[progchat_action] Colombia's Magical Realism
Steven L. Robinson
Magico realismo
by Paul Haste
Dissident Voice
May 31st, 2007
Consider the parapolmtica scandal: the state's participation in the
terrorism and assassinations that rightist paramilitaries have inflicted on
Colombia.
Ambassadors, congress representatives, senators, state governors - more than
50 national and local elected representatives who participated in state
paramilitarism are under investigation, have been arrested or jailed, or are
wanted fugitives in Mixico and the United States.
Colombia's elite Santos clan - owners of the country's most influential
newspaper, El Tiempo, whose former editor is now the Vice President, and
whose cousin is the Defense Minister - are implicated in assisting to
organize the first paramilitaries in the Nineties.
The Foreign Minister resigned as her brother Senator was jailed, and an
arrest warrant was issued for her former Senator father - who is now a
fugitive on the run - wanted for collaborating with paramilitaries.
Accusations that the information director in the president's intelligence
service - Colombia's CIA - compiled hit lists targeting union organizers and
opposition activists to pass onto the paramilitaries to assassinate.
Illegal surveillance operations against opposition politicians and
journalists investigating the parapolmtica scandal, resulting in several
senior police officers being fired, including the chief of police
intelligence - Colombia's FBI - and the national police chief.
The president's supporters in Congress, whose election the paramilitaries
claim to have bought or ensured through intimidation, threats and terror,
proposing a 'presidential coup' - closing Congress to avoid the opposition
taking control as more Uribista delegates are jailed - a proposal the
Interior and Justice Minister thought 'interesting.'
One might think that Colombia is in crisis; the president must be isolated
in his palace writing his resignation and waiting to be arrested for
acquiescing in the state's paramilitarization.
But according to the latest opinion polls, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe
Vilez has an unprecedented 85% approval rating.
Articles in Colombian newspapers are often unsigned, so as to avoid a fate
common to Iraqi journalists under American occupation; contentious opinions
are often met with threats, assassination attempts and forced exile, but
several newspaper columnists in Bogota have courageously raised questions
about the president's apparent stratospheric popularity.
Referring to Colombians forcibly displaced as a paramilitary war tactic, and
to a poor barrio in Bogota, one writer asks, 'how many desterrados or
workers in Ciudad Bolmvar are interviewed in these opinion polls?'
The opinion pollsters state that their interviews take place by phone, and
just in the largest cities. One pollster admitted that Colombia's highest,
or wealthiest strata, constituted almost 20% of respondents, even though
nowhere near 20% of Colombians are in this elite - even in Spain the highest
class is considered to constitute just 15% of the population.
The fact that one hour interviews with respondents were conducted by phone
raised further concerns; just 54% of Colombians have access to a private
phone, and one can only speculate as to how many workers have an hour's free
time to answer questions. As another writer pointed out, domestic workers
cleaning expensive apartments in strata 6 zones - the wealthiest areas -
wouldn't have the time, but the rich whose time is freed thanks to the
labour of these workers, would.
In Colombia, where those in absolute poverty are 50% of the entire country,
some incredulous journalists refused to accept that the opinion polls
accurately reflected Colombian opinion. Those that investigated a little
deeper discovered that one influential opinion poll director was an
unapologetic Uribista, who expressed his contempt for the poor by claiming
the unemployment figures merely measured 'those who are not interested in
work.'
But other unsigned articles seem to be designed to attempt to close down
debate; the business magazine Cambio claims that the president has a 'blank
cheque' from 85% of Colombians to do whatever he wants, while the political
elite's magazine, Semana, without the slightest reflection or doubt,
confidently states that 'Colombians believe Uribe is one of the greatest
presidents.'
It is not clear who the writers at Semana have been talking to, but it is
clear on whose behalf the magazine makes this claim - Colombia's richest
man, Julio Santo Domingo, recently made the same claim and also hoped that
the Constitution could be changed again to allow Uribe to be re-elected to a
third term.
It is also certain that there are some Colombians whose opinions this elite
believes are not worth consideration.
On the Pacific coast live the most desperate and poorest citizens in
Colombia, descendants of Caribbean slaves brought to this tropical
rainforest in 1728 to mine gold for the Spanish empire. After the Colombian
Republic ended the slave trade in 1851, American precious metal companies
moved in to expropriate the land and still, American fruit companies
continue to exploit Pacific coast workers on banana, sugarcane and palm oil
plantations.
In the largest Pacific coastal state, Chocs, this relentless exploitation
has resulted in an incredible 85% poverty rate. At least 50 children have
died due to malnutrition so far in 2007, and state disinterest, according to
the leftist opposition Polo Democratico, has left health, education and
nutrition in a critical and precarious position.
'Chocs's cacaos' - the corrupt bosses in the state - have participated in
the paramilitaries cocaine wars, the Polo states, deliberately displacing
peasant workers that resist their communities' militarization. The displaced
have created desperate shanty towns on the Pacific coast where, in scenes
reminiscent of the poverty and inequality in Haitm, many Colombians are now
forced to scrape a living on less than 2 dollars a week.
Colombia's most prestigious sociologist, Alfredo Molano, writes, 'Chocs is a
colonial state,' paramilitaries, politicians and corporations, 'have left
children displaced, malnourished and dead.' Black Colombians 'have been
exploited by the white elite and their racist, thieving economic
liberalism,' and this elite has been protected by Uribe's Democratic
Security policies that militarise the shanty towns and criminalise dissent.
But in Colombia's magical realism state, editorial writers in Bogota are
convinced that 'Colombia's greatest president,' and his 'undisputed' 85%
approval rating, reflect reality. There is no desperate hunger in Colombia,
there are no desterrados - the paramilitaries are not resurgent and union
workers are not assassinated. '?Parapolmtica? ?Qui es eso?' declares Semana.
'The president continues rising in the polls,' headlines El Tiempo. It is as
though the deeper the crisis becomes, the more Colombia's elite retreats
into their own reality, a magical Colombia that will forever believe in the
president's 2006 election campaign slogan, Con Uribe, mas que nunca - 'with
Uribe, more than ever.'
Sources
?Parapolmtica? ?Qui es eso? Report in Semana, Bogota, 12 March 2007.
.Ni qui niqo muerto, Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, Bogota, 31 March 2007.
Death squad scandal circles closer to Colombia's president, Simon Romero and
Jenny Carolina Gonzalez, New York Times, 15 May 2007.
Chocs: la crisis, las intervenciones, las mentiras de gubernamentales, Polo
Democratico Alternativo de Chocs statement, Quibdo, 18 April 2007.
Cuestionario para el encuestador, Daniel Coronell, Semana, 12 March 2007.
Desterrados: crsnicas del desarraigo, Alfredo Molano, El Ancora, Colombia,
2001.
El largo brazo del narcoparamilitarismo colombiano, Hernando Calvo Ospina,
Telesur report, Caracas, 9 May 2007.
Dmas de tempestad, headline report in El Espectador, Bogota, 20 May 2007.
Presidente Uribe sigue arriba en encuesta, article in El Tiempo, Bogota, 8
March 2007.
Cocaine wars, photographer: Scott Dalton, New York Times, 2007.
The best laid plans of presidents and war criminals: The unintended outcome
of Colombia's demobilizacion process, Garry Leech, Colombia Journal, 17 May
2007.
!Ave Marma! Cover report in Cambio, Bogota, 20 May 2007.
Chocs - ?el pasado o el futuro? Aurelio Suarez Montoya, Centro de Medios
Independientes, Quibdo, 9 April 2007.
Entremeses, Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, Bogota, 20 May 2007.
La favorabilidad del presidente, O L Gonzalez, El Tiempo, Bogota, 12 March
2007.
Los niqos del Chocs, Libardo Muqoz, Centro de Medios Independientes, Bogota,
30 March 2007.
Mas que complicado, Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, Bogota, 7 April 2007.
?Uribe III? Report in Semana, Bogota, 29 de enero de 2007.
Los errors de Gallup, Daniel Coronell, Semana, Bogota, 26 March 2007.
Barbacoa children and streets, photographer: Kris Lane, William and Mary
College, United States, 1995.
Paramilitary ties to elite in Colombia are detailed, Juan Forero, Washington
Post, 22 May 2007.
?Una encuesta embuchada? Marma Isabel Rueda, Semana, Bogota, 19 March 2007.
Al Chocs lo esta matando la rosca, Nistor Lspez, Quibdo report in El Tiempo,
Bogota, 1 April 2007.
La confianza en las encuestas, O L Gonzalez, El Tiempo, Bogota, 2 April
2007.
Momentos amargos, article in El Espectador, Bogota, 20 May 2007.
Paul Haste is a union organizer from London who is currently living in
Bogota to improve his Spanish. He can be reached at paul...@hotmail.com.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/05/colombia%e2%80%99s-magical-realism/
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