What are the motives behind the global FARC protest?

Thanks to the miracles of technology, Colombians around the world have been able to organize against the violation of human rights; particularly against the practice of kidnapping civilians as a means to political goals. Although commonly used by guerrillas, paramilitary groups, criminal and drug smuggling organizations, and the nation’s police and military since the 1950s; only now did the middle and upper class decide to mobilize against it. Why now and why only against Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, the oldest active guerrilla group in Latin America, when for decades journalists, researchers, leftist politicians, labor and indigenous groups, and other marginalized sectors of society have demanded the protection of their own human rights? Because no administration has taken them seriously, forcing them to seek help abroad.

Colombians, domestically and abroad, used the social network Web site Facebook to promote a global protest against FARC on Feb. 4. This has generated a countercampaign headed by other sectors of Colombian society that do not believe that the protest should be targeted just at FARC. Those against it have been critical of the campaign because it has been used by President Alvaro Uribe’s administration to promote his more bellicose agenda against FARC and because it has been welcomed by paramilitary leaders. The alternative protest carried the slogan: “Yes to the Humanitarian Agreement: No to War and No to Kidnapping.”

Uribe has been very supportive of this emerging global campaign against FARC, which he declared a terrorist organization back in the post-Sept. 11 days, when he consolidated his alliance with the Bush administration. Throughout his administration, he has repeatedly said that he will not negotiate with a terrorist organization like FARC; thus blocking all passages toward a humanitarian exchange between kidnapped civilians and incarcerated guerrilla members.

It is no coincidence that the coming protest follows the recent successful release of Clara Rojas y Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo; which resulted from negotiations carried out between Colombian Sen. Piedad Cordoba, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and FARC leadership. Successful negotiations with FARC, which were initially blocked by Uribe’s administration after he declared that Chavez was violating the nation’s sovereignty, showed the world that a humanitarian agreement with FARC was possible and that continuous negotiations would result in the release of more kidnapped victims.

The humanitarian success threatened the economic interests of the Bush and Uribe administrations who had initially removed the political agency of FARC so that they could not interfere in the evolution of the bilateral trade agreement between the two nations. Chavez, through the humanitarian effort, gave new political life to FARC and this did not go well with those hemispheric actors interested in the expansion of free market policies in Colombia, which began in the early 2000s under the so-called Plan Colombia.

President Bush and Uribe are not interested and have never been interested in negotiating a humanitarian exchange with FARC. Social and humanitarian issues have not topped the agenda of the bilateral relation between the two nations. Proof of this is the fact that the Bush administration has paid minimal attention to the release of the three Americans, Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves, and Keith Stansell.

Furthermore, the administration has ignored the claims from Democratic members of Congress that implicate Uribe’s administration with “parapolitics” and the disappearance and murder of labor union leaders and journalists. Therefore it is no surprise that on Jan. 14, the same day that Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo were released in the Llanos of Colombia and transferred to Venezuelan territory, President Uribe was meeting with Jeff Imelt, president of General Electric, in an effort to expand direct investment in Colombia.

Just last week, the Bush administration sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a mission to Colombia in an effort to push forward the bilateral free trade agreement, and in order to balance the presence of the 10-member Democratic congressional delegation headed by Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y. As expected, the agenda centered on issues dealing with the approval of the bilateral free trade agreement and not on the humanitarian exchange. During the two-day visit, solutions to the release of the three Americans was never discussed; instead Rice dedicated her efforts to convincing the Democratic congressional leaders that the government’s involvement in the violation of human rights was a thing of the past.

If one considers FARC as an impediment toward the realization of the bilateral trade agreement, then the global protest against FARC seems to be more about international trade than about humanitarian issues. Yet humanitarian issues continue to be the people’s priority. Chavez knows this and therefore has challenged the U.S. hegemonic power in the hemisphere by playing the role of mediator and peacemaker; knowing that his approach is more appealing than the free trade and open market agenda of the Bush administration, which is unpopular among the millions of impoverished Latin Americans.

The protest therefore represents an approval of Uribe’s open market policies, since siding with the humanitarians would mean support for Colombia’s left.

Stefano Tijerina, a native of Colombia, is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Maine specializing in Canadian-Latin American history.