Militia, drug dealers fill the gap in Colombia

By Eva Karnofsky

BUENOS AIRES (DPA): The violence just won't end: in July, 271 people were snatched off the streets in Colombia by guerrillas, ultra-right paramilitaries or just run-of-the-mill criminals. High ransoms are always the reason. In August, at least 100 people died because two guerrilla groups have been trying for nigh on 40 years to violently seize power. Since then, rebels and the army have been engaged in bloody battle.

Ultra-right paramilitaries are also at war with the guerrillas in the battle over the drug trade. Last Wednesday alone, six were killed in the conflict. On Aug. 24, explosives went off in several cities killing one person and wounding 70 more. Suspicion in the hunt for the perpetrators fell to the drug barons.

So why is Latin America's oldest democracy a bastion of violence which leaves even President Andres Pastrana at total loss? In comparison to other neighbors, the conditions for a stable situation seem highly favourable on the whole.

The army briefly intervened in politics just once in the last century and Colombia has been spared the rule of awful military juntas. While political parties in most of its neighbours have proved themselves to be mere instable groupings, the two large Colombian parties, Conservatives and Liberals, can both look back over a 100-year history. Apart from the last two years, Colombia's economic growth were the envy of the whole continent.

Yet the history of the two largest parties has also been characterized by violence. In the 1940s, they tore themselves apart in a civil war that cost the lives of 300,000 people. Manuel Marulanda, leader of the biggest guerrilla army in the country today, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), learnt guerrilla warfare back then on the side of the Liberals.

But political scientists blame the unbending rigidity of its democratic system for Colombia's demise into an almost ungovernable nation. Since the end of the civil war, both parties have been at pains to avoid any change to the system. The status quo guarantees their power and to this end they have shared jointly in government. Almost every Cabinet has contained at least one minister of the party which came second.

It is still usual for the fieldworkers to assume the political stripes of whichever landowner they happen to be toiling for. But these days, over 75 per cent of the population live in towns and cities, something the political parties have yet to adjust themselves to. They lack the programs and ideas, and have nothing to offer urban voters who are offended by the corruption and nepotism rife in the major parties.

For decades, Colombia's presidents have been supplied by the same upper-class families who are all related by marriage to the big economic interests. These groups have lived to the best of their abilities in a state that makes it easy for them to accumulate wealth. But they are also quite content to see the vast bulk of the population earning the same subsistence wages, and to leave economically uninteresting regions to their own devices.

But in those places where the state neglects to provide education, health care and a legal framework is where the guerrillas, paramilitaries or drug dealers find it easy to gain a toehold -- like Pablo Escobar in Medellin. They are only filling a power vacuum.

Prior to Pastrana, various presidents have tried to pacify the country -- to no avail. Understandably perhaps, the economically powerful groups which financed their election campaigns have never been prepared to shell out more taxes and higher wages.

So the endless series of talks and negotiations all lead nowhere. The phrase "public spirit" is unknown in a country in which only those who have made it count for anything. And as the politicians almost exclusively pander to the needs of the rich, many citizens are not abashed to take what they can get away with. That is why, despite the democracy here, more people are kidnapped and murdered than anywhere else on the continent.