91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly's Ra£l Cienfuegos interviewed Ra£l Reyes, a member of the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The United States and the European Union label the FARC a terrorist organisation, and in Colombia the government calls the FARC a narco-terrorist group. What does the FARC think about these labels?
The United States and the Colombian government are putting on pressure for the FARC to be included in lists of supposed terrorists. And — to justify its war against the Colombian people and their revolutionary army — the Colombian government has added the narco-terrorist label to the FARC.
The government does this to hide its dictatorial nature and its known links with the paramilitaries and drug trafficking, which started well before [President Alvaro] Uribe was elected. The FARC expects this from the class enemy. The real terrorists, those at the top of the list in world terrorism, are the US administration and their main war allies, including Uribe, who heads a government committed to state terrorism.
These murderers label those who try to defend people from their aggression as terrorists. The aggressors want to appear to be the victims. But the real victims are the dispossessed, the people who have the courage to dissent against the government's bad policies. These are the victims of neoliberalism and globalisation, which have been imposed by the United States on all countries throughout the world.
Uribe has asked the US to intervene militarily in Colombia with the same amount of force as in the invasion of Iraq. What would this mean for Colombia?
When a president asks to be invaded by a world power like the United States, it shows he is anti-Colombian, he is Colombia's enemy. No-one, from any part of the world, is going to ask that their country be invaded by another country, especially if they claim to have authority, or that they have the support of most of the population. This just shows Uribe's fascist, pro-US nature.
The FARC has declared it will take state power. How do you plan to achieve this?
Colombia is a rich country, a country of 44 million people, a country in a very strategic position in South America, a country with vital underground wealth, and biodiversity. But the majority of its people are poor. Eighty percent of the population lives in poverty, and 50% in abject poverty, and these trends continue to grow. Meanwhile, 20% of Colombians live off the country's wealth; they live off corruption, politicking, shonky businesses, vice, drug trafficking and other crimes of the state.
The government points to economic growth [in Colombia]. However, this growth doesn't go to the poor, but to the pockets of the elite. So, when they say Colombia's gross national product has grown, it's the pockets and bank accounts of the Colombian elite that have grown.
The FARC is struggling for political power. It is struggling for a new Colombia, hand in hand with the Colombian people. The FARC is part of the people. It is struggling for political power so that there are no exploiters or exploited, so that we can have a just society, where inequalities disappear, and so that we can construct a Colombia where a large majority will benefit from the country's riches.
One can never put a time frame to an objective as big as the taking of power. It depends on the subjective and objective conditions. It will depend on the Colombian people's capacity for struggle, the capability of the forces leading the revolutionary process to mobilise people, and also, on the ability or inability of the enemy to hold on to power, or to resolve certain problems.
Obviously, the FARC and the Colombian people would prefer otherwise. They would prefer we were a few days, or a few months, or a few years from taking power. But it's impossible to work out a time frame for this. One can never set a date, because it may happen in two or three years, or even before. But it could take a little more. Personally, I don't think it will take very long, because the Colombian people have suffered so much. There is a lot of abuse, robbery, corruption, crime and theft of our wealth. Many people die every day as a result of the war that capitalists wage against the poor.
The Bolivarian Movement [a broad, left, social movement] was launched in April 2002. Has it been successful?
The Bolivarian Movement is an expression of the people, and has strong support in the country's academic, political and social sectors. For many years, the political space for Colombia's progressive forces, other than those in armed struggle, has been closed off. These forces now find political expression within the Bolivarian Movement, which is fighting for its social and political demands.
This movement is growing. But because it's an underground movement, none of those who are part of it can come out publicly, because they would be immediately murdered, or at the very least jailed. Still, despite its clandestine nature, it is growing among intellectuals, teachers, students, and among sectors of workers and the unemployed, both in the country and the city. We hope that when the movement is large enough and has greater impact in the country's political and social life, it will be able to come out publicly and participate in everyday political life.
What does the FARC think about the dialogue between the government and the paramilitaries?
Dialogue between the paramilitaries and Uribe's government is the same as dialogue that would occur between father and son. Paramilitarism is a child of the [Colombian] state, and Uribe has always been its backer. Colombian and international communities remember all that Uribe did as the governor of Antioquia province [in the mid-1990s to establish] "Convivir" to legitimise and promote paramilitary activity [According to Amnesty International, Convivir served as government-sanctioned death squads recruiting to the paramilitaries.]
Today, as president of the country, he is following through on the policies he developed as governor of Antioquia. So no-one should find it strange, here in Colombia or overseas, that Uribe returns favours to his boys, the paramilitaries, because they campaigned to make him president.
And why not, if he's their man, if he's their boss? That's why they campaigned for him. Just after Uribe won the elections, we recall that Mr. Mancuso, one of the leaders of these vigilante death squads, said that 35% of parliamentarians are paramilitaries. And it's true. These people are paramilitaries who have seats in parliament — take Rocio Arias, for example.
Therefore, one of the commitments they are trying to carry out in government is to legitimise the paramilitary gangs, so that the government can go on killing its opponents, killing popular, social leaders who disagree with the government. All those who protest against human rights abuses or the neoliberal model, or state terrorism, are considered their enemy and are attacked. With the legalisation of the paramilitaries, they hope to legitimise impunity for these crimes against the Colombian people.
In the last few years there have been large, popular mobilisations in Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina. What does the FARC think about these mobilisations and how do you identify with them?
What we see with the people in Bolivia, the people of Ecuador, the people of other parts of the region and the world is a struggle against the devastating effects of the neoliberal economic model; a model generated by globalisation, the imperialist war against the peoples of the world, carried out by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.
There are thousands of millions of human beings from the so-called Third World who have not had breakfast today, nor will they have it tomorrow, whose children are dying of malnutrition. Some women cannot feed their children because they don't even have food for themselves. The real crime, the real terrorism carried out by the world's financial institutions is seen in the deaths of men, women and children, from hunger, so that a minority can appropriate the wealth of the majority.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 19, 2004.
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