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    Book review: Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia

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    Originally published at Liberation News on November 3, 2010

    On Sept. 23 military sources in Colombia reported the murder of Jorge Briceño, aka Mono Jojoy, one of the members of the FARC secretariat. Amidst all the celebratory propaganda statements issued by the U.S. State Department and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos about their claim they are defeating the “terrorists,” it is important for communists and progressives to revisit the class struggle in Colombia that gave birth to the FARC. What are the class interests of the FARC and why have the Colombian ruling class and their imperialist backers been unable to destroy the popular guerrilla army after 45 years of systemic repression? 

    With five years of field study in FARC-controlled territory, Professor James J. Brittain of Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada, has just published Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP, a book which sets out to dispel the ruling class’s myths about the popular guerrilla army. Brittain takes on all of the propaganda used to discredit the FARC, explaining that they are not a terrorist organization but rather a people’s army that is born out of the deep social contradictions that exist in Colombian society. Guided by Marxism-Leninism, the FARC is working to liberate Colombia’s land and resources from the grip of a minority ruling class and U.S. imperialism.

    Roots of the FARC

    The FARC emerged out of a time period known in Colombia as “La Violencia.” In 1948 liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was murdered by the right wing because of his aspirations to implement reforms for the poor. Gaitán’s assassination set in motion a wave of violence against anti-imperialist, leftwing forces, forcing many Colombian revolutionaries to go underground.

    This led to the formation of rural self-defense organizations of peasants across Colombia connected to the Colombian Communist Party, the PCC. These “peasant republics” which fought for land reform and justice for the peasantry were the predecessors of the FARC.

    The Legend of Marquetalia

    In response to the armed peasant organization, from 1960-63 the Colombian government carried out “Operation Marquetalia”. Twenty thousand combined Colombian/U.S. troops and advisors invaded and pulverized the region, employing napalm several years before it was used in Vietnam in an attempt to push the guerrillas out of the Marquetalia Valley.

    In response to this attack, on May 27, 1964, the “peasant republics” united and intensified their struggle by banding into a guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC. Under the leadership of Manuel Marulanda, the guerrillas resisted the Colombian army and their U.S. backers, giving birth to “the Legend of Marquetalia.”

    La Unión Patriótica

    By 1970, the latifundia economy meant that 77.7% of arable land was in the hands of large rural landowners (7). As the contradictions in the Colombian countryside sharpened and more of the nation’s resources—oil, emeralds, coffee—were gobbled up by transnational monopolies, more and more peasants joined the FARC in defense of their their land. The FARC set up a new social organization within the peasant/guerrilla-run territories, providing free schooling, health care and other social services for the peasantry. In 1985 the FARC, unions and other civil society groups formed the Unión Patriótica, a left alternative to the two ruling-class parties. Alarmed at the potential threat of the left winning in the elections, the ruling class embarked on a political genocide, killing 6,000 members of the Unión Patriótica, including Jaime Pardo and Bernardo Jaramillo, the UP’s presidential candidates in 1986 and 1990. Realizing the dead-end of bourgeois politics, the FARC picked up their weapons again and returned to the countryside.

    The Role of the Paramilitaries: The Shock Troops of the Bourgeoisie

    Traditional state forces were never enough to stamp out the resistance that inequality bred. Since the 1920’s propertied interests also have hired private armies to protect their monopolies. Brittain reports that by the late 1990’s large landowners and the state were employing up to 10,000 paramilitaries. Unlike the disciplined, ideologically-motivated FARC, the paramilitaries’ role is to strike terror in the hearts and minds of Colombia’s exploited classes. Brittain documents their policies of torture and brutal slaughter towards civilians suspected of collaborating with or interacting with the FARC.

    According to the International Crisis Group, the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), umbrella group of the paramilitaries, committed over 1,145 massacres from 1997-2000 (125). In one such slaughter representative of the death squad’s campaign, “the paramilitaries mutilated bodies with chain saws. They chained people to burning vehicles. They decapitated and rolled heads, even playing soccer with one of the heads.” (126) It is the reckless violence of the paramilitaries that has left Colombia with 4.3 million internally displaced people (more than the entire Middle-East including Iraq) (24). Hundreds of thousands of families running from the paramilitary terror have in fact fled into guerrilla-run territory. While the press distorts class reality and turns it on its head, the truth is that the paramilitaries are guilty of the lion’s share of drug-trafficking and horrific brutality that is every day falsely attributed to the FARC.  

    Who are the Major Players in the Cocaine Trade?

    Imperialism has a vested interest in portraying the FARC as criminal drug-runners. But who is truly behind the drug trade in Colombia and what is the FARC’s stance on the cultivation of coca?

    The FARC discourage the trade of drugs but understand the reality for many peasants, who cultivate coca today, because of the plummeting of the coffee market and the absence of other sustainable options. The FARC promote a policy of crop-substitution searching for ways to encourage peasants to grow more bananas, yuca, coffee, sugarcane and other foodstuffs.

    The FARC have in place a class-based model of taxation where the landless and coca subsistence peasant farmers are not taxed but drug merchants, like cattle ranchers and Colombians and corporations worth over $1,000,000 have to pay a 10% tax.

    Washington’s war on drugs is a propaganda tool used to justify its billion-dollar funding to the Colombian government for counter-insurgency and more easily carry out the theft of Colombia’s vast wealth. Colombia is also being militarily boosted by U.S. imperialism as a regional threat to other countries like Venezuela and Ecuador.

    In their so-called war on drugs, U.S. and Colombian ruling elites overlook the fact that former president Alvaro Uribe and his connections are directly linked to narco-trafficking. The largest drug dealers also employ their own paramilitaries, competing violently for control of the drug-trade. They see the FARC’s pro-peasant stance as a threat to the drug trade they control. They form an alliance that seeks to amass as much land as they can to the detriment of the peasantry.

    Major drug trafficker Pablo Escobar himself once said: “that they try to present me as an associate of the guerrilla hurts my personal dignity. I am a man of investment and therefore cannot sympathize with the guerrillas who fight against property” (94). 

    Conclusion

    Amidst the barrage of lies and confusion in the mass media, it is important not to lose track of the class war that rages on in Colombia. The ruling class intentionally misrepresents and under-represents the FARC in the media. It often celebrates murderous attacks on the revolutionary forces, such as the highly touted invasion of Ecuador and murder of comandante Raúl Reyes and Ivan Ríos in 2008 and the natural death of commander-in-chief Manuel Marulanda the same year.

    Brittain’s research shows that throughout the 1990’s the FARC had about 40,000-50,000 trained combatants and a sprawling underground network of support across rural and urban Colombia, consistently maintaining a distance of 16 to 50 miles from Bogota’s downtown. Today the FARC continue to control vast sections of the Colombian landscape and develop their model of a new society, complete with schooling, medical care, a justice system, pensions and their own infrastructure. With meticulous research, Brittain assesses how, despite some setbacks and increased offensive by the U.S. and Colombian governments, the FARC is not defeated and their influence is not diminishing. The FARC continues to resist with the support they receive from the Colombian masses.

    Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia     is well documented and essential to gaining a deeper understanding of the FARC’s struggle for social justice, especially in these times of increased U.S. government demonization of popular movements in Latin America.

    Colombia: Peaceful rhetoric, deadly reality – Wílter de Jesús Quintero Tapasco presente!

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    Originally published at Liberation News on August 15, 2015

    All progressive and revolutionary people should condemn the assassination of union leader Wílter de Jesús Quintero Tapasco in the mining town of Marmato in the northern province of Caldas, Colombia. At 2 a.m. on August 13, Tapasco was ambushed and shot at close range as he finished his shift at the Mineras Nacionales de Colombia gold mine. Tapasco was only 26 years old. He was a dedicated and fearless leader of one of the most marginalized segments of the Colombian population.

    The murder of yet another labor leader follows a long pattern of state violence to intimidate the miners and other workers of Colombia and discourage them from organizing for their rights. In April, when the District Attorney of Marmoto travelled to the mines to investigate the unrelenting violence against the workers he was shot at and chased off. The government of Juan Manuel Santos portrays itself as a liberal option to the hardline Alvaro Uribe government (2002-2010) but the ongoing repression indicates otherwise.

    The strategic value of the United States’ Colombian colony

    Colombia has long functioned as imperialism’s “Israel” in Latin America, a gigantic battleship whose mission is to keep the region in check. With the leftward shifts that occurred in Ecuador & Venezuela—Colombia’s neighbors—and the continent as a whole, Columbia’s strategic importance for imperialism increased.

    In 2009, Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa forced the U.S. to close their military base in Manta sarcastically calling out the U.S.’s imperial arrogance: “We can negotiate with the U.S. about a base in Manta, if they let us put a military base in Miami.”

    True to its form, the U.S. responded by building nine new military bases across Colombia. A leaked U.S. Air Force cable confirmed as much, stating that the deal with former president Uribe offered “a unique opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations in the region against various threats, including “anti-U.S. governments” (The Progressive March 2010).

    Colombia’s value to the U.S. is not just of geo-political importance. Colombia is Latin America’s fourth largest economy with a GDP of $683 billion dollars. Its vast natural resources—including gold, oil, emeralds, coffee, cut flowers- reap enormous profits for multinational corporations. Even the capitalists themselves recognize how untenable the system is and warn the headstrong Colombian elite to implement reforms. Lars Christian Moller, a Senior Country Economist at the World Bank, warns that Colombia’s stark inequality and regressive tax system are a recipe for future social disaster. In a report released yesterday, London’s Financial Times warned that Colombia’s system makes it among the five most fragile in the world.

    Behind the attacks

    This central contradiction—a super-rich country, with a poor, exploited populace—is what drives the naked class warfare in Marmato and across Colombia. The workers are standing up to demand a bit more of the very wealth they produce but their organizing efforts are met with sheer repression. This ensures that further radicalization of the producing classes and the continuation of the seven-decade long civil war.

    The ongoing violence has to be seen in the context of a split in the Colombian ruling-class as to how to best rule the country and continue to siphon off Colombia’s enormous wealth. In December of last year, the armed revolutionary guerrilla army, the FARC and the government signed “a peace agreement.” This was heralded the world over as a step in the right direction for all parties in the Colombian conflict. But Santos was guilty of double-dealing, taking advantage of the cease fire to jail undesirable political activists and encroach further into FARC-controlled territory.

    As the repression continued, Santos continued to cruelly tax the Colombian working class and peasantry and slash social benefits. Like his predecessors, he is ignoring the underlying social inequality that gave birth to the struggle in 1948 when small farmers picked up guns to defend themselves against the violence of the landowning class and their state backers. (For more information on the history of the FARC click here).

    There were those in power who disagreed with any type of “negotiations” with the FARC. These fascist, paramilitary forces were personified by the hated former president Uribe. Some analysts argue that the latest round of persecution is an attempt to sabotage the “peace accord” and continue a war of extermination against the resistance. The political class’s U.S. handlers have given them the OK to employ a “good cop/bad cop” strategy as long as the deluge of profits from this oil and mineral-rich country continues to flow northward.

    The struggle for a sovereign Colombia continues

    As part of the so called “peace” agreement, the Colombian government was forced to provide for and guarantee the security of the union leadership. Betraying their word, the Santos government took away the security teams and assigned them to aspiring political candidates. This left the union leadership and rank-and-file exposed to the companies’ paramilitary death squads. The national leadership of SINTRAMIENERGETICA (National Union of Mine, Petrochemical, Agroricalutal and Energy Workers) has called for a demonstration in the capital Bogotá against the Santos government for Wednesday, a week after the assassination of their compañero.

    Rest in Power Wílter de Jesús Quintero Tapasco and the thousands of valiant Colombians who have always stood up to imperialism and their Colombian underlings against the selling off of their patria!

    50 years later – What can the Black Panther Party teach a new generation of revolutionaries?

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    Originally published at Liberation News on October 18, 2016

    Fifty years ago in October 1966, the Black Panther party exploded onto the political scene in the United States, striking fear into the racist ruling class and inspiring a new generation of revolutionaries to “seize the time.”

    Today, there is a renewed interest in the Panthers and what they stood for. The slogan “Assata taught me” is widespread in the Movement for Black Lives. Huey P. Newton’s Revolutionary Suicide, Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time, Assata Shakur’s self-titled autobiography and George Jackson’s Soledad Brother, among many other books by former Panthers, are staples of any revolutionary library.

    In the face of the ongoing racism, police terror and segregation that Black people and oppressed people face today, it is more important than ever to review the history of the Black Panther Party, and examine how it dealt with these same issues.

    The meteoric rise of the Panthers

    Revolution seemed to be on the agenda during the 1960s – in the United States and around the world.

    In plain view of a television audience of millions, the police departments of the South employed attack dogs, batons, water hoses and other weapons to repress the right of Black people to vote and to uphold segregation. After much sacrifice, the Civil Rights movement won the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Even though these acts declared Jim Crow practices illegal, the majority of Black people, in the South and in the North as well, still lived a precarious existence in either urban slums or impoverished rural areas, where they faced unemployment, substandard housing, disproportionate poverty and police harassment.

    Inspired by the anti-colonial and socialist struggles worldwide, many came to the conclusion that nothing short of a revolutionary overturn of the entire system could defeat white supremacy. As the 1960s went on, the epicenter of struggle shifted from the south to the cities and suburbs of the north, and from tactical non-violence to active self-defense.

    Malcolm X became the most influential voice of the Black Power movement. Local North Carolina NAACP leader Robert Williams, the Harlem 9’s Mae Mallory and organizations such as the Deacons for Defense armed themselves to stand up to the racist terror of the Ku Klux Klan and sheriff departments across the South. In Alabama, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)-affiliated Lowndes County Freedom Organization selected a black panther as the symbol of their struggle. LCFO Chairman John Hulett explained the symbol’s significance: “The Panther is an animal that when pressured moves back until it is cornered, then it comes out fighting for life and death. We felt we had been pushed back long enough and that it was time for Negroes to come out and take over.” (see Black against Empire: the History and Politics of the BPP by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin).

    A pivotal moment had arrived in the history of the Black liberation movement.

    In October of 1966, a year after the assassination of Malcolm X, college students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, Calif., to stand up to police terror and continue the struggle for Black self-determination. The revolutionary political organization they formed became a lightning rod for oppressed Black youth and went on to become one of the most advanced expressions of working and oppressed people’s organization in the history of the United States.

    The Panthers gained national prominence after a dramatic action on May 2, 1967, when 30 Black Panthers—dressed in black leather coats, and armed with unloaded shotguns—entered the capital building in Sacramento to protest the Mulford Act, a measure designed to outlaw citizens’ right to carry weapons. As Governor Ronald Reagan and other politicians scampered away, BPP chairman Bobby Seale read a statement to “the American people in general and the Black people in particular,” detailing “the terror, brutality, murder, and repression of Black people by the racist power structure of America,” and concluding that “the time has come for Black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.” As reporters and cameramen shuffled to capture tomorrow’s headline, one reporter shouted out “who are you?”

    Sixteen-year-old Bobby Hutton, who would be martyred after a confrontation with police the next year, capturing the militant attitude that now gripped the nation, responded, “We’re the Black Panthers. We’re Black people with guns. What about it?”

    A few months later, Huey Newton was arrested and charged with murdering a police officer. The Panthers formed a broad coalition of radical and progressive organization and individuals that carried out a massive campaign to save him from execution. The demand “Free Huey!” echoed across the country, and in 1970 Huey Newton was released from prison.

    By 1969 the Panthers were a national organization of 5,000 members with a median age of 19. The majority of Black Panther members were women.

    The Panther’s guiding philosophy: Marxism-Leninism

    Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale wrote in his book Seize the Time, the “historical experience of black people, translated through Marxism-Leninism, is really the ideology of the Black Panther Party.”

    The Black Panther Party was born into a world where socialist revolution had tremendous prestige. From the Soviet Union  to China to Cuba, over a third of the world’s population lived in countries whose governments aspired to build socialism. The Panthers saw their struggle against racism and national oppression as part of this worldwide movement to break free of imperialism.

    In China at that time the Cultural Revolution brought millions of young people into the streets, sparking interest worldwide. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton raised money for the newly formed Panthers by selling copies of “Quotations from Chairman Mao,” popularly known as The Little Red Book.

    The Panthers were heavily influenced by Malcolm X. They also had the highest regard for the writings of Franz Fanon and the Marxist classics as the best guides for developing their own strategy for revolution and their own tactics for uplifting their communities. As Panther Field Marshal George Jackson said, “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me.”

    Building off of the slogan and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, “to serve the people,” the Panthers established breakfast programs in hundreds of cities across the country. In a sense, the BPP invented the term “grass roots,” developing a series of survival programs that responded to the complex problems that plagued oppressed communities, such as hunger, inadequate housing, drug and alcohol addiction, gangs, sexual violence and internalized self-hatred.

    They saw these survival programs, and their armed cop watch patrols, as a way to elevate the morale of their communities and attract people to socialism. The Panthers emphasized building a revolutionary united front because they understood that only the toppling of the white supremacist, capitalist order and the establishment of a socialist system would begin to seriously resolve the needs of all oppressed communities.

    What the Panthers did: Centralism, training and internationalism

    The Panther leadership developed a 6-week training program for the youth who lined up across the country to join them. They encouraged the party membership to read an average of two hours per day and study the origins of the class and race oppression that affected Black America. The Black Panthers operated according to the organizational model of democratic centralism, where there is unity in action and members are held to a high standard of discipline and dedication.

    The BPP educated the youth and they put them to work in the community. The Panthers’ leadership and confidence helped thousands of young Black people establish a new, revolutionary identity. Claudia Chesson-Williams, a teenage member in Corona, Queens describes the galvanizing effect the Panthers had:

    “No longer did we have to argue and fight about ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ and ‘Don’t step on my sneaker’ and ‘This is my block.’ Now, we really had something to fight for. We had a people to fight for. That was bigger than any gang or any club. We had a goal. We had something to look forward to, which was the betterment of Black people.”

    The panthers developed 35 survival programs. They distributed free food and served free breakfasts for children (at one point for 20,000). They organized liberation schools, GED classes, benefits counseling, free clinics, plumbing and maintenance programs, martial arts programs, a Sickle Cell Anemia research foundation, a visiting nurses program, legal aid and more.

    Their political organ, the Black Panther: Black Community News Service, was read nationally.

    Chairman Fred Hampton formed the original Rainbow Coalition in order to unite different revolutionary groups and ex-gangs into one united front.

    Before many groups dared to take a stance against the oppression of LGBTQ people, in 1970, just one year after the Stonewall Rebellion, the Panthers took a public stance recognizing that LGBTQ liberation was an important part of the liberation of all oppressed people.

    The Panthers were among the strongest proponents of international solidarity. The Panthers not only opposed Washington’s war on Vietnam, they also offered their members as soldiers to fight on the side of the Vietnamese against the Pentagon. In 1970, the Panthers gave full support to Palestinian liberation when few groups did.

    The Panthers’ example inspired other national liberation struggles within the American “prison-house of nations” – a term coined by Lenin to describe the Russian Empire but one that also applies to the United States, where the oppressed Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Indigenous nations and others are denied self-determination. The American Indian Movement, the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, the Grey Panthers and other groups emulated the Panthers’ example of self-sacrifice and centralism. We should remember that it was in a Chicago jail cell that Cha Chi Jimenez, the founder of the Young Lords, met Chairman Fred Hampton.

    State repression

    Despite these amazing achievements in just a few years, the Panthers were never allowed to reach their full potential.  The U.S. government intervened to repress them. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover classified the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

    Why did the U.S. government see the Panthers as a threat? Mumia Abu-Jamal explains, “It was terrified that the [Panthers] had the ability to put forward leaders to channel the mass defiance of the 1960s, growing especially militant among African American communities, into a potent revolutionary movement.”

    What differentiated the Panthers from other service organizations and what made them dangerous to the ruling class was their analysis that popularized a socialist revolution to overthrow white supremacy. For instance, Assata Shakur wrote:

    “I wasn’t against communism, but i can’t say i was for it either. At first, i viewed it suspiciously, as some kind of white man’s concoction, until i read works by African revolutionaries and studied the African liberation movements. Revolutionaries in Africa understood that the question of African liberation was not just a question of race, that even if they managed to get rid of the white colonialists, if they didn’t rid themselves of the capitalistic economic structure, the white colonialists would simply be replaced by Black neocolonialists. There was not a single liberation movement in Africa that was not fighting for socialism … The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation: anything that has any kind of value is made, mined, grown, produced, and processed by working people. So why shouldn’t working people collectively own that wealth? Why shouldn’t working people own and control their own resources? Capitalism meant that rich businessmen owned the wealth, while socialism meant that the people who made the wealth owned it.”

    A fighting organization with a wide following among the people and this type of ideological orientation was nothing short of an existential threat to the U.S. ruling class.

    COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a sophisticated FBI effort to infiltrate and liquidate the BPP. In conjunction with police departments across the country, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover coordinated a massive campaign of misinformation, infiltration and extermination against the Panthers. 28 Panther leaders were assassinated, among them Bobby Hutton, Bunchy Carter, John Huggins, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and George Jackson.

    It was not until years later that the Senate’s Church Committee would show how pervasively the FBI worked against the Panthers and how much it influenced press coverage. It encouraged urban police forces to confront Black Panthers, planted informants and agent provocateurs, and intimidated local community members who were sympathetic to the group.

    While the state liquidated the Black freedom fighters with one hand, they implemented token reforms with the other. The liberal wing of the establishment propped up networks of non-profits and CBO’s (Community-Based Organizations) to give the illusion that the government was involved in rendering basic services. These two strategies of “pacification” were aimed at removing the true forces of liberation from the heart of oppressed communities. The new “grass-roots” were funded and directed from on high, from the outside, so that they became dead-ends for popular energy and anger.

    Panther leaders like Mutulu Shakur, Mumia Abu Jamal and Russel “Maroon” Shoatz continue to languish in prison today because of their uncompromising defense of the right of Black people to self-determination. Assata Shakur, who describes herself as a modern day run-away slave and maroon, is in exile in Cuba with a $2 million bounty on her head. Anyone who repeats the meaningless cliché that “the U.S. is the freest country in the world” should study the history of the Panthers.

    But for all the repression, 50 years later the Black Panther spirit lives on. Its historic legacy – and the active mentorship still provided by former Panthers to a new generation of radicals – can never be erased. The task ahead of us is to revive the revolutionary movement, construct the revolutionary party and seize power to build socialism – we will win!

    South Bronx man beaten senseless by police

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    Originally published at Liberation News on June 9, 2014

    On June 2, Liberation received a call about a showdown between police and community residents outside of an apartment building at 157th St and Courtland Ave in the South Bronx. Eyewitnesses describe a brutal police beating of 39-year-old Raul Garcia, which left the street covered in blood. (see photo)

    Footage obtained of the incident shows Garcia’s limp body being carried into a police vehicle while the community surrounds and denounces the officers responsible, trying to stop the abuse.

    Eyewitness Christian Johnson told Liberation the incident began when a man set a fire outside of Mr. Garcia’s door, with Mr. Garcia’s family trapped inside. After firefighters arrived to put out the fire, the police then arrested the alleged arsonist, but failed to remove him from the scene. As a result, an altercation developed between the man and Mr. Garcia, but instead of separating them, the police then mercilessly beat the victim, Mr. Garcia.

    According to Johnson, around 50 community members spontaneously challenged the police for their abuse, despite officers pushing them back, and threatening to beat them as well. “They made it seem like if we said anything to protect the individual, they would beat us up as well. Some of the police officers pushed pregnant women, old ladies,” Johnson remarked. “We were just tired of it … Some people were afraid but they had the guts to still stand up to the police because they knew that what was being done was wrong.”

    Mr. Garcia is reportedly being charged with criminal assault. No other community members were arrested at the time.

    Every Night

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    Originally published at Young Communist USA in November, 2003

    Every night is an opportunity to
    break night
    to vanquish sleep

    To listen
    to the broken dreams and broken men
    to the whispers and howls
    the midnights and daybreaks
    the weddings and the funerals
    to listen to the flow of the sewers and seas

    To study the sounds of wolves, winds and wounded wings
    Dialects, tempos and centuries’

    To dream to the rhythm of harrowing rains
    and awake in harmony with the land ís pulse

    To awake
    Armed with receptive ears to
    fallen souls
    and scorched flesh’

    Stalking time
    collecting the tears of accursed centuries
    organizing the scars in my memory
    Storing the testimonies like grenades deep in my chest

    Listening to the intimacy of
    death and victory
    anguish and love.

    Amilcar Cabral and the national liberation movement of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde

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    Originally published at Liberation School on January 26, 2011

    For 500 years, Portuguese colonialism was built upon the slave trade and the systematic pillaging of its African colonies: Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome e Principe, Angola and Cape Verde.

    Marxist historian Walter Rodney summarized Portuguese’s colonial rule in Africa: “The Portuguese stand out because they boasted the most and did the least. After close to half a thousand years not a single medical doctor had been trained in Portuguese Mozambique. As for Guinea Bissau, Portugal confessed open neglect of this territory.”

    Amilcar Cabral was born in Bafatá, Guinea Bissau, to Cape Verdean parents in 1924. He was the son of Juvenal Lopez Cabral, a schoolteacher and anti-colonial activist, and Iva Pinhel Evora, a seamstress and laborer in a fish supplying factory. At the age of eight, his family moved back to the Cape Verdean Islands, where he excelled as a student and poet.

    There were several droughts in Cape Verde in the 1940s leading to the deaths of over 50,000 people from starvation. The impact of the drought was felt even more sharply because of Portugal’s indifference to the suffering and starvation. The contradictions of colonial rule across Africa inspired the 20-year-old Cabral to vow to wage a life and death struggle to free his people from the yoke of foreign domination.

    The Portuguese empire offered a few scholarships to students from the colonies in hopes of co-opting and training them to be future functionaries of the Portuguese colonial government. Because of his exemplary intelligence, in 1945, Cabral received a scholarship to study in the colonial center of Lisbon, where he came into contact with other African students from the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Sao Tome e Principe, and Mozambique.

    His arrival in Europe at the close of World War II coincided with a new stage of struggle throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In country after country, colonized populations began to demand independence. Even the intellectuals who had been trained in Europe and traditionally argued that colonialism brought “progress” began to assert otherwise.

    Interacting with his counterparts from British and French colonies in Africa, Cabral formed the African Studies Center in 1948 in Lisbon. He worked closely with Augustinho Neto, the future leader of Angola’s liberation struggle, and Eduardo Mondlane, first president of FRELIMO (the Liberation Front of Mozambique) in an underground study group to discuss political theory, including Marxism, and solutions to the African colonial question.

    Trained as an agronomist, Cabral returned to Guinea. He traveled the countryside to study his country’s soil topography and crop production, generating the first and best scholarly study on the topic.

    His travels throughout Bissau and Angola familiarized him even more with the psychological and economic features of colonialism and the cultural life of his people. For instance, he realized that some of the conventional demands of the left towards the peasantry—such as land reform—were not the most pressing; in the Guinean countryside, small private landholdings were already common.

    Instead, peasants experienced the burdens of colonialism most heavily through their interactions with Portuguese merchants: their exploitative trade rates, insistence on single-crop production and daily personal humiliations. These experiences would have a profound influence in his writings and outlook on how to defeat Portuguese rule in Africa.

    Though Cape Verde is a series of islands 500 miles off the coast of Africa, the nations of Cape Verde and Guinea share a similar history. The Portuguese rulers sought to divide the two nations by favoring the Cape Verdeans, who were thought to be lighter-skinned than the Guineans. Cabral saw the destiny of the two nations as inseparable and in 1956 formed the African Party for Independence (PAI), which would later become the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), declaring open armed struggle as the way forward.

    National liberation and the ‘road of socialism’

    Cabral was part of a trend in the worldwide anti-colonial movement that, drawing inspiration from the Chinese and Vietnamese examples, argued for the supremacy of the urban and rural masses in national liberation struggles. Cabral believed revolutionary socialism was the only genuine solution for colonized peoples: “In our present historical condition, there are only two possible paths for an independent nation, to return to imperialist domination (neo-colonialism, capitalism, state capitalism), or to take the road of socialism.”

    Cabral divided history into three epochs related directly to the development of the means of production: society before classes (of which he called for more study), class society, and a future communist society in which private property and class divisions would be eliminated. Guinean pre-class society had already given way to class divisions prior to Portuguese colonialism, but the latter had stunted the colonies’ economic and cultural development.

    The objective for Cabral was to seize the national productive forces, further develop them and utilize them for the common good. He argued that only mass, popular resistance—not just negotiation conducted by a small stratum of intellectuals—could ever be successful in truly completing these tasks.

    Guinea, as a super-exploited colony, had a small urban working class and Cabral looked to the peasantry as the social force capable of defeating the Portuguese. He emphasized the unreliable nature of the native bourgeoisie, which developed as a service class for colonialism. He warned that they would seek to inherit the state apparatus and continue to siphon off the wealth of the nation to imperialism as long as they received their share. “If we accept the principle that the liberation struggle is a revolution and that it does not finish at the moment when the national flag is raised and the national anthem played.”

    Instead, “we are fighting so that insults may no longer rule our countries, martyred and scorned for centuries, so that our peoples may never more be exploited by imperialists not only by people with white skin, because we do not confuse exploitation or exploiters with the color of men’s skins; we do not want any exploitation in our countries, not even by black people.”

    Cabral directly addressed intellectuals and called on them to abandon their loyalty to other class interests and the agents of imperialism. Instead, the role of the revolutionary intellectual was to march shoulder-to-shoulder with the most oppressed sectors of society. The latter were the only social force truly capable of carrying out a social revolution. (“Return to the Source,” 1974)

    In the process of struggle, guerrilla leaders would undergo “a reafricanization of the spirit.” In short, this meant that picking up arms against the colonial rulers would puncture the mythology of the latter’s “greatness and invincibility” and restore African people’s identity, dignity and self-determination.

    In his famous “The Weapon of Theory” address at the 1966 Tricontinental Congress in Havana, Cabral expressed the desire and determination to emulate the Cuban people’s example of overthrowing all forms of exploitation through armed struggle. Like Che Guevara, Cabral emphasized the human dimension of the liberation struggle, hoping that out of the struggle for a new society, a new man and new woman would develop elevated beyond egotism and self-interest.

    Maria da Luz “Lilica” Boal, an original combatant with Cabral who oversaw the school for children in the liberated territories in the late 1960s and early 1970s, described to Liberation the character of his leadership. She recalled how Cabral checked in at the school every morning gently adjusting the children’s school uniforms and having a laugh with them before he left to oversee the ideological and political training of the PAIGC cadre.

    Cabral’s internationalism

    Undoubtedly familiar with Lenin and the general line of the Communist International in the wake of World War I, Cabral also viewed national liberation as part of a worldwide struggle against capitalism in its imperialist stage. In 1970, Cabral visited Alma Ata, the capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan, for a conference on oppressed nation’s self-determination. Cabral called Lenin “the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples.”

    In fascist Portugal, all references to Marxism and class struggle were punishable by imprisonment, torture and even execution. It was in Africa that many conscripted Portuguese soldiers, of rural and working-class backgrounds, first came into contact with ideas about democracy and socialism. The steadfast resistance and determination of the peoples of Cape Verde and Bissau wore down the conscripted Portuguese army and emboldened them to rebel against their commanding officers in 1974.

    Thirteen years of war against the African liberation movements had moreover over-extended the Portuguese military and become a burden on the economy. In an interview with Portuguese poet and politician Manuel Alegre, Cabral spoke directly to the 20,000 Portuguese conscripts urging them to consider their class interests above and beyond the national chauvinism their ruling class fed them.

    Portuguese officers began to refuse orders on African battlefields, and formed an Armed Forces Movement (MFA) that supported the demand for independence. In today’s terms, this would be equivalent to the rank-and-file of the U.S. military declaring their solidarity with the Iraqi resistance—imagine the impact!

    The MFA led a rebellion against fascism at home, which ended more than 40 years of rule under António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano. It opened the door to a popular upsurge that nearly claimed power for the Portuguese workers. These social convulsions in the imperial center in turn facilitated the independence of Portugal’s African colonies.

    Each wave of revolution builds on and draws from the victories of the past. Just as the Cuban revolution received invaluable support from the Soviet Union, the national liberation struggles in Guinea and other colonies likewise received invaluable assistance from the Cubans, who sent an international mission under the leadership of Victor Drake to train PAIGC cadre.

    You can kill the revolutionary, but not the revolution

    The PIDE—the Portuguese secret police—functioned both at home and in the colonies to harass, jail and squelch all resistance against the ruling junta. They had Cabral killed on Jan. 20, 1973. It was only a few months before the victory of his people over Portuguese colonialism and the declaration of the independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.

    Cabral is only one in a long list of African revolutionaries and visionary leaders assassinated by the colonialists and their elite allies. That list includes Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique, killed by a PIDE letter bomb in 1969. It includes Félix-Roland Moumié, a Marxist Cameroonian leader murdered by French intelligence in 1960. It includes Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, and Chris Hani of South Africa.

    These figures, and the movements they led, contrast sharply with all of the racist, bourgeois clichés about corrupt, inefficient, vainglorious, tribal African leadership and failed states. Instead of inter-ethnic conflict and the enrichment of a tiny elite, they projected broad African unity premised on the public ownership of the continent’s vast resources. This vision—which cut to the very heart of imperialist control—remains potent, ready to be picked up and expanded by the next generation of African revolutionaries. From Tunisia to South Africa, and everywhere in between, the stage is set for a new era of class and anti-imperialist struggles. Amilcar Cabral’s legacy and thought remains valuable today.

    Margaret Thatcher: imperialism personified

    0

    Originally published at Liberation School on April 10, 2013

    While the ruling class mourns the death of one of their most loyal politicians and mouthpieces, the British and Irish working classes and oppressed peoples the world over are certainly not mourning Margaret Thatcher’s passing. From the streets of Belfast to the streets of Brixton, we are seeing a different response from working-class communities who remember all too well the “festival of reaction” that Thatcher reigned over.

    Thatcher’s term as prime minister and Ronald Reagan’s as president symbolized U.S. and British imperialism’s brutal offensive against the working classes of their two countries and increased military aggression abroad. “Thatcherism” and “Reaganism” represented union-busting, greater poverty and an enriched elite.

    Thatcher’s track record included the intense suppression of the Irish liberation movement, military invasion in Latin America and a war against the interests of British workers.

    Ireland—the oldest colony in the world

    Nowhere was Thatcher more hated than in Ireland, meaning that she believed the six northern counties of Ireland were part of the United Kingdom. Ireland was in fact divided by British imperial dictate in 1921, leaving the six northern counties under the jurisdiction of the British crown.

    When Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, “the Troubles” had already raged for over 10 years. She continued the repression against the Irish Republican forces. Republicans in Ireland are those who advocate an Irish Republic free from British control.

    The “Troubles” refers to the two decades of intense violence that began in 1968 when the oppressed Catholic population in northern Ireland—who began massive civil rights marches to demand the end of systematic repression and discrimination—were brutally attacked by the fascist Royal Ulster Constabulary. Armed resistance arose by the republican forces against the pro-British terrorist paramilitaries.

    Thatcher refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Irish resistance, the fighters having been stripped of their political-prisoner status in 1976. She infamously stated: “Crime is crime is crime. It is not political.”

    In 1981, the Republican prisoners went on a hunger strike to protest being treated as criminals and not prisoners of war. Thatcher stood by callously as one by one, the beloved Irish revolutionaries died in a series of 10 continuous hunger strikes that popularized Ireland’s struggle across the world.

    In retaliation, the Irish Republican Army narrowly missed killing her in 1984, exploding bombs at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton, killing four other Conservative Party delegates and seriously wounding members of Thatcher’s delegation.

    In 1988, she introduced a broadcasting ban in the six counties making it illegal to broadcast the views of the political party Sinn Fein “to deny terrorists the oxygen of publicity on which they thrive.”

    Despite her best attempts to break the back of Irish resistance, that freedom struggle pushed on with hundreds of thousands of people coming into the streets in support of the hunger strikers. Before his death, Bobby Sands said: “They won’t break me, because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.”

    An imperialist abroad, a racist at home

    Thatcher oversaw Britain’s role in its war with Argentina over the Malvinas islands, which are situated 8,000 miles away from London in the south Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Argentina. Britain first claimed the islands in 1833 as part of its global empire.

    In April 1982, the Argentinian ruling junta under fascist general Jorge Rafael Videla ordered the military to retake the Malvinas in an attempt to distract workers from the dictatorship’s repression and tap into long-standing Argentinian anger at Britain’s claim on the islands. Despite having helped the Argentinian dictatorship come to power, U.S. imperialism sided with its British imperialist ally by providing intelligence and transport help.

    Thatcher gave direct orders for the British nuclear-powered submarine called “The Conqueror” to attack an Argentinian naval vessel even though it was outside the area of conflict. In that attack, 323 Argentinian sailors were killed. Britain continues to claim the Malvinas because of their interest in plundering the oil in the region.

    The 1980s represented a sharpening of global class war from Nicaragua to Mozambique to Moscow. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan worked hand in hand to carry out a neoliberal agenda and quell liberation movements worldwide. Thatcher was a close ally of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile and other infamous fascist dictators. She allowed the U.S. Air Force to bomb Libya from airbases in England. She supported Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, who would oversee the restoration of capitalism in Russia. She supported apartheid in South Africa even as governments around the world began to impose sanctions on the apartheid regime. She labeled the freedom-fighting African National Congress “terrorists.”

    Within Britain, Thatcher’s role was to carry out a vicious ruling-class agenda to dismantle the social safety net and crush the voices of oppressed sectors of British society.

    In 1981, a social rebellion swept across Britain sparked by high unemployment and unequal social conditions. The racist police brutality against the Black Caribbean population of Brixton in South London was the spark that led to months of insurrection. When confronted with this pressure from below to address segregation and provide opportunities to youth, Thatcher rejected the idea that social conditions had anything to do with the unrest. In her typical inhumane, cold-blooded fashion she stated: “What absolute nonsense. … No one should condone violence. No one should condone the events. … They were criminal, criminal.”

    Thatcher sought to break the power of labor unions—attacking nationalized industry, upholding the “free market” and waging a war against the “welfare state.”

    Thatcher presided over the 1984 privatization of the coal mining industry in Great Britain. The denationalization meant that 20 coal pits were shut down resulting in the loss of 20,000 jobs. Many families in the north of England, Scotland and Wales lost their primary source of work

    On June 18, 1984, near Rothertham, thousands of police brutally attacked striking miners in what was dubbed “The Battle of Orgreave.” Seven miners were killed in the conflict by the police who functioned as the shock troops for capitalist interests.

    While Thatcher herself has died, Thatcherism, the legacy of unfettered attacks on workers and their right to live in peace continues. There is still saber rattling against Argentina over the Malvinas. Irish Republicans continue to be targeted for harassment and violence by the British state. Oppressed communities continue to be scapegoated and ruined.

    We should not be misled by the Obama White House’s statement: “The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend.” The truth is that the pillagers and looters of the world lost one of theirs. We have no reason to mourn the loss of this loyal servant of our exploiters.

    “The Coronavirus is Man-Made:” the Conspiracy Theory Trap 

    0

    Originally published at Counter Punch on April 1, 2020

    In this trying time, have you heard some of your friends say that the U.S. government created this pandemic or that the pandemic is not real at all?

    It is worth responding to these outlandish claims because in times of social tumult, there are no lack of conspiracy theorists irresponsibly tossing these ideas around. It is right to distrust the people in power and “it is right to rebel.” Poor and oppressed people instinctively know this system does not work for them but it is important that we critically read the mainstream news and back up our counter arguments with history and science.

    The Battle of Ideas

    Overwhelmed by the spread of the virus, and the plague of poverty and injustice, our people are searching for answers. Deprived of history and a critical education, some of our friends come up with all types of ideas. Religious zealots say that the coronavirus is the work of god on high intervening in earthly affairs to “clean things up.”

    The liberatory perspective sees things differently than conspiracy theorists or bible thumpers. An organization that defends human life and the environment puts forth a worldview and program to challenge the social class that today seeks to dominate us whereas reactionary worldviews, consciously or not, buttress the power of the dominant social class because they offer justifications of the status quo. It is important to be able to understand all strands of thought and their social origins, such as religious ideology, liberalism, fascism, conspiracy theory and of course Marxism. History will judge our line of thinking and program for action, especially whether we have done all that is feasible, used democratic procedures, and acted to defend all human life by transforming the prevailing capitalist system.

    Where does conspiracy “theory” lead us?  

    We should all be reading far and wide to understand this virus and historical moment. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense encouraged their cadre to read the news for two hours every morning. Today this remains relevant. Wake up and read The New York Times, CNN, Foxnews, BBC and then read what the Chinese, Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan leadership is saying. With a dictionary by your side, (or nowadays with dictionary.com saved as one of your favorite websites) read what CounterPunch, The Gray Zone, Liberation News and other critical media sites are saying.

    Yes political education is hard work and takes years of training. How much easier to just throw your hands up and say: “it’s the government!” or “its the hand of god!” Don’t waste your valuable time on conspiracy theorists because they only entertain ideas which confirm their own narrow view. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    To ignore the dangers of the virus is to also ignore the resistance of working people.

    Detroit bus drivers went on strike and won greater protection from the virus. Amazon workers are on the frontlines of struggle right now. Peasants in Haiti are forming networks through WhatsApp and organizing teams on pickup trucks with bullhorns to raise awareness about the virus. The people and leadership of Wuhan, China coordinated an entire campaign to overcome the coronavirus. In another example of medical internationalism, China and Cuba are now sending doctors to dozens of countries to assist in the global fight against corona. In the column marked new deaths, which skyrockets every day in the West, the Chinese column has read zero for three consecutive days. We also cannot ignore the enormous hardships imposed upon the Iranian people who have a duel battle — one against the coronavirus and the other against an airtight U.S.-led military and economic blockade.

    This unforeseen historical moment is pregnant with conversations and possibilities for building a new world in the aftermath of this pandemic that we could not have imagined last month.

    Understanding the State

    When we are walking down Utica, 149th or 125th St. we see the conspiracy documentaries. They are readily available. These conspiracy documentaries do more to retard and isolate than advance the struggle. They shroud the class enemy in mystery instead of exposing it. Why can’t you find any revolutionary documentaries or books in our communities? Because they are a threat to the powers that be.

    How do the rich maintain their stranglehold over society? Through the state, universal surveillance, and the armed repression of one social class by another.

    There is now extensive documentation exposing the government’s role in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the need to neutralize any other “Black Messiah,” as the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover put it. Just in 1969, the FBI and local police departments tracked hundreds of Black leaders and assassinated 28 of them. This was not merely the doing of a handful of specific individuals who were pulling some invisible strings. This was an entire system that is antagonistic to true empowerment of the Black community and all oppressed communities. The state is presently a tool of class oppression because corporate power is entrenched in the three branches of government; the elites created the police, courts, prisons and military to protect their monopoly over the wealth of society.

    Know your Enemy

    Conspiracy “theorists” are not theorists in the critical sense at all but charlatans who make it seem like the enemy aka the ruling power structure is a mysterious, shady worldwide network that is unable to be pinned down. As 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment last week and millions of other families anxiously await a meager check of $1,200; the billionaires are right before us in plain view, with their companies, property, mansions, yachts and stunning accumulation of wealth. As our families have to decide between intensified poverty because of layoffs or continuing to work and putting our loved ones at further risk, the bosses hide behind their laptops, cutting millions of jobs and moving billions of dollars.

    The same individuals who run General Electric or Disney also own and run NBC, Telemundo and CBS. The social class that owns the means of production also controls the images, information and ideas that circulate through society. It’s up to us to challenge them, using every means of communication at our disposal.  Conspiracy theories do not encourage us to fight back; they distract our attention when what we really need to do is organize around real-life issues.

    Most of the big endorsers of conspiracy theorists are privileged dilatants who are just interested in promoting themselves and their “theory.” As we saw with the “9/11 truthers,” the “Zeitgeist” people and those obsessed with the “Illuminati,” their style leads to a cultish gathering around one “enlightened” thinker but organizes very little, if anything, for our communities. Show me a conspiracy theorist who does anything besides talk! It is a dead-end.

    Which Way Forward? Fight to Learn, Learn to Fight

    Cowering before such mesmerizing challenges, many good people fall into the conspiracy theory trap. But we propose another way forward. Join a union, student or tenant organization or study group.

    We believe in the formation and training of multinational leadership and we believe in a broad struggle organized around every issue that affects our class i.e. access to healthcare, a people’s bailout, budget cuts, sexism, police brutality, wars of recolonization and military recruiting in our neighborhoods.

    What will ever free us from the dictatorship of the rich and spare the planet more abuse by the corporations? Unity and struggle behind a program that seeks to overcome the multiple hierarchies of domination and create a democratic socialist economy aimed at meeting people’s needs rather than private accumulation.

    Colombia’s Other Pandemic: Unchecked State Violence in the Time of COVID-19

    0

    Originally published at Counter Punch on June 26, 2020

    The human rights group Indepaz reports that 800 activists have been killed in the past three and a half years in Colombia, since November 24, 2016, the date the government signed “the Peace Accord” with the FARC.[1] Taking advantage of society’s fear and distraction, and the demobilization caused by the novel coronavirus, state and paramilitary actors have intensified their violence against organizers and their communities. Human rights activists refer to themselves as “sitting ducks,” explaining that they are pinned down by the pandemic and cannot as easily flee and hide from the forces of repression.[2]

    While state and non-state military actors are notorious for violence in Colombia, the police are also guilty of human rights crimes. On May 19, Anderson Arboleda, a 21-year-old Afro-Colombian was beaten to death by the police for supposedly “violating the quarantine” in the Pacific department of Cauca.[3] The police killing of Arboleda — which many compare to the Minneapolis Police Department murder of George Floyd — was not an isolated act. Journalists have found that black and indigenous Colombians have suffered the highest rates of institutional discrimination and police violence.[4]

    Human Rights Watch conducted an investigation into Colombian police violations of the rights of peaceful protesters the past year as hundreds of thousands of Colombians took to the streets against budget cuts and political assassinations. They found 72 cases of extreme police brutality. No officer was ever held responsible.[5] One of these cases was that of 17-year old Dilan Cruz. On November 23, Cruz was at a protest when he was killed by the Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios (the ESMAD or Mobile Riot Squad) which fired live ammunition at him from a close distance.

    COVID-19: double down crisis on poor Colombians

    Colombia now has more than 71,000 cases of COVID-19 and has experienced 2,300 deaths.[6] In Latin America, Colombia trails only Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico in terms of the total number of cases and deaths from COVID-19.[7] At El Cumbe Internacional Antiimperialista, Afrodescendiente y Africano (The International Gathering Ground of Antiimperialists, Afro-descendents and Africans) on June 14th, former Colombian senator and lawyer Piedad Córdoba stated: “COVID-19 lays bare the moral, medical and political infrastructure of our country, especially in the poorer Afro-Colombian regions of the Pacific and the Caribbean. Our people have been the most beaten down by the pandemic.”[8] Senator Córdoba went on to speak about the “hurtful image of a young Black man from Quibdó in the Pacific department of Choco who died on a stretcher in front of a hospital without receiving care for the coronavirus.”[9]

    Despite this unprecedented public health crisis, president Iván Duque and his government seem to be more concerned with suppressing the freedom of speech of activists, criminalizing  resistance and encircling its neighbor Venezuela than seriously confronting the pandemic.

    War as state strategy

    The negotiations in Havana, Cuba from 2012 to 2016 resulted in a historic peace deal meant to end a 50-year war that cost over 220,000 lives and left 7 million displaced.[10] The centrist presidency of Juan Manuel Santos received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for his role in the negotiations, though none of the peasant organizations on the other side of the war who endured decades of displacement, torture and death were ever mentioned as a candidate for the  prize or in the ceremony. The government promised a Truth and Reconciliation Committee, land reform, reintegration of former guerrilla fighters, demilitarization of the conflict zones and political openings for the left. The June 2018 electoral victory of Iván Duque, a protégé of far right wing Alvaro Uribe, spelt immediate doom for the Havana peace accords. The government reneged on all of its promises and the areas where the FARC once commanded saw the highest rise in politically-motivated assassinations.[11] According to the United Nations, more than 170 former fighters have been murdered since the peace deal was signed.[12]

    In response to these charges, Duque and the Colombian media dismissed the FARC dissidents as “narco terrorists,” despite their legitimate status as demobilized non-belligerents.[13]

    Analyst, surgeon and the founder of Pueblos en Camino (The People in Motion), Manuel Rozental explains that the rich in Colombia do not want the military conflict to end because war has always been their cover for appropriating land and resources.[14] Colombian elites and transnationals, such as British Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Exxon Mobil, Coca Cola, Drummond and hundreds of others, use the war as a pretext to clamp down on social movements across Colombia.[15] War is their strategy to displace and dispossess. Any peasant or social organizations who stand in their way can easily be dismissed as coercive or criminal elements. Joel Villamizar is one example. Villamizar was a leader of La Asociación de Autoridades Tradicionales y Cabildos U’wa – ASOU’WA. When he was ambushed and murdered earlier this year the media and authorities simply dismissed him as a guerilla terrorist.[16]

    “A War on Drugs?” or a “War on Sovereignty”?

    According to all reputable data, Colombia is the main supplier of cocaine in the world and the U.S. is the main consumer.[17] The U.S. allegations that Nicolás Maduro oversees a narco government are politically motivated and not backed up by facts on the ground. Approximately 70 percent of cocaine that arrives in the U.S. comes from Colombia via different supply routes, many through the Pacific ocean.[18] The U.S. Navy is surrounding and blockading Venezuela, not to stop the flow of cocaine into the streets of the U.S., but rather to stop the progress of the Bolivarian process.

    It is also worth pointing out that the drug epidemic in the U.S. is not caused principally by cocaine but rather by opioids, many of which are legally prescribed by doctors. According to the Center for Disease Control, over 70 percent of the 67,000 overdoses in 2018 were from opioids.[19]

    On March 26th, Attorney General William Barr formerly accused the Venezuelan government of “narco terrorism” without even clarifying which drugs are killing Americans and where they come from.[20] This spoke to the political motivations behind the claims which were really trumped up charges designed to provide the legalese to ratchet up the war on Venezuela. Meanwhile, Washington takes no action against the government of Honduras, accused by even U.S. courts of being involved in drug related crimes, including Juan Orlando Hernández’s family and the president himself.[21]

    The US Navy sent ships to further blockade Venezuela’s Caribbean coast on April 1[22] and the Southern Command deployed 800 more special force soldiers to Colombia on June 1.[23] This ignited a national debate in Colombia about the question of sovereignty. The Colombian Congress never agreed to allow foreign soldiers into their homeland.[24] Aida Avella, senator of the Patriotic Union party, stated: “The U.S. military cannot enter Colombian territory above Congress to advise the fight against drug trafficking. We reject the use of the country for wars and invasions of other countries.”[25] Lenín Moreno ceded “a new airstrip” in the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador for use by the U.S. military.[26] The U.S. military currently has nine bases in Colombia, twelve in Panama and 76 total in Latin America.[27] The US has deployed between 500 and 1,500 troops to Soto Cano air base in Honduras under the guise of humanitarian and drug-fighting operations.[28]There is also some evidence that the Colombian military may have supported the mercenaries who trained in Colombia before launching incursions into Venezuela in early May in a botched attempt to capture the Venezuelan president.[29]

    Resistance is everywhere

    Distrustful of the government’s commitments, thousands of government opponents have returned to the mountains or sprawling slums of Colombia’s cities.[30] Calling for a second Marquetalia Republic, in reference to the autonomous zones armed peasants held after La Violencia in 1948, rebel commanders like Iván Marquez and Jesús Santrech and their soldiers have taken back to the mountains.

    Not all social actors embrace this strategy however. Warning that war is a trap, social movements drafted a letter to the FARC discouraging them from playing into the hands of the state. Around 70 percent of all casualties in the 50-year and running civil war have been civilians.[31]

    In an interview on June 16 with Colombia’s Caracol Radio, representative of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) [32] and the head of the Dialogue Delegation of the guerilla army, Pablo Beltrán, explained their perspective. Beltrán said the ELN desires a cease fire but not as long as Duque brings in more U.S. soldiers, making a clash with those troops inevitable in Norte de Santander and Arauca on the border with Venezuela. The ELN has expressed that the priority should be alleviating poverty and keeping people safe from the coronavirus.

    As the coronavirus impacts the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of Colombian society, there is little trust that Trump’s faithful partner, the notorious anti-Bolivarian Iván Duque, will respond in a comprehensive way to the health and economic needs of the population. Three national strikes convulsed Colombia between November and December last year because of the neoliberal cuts implemented by Duque. Unable to resolve the needs of their own population, the Colombian elites participate in the destabilization of one of its neighbors. The external and internal contradictions of Colombian society continue to sharpen, promising the playing out of a 50-year national liberation struggle Washington has always feared and sought to contain.

    End notes.

    [1] “Colombia: How armed gangs are using lockdown to target activists,”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-52661457

    [2] “Colombia: How armed gangs are using lockdown to target activists.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-52661457

    [3] “Indignación en Colombia por un caso similar al de George Floyd: un joven negro murió tras una golpiza policial”, https://www.infobae.com/america/colombia/2020/06/04/indignacion-en-colombia-por-un-caso-similar-al-de-george-floyd-un-joven-negro-murio-tras-una-golpiza-policial/

    Translated into English by Danny Shaw

    [4] “Muerte de George Floyd: cuál es la situación de la población negra en América Latina (y el parecido a la de EE.UU.)”,

    https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-52969557

    [5] “Colombia: Abusos policiales en el contexto de manifestaciones multitudinarias”,

    https://www.hrw.org/es/news/2020/03/10/colombia-abusos-policiales-en-el-contexto-de-manifestaciones-multitudinarias

    [6] Worldometers.info, by June 22nd 2020, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/colombia/

    [7] “Where Is the Coronavirus in Latin America?,”

    https://www.as-coa.org/articles/where-coronavirus-latin-america

    [8] “Afro-Respuestas Frente al Racismo y El COVID-19,”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq02CUZj2tc&t=7090s (2:30:30)

    [9] “Video: hombre sospechoso de covid-19 murió en plena calle de Quibdó,”

    https://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/otras-ciudades/video-del-hombre-que-murio-de-coronavirus-en-plena-calle-de-quibdo-choco-506612

    [10] “Colombia’s President ‘Wants War,’ FARC Dissidents Comply,”

    https://therealnews.com/stories/colombias-president-wants-war-farc-dissidents-comply

    [11] “The Slow Death of Colombia’s Peace Movement,”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/12/colombia-peace-farc/604078

    [12] “FARC killings a challenge to peace, but some criticism political: Colombian official,” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-peace/farc-killings-a-challenge-to-peace-but-some-criticism-political-colombian-official-idUSKBN1ZX2QD

    [13] “Colombia Farc rebels: President vows to hunt down new group,”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49516660

    [14] “Colombia’s President “Wants War,” FARC Dissidents Comply,”

    https://therealnews.com/stories/colombias-president-wants-war-farc-dissidents-comply

    [15] “Global Reach: US Corporate Interests in Colombia,”

    https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/colombia/corporate.html

    [16] “Asesinan a dirigente indígena colombiano en Norte de Santander”,

    https://www.telesurtv.net/news/asesinan-dirigente-indigena-colombiano-norte-santander-20200601-0021.html

    [17] “Colombia coca crop: Trump tells Duque to resume spraying,”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51722456

    [18] “What Lockdown? World’s Cocaine Traffickers Sniff at Movement Restrictions,”

    https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/world-cocaine-traffickers-lockdown/#

    [19] “Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Opioid Overdose,” https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/opioids/index.html

    [20] “Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Remarks at Press Conference Announcing Criminal Charges against Venezuelan Officials,”

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-remarks-press-conference-announcing-criminal

    [21] “US prosecutors tie Honduras president to drug trafficker,” https://apnews.com/e85a0f7b43264a5eb6b879701356e1f3

    [22] “Trump: US to Deploy Anti-Drug Navy Ships Near Venezuela,”

    https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2020-04-01/ap-sources-us-to-deploy-anti-drug-ships-near-venezuela

    [23] “US soldiers arrive in Colombia under widespread criticism,”

    https://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=56269&SEO=us-soldiers-arrive-in-colombia-under-widespread-criticism

    [24] “Colombian Political Figures, Activists Reject US Troops’ Arrival,”

    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Colombian-Political-Figures-Activists-Reject-US-Troops-Arrival-20200531-0007.html

    [25] “Colombian Political Figures, Activists Reject US Troops’ Arrival,”

    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Colombian-Political-Figures-Activists-Reject-US-Troops-Arrival-20200531-0007.html

    [26] “Galapagos Islands will not host US military base, Ecuador president says,”

    [27] “U.S. military presence in Latin America & the Caribbean,”

    http://en.granma.cu/mundo/2018-08-15/us-military-presence-in-latin-america-the-caribbean and “Bases militares de EE.UU. en América Latina y el Caribe. El Plan Suramérica”,

    http://www.granma.cu/mundo/2018-08-09/bases-militares-de-eeuu-en-america-latina-y-el-caribe-el-plan-suramerica-09-08-2018-17-08-04

    [28] “Deep in the mountains of Honduras, few know what this US military task force does,”

    https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/08/12/deep-in-the-mountains-of-honduras-few-know-what-this-us-military-task-force-does

    [29] “Venezuela seizes empty Colombian combat boats days after failed invasion plot,”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/10/venezuela-seizes-empty-colombian-combat-boats-days-after-failed-invasion-plot and “Venezuela: captured US mercenary claims he planned to abduct Maduro,”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/venezuela-maduro-abduction-plot-luke-denman-americans-captured

    [30] “Many Of Colombia’s Ex-Rebel Fighters Rearm And Turn To Illegal Drug Trade,”

    https://www.npr.org/2020/05/19/855567659/many-of-colombias-ex-rebel-fighters-rearm-and-turn-to-illegal-drug-trade

    [31] “Colombia Farc rebels: President vows to hunt down new group,”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49516660

    [32] “Colombia. Pablo Beltrán (ELN): ‘Es muy probable que haya enfrentamientos armados con las tropas de EE.UU.’”,

    This is Not a Crisis, This is a Rebellion: a Report from the Front Lines of Haiti

    0

    Originally published at Counter Punch on May 17, 2021

    All of Haitian society is in revolt.

    A mambo and hougan—the traditional voudou priestess and priest—lead ancestral ceremonies before rallies take the streets and block the central arteries of Port-au-Prince, Cap Haïtien, and other Haitian cities and towns. After one of their members was kidnapped, leaders of the Protestant Church directed its congregation to halt all activities at noon on Wednesday and bat tenèb. Bat tenèb, literally “beat the darkness,” is a call for all sectors of Haitian society to beat pots, pans, street lights and anything else as a general alert of an emergency. A Catholic church in Petionville held a mass with political undertones against the dictatorship. When marchers from outside took refuge from the police inside the church, the Haitian National Police tear gassed the entire congregation.

    Ti Germain, a well-known Lavalas activist, was hauled away by President Jovenel Moïse’s henchmen for protesting in the downtown Chanmas Plaza last week and has not been seen since. Peasants come together to form self-defense units against land grabs by the Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK, or Haitian Bald Headed Party) and their foreign backers before mobilizing in the streets themselves. With the spiritual hymn of resistance blaring from a sound truck, “A fight remains a fight. My sword is in my hand, I’m moving forward,” tens of thousands of protesters move toward police lines guarding the Delmas 96 entrance, which seals off the Haiti of the 0.01 percent from that of the 99.99 percent.

    Chanting “The People Poetry Revolution!”, young writers and poets took to the streets on May 3 calling for a Haiti where youth have a future. A cultural worker, Jan Wonal, asserts, “They [the imperialists] fashion themselves the messengers of art, literature, history of art. So, for us, cultural revolution against cultural imperialism is an imperative.”

    All of Haitian society is in revolt.

    Who Cares About Haiti?

    CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the full gamut of mainstream media outlets have paid scant attention to this social insurrection. The headlines—if they mention Haiti at all—have focused on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Biden regime’s deportation of Haitians to the “civil unrest” of Haiti. The anti-neoliberal rebellion goes unmentioned.

    According to one protestor at a mass demonstration, “If we were Hong Kong, Taiwan or in any country the U.S. lists as an enemy, there would be everyday coverage of our movement.”

    The corporate press only mentions Haiti in the context of a natural disaster, a deadly disease or chaos. Millions of people in motion in a U.S. neocolony like Colombia, Chile or Haiti are not deemed newsworthy. The dominant narrative is people in the streets protesting is not a revolt, but a “political crisis.” It is not convenient for a neocolony to make noise and rise up against the empire’s handpicked lackeys and puppets.

    In response to the media whiteout, Haitian intellectual Patrick Mettelus emphasized, “Our national liberation struggle is first and foremost a battle of ideas; it is an informational war. How can we counter the dominant narrative and show what is good, beautiful, encouraging and hopeful from our homeland?”

    Showdown: Haiti vs. Imperialism 

    Ignoring months and years of widespread anger, Moïse continues to say resigning is not an option. The United Nations and Organization of American States (OAS) agree the U.S.-backed despot has another year remaining in his presidency, even though the 1987 Constitution stipulates his term ended on February 7. Former president Jean Bertrand Aristide called the UN, OAS and United States “the troika of evil” for the heavy-handed role they have played in Haiti’s historic destiny. This alone explains why Aristide was twice the victim of coup d’etats orchestrated by these neocolonial forces.

    Moïse went before the United Nations General Assembly on February 24. In a 28-minute display of arrogance, the tone-deaf puppet patted himself on the back for supposedly carrying out ongoing socio-economic reforms. Adding insult to injury, Moïse now intends to brazenly overturn the 1987 constitution. This constitution was the result of consultations among hundreds of local committees representing all sectors of society一women, peasants, poor neighborhoods, etc.一coming together on the heels of the 1986 dechoukaj (uprooting) that overthrew dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Enshrined in the constitution is protection of Haitian cultural and economic sovereignty, and women’s empowerment, among other democratic rights. Today, these same sectors, representing the vast majority of Haitian society, are taking to the streets against Moïse and his dictatorial scheme to overturn the people’s constitution.

    The reformist wing of the opposition has propped up a transition president, Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis, who has been in hiding since February 7, in fear of persecution of Jovenel’s National Intelligence Agency (ANI). Ruling class families such as the Vorbe/Boulos faction, which supported Jovenel (and Michel Martelly before) have now turned on Moïse and want to replace him without systemic change.

    Kidnappings have reached epic proportions. The djaspora (Haitians in the diaspora) are afraid to travel back home. The Center for Human Rights Research and Analysis reported 157 kidnappings in the first three months of 2021. This lawlessness is representative of a society that has lost all confidence in Moïse. The most oppressed layers of society have been overwhelmed by the weak gourde (1 U.S. dollar equals 87 Haitian gourdes), widespread joblessness and no hopes for a dignified future. According to the UN’s World Food Program, half of Haiti’s 10.7 million people are undernourished. This bleek social reality has pushed the most castaway to resort to armed violence and taking hostages.

    The fundamental demand of the popular sectors is a “sali piblik,” or a united transition away from dictatorship and neocolonialism that involves and empowers the masses of Haitian people.

    While the corporate media silences Haitian voices, the Committee for Mobilization Against Dictatorship in Haiti (KOMOKODA), Leve Kanpe, the U.S./UN Out of Haiti Coalition, and other diaspora and anti-imperialist organizations across the United States and the world are standing with the historic Haitian rebellion.

    “The ‘Core Group’ is a cabal of predatory countries and institutions created by the United States of America after the overthrow and kidnapping of President Aristide in 2004 to give a veneer of international legitimacy to their domination over Haiti,” KOMOKODA stated as the group protested May 3 in front of the French embassy in Port-au-Prince, “Join us as we stand in solidarity with the Haitian people, who are in the streets fighting for their liberation and their emancipation.”

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    The essence of a revolutionary is their ability to stand up to bullying in all of its manifestations.

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