Women lead Colombian March against the War
elacrata | 29.08.2002 12:05
On the 25th of July 10-20,000 or more women converged on the centre of Bogota from all over Colombia to refuse to support any side in the war, by refusing war taxes, conscription and the militarization of all aspects of life. This piece is part-report, part-critical discussion.
On the 25th of July 10-20,000 or more women (depending who you read!) converged on the centre of Bogota from all over Colombia. Their slogan was “Not one day, one peso, one man or one woman more for the war”. Over 600 local womens organizations took part, grouped in 3 main bodies: Ruta Pacifica de Mujeres, Iniciativa de Mujeres por la Paz, Mesa de Concertacion de Mujeres, Red Nacional de Mujeres and Organizacion Feminina Popular. Men were also encouraged to take part.
The march came as a new president with thoroughly pro-war rhetoric was taking office: Alvaro Uribe. The statement agreed on by the different organizing groups rejects his plan to create a network of a million armed informers as a means of involving the civil population even more in the war. The fact that the president can even contemplate such a move shows the extent that the ruling class is confident that the guerrilla movements are lacking in popular support. In Peru President Fujimori took advantage of a similar lack of real support for the Shining Path to create armed peasant groups involving hundreds of thousands of villagers to fight directly against them countryside.
In contrast to Uribe’s macabre plans, the womens march demanded the de-militarization of civil life: a demand which goes against the current strategy of all the armed forces operating in the country. The march demanded a return to peace negotiations with the participation of women as a distinct social group, saying “We refuse to allow armed groups or politicians to speak in our name or say that they represent our interests”. It demanded initial humanitarian agreements covering the rape of women in the war, the involvement of under-age fighters, the use of dangerous toxic chemicals used to spray coca crops in the farcical “war on drugs”; forced recruitment, freedom for kidnapped people and the truth about all the people who have disappeared.
Clearly in such a large mobilization there are many forces at work which the ‘leaders’ do not necessarily represent (as we know only too well in Britain with all the ‘official’ spokespersons of the anti-capitalist movement!). The march officially supported some kind of cross-class peace settlement in words that evoke a certain lefty/post-modernist/academic discourse which a large chunk of academia swopped for the Leninist discourse (for a Leninist lament of this change see James Petras’s article The Metamorphosis of Latin America’s Intellectuals in the journal Critique no.22). It demanded “a new process of negotiation which includes all the different ethnicities, races, genders, generations, representatives of all the social classes (my emphasis) and all religions...”(Patricia Buriticá, spokesperson for IMCP – see above).
This is interesting as it seems to be trying to draw in a certain sector of the bourgeoisie that might be still be amenable to a settlement, such as the local politicians who are under threat from the FARC’s current campaign to make all local mayors and other officials resign. These threatened mayors and a number of kidnapped deputies have recently been making noises in this direction, in order to save their own skins. (The official left candidate in the recent presidential elections, Luis Eduardo Garzon (supported by the PC, amongst others), recently blamed the FARC in El Tiempo newspaper for provoking the new state of emergency. Will he be part of a new left/bourgeois realignment which rises from the ashes of the collapse of the traditional parties in the future?)
It is also interesting in as much as it resembles, beneath the radical appearances of jungle guerrilla imagery that seduces so many nostalgic leftists in the west, the FARC’s own programme for national state capitalism under a “government of national reconciliation”. Social democracy meets Leninism....
The mentioning of indigenous groups is clearly part of an attempt to draw in sectors of the population alienated by all sides in the conflict. Some indigenous groups, particularly in the Cauca region, have been amongst those communities who have declared ‘active neutrality’. In their case a certain formal level of local self-government has helped facilitate this on a practical level. The independent left newspaper Desde Abajo (see Colombia indymedia site) wrote an interesting piece last year about the growing frictions between the guerrilla movement and indigenous communities – something repeated in other parts of Latin America over the last few decades and which for some supporters of the former only confirms the backwardness of the indigenous peoples.
Of course the state’s media have been quick to try and turn this ‘civil resistance’ movement to its own ends, presenting it as JUST a reaction against the guerrillas, when the small print shows that some of these communities have not only revolted against guerrilla incursions but have also for example refused Plan Colombia money offered to them by NGOs, and been against any army or paramilitary presence.
The women’s march tried to recapture the autonomous nature of such resistance, by claiming “non-violent active resistance” as their chief method to oppose the war, as opposed to the attempts by the state and particularly mayors of major cities to say in major publicity stunts that THEY are supporters of ‘non-violent civil resistance’ – but only against the guerrillas! These stunts have attempted to manipulate people’s desires for peace and anger at the working class and peasant deaths that the guerrillas’ ultra-militarist strategy and imprecision bombing (sic) always seems to cause. Likewise this march is qualitatively a different kettle of fish to the million-strong ‘peace’ demonstrations of several years back and ‘anti-kidnapping’ demos that continue today, which are also organized by the state and ruling classes.
Pursuing this theme, the women’s march in its official statement said they would refuse conscription, not allow their children to dress in military garb, and not let their children into army or police bases, or guerrilla or paramilitary camps. They also said they would refuse to pay tax towards the war, demanding that this money be invested in alleviating poverty.
The march received practically no coverage in the alternative media. But movements like this at least represent a space for those who without falling into pacifism recognize that a drawn out civil war is not likely to result in serious social change.
PS The author of this report would be grateful if comments don't accuse him of being a CIA spy or a lunatic, as has happened to other contributors to discussions on this region. Shades of cyber-stalinism?
The march came as a new president with thoroughly pro-war rhetoric was taking office: Alvaro Uribe. The statement agreed on by the different organizing groups rejects his plan to create a network of a million armed informers as a means of involving the civil population even more in the war. The fact that the president can even contemplate such a move shows the extent that the ruling class is confident that the guerrilla movements are lacking in popular support. In Peru President Fujimori took advantage of a similar lack of real support for the Shining Path to create armed peasant groups involving hundreds of thousands of villagers to fight directly against them countryside.
In contrast to Uribe’s macabre plans, the womens march demanded the de-militarization of civil life: a demand which goes against the current strategy of all the armed forces operating in the country. The march demanded a return to peace negotiations with the participation of women as a distinct social group, saying “We refuse to allow armed groups or politicians to speak in our name or say that they represent our interests”. It demanded initial humanitarian agreements covering the rape of women in the war, the involvement of under-age fighters, the use of dangerous toxic chemicals used to spray coca crops in the farcical “war on drugs”; forced recruitment, freedom for kidnapped people and the truth about all the people who have disappeared.
Clearly in such a large mobilization there are many forces at work which the ‘leaders’ do not necessarily represent (as we know only too well in Britain with all the ‘official’ spokespersons of the anti-capitalist movement!). The march officially supported some kind of cross-class peace settlement in words that evoke a certain lefty/post-modernist/academic discourse which a large chunk of academia swopped for the Leninist discourse (for a Leninist lament of this change see James Petras’s article The Metamorphosis of Latin America’s Intellectuals in the journal Critique no.22). It demanded “a new process of negotiation which includes all the different ethnicities, races, genders, generations, representatives of all the social classes (my emphasis) and all religions...”(Patricia Buriticá, spokesperson for IMCP – see above).
This is interesting as it seems to be trying to draw in a certain sector of the bourgeoisie that might be still be amenable to a settlement, such as the local politicians who are under threat from the FARC’s current campaign to make all local mayors and other officials resign. These threatened mayors and a number of kidnapped deputies have recently been making noises in this direction, in order to save their own skins. (The official left candidate in the recent presidential elections, Luis Eduardo Garzon (supported by the PC, amongst others), recently blamed the FARC in El Tiempo newspaper for provoking the new state of emergency. Will he be part of a new left/bourgeois realignment which rises from the ashes of the collapse of the traditional parties in the future?)
It is also interesting in as much as it resembles, beneath the radical appearances of jungle guerrilla imagery that seduces so many nostalgic leftists in the west, the FARC’s own programme for national state capitalism under a “government of national reconciliation”. Social democracy meets Leninism....
The mentioning of indigenous groups is clearly part of an attempt to draw in sectors of the population alienated by all sides in the conflict. Some indigenous groups, particularly in the Cauca region, have been amongst those communities who have declared ‘active neutrality’. In their case a certain formal level of local self-government has helped facilitate this on a practical level. The independent left newspaper Desde Abajo (see Colombia indymedia site) wrote an interesting piece last year about the growing frictions between the guerrilla movement and indigenous communities – something repeated in other parts of Latin America over the last few decades and which for some supporters of the former only confirms the backwardness of the indigenous peoples.
Of course the state’s media have been quick to try and turn this ‘civil resistance’ movement to its own ends, presenting it as JUST a reaction against the guerrillas, when the small print shows that some of these communities have not only revolted against guerrilla incursions but have also for example refused Plan Colombia money offered to them by NGOs, and been against any army or paramilitary presence.
The women’s march tried to recapture the autonomous nature of such resistance, by claiming “non-violent active resistance” as their chief method to oppose the war, as opposed to the attempts by the state and particularly mayors of major cities to say in major publicity stunts that THEY are supporters of ‘non-violent civil resistance’ – but only against the guerrillas! These stunts have attempted to manipulate people’s desires for peace and anger at the working class and peasant deaths that the guerrillas’ ultra-militarist strategy and imprecision bombing (sic) always seems to cause. Likewise this march is qualitatively a different kettle of fish to the million-strong ‘peace’ demonstrations of several years back and ‘anti-kidnapping’ demos that continue today, which are also organized by the state and ruling classes.
Pursuing this theme, the women’s march in its official statement said they would refuse conscription, not allow their children to dress in military garb, and not let their children into army or police bases, or guerrilla or paramilitary camps. They also said they would refuse to pay tax towards the war, demanding that this money be invested in alleviating poverty.
The march received practically no coverage in the alternative media. But movements like this at least represent a space for those who without falling into pacifism recognize that a drawn out civil war is not likely to result in serious social change.
PS The author of this report would be grateful if comments don't accuse him of being a CIA spy or a lunatic, as has happened to other contributors to discussions on this region. Shades of cyber-stalinism?
elacrata