The problem, we as participants in a 'Leninist' list, are concerned with ought
to be proletarian class rule as an unescapable basis for putting capitalist
barbarism off the historical agenda. So while it is true that the FARC & Co
would very much like to play the 'democratic' game but have to stay in the
countryside in order not to get slaughtered this does not yet answer the
question of their socio-political programm. There are so many quotes from
leading FARC-(and ELN-)representatives that they are fighting for bourgeois
democracy that in the light of the experience of practically all the other
radical national liberation movements all over the world there is no reason to
doubt that they mean what they say. Apart from the class basis of the rank and
file (peasantry) politically they are a petty bourgeois-movement. The fact that
the CP is the force behind the FARC confirms this, since the Kuomintern-CPs are
a petty bourgeois intruding force within the working class. The problem now is
not that there will of course never be a 'pure proletarian' revolution. The
problem is, who is leading the non proletarian exploited and oppressed masses.
Another problem is, whether any non-proletarian (ergo bourgeois) revolution
in today's world can fulfill even its limited bourgeois-democratic promises in
the long run. I think that history shows it can't, and this is not due to the
'evilness' of the leaders of such movements but because of the laws of
capitalism under which they work.
I think we have to support the FARC as much as the Chechen-nationalist
or any other force struggling against bourgeois/imperialist oppression, but we
must know that we are not supporting forces which are about to break
strategically with capitalism and therefore imperialism. Also the idea that
a bourgeois stage of the revolution is necessary before the proletarian
stage is shown by history as bancropt. The implied reformism for Lenininist must
not be views as a limited step foreward but as a counterrevolutionary break on
the revolution. Theforces forces to break with capitalism have to be build in a
political (and later probably also military) fight against the forces we are now
forced to defend against imperialism.
I think that the aim of a 'Leninist' list is to further this
understanding within the 'left'.
A.Holberg
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Louis Proyect schrieb:
> >Louis,
> >
> >perhaps I am too dull to see the obvious, but I am wondering, what you
> >want to say by quoting a two year old article:
> >- There is (was) one Colombian town, where the mainly rural based
> >guerilla armies have some support from the urban proletariat ?
> >- The ELN and FARC have the potential of beeing supported by the urban
> >masses?
> >- The guerilla armies are firmly rooted within the urban poors.
> >Barrancabermeja is just the rules (and not the exception) for Colombia?
> >
> >Johannes
>
> Look, comrade, you really have to put in some effort to try to understand
> the recent political history of Colombia. These guerrillas do not have some
> kind of Debrayist metaphysic about working in the hills and shunning the
> proletariat. They are there because the forces of repression will not allow
> anybody with those kinds of politics to speak up in the urban electoral or
> trade union arena--what is sometimes called 'civil society'. (God, I hate
> that term.) There is nothing that the guerrillas would like better than to
> run for office and exercise other constitutional liberties, but the last
> time they tried that they were systematically exterminated. If you want a
> leftist account of all this, get your hands on Jenny Pearce's "Inside the
> Labyrinth", the best book on Colombia as far as I'm concerned.
>
> ====
>
> The New York Times, April 8, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
>
> Assassins Wiping Out Colombia Party
>
> By JAMES BROOKE, Special to The New York Times
>
> BOGOTA, Colombia, April 1
>
> Beguiled by his ringlets, droopy mustache and premature jowls, supporters
> nicknamed the 36-year-old presidential candidate ''Garfield,'' after the
> cartoon cat.
>
> But in the grim world of Colombian politics, some people had a colder view
> of Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa, the rising star of the nation's left.
>
> On March 22, Mr. Jaramillo sat with his wife, Mariela, at the domestic
> terminal of Bogota's airport. A year earlier, a fellow leader of his
> Patriotic Union party had been shot to death at the same airport. But Mr.
> Jaramillo, who was heading to a Caribbean beach for a vacation, had decided
> to leave his bulletproof vest at home.
>
> A young man walked up, ostensibly to greet the candidate. But his newspaper
> hid a submachine gun. And for the second time in nine months a Colombian
> presidential candidate died at the hands of a killer, most likely hired by
> cocaine traffickers, who have been linked to the country's extreme right
> wing.
>
> 3,000 Members Reported Slain
>
> The assassination of Mr. Jaramillo suddenly threw a spotlight on the slow
> extermination of his political party, now easily the most heavily
> victimized party in the Americas.
>
> The Patriotic Union says 3,000 members have been killed since the party was
> formed by former leftist guerrillas in 1985. Of this number, the party
> counts 1,000 as ''leaders'' - members of Congress and city councils,
> mayors, and candidates, including the party's previous presidential
> candidate, Jaime Pardo Leal, who was slain in 1987.
>
> In ''The Killing in Colombia,'' a study issued last year by Americas Watch,
> the New York-based human rights group said, ''Everyone agrees that the
> Patriotic Union has suffered most from this form of repression.''
>
> So far this year, party members have been murdered at the rate of one a
> day. In a country with three active leftist guerrilla groups, the unchecked
> death-squad attacks on Colombia's largest leftist party are seen as a major
> obstacle to national reconciliation.
>
> ''Since members of the FARC put down their arms and entered the Patriotic
> Union, peaceful political participation has proved to be more dangerous
> than armed struggle,'' the human rights report said, using the Spanish
> initials for the nation's largest guerrilla group, the Colombian
> Revolutionary Armed Forces.
>
> Two Suspected by the Police
>
> In a land of political intolerance, the Patriotic Union's original sin
> appears to be its birth as a political offshoot of the guerrilla group.
> Moderate leaders like Mr. Jaramillo repeatedly declared a break with the
> guerrillas, condemning their use of kidnapping and extortion to raise
> money. But this fine point was lost on the party's enemies, a mix of
> cocaine traffickers, right-wing paramilitary squads and midlevel army
> officers.
>
> After Mr. Jaramillo's slaying, the Colombian police pointed fingers at
> Fidel Castano, a reputed death-squad leader, and at Pablo Escobar, the
> leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel. In separate communiques, both men
> denied being behind the killing.
>
> ''I have never ordered the assassination of any member of the U.P.,'' Mr.
> Castano said, using the Spanish initials of the party. ''But if a member's
> true participation with the guerrillas were ever proven, we would proceed
> with his execution.'' Mr. Castano is widely believed to have taken over the
> armed units of the Medellin drug cartel after the slaying of the cartel's
> No. 2 leader, Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, in a shootout with the
> authorities in December.
>
> Mr. Jaramillo opposed the extradition of drug traffickers for trial in the
> United States as an attack on Colombian sovereignty. But despite this
> stand, he is unlikely to have won the wholehearted support of the
> traffickers considering his leftist positions and his party's past ties
> with guerrillas who tried to extort money from drug barons through
> kidnappings.
>
> A Theory on the Killing
>
> A leading theory here is that the traffickers killed Mr. Jaramillo to
> intimidate Cesar Gaviria, a hard-line opponent of drug trafficking who is
> expected to win the May 27 presidential election. An anonymous caller who
> took credit for the assassination barely mentioned the slain leftist, but
> instead unleashed a stream of invective on Mr. Gaviria.
>
> Rodrigo Losada Lora, a political scientist, said, ''With the death of
> Jaramillo Ossa they wanted to send a message to Gaviria and to the
> Government.''
>
> The theory holds that by killing Mr. Jaramillo the traffickers could
> unnerve Mr. Gaviria, the popular candidate of the governing Liberal Party,
> while avoiding wide public outrage and the kind of military crackdown that
> followed the slaying last August of Luis Carlos Galan, a staunch foe of the
> drug lords who at the time was widely considered the leading contender for
> the presidency. The crackdown, ordered by President Virgilio Barco Vargas,
> caused major disruptions for the traffickers in August and September.
>
> At the American Embassy here, a drug expert said of the Jamarillo
> assassination, ''My gut feeling is that the Medellin cartel did it.''
>
> The man who was captured and identified as the hit man, Andres Gutierrez, a
> Medellin native, has told the police little more than his fee: $750. At 15
> years of age, Mr. Gutierrez is a minor and will probably be released next
> year.
>
> Many leftists here charge that Interior Minister Carlos Lemos Simmonds set
> the stage for the killing by charging in mid-March that the Patriotic Union
> was the ''political arm'' of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces. Mr.
> Jaramillo promptly denounced the statement as a ''death sentence for U.P.
> leaders.'' Letup on Drugs Charged
>
> Three days after Mr. Jaramillo's murder, Mr. Lemos resigned. He provoked
> another furor by charging in his resignation that the Government had
> softened its war on cocaine traffickers.
>
> While Patriotic Union supporters initially accused the Government of
> complicity in the slaying, Diego Montana, the party's president until he
> resigned late last month, said he did not know who killed Mr. Jaramillo.
>
> ''I am not certain it was the Extraditables,'' he said, referring to a
> group of top traffickers. ''They say no. Bernardo Jaramillo was not for
> extradition. He was in favor of dialogue.''
>
> He then speculated that Mr. Castano might have been behind it, saying that
> Mr. Castano had taken over Mr. Rodriguez Gacha's group, which he accused of
> killing Mr. Pardo Leal.
>
> The terror apparently is taking its toll on the party's electoral appeal.
> In the March congressional elections here, the Patriotic Union's
> representation dropped from 14 seats to 9.
>
> Clara Lopez Obregon, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Bogota in 1988
> with Patriotic Union support, said that during the campaign ''people were
> afraid to pick up ballots, were afraid to attend meetings.''
>
> ''They were afraid to be associated in any way with the U.P. because the
> U.P. was being physically exterminated,'' she said.
>
> Party Close to Collapse
>
> Battered by the election defeats and by the slaying of their leader, the
> party is now on the verge of collapse. At odds with the party's
> ''ortodoxos,'' Mr. Montana and the party's entire moderate leadership,
> called the ''perestroikos,'' resigned on March 30.
>
> At the heart of the dispute is the guerrilla war. The ortodoxos believe in
> supporting the guerrillas of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces. The
> perestroikos believe, in the words of Mr. Montana, that ''guerrilla war
> does not lead to power.''
>
> Speaking of the assassins, Mr. Montana said: ''They have won a battle
> against those of us who fight for peace. They have strengthened the hand of
> people who say the only way is the armed struggle.''
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
>
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