María Fernanda Barreto
The Nobel Peace Prize loves war. Juan Manuel Santos not only does not want peace for Colombia but has also provided all his power so that the Colombian State perpetuates itself as the lieutenant of the United States in South America.
The president, who intends to go down in history as a peace builder, managed to demobilize the FARC with some agreements taken to the minimum expression to later breach and violate them, which sends a negative message to the negotiating table with the ELN. Well, no one in their right mind makes an agreement with a scammer.
The saddest thing of all is that Colombia is not a sovereign country. It is enough to see how the peace agreements collapsed like a house of cards with simple a request from the United States that passes over the special jurisdiction of peace, that while reconfiguring the chamber of representatives of Colombia in their favor, continues forcing the Colombian government to place itself in the front line against Venezuela.
The detention of Santrich: a milestone in the history of peace agreements in Colombia
The armed struggle in Colombia has a long history because the Colombian oligarchy is undoubtedly the most violent in Latin America. The victims of state terrorism and their paramilitary bodies in Colombia far outnumber the victims of all the Southern Cone dictatorships combined.
Colombia has come to have more than six guerrilla organizations at the same time. In the decade of the nineties, peace agreements were signed with the M-19, which promoted the convocation to the Constituent Assembly and within its framework the peace agreements were signed with the EPL, the indigenous guerrilla group Quintín Lame and the PRT.
Although none of the agreements were fully complied with, and only a month and a half after their signing, Commander Pizarro – already a presidential candidate of the M-19 – was assassinated by the paramilitary groups.
Yet, the arrest and possible extradition of Santrich is one of the most flagrant violations on the part of the State to any peace agreement in the history of Colombia.
The only peace agreements that have been fulfilled and favorable for both signatories have been those that Uribe signed with the paramilitary groups, with which they legitimized their capitals, reduced their sentences, and of course, were even more linked to politics and the economy to favor the establishment, without this signifying its disappearance or any progress in the real construction of peace, but exactly the opposite .
Since the signing of the agreements, the US has been pressing Santos to break them. Starting with the opposition to point 4 regarding the substitution of illicit crops and the requirement of forced eradication in view of the increase in sowing and export reported by the DEA itself. But with the recent incarceration of Santrich, the entire final agreement is put at risk, and extradition will undoubtedly be the final thrust. So far there is not a single solid proof incriminating Santrich.
The arrest of this former guerrilla by order of the US also means that the FARC and the Colombian left will all lose positions in the Colombian Congress. There is also a process opened against Senator Alberto Castilla for alleged links with the ELN, with which they would be able to remove not one but two seats to the Colombian left with the same argument.
Not being enough for the US government to push the government to destroy the agreements it signed with the FARC, now it closed its doors to dialogue with the ELN with the collaboration of Lenin Moreno.
When it comes to geopolitics, coincidences do not exist
The capture of Santrich in the geopolitical framework against Venezuela
But this capture is also a movement within the geopolitical strategy that aims to end the Venezuelan process. It came to light that the alleged “key informant” in the Santrich case says he is willing to declare the supposed links between Santrich, the Sinaloa cartel and Venezuela. This “protected witness” was transferred to the US and it will be there where it finally gives a statement.
Before the formal interrogation and the false judicial positive, the media battle began. According to the press, “Marín said he was willing to give names of the powerful contacts they have in Venezuela to move cocaine shipments.” These statements already augur the beginning of a new operation against Venezuela in which “a single man, a relative of a FARC leader, will testify against Santrich and, incidentally, against the Mexican capo they have just mounted on the list against other objectives established in Venezuela “.
They will continue to feed the narrative of the Venezuelan “narco-state” and try to foist the Bolivarian revolution with the imminent failure of the “peace accords”. A strategy that seeks to unify in a single maneuver a supposed “threat” (absurdly linked to drug trafficking) to Colombian national security from Venezuela to escalate in the aggressions, prevent the advance of Gustavo Petro in the local electoral context and raise the profile of the Colombian state as a geopolitical battering ram of the US to corner Venezuela from the diplomatic and financial front.
More “coincidences”. From April 9, 1948 to April 9, 2018
As if the ghost of Gaitan’s assassins continued to hover, or perhaps as evidence that his descendants continue to maintain power, Santrich is arrested on the same day that seventy years of his assassination were committed in Bogotá and that same day. from Bogotá – a parody of the Venezuelan TSJ, which calls itself “TSJ in exile”, giving itself the excessive luxury of sitting in the Colombian Congress itself, made a presumed trial against President Maduro for an Interpol order for his capture This legal grotesque has in addition to the privileged scenario granted by Santos, all the support of Marco Rubio and related media, such as the Nuevo Herald .
We will have to choose between believing in ghosts, marveling at coincidences or assuming that apparently isolated facts are part of the same plan of those who dominate regional geopolitics.
The eye of the hurricane
The appeal to the external threat from Venezuela is being used in a desperate attempt to coalesce the votes against Petro, since this former M-19 guerrilla who also accepted the “peace accords” of 1990, threatens to break the hegemony of the Colombian families that for years have shared power. The terror that a center-left candidate bursts into the reconfiguration of the South American panorama that the right has achieved in the region, is already reverberating even in the headlines of CNN .
Petro managed to remove from the debate the disqualification of being “castrochavista”. Now, to survive the long tradition of murders of dissident presidential candidates that began with Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, and that took his former fighting partner Carlos Pizarro, Petro must also overcome the dubious Colombian electoral system.
A re-elected Maduro president or a Petro president are a complication for the geopolitical interests of the US in the region. They do not seem willing to allow a party like the FARC in Colombian politics, nor do they want the ELN more than an unconditional surrender.
They are not interested in dialogue as a policy. They try to nip all these possibilities in the bud. The dogs continue to bark, and if they bark, it is because they see something, even if they are only ghosts. What is definitely true is that, when it comes to geopolitics, coincidences do not exist.