This is my first video in English, so please be kind. All right, from an Italian perspective,
I mean, from some unknown guy who lives in Italy, which is me, Colombia is quite fascinating.
Colombia is not an easy country. We’re dealing with a country that preserves one of the
greatest biodiversity in the world, a stunning landscape with every kind of natural habitat:
from savannahs to rainforests, all renowned for the quality of their products (coffee,
cocoa, flowers and tropical fruits). Colombia is country known for other nice things, such as
being the birthplace of great artists and writers such as Fernando Botero or Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 in this case). This is lovely, but
unfortunately there is the other side of the coin, that is: drug cartels, drug trafficking, violence
and armed conflict, which are just some of the key words that unfortunately show up when we talk
about Colombia. But let’s start with the latest news: : the capture of the most wanted trafficker,
the head of the Gulf Clan - El Cartel del Golfo - Dario Antonio Usuga, better known as Otoniel,
now detained in a location in the northwest of the country, near the border with Panama. The
capture was "the most important expedition in the jungle ever seen in the military history of the
country and the hardest blow to the drug trade, comparable only to the downfall of Pablo Escobar,
someone I think you know. But let's let's take it step by step.. So, geographically speaking,
Colombia is one of the largest countries in South America and is located in the northwestern
part of the continent, overlooking two oceans, the Pacific Ocean to the west
and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, thus enjoying a fundamental strategic position. The territory is
also rich in natural resources (such as gas and oil), mining (nickel, emeralds and gold), energy
(coal and iron), water and of course the evergreen agriculture. A country full of opportunities,
and yet from the socio-economic point of view, despite the fact that the per capita GDP is in
the medium-high range of Latin America and the economy is fairly flourishing thanks to
exports and low foreign debt, the rates of poverty and inequality in income distribution and land
ownership in Columbia remain very high. In 2020 According to DANE, 42.5%
of Colombians were found be in extreme poverty. If we were to identify one constant that has left its
mark on the country's troubled history almost since its independence from the Spanish Empire
in eighteen nineteen, that is undoubtedly violence. Since the 19th century, the territory
has experienced the devastating effects of no less than 24 wars, including conflicts with Ecuador
and Peru, as well as popular uprisings, an harsh reality of violence during the 1940s and 1950s,
and an armed conflict that in the last 70 years has involved various actors such as guerrillas,
paramilitaries, drug traffickers and the government itself, with the support of the
United States. in the last two centuries Colombia has lived and still lives a situation of permanent
violence. This phenomenon, which today contributes to destabilize not only the region but also
the neighboring countries, especially Venezuela and Ecuador, has essentially political roots,
which date back to the period of the so-called "violencia", which goes from 1946 to 1958,
during which the liberal leader Jorge Gaitàn was assassinated in the capital
Bogotà. Gaitán is considered one of the most prominent leaders of the last
century in Colombia. The founder of the socialist party Unión Nacional Izquierdista Revolucionaria,
was strongly committed to returning land to small private settlers and tenants. Gaitán supported the
rights of the peasant masses and denounced all the abuses carried out by the public authorities in
complicity with the landowners, who in turn were associated with large multinational companies,
among which we can mention the United Fruit Company. On top of that, Gaitan promoted the
literacy of the peasants and a basic health care system for all of them. A glimmer of hope
destined, however, to be extinguished in 1935, when the party was dissolved and its leader
decided to join the Colombian Liberal Party, while maintaining a declared socialist orientation.
The more traditionalist people, however, despite benefiting from the popularity of Gaitan,
did not tolerate his progressive ideas, and ended up in permanent contrast. And so,
in 1948, on the eve of new elections that saw him clearly in favor, Gaitan was assassinated,
triggering a bloody popular uprising known as "El Bogotazo". El Bogotazo escalated like a river in
flood in the form of raids and mobilizations, initially fomented by the Liberal Party but then
totally out of control. Needless to say, the government's response was not long in coming,
triggering a fierce clash between special police forces and civilians. The outcome was more than
200.000 thousand dead. The situation of chaos that had been created saw the birth of the first
guerrilla cells: "liberales limpios", the most ancient and liberal faction, opposed
to the "Comunes", of communist matrix. Initially, both were driven by the need to defend themselves
from the wave of violence perpetrated by members and sympathizers of the conservative party,
the ones the campesinos called agents of terror and repression. In the 50's it was almost taken
for granted that the traditional parties would join forces to fight a common enemy and in 1952,
thanks to the first military assistance treaty signed between Colombia and the United States,
the subversive groups were hit by a powerful attack from the government forces, reinforced
by a greater quantity of weapons and by the use of new training techniques provided by the Americans.
None of this, however, could ease the internal political divisions and this
created the ideal situation for the military coup of June 1953, the only one in the entire
republican history of Columbia. The coup was organized by a general called Gustavo Pinilla,
who proclaimed himself head of state, forcing the elected president Laureano Gomez into exile.
The first step of the new government was to get to a pacification campaign,
trying to dismantle the guerrilla cells and rebuild the areas most affected by the violence.
The guerrillas were invited to surrender and lay down their weapons in exchange for a series of
benefits , including amnesty and pardon for all those political crimes committed before 1954.
Most of the fighters accepted the conditions, with the exception of the communist guerrillas who had
never fully trusted the peace proposals posed by the governement. And with good reason I might say.
the following years the government was repeatedly accused of not having respected the pacts, also
due to the murder of Guadalupe Salcedo in 1957, one of the most famous guerrilla leaders, which
took place in circumstances never fully clarified. Later, the two traditional parties, under the
leadership of the liberal Alberto Camargo and the conservative Guillermo Valencia, joined forces
to overthrow Pinilla's military dictatorship, forming the system of government known as the
National Front from 1958 to 1974. The National Front was set to exclude any new political force.
It was meant to lead the the population to gradually lose interest in political life and
to abstain from voting. However, from the 1960s to the present day, there were some major phenomena
that took form at the same time in Colombia: the emergence of guerrilla organizations, the attempts
to combat them both militarily and peacefully, the unstoppable rise of drug trafficking, the
appearance of paramilitarism and the systematic use of kidnapping for extortion. Experts finds
the main reason for the disastrous situation in Colombia to be in the unequal distribution of
land. The repressive actions led by the government are basically a reaction to popular demands for
social justice. And this has seen as a consequence the emergence of different armed groups:
Among these are the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army) operating since
1964 in the regions of Tolima, Cauca and Huìla and to a lesser extent still existing today. The
Revolutionary Armed Forces grew in a short time to the point of becoming a state within the state.
Just to understand what this means: when in 1964 the government conducted the so called Operation
Soberania (sovereignty) to strike the guerrillas' headquarters, the Revolutionary Forec’s territory
was a region of more than 800 square kilometers with the name of “Republic of Marquetalia”. The
Operation allowed the government to retake the region, but failed in capturing the big fish,
who had been informed in time of the attack. The group would later reorganize itself, going
from a mere resistance form to a revolutionary armed struggle, in a hostile territory with the
absence of communication routes and adverse weather conditions. Thus, the FARC succeeded
in taking complete control of at least a third of the country. This led the Colombian State to adopt
a more bland approach. hey eventually signed in November 2016 a peace agreement. But the oldest
and currently existing guerrilla fringe is instead the ELN (National Liberation Army), inspired by
Che Guevara ideals and Catholic tendencies (so much so that many Spanish priests were active in
its ranks). Almost all the guerrilla organizations still active in the country have progressively
abandoned their ideologies as well as the fight with political aims. They're now only mainly
involved in the production and distribution of cocaine and activities such as weapon trafficking,
kidnapping and extortion. In 1980s and 1990s, the scourge of paramilitarism, a true form of state
terrorism, entered the scene. The paramilitaries of the AUC (United Self-Defense Units of
Colombia), financed with the aim of curbing the actions of the guerrillas, spread panic among the
population. These paramilitaries were among the main culprits of land grabs and brutal massacres,
such as that of Mapiripàn, during which (according to the U.S. State Department) at least
30 civilians were brutally killed with machetes and chainsaws. And who were the puppet masters
of these executioners? It is quickly said: businessmen and drug traffickers with the support
of the political and military authority leading the country. And that’s not all,
since the US strongly contributed to their origin in the so-called Plan Lazo suggested in 1962 by
General William Yarbrough. The Plan Lazo was aimed at contrasting the guerrilla movements and crush
any form of association with the Communist Party in Colombia, with the help of US Mobile training
teams and Colombian military. The United States presence is also found on other occasions: one of
these is the bilateral agreement of 1999, known as "Plan Colombia", which provided massive economic
and military support from the United States and a strong commitment from the Colombian government to
allocate budget resources to military spending; these conditions have allowed the creation and
training of specialized bodies in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking. The
huge amount of money used can help us describe Plan Colombia as the most important aid program in
the entire nation's history, placing it in third place among countries receiving military aid after
Egypt and Israel. Its natural successor was Plan Patriota, which consisted of a greater offensive
against the FARC, now considered a terrorist group on the same level as other paramilitaries. To all
of this we can only add the last but not least actor in the armed conflict, the state itself,
which has played a key role in the increase of violence in the country. A clear example
is given by so-called "false positives", which recalls one of the darkest recent events in the
history of the country, consisting of a series of executions that took place between 2002 and 2008,
under the presidency of Alvaro Velez (member of the same party that is currently in government).
The false positives were part of a policy known as "democratic security". The targets were civilians
that no one would miss, such as drug addicts, mentally ill people, beggars, etc. These people
were registered by army officials as fighters who had fallen in combat; in this way, the military
obtained economic benefits, additional leave and career promotions. The numbers point to
6,000 people dead. And because of the high rate of impunity, in 2019 Colombia was condemned by
the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. However, it was only in 2016 that a first effective step
towards internal pacification was taken, when the new President of the Republic Juan Calderón and
the commander of the FARC Timoleòn Jimenez, signed the final agreement for peace. It took the form
of a long document of more than 300 pages that is divided in 6 main points, including a way to
address the problem of drugs, the demobilization of the guerrillas and the much needed agrarian
reform. Reforms or not the situation in Colombia unfortunately has not improved at all. Violence
has even worsened in many regions since the first negotiations, cause the groups of paramilitaries,
former FARC guerrillas and drug traffickers have become even stronger. In recent years the country
has seen an increase in violent activities by the many armed forces (about 30 in total) that
fight among themselves for control over the territory, competing for the traffic of cocaine
and timber as well as illegal mining, all with great repercussions on the civilians. And speaking
of drugs. these substances began circulating in the 70's with the first cultivations of marijuana
and then expanded towards cocaine and heroin along with the growth of organized crime. In the 80s the
first cartels were born, the one of Medellin, led by Pablo Escobar, whose nickname was "El Patrón"
and his rival, the Cali Cartel under the leadership of the brothers Gilberto and
Miguel Rodriguez. After Escobar's death in 1993 and the arrest of the heads of the rival cartel,
it was the Norte del Valle Cartel that established supremacy over the territory. It remains however
difficult to accurately quantify Colombian cocaine production. In the early 1990s,
Colombian laboratories were processing the world's largest amount of cocaine, while
Peru was the largest grower, producing 60% of the world's product. Raw cocaine was flown from Peru
to southeastern Colombia for processing and then sent to the north of the country and to the west
coast for shipment to the United States. In the latest years, Colombian coca production grew
exponentially, with an estimated more than two hundred tons produced in '99. All of this while
Peru struggled in maintaining high numbers. In other words, while Peruvian harvests declined due
to an efficient programme of fumigation, Colombian growers increased the number of hectares dedicated
to coca, mainly in the south-western region of Putumayo. According to the CIA, in the same year
20,000 new hectares were allocated to cultivation, an increase of 20% over the previous year for a
total of 100,210,000 hectares. Production estimates would exceed five hundred twenty
thousand tons. These estimates were then denied by the Colombian National Police, which instead
quantified the number of hectares cultivated with coca at around one hundred thousand. To these
number we can add the business of opium poppy cultivation. According to the U.S. anti-drug
agency, criminal organizations have entered this business after the dismantling of the Medellin
and Cali cartels. According to a report of the same agency, but these are data to be taken with
caution, in those years more than 6000 hectares of land were used for the production of heroin,
mainly concentrated in the Andean areas of Tolima and Huila. It has been argued that about 75%
of the heroin consumed in the East Coast came from Colombia, despite that on the world scene,
when it comes to production, Colombia does not rank first. But when it comes
to cocain, and beyond the accuracy of the data, Colombia is still the undisputed
leader of cocaine production in South America. Today, despite the decline of the big cartels,
the traffic is managed by what remains of the FARC guerrillas and the paramilitaries still operating,
and the fault lies mainly with the State. Its absence is felt in many areas,
highly underdeveloped, where there is no road paving, no hospitals,
no schools and no adequate health and social security systems. It is true that where the
State does not intervene, criminal organizations arrive, which are then seen by the locals as
the only solution to its problems. the many attempts to reach a solution over time have
failed due to the continuous search for then reflected on the Colombian society, with
disastrous effects as we can today see. Despite the clear will of the locals to get rid once and
for all of a conflict that seems to be infinite, Colombia is still stuck in its difficult past.