Colombia: Nueva Democracia, Editorial – A balance of 2 years of the “government of change”
Hereby we publish an unofficial translation of an editorial of Colombian newswebsite Nueva Democracia:
The second year of the “government of change” culminates in the midst of another major corruption scandal. Hundreds of billions of pesos from the State, which come from the work of the Colombian people and which should go to disaster prevention and attention (UNGRD), were destined for the enrichment of some officials and for the bribery of congressmen in exchange for their support of the process of government reforms and projects. High-ranking officials such as the Minister of Finance and the former Minister of the Interior are implicated in the corruption network, which includes members of government Parties such as the “Historic Pact” and the “Green Alliance”, as well as representatives of traditional Parties.
Evidently ending corruption and clientelism have not been part of the “change” embodied by the current government. There is so much evidence of the brazen robbery that they cannot longer say that it is an attempted coup d’état by the opposition. All what is left is the also unoriginal, rather trite, escape resource of presidents: “everything happened behind my back.”
Even though the theft of the “public finances” is very serious and the noise cynically made by mass media such as El Tiempo (from the Sarmiento Angulo group, implicated in the Odebretch corruption cartel) is loud, this is not the most significant or main fact of the balance of two years of a government that proclaims itself to be of the people and of change. At the end, just with this fact, there is always the option of saying that it was a few bad apples or that it is a discredit campaign by the opposition. On the contrary, if we see the main facts of the government and do not limit ourselves to its beautiful and abundant words or the screams of the far right against the government, we will be able to make an objective assessment of what the current government has been.
Anyone who has participated in the popular movement knows that Colombia is not an independent nation, that our country is dominated by imperialism, mainly Yankee. In fact, almost all the Parties and organizations that today are part of the “Historical Pact” or that support it, in previous governments denounced and some even mobilized against the establishment of American military bases in our territory, against the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, in opposition to the arrival of Yankee troops, in rejection of the IMF and its adjustment packages, etc. Now, what has the “government of the people” done in order to free the nation from foreign domination, the main yoke that prevents our nation from progressing?
When he was campaigning, Petro promised the IMF to maintain macroeconomic stability and in a meeting with the Council of American Companies, which brings together more than 100 Yankee companies that have capital exported to Colombia, he assured that he would guarantee legal stability. All of this might seem to some to be a necessary trick in campaign times, but he just won the presidency, Biden called him to congratulate, sent a delegation to his inauguration and from then on there have been numerous “high-level dialogues” between the presidents or their delegates, always concluding as “friendly” and “successful.” These are just words, so you might still think that this is just part of the art of diplomacy.
But facts are stubborn, you can’t escape them easily. In these two years of government, as even his old and new followers, once “anti-imperialists”, recognize, Petro has had “excellent relations” with the Yankees (moreover, also with the European imperialists). He continued the obedient task that all Colombian presidents fulfill of ensuring “investor confidence” (one of the famous 3 pillars of the Uribe government), that is, generating the best conditions so that the big imperialist capital invested in our country obtains its maximum revenue.
And how has the current government done this? Complying with the fiscal rule, a measure imposed by imperialism to ensure, at whatever cost necessary, the health of the State’s finances with a view to guaranteeing the payment of the external debt and stability for big capital investments; obsessively paying the external debt and expanding for this purpose – by an amount greater than any of the previous governments – the State’s debt quota; constantly going out to showcase the country and its natural resources under the slogan: “Colombia, the country of beauty”; fulfilling as is the ruinous FTA with the Yankees; and maintaining legal and, more importantly, social stability for the investments of big imperialist capital.
It is necessary to clarify one issue before finishing this analysis. Foreign investment is not progress for the country, as all governments want us to believe, including the current one. Foreign investment is as taught by Marxism and demonstrated by the eternal “underdevelopment” of our countries: export of imperialist capital to exploit labor, plunder resources, usurp income and thus obtain the greatest possible profit, whose destiny, obviously, are the coffers of the owners of this capital: the imperialist powers.
Although such economic measures would be enough to make an accurate judgment of this government’s relationship with imperialism, let’s look at other facts, even more clear and outrageous, in the military field. The head of the US Southern Command has declared that “the relationship with Colombia is stronger than ever” and these are not just words: in just two years of the current government he has made numerous visits to our country. In order not to go into too much detail, let’s just look at the “noble” motives of two of his visits, which he carried out in October 2022, just 2 months after the new government took office, he “donated” some old helicopters that Petro renamed “the macaw fleet” [Translator’s note: in reference to birds which are usual in Colombia] and said that he would use them to care for the Amazon in charge of a joint military body that he proposed to the Yankees (like someone who leaves the sheep in the care of the wolf) and that months later Petro himself called the “Amazonian NATO”. In another of his visits, one month ago, the head of the Southern Command did not arrive alone, he came along with a US aircraft carrier to the Pacific waters to carry out joint military exercises and highlighted “the commitment to support the Colombian Military Forces in the fight against terrorist groups.”
To finish this topic, we will point out two other facts. During the Petro government, the construction of three Yankee military bases located in Gorgona, Pereira and Leticia is carried out. This country-selling action speaks for itself, but in the face of so much demagoguery, it is worth asking these questions: Can a government that builds American military bases in our country be considered progressive and anti-imperialist? Why do many who in 2009 rejected the agreement that the Uribe government made with the Yankees so that their troops would have free access to seven military bases in Colombia, today remain silent regarding the establishment of three Yankee bases in our country with the endorsement of the Petro’s government? Or have the Yankees stopped being imperialists and ennobled their intentions?
The last fact is also very telling. Petro, in his first speech before the UN, which some of his followers came to describe at the time as “anti-Yankee,” asked to “end the irrational war on drugs” that “fills our lands with blood.” Well, a year and a half later, last June, he launched, with “support” from the United States, the Cauca Mission, a Plan that, as the digital media ‘La silla vacía’ has analyzed, is, in essence, a reissue of one of the military plans of the Uribe government with which “Petro embraces twenty years of counterinsurgency in Colombia.” And of course, how could they not have the same essence if both were designed and directed by the same master? This Mission, which the journalist sarcastically calls “humanist counterinsurgency,” is the same Yankee war that, disguised as a war on drugs, Yankee imperialism has unleashed on our lands for decades, always with the endorsement of the governments in power, and this time was no exception. Even though you change the form, you have not changed the content.
All of these are proofs that the current government not only maintains, but deepens foreign domination over our country, with one important difference, it uses the language of the popular movement to present itself on the scene as a defender of the self-determination of nations, as a progressive, “left” government, and with this it manages to deceive and excite an important part of the people.
Now let’s move on to analyze what the government has done regarding another major problem of the Colombian nation: the land problem. As is known, in Colombia there are few with a lot of land and many with little land. The land was taken from the people since the conquest and until today it is concentrated by a few big landlords. All research confirms it, the peasant struggle and the war in the countryside are witnesses of that to it.
What has the current government done about it? It promised agrarian reform during the campaign, but, given the commotion that this word caused among the big landlords, it reassured them by clarifying that it would do so without expropriating “one small pice of land”, a commitment that it swore in a notary and, to be fair, is one of his few promises kept. Two months after being elected, it established the “historic pact” with Lafaurie, president of Fedegan, representative of the big landlords, proposing that the State buy half of their land at an inflated price, in his words: “we are buying it at a commercial price. Even more, raising the price of land.” And that, for the other half of the land that they will be left with, “we give them a loan” with very good conditions “to plant trees so that the cows eating looking up,” and this results in the end in that “the rancher wins further”.
The big landlords were very satisfied with this “historic pact.” Lafaurie widely promoted it as a “winning” business, adding that with the “beneficiaries of the agrarian reform” they “could take advantage of the synergies of the neighborhood and Fedegan’s assistance.” Uribe said: “a great step has been taken when President Petro, at this moment, does not talk about expropriations, but rather about buying X number of hectares.”
Before analyzing this “agrarian reform,” let us look at how much land has been distributed in the two years of the “government of change.” During the campaign, Petro promised that he would give three million hectares to the peasants, fulfilling the goal of the Peace Agreement with the FARC. Some time after taking office he broke his promise and went down by half: 1.5 million. He has recently stated – based on the fact that in two years he has purchased around 100 thousand hectares – that “with a great effort we could reach 500,000 by the end of the government.” Then Petro’s agrarian reform will be, in the best of cases and according to his most recent words, around 500,000 hectares given to the peasants, an insignificant figure considering that only between 1995 and 2004 – according to the Commission report of the truth – the peasants were dispossessed of more than eight million hectares and that the handful of big landlords in Colombia own between 20 and 30 million hectares, while millions of peasants do not have any land or have insufficient land.
Both the design and execution of this project are far from being an agrarian reform. The peasantry and the big landlords cannot be seen as two unrelated actors. They are antagonistic classes, the peasant works the land, the big landlords – in different ways – take part of this work, that is, exploits it. By buying a part of the land (and at high prices) from the big landlords, they, as Petro points out, will be richer and apart from that, the violent dispossession they carried out on peasant lands with their military and paramilitary forces will be legalized, they will go further, those who decide what land to sell. If the big landlords decide which lands to sell, they will obviously sell the worst lands to the peasants and keep the best ones, as has already been evidenced in several state purchases of lands unsuitable for agricultural production. Richer, more powerful and legitimized big landlords, compared to peasants with little and bad land, subjugated and dependent on them, is what Lafaurie longs for when he uses the euphemism that with this agrarian reform of the Petro government, “the synergies of neighborhood and Fedegan’s assistance.”
It is evident that without changing the structure of land ownership and giving only 500,000 hectares to the peasants at most, some forms of semi-feudality in the countryside will change, but the essence will remain: the land will continue to be concentrated in the hands of the big landlords. The peasantry will continue to be a semi-serf subjugated by the big landlord and local power will remain in the hands of the big landlords, their clans and gamonales.
Thus, after two years of Petro’s government, the land problem, the peasant problem continues, and once his mandate is over, it will continue, even more so when at the same time as the power, legitimacy and arrogance of the big landlords rises, it is threatened and it represses the peasants who take the land by de facto means (Petro and Francia ordered violent eviction of the invasions) and the peasants are corporatized so that their organizations support the government and desist from the direct struggle for land, the only way in which the concentration of land in our country has been reduced and that the land problem can be solved, destroying the large estates and taking all the lands for the peasantry.
Well, now let’s analyze very quickly, since we are running out of space, how the current government has faced the problem that a few local monopolistic groups (Sarmiento, GEA, Gilinski, Santo Domingo, Ardila Lule, etc.) dominate the main levers of the national economy, exploit the working classes and control the lives of the people.
Although the Petro government has attacked them in some speeches and has had certain friction with some of them, in essence, in reality, it has favored them and has repeatedly sought them out, inviting them to the great “National Agreement”. Let’s look at just a few examples. Since the publicized meeting of “Petro with the cacaos” in November 2023, there have been several large “public-private” alliances of the Petro government with these monopolist groups, such as the Guajira Mission with the Aval group of Sarmiento Angulo and Claro of Carlos Slim, the “Cacao Mission” with Nutresa of the Gilinski group, and an agreement between “The Antioqueño Business Group, Gilinski and the government to invest in the territories.” On the tour that Petro made to Europe in June of this year, he traveled accompanied by representatives of Argos (GEA), Gilinski and Ardila Lule. The same month, invited by the banks to their annual convention, he said: “relatively private global financial system vs. global public powers: complementary or contradictory? In my opinion, complementary”. And in case even after this there could be any doubt, Laura Sarabia, director of Dapre, said just two weeks ago in front of representatives of the big capital in Colombia: “I can tell you that there is a president who considers the private sector as an ally, obviously there are differences, but the key is to find consensus.”
Thus, in the “government of change,” large monopolies that suffocate the people continue to dominate the economy and Petro declares himself and behaves as their ally.
In conclusion, the balance of two years of the Petro government confirms that this is a government allied with imperialism, the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie, the classes that exploit and oppress the people, that keep the nation subjugated and backward, the true enemies of the Colombian revolution, of new democracy. The peculiarity is that it is a government that pretends, more than any other, to be a “government of the people”, and through demagoguery and compensatory policies (crumbs) it manages to confuse many of the people. It is the duty of the democratic and popular press and of all revolutionaries to patiently and persuasively help the people to remove the veil of demagoguery, to reveal the opportunist essence of the current government and maintain a popular movement independent of the big-bourgeois-big-landlord-State and all the political parties, that fight for the rights of the people and progressively become a force capable of carrying forward the New Democratic Revolution.
