|
 |
|
|
Chávez proposal about the FARC creates deep analysis in Mexican press
|
Caracas, Jan. 18^th . ABN.- The National Assembly was in expectation last Friday 11^th when the address of president Hugo Chávez started to heat. It dealt mainly with the statement of his annual report during 2007, but then a controversial issue appeared: the possibility of recognizing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as belligerent forces.
It was a shock that today still has international consequences. A controversial idea that has just begun to be studied with calm, though since the beginning it has been taken by some sectors as crazy, as an intervention into the Colombian domestic affairs.
However, beyond the din, Chávez's proposal causes reflection on behalf of analysts who, with more calm, go deep into the issue to achieve relevant conclusions.
It is the case of three writers on the Mexican press. Carlos Montemayor, Emir Sader and Angel Guerra Cabrera recently wrote on the renowned journal La Jornada in favor of the request of president Chávez, and they expressed in detail why the proposal is a valid way to achieve the peace in the region.
Mistaking terrorism with nonconformity
According to Carlos Montemayor, the proposal of president Chávez is interesting, especially because it places on the national and international table “the slanted and utilitarian concept of 'terrorism' and it discovers other phases of the social reality on the current world. Specifically when the 'international meddling' of our days does not begin on the terrorist circles but on the financial.”
The analyst recall that the Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba made publicly noticeable that the FARC is not an army, it is a political subject, and as soon as it is understood more hostages would be released.
Montemayor stresses: “This is the aspect that several governments in the world are trying to eliminate, hide or distort in opposition social processes or in movements of resistance against the territorial occupation of foreign forces. It is not difficult to see that there is a practice of utilitarian political discredit to social movement and processes in countries like Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan or Colombia, just to name some examples. The request to recognize the FARC in Colombia as a belligerent force is related to several cases of many countries of the world, including Mexico.”
According to Montemayor, it is the use of the term terrorism that results dangerous in this case. At the end of his article in La Jornada, he conclusively states: “The dangerous side is the temptation of mistaking the term terrorism with social nonconformity. Upon the basis of this tempting confusion falls the explanation of the immediate reactions of the Colombian and the United States governments of rejecting to recognize the FARC as belligerent forces. As well the radical reaction of Cesar Gaviria, today leader of the Liberal Party: 'The statements of president Chávez constitute a serious infringement to the Inter-American Democratic Charter.'
“Curious reaction, especially now than in Mexico and the complete continent all kind of authorities have been pressured, with great results, by the financial and industrial elite of our countries, the bank system (which in our case has stopped from being Mexican), transnational companies, the government of the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Towards this real pressure in order to make the authorities take 'a determination', the pressure of 'the terrorists' seems to be a joke.”
Stop the war
On the other hand, Emir Sader, another writer for La Jornada who dealt with the issue, remarked the release of the first hostages as a humanitarian gesture that should be welcomed with the due gratitude to those who are responsible for it, among them, Hugo Chávez.
Sader calls to not stop the freeing of hostages in the Colombian case and he emphasizes in that the release would be a step with no much value “if the army continue attacking farmers, if kidnaps continue; anyway, if the war continues.”
Then, Sader praises Chávez's proposal of promoting a political negotiation which allow to end the war in Colombia, because in this way the conflicts would be solved without resort to war. “For that, it is necessary to have governments with initiatives, audacity and commitment in order to achieve solutions favorable to the welfare of our people, as it has been the case of Venezuela. Then those who bet for violence and war to gain conflicts would fail; it is to say, the armaments' manufacturers, those who live from that in Colombia.”
Emir Sader ends up his article by saying, “The Colombian matter is a problem of Colombians, but we have seen that the international support has good possibilities of success; besides, it might represent a milestone in this beginning of century, yet dominated by the 'infinite wars' of the empire. Latin America can show to the world that it can solve by its own, pacifically and fairly, the Colombian conflict.”
The United States meddling
Angel Guerra Cabrera, another analyst from the Mexican journal La Jornada who recently approached the issue, says directly that initiatives as that stated by the Venezuelan president would work to make the Colombian president Alvaro Uribe to look for a political solution to the conflict in the neighbor country.
Guerra Cabrera harshly analyses the issue, “Faced to the Colombian war, there are key matters to take into account. First of all, contrary to the arguments of the United States, the powerful biased media and Uribe, the armed conflict does not owe to the existence of the guerrilla, but it arouse and it has survived, and even got stronger, due to the prevailing damaging economic and social inequality, and to the fact that the Colombian state has closed the spaces for democratic participation for great sectors of the population, joined to an outrageous and systematic exercise of repression against social protests and the alternative attempts to do politics in the Andean country.”
Then, the writer indicates, “It is worth mentioning that hundreds of activists from the Patriotic Unity who were killed when the FARC and the Communist Party tried to compete on elections with that name; the homicides of the leaders from the M-19 after the peace process with this organization: the thousands labor unionists and social workers victimized or who are imprisoned nowadays. By the way, those are ignored by the media fuss with which has been manipulated as the Clara and Consuelo release, as the reasonable proposal stated by Chávez of recognizing the belligerence of the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN).”
Finally, Angel Guerra Cabrera analyses deeper the matter when he criticizes the open meddling of the United States in Latin America. “When the political conditions in Latin America changes, the armed conflict presents itself as a huge obstacle to the people's struggles and the permanence and rising of governments more democratic and independent from Washington.”
“It works that way because it helps to justify the excessive meddling of the United States through the Plan Colombia and its increasing military presence in the South American region, it makes easier to enroll the army and the Colombian paramilitaries on a possible action against Venezuela or Ecuador, which would cause the armed intervention and to make impossible the electoral victory of a people's option in Colombia.”
Translated by Felitza Nava |
|
|
|
|
| ABN 03:33 pm 18/01/2008 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
