General Rafael Pena Rios retired fiom active military service at the end of 1987 at the age of 49. He had been fighting guerrillas since he was sixteen. He graduatedfirst ofY 800 officers in the Chief of Stqffs course at Fort Leaven- worth, and w'as commander ofthe XII Brigade in Caquetd. In March 1988 he gave his first interview to Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza of El Tiempo, from which this is drawn. Are we at war, General? We are at war. Just as they created two Vietnams, two Koreas, there could be a Colombia divided into two. What is happening? Why isn't there an effective military response to armed insurrection? In order to develop, the guerrilla needs three supports: one political, another social and the third economic. At this moment it has all of them. The political support it was lacking, it obtained through the peace agreements. Move- ments arose which weren't aiming to integrate the guerrillas into legal activity, but were simply their political projection, not explicit but camouflaged. Each guerrilla organization has its political movement, broad in some cases, narrow in others. Don't you think that the political groups are one thing and the guerrillas another? The confusion of these two is danger- ous. The linking of the UP and the FARC has produced many assassinations. The violence of the so-called paramilitary groups comes from the transparent relationship between political groups and guerrilla groups. It wouldn't have arisen if from the beginning in the agreements the former were made respon- sible for what the latter did. Luis Carlos Galan led an anti-corruption faction out of the party to found Nuevo Liberalismo. Even with the barriers to third party candidates, he managed to win 10.9% of the vote in the 1982 elections against the official Liberal candidate, former President Alfonso L6pez Michelsen. The anti-Turbay backlash certainly contributed to the victory in that election of Conservative candidate Beli- sario Betancur. He succeeded by appealing beyond the party machinery to the people, particularly the urban middle class. He spoke of reform, and was viewed as making a serious effort to deal with the violence-notjust political violence, but also criminal violence, which had reached epidemic proportions in the cities by the early 1980s. Betancur launched an audacious initiative for negoti- ating peace with the guerrillas, and dedicated himself to the Contadora Group working for peace in Central Amer- ica. He paid less attention to political reforms at home and had no substantial economic and social program with which to back up his peace initiatives. He faced strong opposition from within his own party: and, while a few selected Liberals participated in his government, the rest opposed him from their congressional majority and blocked any significant reform." The paramilitary Right, mean- Some years back, General, the army had more initiative, it confronted the guerrillas, it defeated them, it recovered stolen arms. Nothing of that is seen today. The army lost its capacity for combat, because it was taken away. It was taken away at the very moment when military justice was deprived of its function of judging public order crimes...at the moment army commanders began to face charges, when their hands were tied. The army lost the protection of the state....The basic problem is that the army is not being used as a military force. It is being used as a preventive force, as a civic force. Not even as a police force, because the police have more powers. A simple interrogation carried out by a military authority has no legal validity. It is not, as it should be, a force of repression. Repression is a taboo word... The function of the army with respect to subversion is repression. But today you can't shoot before you're shot at. The Statute for Defense of Democracy was left with no backbone when the Supreme Court annulled the right of the armed forces to carry out searches....We are not asking for a licence to kill. But just to arrest, search, keep a detainee for eight or ten days and carry out an interrogation... Don't you believe in a political solution to the problem of subversion? I don't. The aim of these groups is subversive, that is the seizure of power by arms to change a system and a society. It is not insurgency, it is subversion....Insurgency corre- sponds to political, economic and social problems. When those problems disappear, so does insurgency. If new politi- cal spaces and reforms are open, insurgency loses its reason for being. Subversion, no. It accepts dialogue for purely tactical reasons, to strengthen itself, but it never abandons its objectives....Here, there are politicians who say that we must enter into dialogue with the guerrillas. They are people who NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASwhile, drowned his peace initiative in blood by stepping up the dirty war against guerrilla sympathizers. B Y 1986, COLOMBIA'S POPULAR MOVEMENTS had reached a new stage, qualitatively and quantita- tively. A more educated population was less willing to be manipulated. No longer would they put up with condi- tions tolerated at the beginning of the 1960s. People were organizing around their real needs and sought no media- tion from the parties. These movements brought people into political life in an unprecedented way, forcing both the orthodox and revolutionary Left to question the elitism of the past and show greater respect for popular organizations and their autonomy. In 1986 the country's first independent labor confederation, the United Confederation of Workers (CUT), was formed, with the majority of the country's trade unions affiliated. Perhaps more significant were the newer "civic" movements, which brought people together on the basis of interests shared by a local community, sector or region-such as the lack of water, sewers or other munici- pal services-rather than the traditional class-based trade unionism. These movements view the fundamental contra- FARC guerrillas: The only organized force with a vision already accept defeat and who want to win their [the guerril- las'] favor or that of political groups in certain regions for electoral interests or for protection. How to defend the country better, General? We must recognize that there are insufficient troops to protect the thousand municipalities. Besides, civil support to the police is not allowed as it is not legal. That would create armed self-defense or paramilitary groups, it is thought. We are at war, that is forgotten... And how do you defeat the guerrillas militarily? Is itpossible within the institutional framework of a democratic system, without recourse to a dictatorship, which the democrats, the immense majority of the country, all reject? diction in society less as that between capital and wage labor (which has won some privileges) than between capital and the excluded (unemployed, underemployed, street vendors, etc.) who are denied the means to a livelihood. Not concerned with the seizure of state power, these movements attempt to build alternatives from be- low, independent not only of the traditional parties, but also of the orthodoxies of the Marxist Left and the various strategies of armed struggle. But with hardly any time to consolidate, these young and fragile movements soon found themselves working in semi-clandestinity and subjected to systematic violent repression. While the worst of the 1970s sectarianism had dimin- ished, the Left remained locked in debate over whether the popular movements should seek reforms through existing institutions, or a radical transformation of Co- lombian society as a whole. The Left made two attempts to work within the electoral system during the Betancur administration. Most important was the Uni6n Patri6tica (UP), a coalition of the Communist Party and several small left parties, founded in 1985 by the FARC guerrillas as a result of peace accords signed with Betancur. The effort was principally intended to be a vehicle for the guerrillas to enter the political arena. Making use of the It is possible. But the nation has to make the firm decision to confront subversion as an adversary, an enemy. It must be defeated. And in this struggle, all institutions must take part; the Supreme Court must take into account the reason of state, the fact of a country in danger, and not abstract legal considerations. If there is will on the part of the government, will from the parties, will from the court and the judiciary, will from parliament, the armed forces will have the will to fight and win....They don't have it now for lack of support. Many officers say, Why should we get ourselves killed for those who judge us without taking into account that we contribute our dead? General, the country is aware of that. But it won't accept the dirty war. It doesn't want torture, disappearances. The complicity of the army in these activities has been con- demned. For a democrat, that is to be rejected. That dirty war exists, but the army is not linked to it. It is caused by private initiatives, due to the absence and weak- ness of the state and also to the pain caused by the subversive groups. An energetic state would make the dirty war unnec- essary. What do you call an energetic state? A state which gives us the instruments to act. It must create legislation which supports our operations. It must create legislation which protects the army's witnesses. Which makes it possible to take special measures, to restrict freedom at a given moment. I am not speaking of arbitrariness nor of despotism, but rather of the institutional framework adequate for a war situation. If this doesn't happen what will? A very serious power vacuum. Nothing will remain as an alternative, neither one of the parties, nor the church, nor, as people have come to think, the armed forces. Only subver- sion. It is the only organized force with a vision.
