on fascisim in colombia, as gamonalismo:
[free trade in history] Not only did they consolidate their local power and the property of their haciendas, they also imposed an era of “free trade”, which really meant freedom of import, setting the growth of national industry back fifty years. That era saw the rule of the doctrines of English liberal economists as well as Colombia’s submission to the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, signed in 1846 with the US by the government of the gamonal of gamonales, landowner Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera, who not only opened the doors to free trade but also forfeited the sovereignty of the country to the megaproject of the Panama Canal which led eventually to Colombia losing Panama in 1903.
(...) [on needing connections] The gamonal is in the first instance a major landowner. His title originally depended on the Spanish Crown, which granted lands and gold mines, first to the conquistadors and afterwards, under the Bourbon dynasty, to slave traders and other businessmen who received the mines and haciendas of the Jesuits, who were expelled by the empire at that time. His wealth depended on the government in power, the articulation of economic power and international politics, and the links between local powers and big landowners. These elements have shaped the configuration of gamonalismo, from its beginnings to this day.
(...) Gamonalismo survived in spite of industrialization and severely limited the modernization of Colombia. Although peasant and indigenous movements expanded and won some victories between 1914 and 1946, the gamonales managed to retain their latifundia and ultimately to consolidate them by way of violence, namely “La Violencia”, between 1946 and 1958´.
(...)[capitalism needs democracy?]Another portion of the capital came from foreign investment in petroleum, mining, and banana enclaves that, rather than challenging the power of the gamonales, stimulated it and guaranteed its concessions and profits. Gamonalismo was the most efficient political agent and police force for foreign capital.
(...) [history of the paramilitaries; need for control] “La Violencia” of 1946 closed many hopes for democracy. The assassination of Colombia’s most popular leader, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, on April 9 1948, summarized the decision of traditional gamonalismo to maintain the status quo with blood and fire. Two hundred thousand people were killed in the process of displacing 2 million people from 350 000 small plots of land. Those who are today called “paramilitaries” were then called “pajaros”, illegal troops who worked with police and the regime and its own army to assault lands and peoples. For the politicians, access to armed bands was a source of power, and new fortunes were made by way of La Violencia, fortunes that made it possible to control local business and the international contraband trade in coffee and liquor.
(...) [this war on drugs] Colonization was offered as the solution for landless peasants and in the distant regions, without roads, communication, or services, the peasantry had resorted to illicit cultivation, first of marijuana and then of coca. Colonization, the solution for preventing agrarian reform, had become a problem: the peasants had money and gained power, organized, marched, and held strikes. The war extended into the regions of colonization, and under the pretext of the “War on Drugs”, the gamonales crushed the peasant resistance, allied with the mafia dons and seized control of narcotrafficking. This was the model in Puerto Boyaca, Puerto Berrio, Puerto Triunfo and a large part of southern Magdalena Medio, and extended throughout the country.
(...)[mafia and transnationals] These increasingly wealthy mafias became central characters in many self-defense teams and came to finance the training of the paramilitaries as an army, paying well-known mercenaries from the UK (like Peter McAlleese), South Africa, and Israel (like Yair Klein). These mercenaries had been (in Malaysia or Angola) continued to be (in Sierra Leone or the Congo) stars for the transnationals in the wars of other countries. The warlords trained by these men can be found in various parts of the world where profits can be had from gold, petroleum, diamonds, narcotrafficking, the theft of gasoline from government pipelines, or the theft of health care, housing, and any other public funds to which the imprisoned electoral system can provide “democratic access”.
(...) [justice and peace?] The parties affiliated with President Uribe are full of para-politicians, who in the congress voted in the “Law of Justice and Peace” that regulated the agreement between the paramilitaries and the government. Today in Colombia by virtue of the laws that were approved, the jail term a paramilitary faces for cutting hundreds of people to pieces is the same that a peasant would receive for growing a Monsanto-patented seed.
(...) [resistance] Against these objectives, there is a popular resistance that has expressed itself in mobilizations like that of May 15 2006, the popular consulta against FTA organized by the indigenous, the unity of peasant, indigenous, and afro-colombian organizations against FTA and the Rural Statutes, the marches of the teachers, the struggles of the oil workers and the strengthening of the Polo Democratico Alternativo as the opposition party. In 2003, civil resistance managed to stop in a referendum the constitutional reform of Uribe. Civil resistance has slowed the project of imposing a fascist constitution legalizing mass detention without judicial order. But civil resistance has not managed to stop the co-optation of local governments by the armed gamonales nor has it managed to stop the FTA or Uribe’s lamentable foreign policy. It is nevertheless the only hope for Colombia to break the hegemony of the gamonales and their transnational sponsors and join the movement of the majority of Latin America. Only civil resistance can prevent the war from being a profitable business for the warlords.
(...) [the future?] For the moment Uribe can count on a favorable point in the economic cycle, brought on by the laundering of the narcodollars of the paramilitaries. But when the economic cycle moves back down and the speculative force becomes a crisis again, uribismo could fall to popular mobilization. Agrarian reform will be an essential element of change because it will take the power base of the gamonales away and create the economic conditions to strengthen the internal market that the FTA seeks to destroy. The great failure of the 1991 constitution, which sought to combine democracy with neoliberalism and latifundium, should be repaired.