling-buying drugs, like derivatives?<\/p>\n

But, there are exits from these well protected pathologies:<\/p>\n

[1] Winds of change are blowing; outside if not inside Colombia<\/em>.\u00a0 The US empire falls, the hold on Colombia weakens.\u00a0 Like US elites, they own native lands (res communis res nullius<\/em>).\u00a0 Next door, the bottom of society is lifted up; the indigenous, Mother Earth have voices; constitutions define Crimes Against Nature.\u00a0 Strong winds.<\/p>\n

[2] The<\/em> narco-traffic is a regional, not a Colombian problem.\u00a0 Plan Colombia<\/em> for production only will never work.\u00a0 A Plan USA<\/em> for consumption, and a Plan Mexico+<\/em> for distribution, are needed, with reports, transparency and accountability to UN bodies.\u00a0 Military measures alone will never work; too many depend on narco money for livelihood.\u00a0 Social development in Latin America, and spiritual in North America, are needed to close the social and spiritual gaps filled with narco money and narco drugs, as Fernando Montiel says.<\/p>\n

[3] The bottom of Colombian society has to be lifted up, community by community, starting with the worst, employing the neediest<\/em>.\u00a0 Like in China, the public-private-civil society-technical sectors have to cooperate in micro-companies for basic needs, coordinated by local authorities; like local, cooperative production to meet the basic needs of the most needy for affordable food-water, clothes, housing, health, education.\u00a0 This will ultimately increase the buying power at the bottom, making the wheels of the economy run faster.\u00a0 Everybody will benefit.<\/p>\n

[4] Invite FARC-ELN to participate in this giant enterprise, in principle to their liking, laying down arms<\/em>.\u00a0 Some of them have social experiences that would be helpful.\u00a0 Individuals may join if not yet the organizations; negotiations with them only about laying down arms are probably useless at present (‘Francisco Gal\u00e1n’, ex ELN negotiator, El Tiempo<\/em>, 18 Oct 2011).<\/p>\n

[5] FARC-ELN should learn from the Arab spring, now also in Wall Street: violence does not work, nonviolence may<\/em>.\u00a0 They would have come so much further had they not given in to the Colombian violence culture.\u00a0 They should have struggled with negative and positive, gandhian, nonviolence, not with Kalashnikovs.\u00a0 Moreover, each killing by them confirms what entrenched exploitative elites fear: if they come up, they will treat us as badly as or worse than we have treated them.\u00a0 FARC violence reinforces ultra-stability.<\/p>\n

A change is needed from Obama’s residual imperialism to Ron Paul’s no wars, no bases.\u00a0 And to an Antanas Mockus in Colombia?\u00a0 The natural context for Colombia are the next door neighbors in Grupo Andino.\u00a0 Moreover, the Latin America-Caribbean region is coming quickly; and Colombia, like Japan, may fall between them. Rather a giant social project to lift the bottom up, without threatening the top.\u00a0 The development goal of the millennium.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ultra-stability: institutionalized structural violence, and ritualized warfare; legitimized by multi-party democracy licensed to exploit and kill if only the parliament agrees. The narco-traffic finances poor and rich. The violence follows the flow of US arms and money, with a counter-flow of drugs, paying good commissions when the drugs change hands. End consumption mainly in the USA. Or destruction, being selling-buying drugs, like derivatives?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,206,53,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-coops-cooperation-sharing","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}