A sea of white

I got back from Bogotá last night. Amidst our sadness, our family celebrated the long and full life of my grandmother Helena, whom we will all sorely miss.

She would have been proud this past Monday, when sandwiched between the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday, something truly remarkable happened. In the space of a month, a group of young Colombians convened, via Facebook, a February 4th march against the FARC, the primary guerrilla group involved in Colombia's 50-year civil war, that convened hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

The FARC once had a genuine political project - their emergence at the tail end of La Violencia is about where my dissertation leaves off - but now they're a drug-running mafia that uses kidnapping and extortion to fund their activities and undermine the government by sowing terror in the population. They're not the only group using terror tactics in Colombia - the ELN guerrillas, paramilitaries, and just plain drug traffickers are part of the conflict as well. But the FARC are the largest and most visible.

They currently have 3,200 hostages, of whom 40-45 are high-profile "exchangeables," including 3 Americans and a former presidential candidate. Last fall, the FARC began discussing a "humanitarian agreement" to release some of the exchangeables (canjeables). President Uribe brought in his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez, a patron of Fidel Castro who's presumably closest to the FARC's end of the ideological spectrum (their ideology is entirely cynical at this point, but they publicly continue to avow far-left/Communist dogma), as a mediator.

In December, Chavez suffered a key domestic setback, as his effort to reform the constitution via referendum to permit him unlimited re-election was narrowly defeated. At around the same time, Uribe de-authorized him as a mediator with the FARC, because he phoned a Colombian general directly, a serious breach of diplomatic protocol. This was Chavez's opportunity to distract attention from his failure in the referendum. (When you're having trouble at home, create a ruckus abroad that everyone can get behind.) Chavez seized the opportunity, weighing in against Uribe and continuing to insist on a role in the release of three hostages, announced by the FARC for late December.

The three included a mother and her son, 3-year-old "Emmanuel," who had been born during his mother's 6-year captivity (you do the math). In late December, the FARC announced a postponement of the release, and Uribe responded by accusing them of not even having Emmanuel anymore. Which turned out to be true! They had essentially subcontracted the task of holding the child, and the "subcontractor" had taken him to a hospital for medical attention, where a state social-services worker took Emmanuel into custody based on concerns of neglect - but not realizing that the child was a hostage.

Ultimately, Emmanuel's mother and another hostage were released at year's end in the jungle to an international delegation, and flown directly to Caracas, where Chavez got what he wanted, a photo op holding Emmanuel in his arms, flanked by the other two released hostages. This fan and patron of Fidel had finally found his Elian Gonzalez.

A few days later, the favor was returned: Chavez argued that the FARC should be taken off the US and EU lists of terrorist organizations, and be given the status of "belligerent groups," which connotes that they're a legitimate party in a civil war with political aims. Which is just not true anymore.

It was in response to Chavez's assertions that a young Colombian created a Facebook group, "A Million Voices Against the FARC," on January 4, to show the public that the FARC did not have a legitimate social base, and were in fact repudiated by Colombians, undermining their claim to be a "belligerent group" and not a terrorist organization. Tens of thousands of people (including me) joined the Facebook group, and the organizers planned a march against the FARC for February 4. As it became clear that the march was going to be a big success, controversy over its framing erupted on the left, which opposes Uribe's authoritarian tactics. (Amid ongoing charges of human rights abuses, Uribe succeeded in getting the constitution reformed to allow for his immediate re-election, a profoundly undemocratic move carried out through democratic means.) It is indeed odd that the march should focus only on the FARC, and not address the ELN, or most importantly, the paramilitaries, the latter of which have been responsible for just as much if not more atrocities over the past two decades. For this reason, some on the left opposed the march. Others in the opposition saw the march, while having a worthy goal, as an implicit endorsement of the Uribe government and its policies. (Sound familiar, Democrats?) Families of the hostages distanced themselves from the march, fearing reprisals against their loved ones.

Despite these concerns, the turnout on Monday was massive. Hundreds of thousands of people turned up across Colombia, and in more than 100 cities around the world, to protest the FARC's terror tactics and to call for the release of the hostages and an end to kidnapping. My family and I participated in one of the five marches that took place in Bogotá, and pictures and video are below.










It was amazing to see so many people out, wearing white T-shirts that said "Colombia soy yo" (I am Colombia) on the front, and a series of slogans on the back superimposed on the colors of the Colombian flag. Interestingly, the messages on the back were not identical across the shirts. Mine says, "No more kidnapping, no more murders, no more lies, no more FARC." I actually prefer the version my sister has, which substitutes "No more terrorism" for "no more FARC." But I still wanted to participate in the march because even though other terror groups were not explicitly included, it remains true, as one of the chants on Monday went, that "Colombia without guerrilla would be a marvelous place" (Colombia sin guerrilla sería una maravilla). Such a beautiful country with such promise. Here's to a future with no more FARC, no more ELN, no more paramilitaries, and no more kidnapping.