[Marxism] Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela

[Aaron Aaron]

[Note: Some posts to this thread got a comma added at the end of the Subject header, so they will appear in some readers, and perhaps online, as a separate thread.]

At 13:09 -0400 2008/08/20, Walter Lippmann wrote:
>The situation [in Colombia] can best be resolved by negotiations,

"best" for whom?

>which is what Chavez was striving for, and what prompted that dramatic operation to release Ingrid Betancourt was designed, at least in part, to undercut. Uribe and Washington do NOT want Chavez to get any credit, though, of course, he earned it already during the year through his own successful efforts re: Clara Rojas, etc.

[SNIP]

>Colombians will have to find their own way out of the situation.

Is "the situation" that "Colombians will have to find their own way out of" the armed conflict between the FARC, et al., and the state, or the (necessarily violent) ongoing oppression and exploitation of the Colombian masses by oligarchic capitalism and imperialism? If you agree that it's the latter, then there are a substantial number of Colombians who won't WANT TO find their way out of that situation.

>Some sort of negotiated arrangement which will allow an end to the violence. The struggle then will proceed to another plane, in the best of circumstances. That is what happened in South Africa, in Ireland, and so on.

In South Africa, under what I labelled "apartheid in blackface" back when the ANC first came to office in 1994, the majority of the Black population is living in substantially worse material conditions than under formal apartheid. Of course, most middle-class blacks -- in the ANC leadership and sometimes out -- are doing very well, thank you!

As for Ireland, the Gerry Adams gang not only gave up the armed struggle but even gave up the right to call for a United Ireland -- unless the settler-colonial Loyalists in the North suddenly see visions of the Celtic goddess and decide to support it!

It's a pretty consistent experience that anti-imperialist movements that give up armed struggle and make peace agreements also give up much of their political program and, in fact, become agents and partners of capitalist oppression. Another example is Zimbabwe and the Lancaster House settlement in 1980.

I'm not arguing that the FARC shouldn't, perhaps, try to shift its emphasis from militarism to mass organizing, but they'll sure as hell need their weapons to defend those who dare to work with them. And perhaps they should also uncoditionally release those of their prisoners who are not legitimate prisoners of war or criminal agents of the state and the oligarchy. But the one thing they hopefully won't do is arrive at a political accomodation with the Colombian ruling class and its U.S. sponsors.

 - Aaron