For: Hollman Lozano

It‘s necessary to recognize that the paramilitary movement in Colombia had gone so far that was absolutely necessary to negotiate with them their deposition of the arms. The idea of openly fight with them was not recognising their power and capacity to intimidate the population of their places of influence and to spread terror. Their violent actions had gone to extremes of barbarism with extremely strong ties with the organisms of security of the government that to pretend its end by means of the legitimate state were no more than democratic dreams. Therefore, the negotiation with the paramilitaries was not only a necessity to stop their armed actions; it was also an obligation, although a formal acknowledgement from the government about its impossibility to stop the paramilitary movement by other means.
However, the negotiation that the administration of Alvaro Uribe had done with the Colombian paramilitaries is not what was required within the specific and complex humanitarian situation that lives Colombia.
The paramilitaries grew extremely fast with the help, training and information of the security forces of the state, as well as their participation on the traffic of narcotics. In fact the paramilitaries started to do the dirty job as the killing of union members as well as people ideologically close to the left, which the Colombian army was unable to do for the permanent vigilance of the NGO’s. In the same sense they permeate the regional politics enforcing through the power of their guns and their economical power derived form the traffic of narcotics. Therefore, the same importance that the government has placed in the deposition of their arms is to be placed in breaking their ties with the agencies of security of the government. Not to do so, will only mean an eventual deposition of their guns, leaving intact their structure of terror, loosing a historic opportunity to reinstitutionalize the country. In fact not to do so, is to leave the door open for new groups that eventually will be much more savage than the already demobilised.
In fact, one of the great dangers that the paramilitary movement has inflicted to Colombian’s, is not only the savage killing of so many innocent people, but at the same time, the public sensation that the state cannot be trust, for its representatives are close friends of the paramilitaries. The role that the state should have played as a central factor able to play in favour of the less favoured was taken for these representatives of the state, as well as the paramilitaries that joined forces to violently delegitimate the Colombian state.
As a result, the process of clearing the close tights that the paramilitaries have had with the government is even more important that the clearing of the relation that the movement has had with the traffic of narcotics. For their relations with the government have undermined the confidence that the population should have on the democratic institutions allowing them to solve their differences by any means, especially violent ones. If we, as a society are able to reduce the bridge that now exists, between the society and the institutions, we will be able to modify that culture that has seen the guns and the violence as means to solve any difference. However, this responsibility should not be left to special committees. It should be a function of every citizen who since its primordial individuality assumes its role on the reformulation of the structures of the nation and takes the required measures to its proper end. This responsibility is for every one of the Colombians, who should search, look and denounce, for it is a necessary step if we are to change the structure of violence that has taken place in the country.

 hollman.lozano@yahoo.ca