[Marxism] Answers to two questions re Colombia

[Néstor Gorojovsky]

2008/2/8, Anthony Boynton <northbogota en yahoo.com>:
> Answers to questions about Colombia:
>
> Nestor's question about the social backgrounds of
> Colombia's officer corps is a good question to which I
> can only give a vague answer. I have never heard of a
> general from one of the powerful families in Colombia.
> My impression is that there seem to be some
> traditional military families, but they are not
> considered to be part of the oligarchy.  This is a
> very "clubby" country, where which club you belong to
> determines which rung on the ladder members of the
> bourgeoisie are standing on. Most officers go to the
> officers club, the officers vacation resort, the
> officers this and the officers that. Non-commissioned
> officers also have their own clubs, resorts, etc. A
> large part of the petty bourgeoisie and the
> professional elite her is connected to the military by
> family relations.

I hope all your "vague answers" are always as "vague" as the above, Anthony!

The social origin and relations of the Colombian officers, as per your
clear portrait, reply, almost to the last detail, those of the
Argentinean officers and, I am afraid, those of most Latin American
officers. I had some hunch that permanent warfare and US American
intervention in Colombia had changed this. But not.

Our military in Argentina, and so it seems to be still the case  with
Colombia, are also a relatively closed fraction of society but have
complex and strong links with the petty bourgeoisie and the
professional elite. Keep in mind however that these terms, in my
country (which even today is still less  dramatically split between
haves and have nots than Colombia) are somehow less "elitist" than
they are up there in Bogotá, Medellín or Cartagena.

And the current social standing of the Colombian officers, strongly
reminds me that of those same officers in Argentina between 1955 -when
the reactionary command of the Armed Forces turned them into the
actual political party of the oligarchy and imperialism- and, roughly,
1985-95 the time when -after the Malvinas war- a decission was made
and implemented by the powers that be to dismantle the Armed Forces
here.

There were always very frew, and not too influential BUT DURING SOME
DECISSIVE PERIODS, officers of oligarchic origin. In fact, after 1955
the oligarchic families (particularly so the families of English
origin linked to the fading Britsh Imperial power on Argentina) put
their female children to task and, overcoming their obvious
repugnance, forced them, quite Lampedusian in fact, to marry
Argentinean Army, Air Force and Navy officers. But this was somehow a
"prize" for their anti-Peronism.

Suffice it to say that dictator Juan Carlos Onganía who overthrew
Illía in 1966, an empty and ridiculously "formal" General of Cavallery
and of the humblest origin (in fact, he had attended to the same
elementary school I attended decades later, in a very poor section of
Buenos Aires),  was married to a Miss María Emilia GREEN, while Jorge
Rafael Videla, the highest ranking butcher of the 1970s and the man
who took office at the Pink House after overthrowing Isabel Perón in
1976, was married to a Raquel HARTRIDGE (Videla, however, seems to
have been linked to a minor oligarchic family in Mercedes, a
particular town -with some distinguishing traits, like a petty
oligarchy of its own- in the province of Buenos Aires some 100
kilometers to the West of Buenos Aires, but since his family was one
of the lowest ranks of the oligarchy, there was no great difference
between them and the more or less comfortable and professional petty
bourgeoisie or bourgeoisie: they were what in my countr we know as
"medio pelo")

If Colombian officers are still from that origin, not everything is lost.

Just for you to see what I mean: the military garrison in Salta is one
of the most important ones of the country, certainly the most
important in the Northwest. For some time, the Venezuela-based cable
news network Telesur  was (miraculously) broadcast by a local cable
operator. It was cancelled, after the local authorities (civilian!)
complained that it was way too popular among the officers at the
garrison!!!