Yearbook 2019
Colombia. A national general strike scheduled for
November 21 was preceded by an increasingly general support
for and an increasingly intense protest movement against the
government. The strike was organized by the trade union
organization Comando Nacional Unitario with support from
student organizations and other social and political
organizations. A major reason for the escalated discontent
was the government's handling of the increased violence in
the province of Cauca in the southwest, the country's
poorest. Dissidents from the now pacified guerrilla group
FARC (Colombia's revolutionary and armed forces) have
continued to be active there, as have other guerrilla groups
and narcotics forces. President Iván Duque promised, during
two visits to the province at the end of October-November,
both an increased military presence of 2,500 men and social
initiatives of the equivalent of $ 400 million.
According to
CountryAAH, the local elections on October 27 developed into a major
defeat for the established parties. Claudia López Hernández
of the Left Alliance The Green Alliance (AV), for example,
won the mayor's post in Bogotá. López Hernández, with a
background as a journalist and former senator, thus became
not only the capital's first female mayor ever, but also the
first openly gay mayor in the country's history. In
Medellín, the country's second largest city, Daniel
Quintero, who became known for his commitment to corruption,
won the same support for anti-corruption activists in the
election results in the cities of Cali and Cartagena. FARC
ran in 16 cities but failed to win in anyone.
The most important indigenous people of Colombia are
chibcha or "Muisca", as they call themselves. They live
in the northern part of the country and in present-day
Panama.
In the years 1536-39, Spain conquered Colombia. Gonzalo
Giménez de Quesada defeated the Chibcha people and
founded Santa Fe de Bogotá, which from 1718 was the capital
of the Viceroy of Nueva Granada. The population was subject
to a work system that was a mere hidden form of slavery.
After 300 years of colonial rule, most of the Native
American population at the beginning of the 19th century had
been eradicated.
The colonial lords developed an export-oriented
production based on coffee, bananas, cotton and tobacco,
which broke down the original production of potatoes, yuca,
corn, wood and medicinal plants. As the indigenous
population had succumbed to work on the Spaniards'
plantations, imports of slave labor from Africa began.
1781-1813 The struggle for independence
With the municipal rebellion in 1781, a longer process
began, culminating in 1813, when Antonio Nariño proclaimed
Cundinamarca's independence. The process was marked by the
struggle between, on the one hand, the centralists of
Nariño, based on the bourgeoisie of cities and Europeans,
and on the other, the federalists led by Camilo Torres,
president of the Congress of the United Provinces and based
on the popular sectors..
In 1816 Torres was defeated and executed by Pablo
Morillo. Three years later, Simón Bolívar liberated the
country from Venezuela and created the Greater Colombian
Republic, consisting of the present Venezuela, Colombia,
Ecuador and Panama. Local strife and pressure from the
English side caused Venezuela and Ecuador to break free in
1829-30. Instead, the Republic of Nueva Granada was
proclaimed, which in 1886 adopted the name Colombia.
"Justice and Peace"
President Uribe worked on two fronts to end the war in
Colombia: On the one hand, he provided incentives for the
demobilization of armed groups through the "Justice and
Peace" process, on the other, the military attacks on the
FARC guerrilla intensified. This partly contradictory
strategy can be seen as the result of Uribe's assessment of
the FARC guerrilla as a terrorist organization, not as a
political actor. In Uribe's view, a military victory over
the guerrillas was the only possible solution to the
conflict.
In the fall of 2003, the right-wing paramilitary AUC
initiated what was intended to be the disarmament and
demobilization of its 33,000 soldiers by 2005. The process
was institutionalized in 2005 with Law 975 of 2005
and is known as the "Justice and Peace" process. At this
time, FARC and ELN mustered forces of over 20,000, including
thousands of child soldiers.
The "justice and peace" process was extended in 2012 and
is still ongoing. The process includes members of all
illegal armed groups active in Colombia. It provides
conditional amnesty and shorter prison sentences in exchange
for confessing to abuse, voluntary disarmament and
demobilization, and raising the victims. Demobilized people
who had not committed serious human rights violations were
given conditional amnesty, as well as being included in a
reintegration process. The demobilized people who had
committed human rights violations went into a special legal
process that started with public confessions (known as "
version's libres"»). The prison sentences for those
found guilty by the Justice and Peace Court were from a
minimum of five years to a maximum of eight years. In
addition, a Commission for Resurrection and Reconciliation
was established, and a working group working on the
historical memory of the Civil War. The "justice and peace"
process uses transitional justice tools, an approach used by
countries that have previously had authoritarian rule or
armed conflict, to deal with abuses committed in the past.
The approach was also later adopted during the peace process
with FARC.
Demobilization
Initially, it was the paramilitary forces under the AUC
that collectively demobilized in the framework of the
"Justice and Peace" process. According to official figures,
60,319 people have demobilized from armed groups in the
period 2003 to April 2016. Over 31,000 of these were
paramilitaries who collectively demobilized until 2006, the
rest having demobilized on an individual basis. Of all
demobilized, around 5,000 have been included in the special
judicial process, approximately 4400 with previous
affiliation with paramilitary organizations. The majority of
those who demobilized individually belonged to the FARC
guerrilla.
An increasing number of FARC guerrillas and local leaders
were arrested, killed or surrendered, partly against the
promise of free leasing towards the end of the 2010s. The
crushing of the FARC accelerated when former presidential
candidate Ingrid Betancourt, along with 14 other hostages,
were freed by government soldiers after over six years in
captivity. This action strengthened President Uribe's
popularity and uncompromising line with the guerrillas. In
the pursuit of guerrilla groups, Colombian military action
across borders led to a diplomatic crisis in relations with
neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela. |
