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CIAO DATE: 03/01
Foreign Policy
Global Newsstand: Revolutionaries or Crooks
Benjamin Ryder Howe
*
NACLA Report on the Americas, September/October 2000, New York City
Colombia produces three fourths of the world's cocaine, and of that total, more than half originates on farms protected by theFARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Doesn't the entanglement of leftist rebels supposedly bent on social justice with the world's most notorious criminal industry represent something of a contradiction?
From the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey to Sierra Leone's Revolutionary Armed Forces, rebel movements around the world sustain themselves, at least in part, either by tapping the black market or by preying mafia-like on legitimate industries such as big oil. In the process, some-if not all, according to a recent World Bank report-have blurred the line between criminal enterprise and genuine political action. After considering more than 100 civil wars over the last 35 years, the report concludes that rebellion in general has little to do with "grievances" or ideology, but with an insurgency's ability to latch onto a commodity, such as diamonds, and use the profits to fuel its arsenal. "Popular perceptions see rebellion as a protest motivated by genuine and extreme grievance," the report states. "Economists who have studied rebellions tend to think of them not as the ultimate protest movements, but as the ultimate manifestation of organized crime."
By that reckoning, the source of turmoil should seem relatively clear in Colombia, a hive of domestic instability that sits on huge supplies of raw goods such as oil, coal, and coca. The FARC, for instance, earns between $200 and $400 million a year "taxing" coca farmers, extorting mining companies, and kidnapping just about anyone. But two articles in the September/October issue of NACLA Report on the Americas, a widely read, left-leaning journal published by the North American Congress on Latin America, argue against equating Colombia's rebellion with organized crime.
Alfredo Molano, a Colombian author of oral histories, takes a sympathetic look at the transformation of the FARC from a peasant uprising into the world's richest guerrilla force. Although the rebels may be labeled "gangsters," Molano says, their grievances are real, and the organization remains one of the only champions of the Colombian peasantry. Molano depicts the FARC not as predators, but as defenders of those preyed upon by a rural elite violently opposed to land reform. Coca, he says, may be a convenient way for the rebels to build up their arsenal, but it is also the only viable crop for destitute farmers who need rebel protection. The fact that coca is illegal only masks a larger class struggle.
Molano casually dismisses the FARC's "gangster" label as a smear by the ruling class. Marc Chernick, a professor of government at Georgetown University, attacks the name-calling more directly. Chernick casts the guerrillas as "a state within the state," an institution that has taken on the responsibilities of government. For instance, the FARC has a pension fund for ex-guerrillas and reinvests profits back in the formal economy as small-business loans. Like all states, Chernick suggests, the guerrillas must impose taxes. "What is surprising," Chernick says, "is not how much the FARC has degenerated into a criminal syndicate . . . [but] that despite their obvious involvement with the lower ends of the drug trade, they have maintained their political character."
Chernick allows that the conflict is principally about "competition for power," but his definition of power would probably include much more than economic resources. For the FARC, he says, it would include a say in social policy-issues such as unemployment and alternative crop development, which the rebels have insisted on addressing in peace talks.
While coverage of Colombia tends to focus on the FARC's misdeeds and astonishing wealth, the consensus among Colombia watchers is that ending the war will depend on far-reaching social and political reforms-many of which FARC champions. Material resources such as oil and coca may have enabled the FARC to put up its fight, but those same resources also drive the country's economy and raise issues that are not likely to go away.
Endnotes:
*: Benjamin Ryder Howe is associate editor of the Paris Review. Back.