[Marxism] Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela

[Aaron Aaron]

(I forgot to hard-wrap this the first time around. Sorry!)

[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