Colombia, do you support stable and durable peace?

No. Almost 6.5 million Colombians chose last Sunday to not agree with government negotiations with the armed group Las FARC. This was a huge surprise cause all inquests had shown that Yes would win in the referendum. “This No means Yes to peace, but in a fair way. Peace without impunity. Peace with better effective instruments to compensate all victims, peace where we won't award censurable behaviours”, said one of the senators of the Central Democracy party who supports No, Ivan Duque, to El Espectador Newspaper.

This is the sixth time when a Colombian president tries to negotiate with Las FARC. And both sides, the Government and the armed group signed an agreement last month to stop 52 years of war inside the country and to start building peace in Colombia without deaths, weapons, kidnappings and drug trafficking. Juan Manuel Santos, the Colombian president since 2010, chose asking to his country if they agree or not with what they have signed in Havana, Cuba, a few weeks ago. It means better farmland distribution, drug problematic, fortify politic participation and new agreement between victims and justice. He organized a referendum even if he did not need to ask for keeping the agreement. But Colombian population did not consider it as an important moment, cause more than 60% of Colombians didn't vote.

What has happened in Colombia?

“Las FARC has raped women, killed Colombians and kidnapped children. People don't want them to be in politics without any punishment. The main argument from people who voted No was that, they don't want peace without impunity”, Colombian journalist Joaquin Lopez affirms.

Colombian society is completely divided between resentment and peace wishes after 52 conflictive years. And we can see it in the referendum results of last Sunday: 50,21% votes to No, 49,78% to Yes.

17th of September, 2015, Las FARC made some overtures to Government after a break between both sides. Three months later, Colombian Congress accepted the peace plebiscite to stop the longest conflict in the Occidental hemisphere.

Since that, the Government and Las FARC have been meeting and talking about creating a peace document where the armed group will get some politicians sites if they submit all their weapons and show their secret bases inside the jungle. Also drug business must stop, even if Las FARC declares they do not produce drugs.

Why did No win if it's about peace?

All inquest ventured more than 60% to Yes, but “in Colombia most of the population lives on the rural, even if many people moved to cities. This means most of the Colombians hadn't read the 293 pages from the document. It is like with Brexit, people do not know why they voted, and what is even worse, they do not know its consequences. People from Colombia do not believe in politics. Voting should be obligatory as it is for militarist”, the Colombian journalist asserts.

This is one of the main reasons: more than 60% of the population did not vote, and more than 168.000 votes were null, even if was just a yes/no question.

Moreover, Colombia is very polarized cause main leaders from Yes and No have completely different followers. In Yes side, we have president Santos, who has less than 30% of the popularity, so he just lets his supporters and Alvaro Uribe´s opposers to lead the campaign. On the other hand, the ex president Uribe is leading No side, and he has more than 70% of the popularity and his oratory is really good”, Lopez attests. So this referendum, which was about peace and ending the war, became a popularity and political election.

Another reason was that “people from cities do not feel Las FARC violence”, which means places most affected by war voted mostly Yes (most of them, with more than 90% of the votes), and the big cities just chose No.

And what now?

“We were pretty sure Yes would win, nobody expected. In our newspaper we finished on Friday all articles and videos just with Yes result”, said Joaquin. The ex president Cesar Gaviria also said before the referendum that “it is not true this peace agreement can be dealing again. If they are not approved, it is hard to say, but war will come again”, he said the 24th of August to the journalist Javier Lafuente (El Pais) in Bogota. After the results, president
Santos organized a new meeting to deal with all politicians to decide what to do, if they can improve the already signed agreements.

“First, they should change Constitution. Then, government should renegotiate what opposite groups don't like, like Las FARC must go to prison, and add it to the document. But this means another plebiscite and waste again around 85 millions euros. Another way to continue is just if
government accepts peace agreements despite of the referendum”, declares Lopez.

Anyway, Santos and the rest of politicians are meeting and what we know is “president Santos wants to win Yes and he is not going to give up so easily”. “This country needs to be united. We must let go hates and polarization that had hurt us so much”, said Santos in El Espectador.

Who are Las Farc?

“We fight for the whole country as an answer to Government violence”, “using violence, we will get to power to improve Colombians opportunities and get a better Colombia with social”, said member of Las FARC in different documentaries. This is Las FARC, but at the same time, they are also the responsible of 220.000 deaths and 37% of the 40.000 kidnaps between 1970 and 2010, as we can read in the research “Una verdad secuestrada”.

Las FARC is the guerrilla´s movement longer. They start inn 1964 to defence themselves from “a conservative minority government which using violence made perpetual in power”.

“Las FARC was born as a small group of people looking for more equitation farmland distribution in Colombia. Then, Manuel Marulanda gave weapons to farmers and called them FARC. The problem grew up when this farmers group started to get control of places where State didn't”, Joaquin Lopez declares.

In 80´s, Las FARC starts to use kidnappings as a financial way of surviving, mostly between 1996 and 2005. And also they use drugs trafficking, which gives them 30% of their incomings, but also they lost supporters and respectability. And these two topics are still nowadays ones of the most important, cause drugs move around 300.000 dollars per year in Colombia among 250 millions global consumers (800.000 are Colombians).

“The previous problem was Las FARC used to be really strong in military style. But ex president Uribe, in 2002, fight against this group. So before 2002 you couldn't travel around Colombia, but strengthened the army and debilitated Las FARC, dismissing main leaders. So now, their option was negotiations”.

 

 

 Sabela González García

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