Colombia resorts to historical war strategy: civil resistance
President Uribe called a state of near emergency Monday following a week of rebel violence that left 115 dead.
By Rachel Van Dongen | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
POPAYAN, COLOMBIA - After guerrillas demanded in early June that all of
this country's mayors leave town, more than 200 municipal
executives quit in fear.
Not Segundo Tombé. He says he is not afraid of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest guerrilla group,
which, as part of a continuing assault on Colombia's government and society,
threatened mayors with retribution if they did not resign.
Many towns are now without an administration.
Mr. Tombé, a Guambiano Indian who presides over Silvia, a mostly
indigenous town on the outskirts of the provincial capital Popayan, says
he owes his secure feeling to the indigenous tradition of civil resistance
that goes back hundreds of years to the Spanish conquest of South
America. The concept is gaining popularity at an increasingly desperate
time when many here view the government as incapable of
providing adequate security.
Several recent standoffs between indigenous towns and rebel guerrillas
have led some of Colombia's elite to embrace civil resistance as a
way to end the nation's 38-year civil war. Even newly-elected President
Alvaro Uribe Vélez, who promised a hard-line approach toward rebel
groups, is counting on civilians to take a more active role in ending the
violence that has only escalated since his inauguration last
Wednesday.
Early Monday, Mr. Uribe declared a state of near emergency, granting his
government special measures after a week of violence left 115
dead. Immediate measures include a call for 10,000 new police officers
and 6,000 soldiers, as well as plans to create a web of 1 million
civilian informants, who may even be armed. The cost for these measures
is estimated to be $780 million, which will paid for by a tax
increase.
Human rights groups, however, say that involving civilians directly in
the war will make them targets. They argue that Colombia's police and
Army don't have the resources to protect civilian informants, who could
be exposed to retribution.
But Mayor Tombé has seen the benefits of involving civilians in
the protracted conflict. "[The FARC] have done nothing with me," he says
from a makeshift office he uses part of the week in Popayan, one of the
"prudent" security measures he has adopted since the FARC's
edict. "I have a lot of backing from the community."
Wearing the traditional black bowler hat and bright purple skirt of his
tribe, Tombé declares: "If they do anything with me, they're going
to
have a lot of difficulties with the community. There will be an indigenous
uprising."
That is exactly what happened last month in the nearby towns of Totoró
and Toribío, in the southwestern province of Cauca. The largely
indigenous communities marched in the streets to defend their elected officials
when the FARC arrived.
The left-wing guerrilla group retaliated by launching a 72-hour siege of
both towns, gravely wounding many civilians. In Toribío, they held
14
policemen hostage, threatening to burn them alive. But the townspeople,
helped by the local priest, implored the FARC to respect the lives
of the policemen, and they were ultimately let go. The local FARC commander
told a television station that they did not kill the officers
because they acted like "true men."
Following these standoffs, which were abetted by a late-arriving Army force,
the idea of civil resistance began gaining currency. The
catchphrase is used almost daily in the country's leading newspaper, El
Tiempo, which has implored civilians to become more involved.
Civilian informers have already foiled a kidnapping in Valledupar in the
province of Cesar.
But leaders of the indigenous community scoff at the idea that civil resistance is a new phenomenon.
"In order to interpret the civil resistance movement, we have to return
to the past," says Colombia's first indigenous governor, Taita Floro
Tunubalá of Cauca.
Mr. Tunubalá says the indigenous community is accustomed to fighting
for its rights to land and political power, beginning with resistance
to the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago, and up through the guerrilla
attacks today.
"In the indigenous communities, it is something normal. But it has cost us many lives," Tunubalá says.
Fabricio Cabrera, the head of the anthropology department at the University
of the Andes in Bogotá, says that civil resistance is also on the
rise in nonindigenous communities.
Mr. Cabrera points to communities in the northern Magdalena province that
have refused armed help of any sort for some eight to 10 years.
But over time, some communities have turned violent themselves, evolving
into the right-wing paramilitaries that are part of Colombia's cycle
of violence. And while the civil resistance movement has so far not been
armed, some observers fear that arming civilians will only lead to
an increase in violence. Cabrera also says that towns that resist can be
targeted for retaliation.
Ricardo Gembuel, an adviser to Cauca's Regional Indigenous Counsel, which
represents 200,000 people and seven ethnic groups, says the
indigenous community derives its power from the land and will not abandon
it.
"We have said that we don't want to be included in the armed conflict,
but it has touched us because the land that we have is very strategic
for the guerrilla and for the economy and for everything," Mr. Gembuel
says. "We have said that we are going to defend the lives of the
people."
Gembuel explains that the indigenous community in Cauca has formed a type
of civil guard, armed with radios instead of guns, to warn its
people of incursions by the FARC or the paramilitaries.
Indigenous leaders insist that they are not taking sides in the three-way
war between the FARC, the paramilitaries, and the state. But
Tunubalá has harsh words for the FARC.
"In the case of Toribío, what the FARC did was absurd," the governor
says. "It really is a declaration of war against a civilian population
that
is in the process of reconstructing itself. Therefore, one asks the question:
'What does the FARC want? What is their political agenda?' At
this moment, the [FARC] has lost its values, its principles."
Tunubalá doesn't have high hopes for help from the new administration, despite recent pledges.
"The problem is the state doesn't have the logistical capacity to have
forces in all of the municipalities," Tunubalá says, pointing to
14
municipalities in Cauca alone that have never seen the police or the Army.