WaPo posted:

Colombian president, rebels announce major breakthrough in peace talks

HAVANA — Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the leader of the FARC rebel group announced a major breakthrough Wednesday in their peace negotiations, bringing the country to the verge of ending one of the world’s longest-running wars.

The dramatic announcement came in Havana, where the two sides began formal negotiations in 2012 on ending the 50-year-old conflict. Wednesday’s ceremony marked the first time Santos has appeared beside Timoleón Jiménez, alias “Timochenko,” the elusive FARC commander who previously surfaced in videos recorded from his jungle hideouts.

With Cuban President Raúl Castro seated between them, Santos said he and Timochenko had told their negotiating teams to reach a final agreement within six months. The guerrilla commander remains an adversary, Santos said, but “today we are making progress in the same direction, toward the most noble goal a society can have: peace.”

“We must break once and for all any link between politics and weapons,” he told a room packed with Colombian journalists and politicians at Havana’s convention center.

More than 220,000 people have been killed in the three-way violence between the left-wing guerrillas, the government and right-wing paramilitary groups. At least 6 million Colombians have been forced to flee their homes. Only Syria has more “internally displaced persons,” according to U.N. data.

The agreement announced Wednesday breaks an impasse over the most sensitive element of the talks, namely whether guerrillas who lay down their weapons would be subject to criminal prosecution, prison terms and potential extradition to the United States.

Leaders of the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, have insisted they would not submit to such terms. There are reams of criminal charges against them in Colombian, U.S. and international courts for murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking, terrorism and virtually every other serious offense imaginable.

The deal would establish a truth-and-reconciliation process through which guerrillas and Colombian military commanders accused of rights abuses would be required to confess their crimes at special tribunals.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/colombia-and-rebels-expected-to-reveal-major-breakthrough-in-peace-talks/2015/09/23/98694be6-61f1-11e5-8475-781cc9851652_story.html

The strike also acts as an umbrella of resistance under which other popular struggles are being taken up.
The agrarian strike which has ignited across Colombia is rooted in the historic marginalization and repression of Indigenous, rural and Afro-Colombian communities and the state’s failure to fulfill promises made after earlier displays of popular mobilization. Much of the country is now at a standstill in what could be merely the first phase of the uprising, widely known as the Minga.

It began Monday. By Tuesday several of Colombia’s highways were blocked, restricting access to zones across the country. In some places it was cut off completely. This is not the first time Colombia has mobilized to demand the government meet its social and political obligations, but it is the largest Minga to date. And nobody knows when it will end.

The department of Cauca is home to a large rural population and a history of radicalism. It is also one of the most ethnically diverse regions in Colombia. These factors situate Cauca at the vanguard of the movement. Protesters occupy the Pan-American highway linking the department capital of Popayan with the larger city of Cali in neighboring Valle, rendering Cauca inaccessible by road. The last time this happened, in 2013, it was two weeks before it reopened.

Indigenous communities from across Cauca have gathered in the traditional meeting point for collective dialogue and decision-making, La Maria, a few kilometers from the town of Piendamo. To enter La Maria involves crossing two lines of the Indigenous Guard.

Each of the more than one hundred communities present at La Maria is escorted by its own guard, who are distinguished by their bamboo staffs adorned with colorful fabrics. In autonomous zones beyond state control, the guards are the peacekeepers. They also represent the frontline of defense against the authorities.

Admission to La Maria is only granted to recognized allies of the movement. One such group is the Patriotic March, a left-wing political organization formed in 2012 which has become a powerful force in grassroots mobilization. In 2012, 80,000 people marched through Bogota in support of the movement (hence the name). Its political strength is emphasized by the fact that over 100 of its members have been murdered by the military or right-wing paramilitaries.

A process of inclusion is required, says Oscar Salazar, a lead coordinator for the Patriotic March, "The government must address rural and Afro committees in Cauca. There needs to be legalization of campesino territories and recognition of their rights. These are related to the politics of mining and energy."

In Cauca, the Minga has been called by a collective body of organizations known as the Agrarian Summit, made up of the Patriotic March, the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca, the People’s Congress, and smaller campesino and Afro-Colombian organizations.

The strike also acts as an umbrella of resistance under which other popular struggles are being taken up. In Popayan, workers at the Syndicate of Public Employees, university students and activists from the Patriotic March protested plans for privatization of public services by blocking central city streets.

Inside La Maria, women, men and children fill a large hall made of bamboo under a corrugated roof. Others spread across a grassy ledge overlooking the restricted highway. Many older people wear traditional hats and chew coca leaves around the central fireplace.

Much of the younger generation play with mobile phones and sport Cristiano Ronaldo haircuts. Indigenous authorities address the congregation from a stage which will host numerous government ministers in the coming days.

Spirits are high but there is trepidation. Clashes are occurring throughout the country, including at the blockade a few kilometers up the road. Tensions have been raised by the death of a young Embera man in an encounter with riot police, the much-reviled Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron.

On the eve of the Minga, 26-year-old Willington Quibarecama Nequirucama died after being struck by an armored vehicle and falling from a bridge in Valle. The following days brought multiple reports of police brutality, arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances. On the second day helicopters buzzes the congregation, a loudspeaker threatens anyone who blocks public highways with prison. The response on the ground is, mildly speaking, derogatory.

For those coordinating the movement, a unified front is critical to resisting state intimidation tactics. "Why is it important for all our people to come together?," asks Jose Ildo Pete, Senior Counselor for the CRIC.

"We are not fighting for individual demands, but a collective and communal one. The principal theme of this Minga is the defense of territory, which is fundamental to the survival of Indigenous people and their culture and spirituality."

The defense of territory is a historical commitment that is today gravely threatened by conflict and resource extraction. In Cauca—and across Colombia—this has displaced villages and devastated the environment, with the local municipalities of Suarez, Santander de Quilichao and Buenos Aires among those affected by illegal gold mining.

Polluted lands and rivers slowly kill the people who depend upon them for survival, while criminal negligence in the mines has caused dozens of deaths in recent years.

The issue of mining is prominent on the list of demands, alongside health, education, human rights, political autonomy and inclusion in the peace process.

Underlying the dispute is Decree 982, drafted in 1999, in which the Colombian state recognized the "social, cultural and economic emergence declared by the Indigenous authorities and peoples of Cauca."

Back then, the Interior Minister attended La Maria to sign a multitude of agreements with the CRIC which constitutionalized Indigenous rights over land, environment, human rights, security and economy. Few have been adhered to.

Cauca has been further blighted by the civil war. In 2012 Nasa communities mobilized against the militarization of their homeland to demand that both insurgency and state submit to Indigenous authority before encroaching on designated territories. Under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, these communities hold political autonomy over their lands, making any unsolicited incursion a violation of their rights.

While the Santos administration and the FARC negotiate to end the conflict, many social groups affected by violence are calling for inclusion. The state is not interested in constructing a genuine post-conflict scenario, says one Indigenous guardsman, "I think peace is going to be very difficult because some will submit to it and others won’t. The government doesn’t support peace and keeps killing Indigenous members, women."

Any hope for a quick and relatively peaceful conclusion to the Minga was dispelled by the killings of two Indigenous guards on Thursday. Gersain Ceron and Marco Diaz Ulcue were shot by security forces at the Cauca blockade.

Despite the deaths, the CRIC continued to call for a peaceful resolution and demanded "the national government withdraw public forces from the site of confrontation and continue with the dialogues to guarantee the completion of accords with the Indigenous peoples of Cauca and on a national level."

Other sources told teleSUR that more militant factions were seeking to intensify the insurrection in the wake of the killings.

Colombia’s government is failing its people. To revert this, it must unreservedly instigate processes guaranteeing the security of all citizens, not only urbanized populations of European descent.

It must prioritize the wellbeing of communities and their environments over the profits of multinational corporations. It must submit to established zones of political autonomy which predate the existence of the state. And it must construct an intercultural framework for health and education which puts all Colombians on an equal footing while respecting diverse traditions and customs.

On Thursday evening the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia released a statement criticizing the "repression of the Santos government" and vowing the Minga "will take place until the National Government formally addresses our demands efficiently and satisfactorily through purposeful and political dialogue which guarantees our rights."

For now, the struggle continues.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/This-is-What-Happens-When-You-Ignore-Us-Striking-Colombians-20160603-0028.html

A revolutionary organization as experienced and responsible as the FARC-EP realized that what had to be done, was to formulate proposals in line with the tragic reality that Colombians were going through, before engaging in heated debates about the validity of the revolution and socialism. At that point, it was understood that massive support to the political struggle would come through the adequate interpretation of the needed changes according to the people´s deepest longings.

A people besieged by State and paramilitary violence, victim of the terrorist attacks carried out by the drug mafias, threatened on a daily basis on the streets of towns and cities by the death squads, harassed by the impact of a long internal war and on top of that victim of the economic model, had feel the deep aspiration of peace and change in its favor.

The FARC-EP was clear that peace, democracy and social justice were the banners that had to be raised in a Colombia stricken by State terrorism. We had to provide a huge impetus to the demands of the Colombian people to stop State terror, to open spaces that would allow political action by those from below, who have been deprived of their rights due to the official violence while generating awareness against neoliberalism and injustice.

A revolutionary organization as experienced and responsible as the FARC-EP realized that what had to be done, was to formulate proposals in line with the tragic reality that Colombians were going through, before engaging in heated debates about the validity of the revolution and socialism. At that point, it was understood that massive support to the political struggle would come through the adequate interpretation of the needed changes according to the people´s deepest longings.

A people besieged by State and paramilitary violence, victim of the terrorist attacks carried out by the drug mafias, threatened on a daily basis on the streets of towns and cities by the death squads, harassed by the impact of a long internal war and on top of that victim of the economic model, had feel the deep aspiration of peace and change in its favor.

The FARC-EP was clear that peace, democracy and social justice were the banners that had to be raised in a Colombia stricken by State terrorism. We had to provide a huge impetus to the demands of the Colombian people to stop State terror, to open spaces that would allow political action by those from below, who have been deprived of their rights due to the official violence while generating awareness against neoliberalism and injustice.

These were not precisely the slogans of revolution and socialism, but it was clear to us that by achieving and materializing them, they would generate the conditions for the victims of the economic and political system to play a key role in further transformations, it would open the possibility to organize and advance, to conquer rights and deepen the struggle to expand them. The slogans of life, peace, political freedom, land, State support and others would eventually become a hurricane.

But we didn’t only say it in proclamations and conferences. We defended it with the force of arms. At the historical moment in which all voices of the Establishment and significant leftist groups were trying to convince us of the need to demobilize, the FARC-EP assumed the military confrontation at its most intense level, we fought without hesitation against the State and its paramilitaries, we shed our blood and many valuable combatants gave their lives.

(...)

It has been our armed resistance, united to the clamor of millions of Colombians for peace and for the end of the neoliberal policies -that threaten the very existence of the human species- which conquered the space of the Peace Process in Havana. And within it, we have waged a political battle of historic dimensions in order to enforce our idea of ​​peace with social justice and democracy. The agreements signed so far are an example of it.

we'll see. a day or two ago they stopped enforcing taxation in their territories.