Why the Victims' Law Applies to Me

By Christian Jaramillo

Why the Victims Law Applies to Me is an analysis of Colombian political philosophy, based on the authors own experiences, and departs from a specific historical context and liberal approach.
The author presents a new approach to Latin Americans and Colombians realities, and denounces the misrepresentations of Colombias History, past and present. He also proposes solutions and a development platform to envision a future with optimism.
Jaramillo reveals the current and past perpetrators of the violence in Colombia, denounces the public servants that plunder the countrys institutions, and relentlessly calls for the need for the
State to provide Ethical and Moral education through mandatory school and university programs.
With his vibrant, agile and brilliant writing style, the author submerges the reader into the complex subject of Violence.
Jaramillo presents a coherent and well-documented work, which will serve as a foundation for future scholars and writers on Colombias History, especially over the last seventy years.
This book contains many press releases that corroborate all aspects of Jaramillos observations, making it a very up-to-date book in terms of Colombian current affairs. The author includes an extensive bibliography at the end of the book, which documents the complex events experienced in Colombia, as well as two annexes to clarify the context for the reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palibrio
• Release date: Mar 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781463378035

Christian Jaramillo

El historiador y filosofo Christian Jaramillo, presenta un documento de gran valor histrico sobre la violencia en Colombia, visto dentro de la concepcin de una Filosofa Liberal, que comprende desde la dcada de los aos 1942 hasta el 2012. 70 aos de violencia en Colombia, narrados con una prosa gil, vibrante y agradable, en donde describe su experiencia al describir los hechos de que fue vctima, hasta que los Estados Unidos le concedi el asilo poltico en el ao 2000. Todo ello enmarcado en un contexto histrico. Hace fuertes crticas al liberalismo aplicado en Colombia y a sus lderes, culpndolos del estado actual en que se debate el pas. Formula importantes correctivos a las instituciones y a los partidos. Y plantea una interesante agenda de desarrollo. Este nuevo libro de su produccin literaria complementa su visin del mundo contemporneo plasmada en su ensayo Disquisicin sobre la Religin la Ciencia y el Estado, publicado por esta misma editorial.

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Copyright © 2014 by Christian Jaramillo.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014902367

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4633-7805-9

Softcover 978-1-4633-7804-2

eBook 978-1-4633-7803-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Rev. date: 24/02/2014

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Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Dedication

Preamble

Background

Historical Background

Recent Background

Present Background

Opposition And Types Of Violence

The Fourth Attempt At Peace

My Personal Experiences

My Early Experiences Of Violence And Politics

My Youth And Violence

My Experiences As An Engineer

Our Experiences In Tibú

Plato-Bosconia

My Experiences In Magdalena Medio

My Experiences In The Mining Sector

My Experiences As An Inspector

My Experiences In Magdalena

My Experiences In Ranching

My Experiences As A Property Developer

My Experiences In The Special District Of Bogotá

Political Asylum

My Proposal

Purging The Political Establishment

Press Freedom

Justice

What It Is To Be A Liberal

Educate, Educate, And Then Educate Some More

Prenatal And Postnatal Nutrition

Economic Freedom And Political Freedom

From Agricultural And Industrial To Technological Development

My Message

Notes

General Notes

Bibliography

Icono Certifications

Presidents Of Colombia

PROLOGUE

To witness a process in which violence is the main factor of human transformation taking place in the most diverse strata of our country, Colombia, and narrate the hard facts so that the painful memories of life, efforts and sacrifices can transcend the silence and anonymity, strongly pointing to the various forces that have converged from different sides to bring about a disintegration that started in Colombia’s distant past when social conflicts began in 1499; and to lay bare the violent experiences and consolidate certain thoughts on the matter, in order to understand the course of our history, one has to emphasize the value and dignity of life through a clean and timely story that encompasses this world of immorality, profits, desire for power at any cost, the insane excesses of guerrillas, disproportionate electoral ambitions, envy, kidnapping, robbery, drug trafficking, pillage and violation of human rights.

Laying the facts bare is crucial when talking of any new attempts to find peace after 40 civil wars, of a national armed conflict known as the Thousand Days’ War, which marked the subsequent development of the country; of tracing the path of violence and bloodshed, government corruption, drug trafficking, paramilitarism and governments like that of Ernesto Samper Pizano, which trampled all moral and ethical principles; of making three attempts to achieve peace and having Pastrana Arango exhaust all dialog options through his consequent failure; of obtuse rulers, of the annual commemorations to mark the vile assassination of Gaitán on April 9, 1948, of the extermination of the Patriotic Union, or of false positives. In the midst of all this disaster, Christian Jaramillo boldly assumes that this is not an individual concern, but rather a crisis of human qualities and values.

The author has conducted an in-depth analysis of all forms of political violence, common violence, social violence, State violence, guerrilla violence, drug trafficking violence, workplace violence and paramilitary violence, as these have all left scars on his skin from his childhood, when he ran through the streets amidst a cacophony of bullets during the Rojas Pinilla dictatorship; throughout this violent passage of time, he witnessed murders, kidnappings, corpses amassing along the sides of roads he walked during days of flight; psychological threats and terror on the faces of entire families, with that ghastly look of death in their eyes, hanging from the branches of trees in Santander, and menacing fear in San Juan del Cesar; sinister extortion in Plato-Bosconia, the dark days in La Jagua de Ibirico working coal mines, and the stifling of screams during civic strikes, boycotts, kidnap threats and treachery; the suffocating pressures experienced when the author served as an administrator; the vile contradictions of his farming experiences in the Western Plains, or when he tried to be a property developer in Yopal, from where he escaped the then-permanent threats; and the corrupt construction permits in the Special District of Bogotá.

Many private entrepreneurs and individuals in Colombia took advantage of the situation created by the guerrillas, and used them as their armed wing to threaten and kidnap, explains Jaramillo to clarify the degree of decomposition; just one more of the perverse, evil attitudes adopted to serve sinister purposes.

Although everything covered in this book is common knowledge, it does not seem to be recognized as such, and is considered intrinsic to everyday life in Colombia; it is as though when people contemplate the facts, they take on a different aspect, becoming a sort of distant, alien stream of events.

The horrors of inhuman violence, the bestial behavior of those who have lost the concept that defines values, have become a media show, in which the mass media, in their zeal unleashed by the power for their own benefit, use the reader as the megaphone of their hatred and interests; such biased news reporting creates a sort of anarchy that circumvents freedom of expression and press freedom.

This book presents hard facts and real names related to the disintegration of Colombia’s social, political and economic processes, which has affected the structure of society and threatens to undermine an already lacerated and complex democracy, deeply disturbing the balance of mankind.

Christian Jaramillo has always declared himself a Liberal, and this has allowed him to petition that The liberal model that has been applied in Colombia thus far must be replaced by true liberalism of the State. The author also calls for ethics, morals and standards to purify and cleanse politics; he appeals to primary voters to understand the problems involved, focus on real issues when voting, and abandon their role as part of the uninformed masses; he urges voters to get informed, and understand this phony law of supply and demand for what it really is—forever abandoning this platform that promises more at the lowest cost.

The general belief in Colombia is that money and power can buy justice, and as such are factors of alienation and isolation, which makes our version of blind justice more akin to a sightless old woman fumbling about with her cane.

Educate! Educate! Educate! the author exclaims from his exile in the United States, through a campaign based on the framework of a civic curriculum, which explains how a democracy is established and maintained. He wields arguments based on James Heckman’s economic theory on prenatal and postnatal nutrition, and states that the running of the economy, as well as the agricultural, industrial and technological development of a nation are dependent on how policies are managed.

The author states that the practice of politics must be pristine and egregious with respect to the philosophical principles it defends, and must always seek to benefit the social cluster and people in their condition as citizens that make up the State, and concludes with a call to future generations to bear in mind that it is in their hands to change the conditions so that their grandchildren and future generations can live in a better country.

Why the Victims’ Law Applies to Me is a hard-hitting book written in clear-cut language; it is motivating, painful and optimistic, critical and methodical, painfully truthful, hopeful and responsible.

Carlos Eduardo Uribe Botero

Writer and Theater Director

El Refugio, October 2012

INTRODUCTION

As I have categorically stated in all my writings, lectures, forums and national or international conferences: violence is inherent to the nature of Colombia. To trace its origins, it is necessary to go back to August 3, 1492, when Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de Moguer with his expedition of ships the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, bound for the East Indies; I quote this date because violence has dominated the cities and countryside of Colombia ever since.

With its geostrategic location at the northwest corner of the subcontinent, a coastline straddling two oceans, and its proximity to the Panama Canal—the only inter-oceanic waterway—one would think that these factors would serve as privileged grounds for the harmonious development of Colombia; however, they have only caused the evils that plague Colombia today without respite—evils I identify as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Subversion, Drug Trafficking, Corruption and Organized Crime (drug trafficking and paramilitarism).

The origins of violence in Colombia date back to the times of the Discovery and Conquest, when the Spanish took possession of the new continent, provoked and crushed the uprising of the natives, and created resentment that later brought the Creoles and Spaniards into a relentless war during the Colonial and Independence times. This last phase marked the natural climax of political, economic and social deterioration, and exacerbated by the relentless passage of time, served as the engine that caused the climate for an armed revolution that changed the established order and ushered in the Republic once the absolute monarchy was abolished.

The Conquest was violent in every way. With some exceptions that prove the rule, the Spanish Conquistadors were members of the lowest classes, and left a trail of death on their infamous journey to incorporate the newly-discovered land to the Spanish Empire.

The Colonization was violent because the location of the New Kingdom of Granada in the tropics was not conducive to families of settlers—as had happened in other parts of the New World, where families arrived from the old continent for one reason or another—but bandits, ex-convicts and adventurers drawn by the gold and wealth of these geographic locations, who destroyed everything that stood in the way of their conquest of El Dorado. However, in response to Spain’s undeniable power and rivalry with England, the British decided to attack their long maritime communication lines in order to decrease the Spanish influence, and hamper Spanish efforts to ship the treasures found in the lands discovered by Columbus back to the Iberian Peninsula. To achieve this, the British brought corsairs and filibusters into war and chose the Caribbean Mare Nostrum as their theater of operations. This area was teeming with English pirates who promoted bloody violence in their waters and coasts, and naturally spread to New Granada since it was the most important Viceroyalty due to its extensive coastline on the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the west.

The War of Independence was the most violent war in the New Continent. To achieve his mission, Bolivar proclaimed his Decree of War to Death in 1813, and the Freedom Flag was raised to the skies of the country after heavy casualties.

The Republic was violent because unity was never consolidated, and the political factions resulting from the excessive ambitions and appetites of the Supremes, sparked civil wars from the dawn of the Nation until the Thousand Days’ War, which ended with the Wisconsin Treaty.

Unfortunately, violence had become deeply rooted in the nature of Colombians, and peace was elusive as a result. Ideological clashes were not settled in the realm of ideas but on the battlefield, as it had become more typical of our character to impose our will with arms. This was followed by clashes between centralists and federalists, liberals and conservatives, writing bloody pages in our nation’s history, with an endless succession of civil wars that more or less followed the pattern of military orthodoxy; leaders and troops were often improvised, but continued to use conventional warfare techniques. Short periods of peace ensued, only to prepare for the next round of armed conflict. The many civil wars extended from the conflict between centralists and federalists, until the Thousand Days’ War. Between the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries these wars were unparalleled in the Americas, and included the following:

1. Centralists-Federalists War: 1812-1815

2. War of Antioquia or Córdova’s Rebellion: 1829

3. War of the Supremes: 1839-1841

4. Civil War: 1851

5. Civil War: 1854

6. Civil War: 1860-1862

7. Civil War: 1876-1877

8. Civil War: 1884-1885

9. Civil War: 1895

10. Thousand Days’ War: 1899-1902

For political and military leaders, political affiliation was not significant, and they would freely change allegiance from one party to another whenever they saw fit, fighting bitter battles on behalf of the liberals sometimes and for the conservatives other times. This was a legacy of the War of Independence, in which the founding fathers also switched allegiance according to their whims. José María Obando went from being an angry realistic man to a prosaic hero in the patriot ranks. At times they would unscrupulously shoot liberals, and other times conservatives. Everything was dependent on the political interests of The Supreme at any given time.

In the times of the Borgias, political assassination was one of the preferred methods, and was actually a very effective way of consolidating power. Countless liberal and conservative leaders were slain during civil strife; for example, José María Córdova, Antonio José de Sucre and Rafael Uribe Uribe were sacrificed in this way.

In the early twentieth century, a jubilant nation celebrated the end of the Thousand Days’ War through the signing of the Wisconsin Treaty on November 21, 1902. The treaty was signed on board the U.S. Battleship Wisconsin, a component of the force deployed by President Theodore Roosevelt to freely, arbitrarily and spinelessly patrol our coast, and invade and occupy by force the Department of Panama and seize the then-developing inter-oceanic canal. The celebrated agreement ended the war but not the violence, which took on other forms and became an instrument for strengthening the government formed through precariously democratic election results, without turning into a civil war, like in the recent past. This is why we talk about liberal violence and conservative violence.

As a result of the peace treaties, and some excellent inspiration from the accomplished veteran statesman and military man General Rafael Reyes, political parties were stripped of their armed wings, and a permanent, professional standing army was created. The first breath of life of the current Colombian Army was the founding of the Military School of Cadets in June 1, 1907. From this date, violence entered a dormant period until the 1930s.

In the 1930 elections, the conservative hegemony fell, and the Liberal Republic began with a government program called Revolution in Motion, which included significant social, economic and political reforms; however, this also led to bloody confrontations with opponents and detractors. During this period, Jorge Eliezer Gaitán emerged on the political scene, an undisputed liberal leader who particularly appealed to the working classes. Gaitán raised the question of class struggles, becoming a threat to the peculiar plutocracy that had determined the destinies of the country throughout its checkered history.

In the 1930s, the populist social movement, Gaitanism, was gaining significant momentum with its Peasant Leagues and Associations organized by the newly-formed Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, which was founded on July 17, 1930 as a Section of the Communist International. They sometimes acted as allies, and other times as adversaries, which led to a wave of violence that gradually spread to the farming sector and caused the emergence of angry peasant and indigenous leaders such as the prominent Quintín Lame, who became the target of government repression, giving way to a new era of violence that has regrettably persisted to the present day.

The extremist factions collided with each other, but occasionally allied to implement joint actions against the establishment and its security agencies; this was particularly prevalent in the center of the country straddling the western mountains, the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, rural regions of Sumapaz, and areas of Huila, Cauca and Tolima. Colombia’s so-called political violence originated here, which has caused so much futile pain and bloodshed.

After the failure of the Liberal Republic, which foundered in a sea of corruption and ineffectiveness, Gaitán mobilized the masses and became a direct threat to the plutocracy that had hitherto determined the destinies of the country. This plutocracy also financed the candidates of the two traditional parties in order to maintain their political and economic dominance, and this naturally clashed with the armor of morality of the liberal leader, who flatly rejected such shallow intervention.

With this situation as the backdrop, presidential elections were held in 1946. Two candidates were nominated for the ruling party: Gabriel Turbay, a true representative of the Creole oligarchy, and Jorge Eliezer Gaitán, the leader of the dispossessed. The opposition party put forward the conservative Mariano Ospina Pérez as its candidate. The liberal division made Ospina the winner of the elections and, with the Conservatives in power, clashes broke out again, political hatred was exacerbated and rural violence increased.

Interestingly, political violence was not instigated by the opposition during this period, but by the ruling party, which went all out to consolidate power. Colombia bled in this absurd, cruel, futile and pitiless rural struggle, which only served to create irreconcilable hatred between liberals and conservatives.

Fighting methods took a new turn after the April 9 event. Liberals from the highest levels organized their forces in irregular formations to create armed opposition to counter government violence. These liberal insurgent forces resorted to guerrilla warfare tactics on the Eastern Plains and Santander. Rebel leaders such as the prominent Guadalupe Salcedo and some younger men including Eliseo Velásquez, Rafael Rangel, Eduardo Fonseca, Eduardo Franco, Eliseo Fajardo and Aljure Dumar were in charge of leading the guerrillas in their efforts to create armed opposition against the newly-installed conservative regime that now held the nation’s supreme power.

It is difficult to establish which of the armed conflicts came first. Some say it was the uprising of Captain Alfredo Silva, a commander of the Apiay Air Base in Meta; others say it was the taking of Puerto Lopez by Eliseo Velásquez; others, again, say it was the conflict led by Rafael Rangel in San Vicente de Chucurí; and some point to the taking of Barranca de Upía by the Fonseca brothers. Which one it was is not really important; the upshot was that violence spread through the Plains, and the country had to go through five years of civil war inundated with military successes and failures, and confined to a specific region of the country, which caused extreme apathy in the rest of the country. It was common to hear in social and political circles that this was a problem between the army and the guerrillas; the vast majority of the population was kept out of these tragic events that painfully affected those living in the Plains, who had to endure the excesses of one side or the other for five long years for the sake of a cruel war that bloodied the Great Plains.

The army was not trained, equipped or motivated for this kind of conflict. The techniques and tactics of regular warfare were taught in military academies and courtyards—techniques and tactics that had emerged from World War II, which ended just three years previously. This is what caused the notorious military failures and lack of discipline that emerged in the heat of combat. Military training was mediocre and improvisation was general. There was no mention of units in military terms, as a new jargon had appeared; the base of operations and patrol were now called military post and commission, respectively. The uniform was also scrapped. For example, the Paez Tigers (the name given to the officers of cavalry group No. 1 Paez, commanded by the highly controversial Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro Castillo) started wearing wide-brimmed felt hats, half-length ranchero boots, red neckerchiefs and impressive tiger leather belts with holsters on one side for a revolver and on the other for a knife. It is only now in my later years that I can say that I too proudly wore this grotesque costume at the time, and the self-discipline that it entailed.

The uprising lasted until 1953, when General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla assumed the presidency of the Nation, and the Liberal leaders took the opportunity to withdraw their support of insurgent forces, prompting the guerrillas to accept the amnesty offered by the government, hand in their weapons and demobilize in order to put an end to the War of the Plains.

However, peace remained elusive for those who refused to return to civilian life, and rampant violence erupted in different parts of the country. Some strategically retreated to the mountains to organize and challenge the established power once more, while others occupied production areas around the country and made violence their business. This was known as the period of vandalism or simply banditry, and was started by the so-called children of violence, who were lawless and godless and spent their days spreading terror through their chilling exploits, thrashing key Colombian regions. The army was once again called in to avert the threat.

Besides the pain and grief caused by the bloodshed involved in these clashes, they also led to the destruction of agriculture, and the migration of the rural population to big cities, creating major poverty belts, which in turn became breeding grounds for further violence. This period produced notorious names who commanded small-scale, but chillingly cruel gangs such as "Sangrenegra [Black Blood], Desquite [Payback], Efraín González, Capitan Veneno [Captain Poison], Chispas [Sparks], El Tigre [The Tiger], Alma Negra [Black Soul], Zarpazo [Snatch], Capitan Revancha" [Captain Revenge], Juan de la Cruz Varela and many more, who relentlessly spread terror in the Departments of Tolima, Caldas, Cundinamarca and Boyacá, with no defined political banner, but with an insatiable thirst for hatred, cruelty and vengeance, committing some of the most gruesome and hideous massacres in our troubled history.

By the end of this period, the army was up against two different fronts: the banditry in Cundinamarca, Caldas and Tolima, and the Marxist-Leninist subversion in Huila, Caquetá and Cauca. To respond to these, it was decided to carry out an offensive in the north and strategic defensive action in the south, which was approved and endorsed by the government of Guillermo León Valencia.

The government offered unprecedented support to the national army. With spirits high, and just about enough resources for the first time, the military power of the country embarked on a process of resolving the problems and defeated the bandits that were so mercilessly thrashing the country. Peace was resurrected in the countryside and districts of Colombia. President Valencia was hailed the President of Peace. However, this triumphalism diluted his successful exploits, and the hard-earned peace was short-lived as a result, vanishing very quickly in a short period of time.

While this was taking place, in the shadows of the events that captured the nation’s attention and kept the military instrument committed, one guerrilla group from the Plains refused to lay down their arms having become captivated by Marxist preachers, which gave rise to a subversive organization whose only goal was to seize