By Lilia Solano

Colombia has established itself as country in which certain criminal activities prosper and survive the test of times. Although activities such as narcotic trafficking are the one who come to mind whenever this issue is raised, they are not exclusive of Colombia. At the same time, organized crime in Colombia does not focus only on dealing with narcotics. What makes such criminal enterprises so unique in Colombia?

The answer to this question leads to the complex forms of violence that pervade daily life in Colombia. One would expect that if organized crime reaches certain level of sophistication so as to earn a degree of acceptance, its accompanying violence would diminish. However, the action of the Colombian civil society must be taken into account whenever the extent of organized crime is going to be examined. Following my basic premise, I would argue that the kernel of the civil society consists of a rejection to allow organized crime to play the role it wants to perform, that is the role of the arbiter and adjudicator of the public good.

Organized crime and the weakening of the State: The 90’s

The Colombian establishment fully embraced the gospel of the weak State as a precondition to free market under the presidency of Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994). By then, key social actors such as trade organizations and local industrialists plus a good number of middle and high ranked politicians had already entered into unholy matrimonies with all powerful drug traffickers. The drug baron was by then a local figure well accepted into the national iconography, although he was despised. Drug traffickers had taken upon themselves the task to “pacify” the country and bring to an end decades of socially, economically and politically motivated insurgency, something the Colombian Army had failed to achieve.

This uncomfortable situation had to be dealt with in order for the government to facilitate conditions for private investors, many of whom were individuals and organizations with well known links to the international illegal drugs market. The result of this struggle was the criminal organizations that were able to read the new script and co-operate with the authorities were given room to continue.

The weakening of an already weak State exacerbated decades long conflicts on different areas. The rural sector was badly hit by policies that discouraged local production and small scale farming in order to encourage the agro-industry and the concentration of land ownership. In the cities, factory after factory had to close shop because they were unable to compete with capitals of dubious origins that imported goods that were already locally manufactured.

If in Eastern Europe the civil society organized itself in order to counteract totalitarian regimes with a goal to achieving more democratic states of affairs, in Colombia the civil society sensed something similar but with its own difficulties: Wasn’t Colombia a democratic country after all?. It became an uphill battle to do this without co-opting the action and message of the civil society to the emerging neo-con mentality, and without lending legitimacy to the matrimony between organized crime and ample sectors of the State. At the same time, the civil society started to make good use of legal tools to defend itself form the abuses of the authority. The Army started to be held accountable for the first time in the history of the country. The demands for human rights to be respected and the observance of the International Humanitarian Law principles in the counterinsurgency war became top priorities in the civil agenda.

The weakening of the State also affected its military arm. Because of the dynamics of the civil society, the Army could not go on violating the fundamental rights of civilians any longer. The dirty war was then waged by right wing paramilitary groups that received training, support and funding from the Army. The whole nation woke up to new trends: and indiscriminate massacres (right wing paramilitary) and forced disappearances. A weak State, a weak Army, seemed to demand a strong response.

The strong hand: 2002 to date

Current President Alvaro Uribe came to power in 2002 on a ticket that highlighted a military approach to solve socially, economically and politically motivated maladies. Years of frustrated peace processes with the insurgency, plus the increasing action of organized crime in the areas of narcotics, not to count corruption at the national and local levels that diverted public funds led Colombians to elect him, and four years later (2006) to reelect him.

The Uribe’s administration inherited from his predecessor a substantial aid package from the US aimed at combating organized crime. However, the boundaries that should tell organized crime, mostly drug production and trafficking, and social and legitimate political activities apart were blurred in the implementation of what President Uribe calls: “Democratic Security” policies.

Ironically, mass arrests and criminalization of social leadership became the targets of the war against drugs. As for combating organized crime properly, the action of the State seemed to be dictated by economic compromises: fumigation of vast areas using internationally banned toxics, contracting out the servicing and maintenance of military equipment, etc. However the flow of drugs to the international market continued -and still does- without interruption.

Most recently, the interlocking that bring together organized crime and wide sectors of the Colombian establishment (State agents included) are taking on a more dramatic face. As I speak right now there is a growing move towards accepting that the Colombian elite is highly involved in the development of the ring wing paramilitary fronts. The debatable “Peace and Reconciliation” legal package that the Uribe’s administration pushed forward in order to facilitate peace negotiations with the paramilitary is making evident that this was nothing but a legal move that was aimed at allowing heavy drug barons to come back to society, legalize their capital and avoid proper punishment.

The action of the civil society

First and foremost, the civil society made the most important contribution towards the establishment of the rule of law in Colombia. In 1991 a new Constitution was drafted, and with it Colombians got legal tools at their disposal to strip armed factions off their power to represent the interests of the civil society. The most important step was towards gaining its own voice.

The same must be said regarding the role of the State as the mediator of the society and other sectors, such as the market. Giving the proclivity of the agents of the Colombian State to comply with the demands of the transnational capital and the influence of the US, it became clear to the civil society that the State agents could not represent them properly. Just as the civil society took distance from right win paramilitary fronts, so a critical distance is maintained regarding the State.

The current debate around the collusion of the Uribe’s administration with the right win dirty war is showing one of the results of such a critical move. For the first time in Colombian history, State institutions such as the Supreme Court and the Office of the Prosecutor General are acting with some independence from the Government. In the Colombian presidentialist system, too much power rests on the Executive up to the point that it’s the President the one who bears the image, dreams and destiny of the whole nation. This quasi-messianic bent is more prevalent in the authoritarian style of President Uribe. Therefore, keeping distance from his administration is a noteworthy achievement.

However, it should be remembered that the civil society has multiple faces. Some sectors of the civil society mobilize in order to avoid any change to the current arrangements. They are represented by powerful industrialist, trade organizations and land owners. The debate that today is taking place in Colombia around the influence of the right wing dirty war also raises serious questions for this sector to answer. The infiltration of drug trafficking is too deep for influential economic actors to ignore, or to have ignored in the recent past. One of such questions has to do with the presence of plain criminals in the peace dialogues with the Uribe’s representatives. It seems that drug traffickers, because of their financial support to right wing extremists, are going to benefit from the "Peace and Reconciliation" legal package thus avoiding punishment or extradition. One of the fears is that their reps may have a seat also in the deliberations of the civil society.

There are other sectors within the civil society that only envision the strengthening of the State institutions, without passing judgment on the current administrators. This is the sector comprised of middle class executives, some religious leaders in the urban centers and the media. This sector fears that a full disclosure of the activities of organized crime in State agencies or well respected private organizations may lead to a total chaos thus paving the way to some sort of dictatorship. This sector is willing to turn a new white page even if means leaving untouched the links between organized crime, violence, society and the State. For this reason, President Uribe still enjoys a high popularity rate, in spite of his dubious dealings with right wing paramilitary and drug traffickers.

There is also a third sector within the social society that is made mostly by the direct victims of decades of criminal and State sponsored violence. Although more numerous, this sector remains voiceless and powerless. It lacks the economic and political clouts of the first sector, and the prestige and social influence of the second. However, this is a dynamic sector that creates pockets of reconciliation within violence torn regions and even keep huge multinationals at bay preventing oil drillings there where the environment and the well being of communities are at risk. This is the sector that sees a full disclosure of the paramilitary/drug trafficking activities as a precondition to reconciliation. It represents thousands of communities whose lands have been snatched away by means of violence in the dirty war the right win paramilitary fronts waged in order to facilitate the development of agro-industrial project that should benefit the transnational capital.

Regardless of their many differences, the Colombian civil society as a whole presents some common fronts that enable it to counteract the impetus of organized crime in our country. I will mention just two:

 1. The defence of the rule of law as an alternative to deny legitimacy to any other form of social cohesion.
 2. The organization of stakeholders, that in a context of violence means victims. Once the different organizations learn to use the legal tools at their disposal they find the way out victimhood to become actors, interlocutors, proponents of truth, justice and reparation. These victims are present all across the board. All the sectors of the civil society agree on making good use of the democratic institutions as the only way to counteract violence without perpetuating it.

Conclusion.

Although organized crime takes on many faces, in Colombia the most prevalent form of organized crime is the one that makes itself visible in the connections of powerful criminal organizations to influential sectors of the society and some government and State agents.

The resulting inability to combat to most pernicious effects of organized crime led the country to favour a strong approach to solve the many problems of the Colombian society. However, the current military minded administration is proving, once again, incapable of dealing with the long standing infiltration of drug trafficking in the Colombian society and layers of governments.

In this context, the civil society is maturing and, in spite of the many differences between its constituents, is learning to push forward the notion and practice of the rule of law as an alternative to governance. In so doing, the civil society is learning to organize its forces in order to create a more democratic atmosphere.