Colombia peace unlikely despite FARC leader's death Analysts aren't hopeful that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia will lay down its arms after the death of Alfonso Cano.
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The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia's leader, who went by the alias Alfonso Cano, was killed Friday during a military operation. (European Pressphoto Agency / August 12, 2009)
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times November 6, 2011
Reporting from Bogota, Colombia—
Although Colombia's armed forces delivered a serious blow to the country's largest rebel force with the killing of its leader, analysts Saturday held out little hope for a peace initiative by the decimated but still potent leftist insurgent group.
The 63-year-old rebel leader, who went by the alias Alfonso Cano, was killed Friday in a military operation in southwestern Colombia. At a news conference Saturday, President Juan Manuel Santos called on the rebels to lay down their arms.
"Violence is not the way," Santos said. "Demobilize, because as we have said many times, you will end up in a grave or in jail."
A decade ago, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had up to 20,000 fighters and controlled one-third of the country's land. But under Santos' predecessor, the hard-line Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian military knocked the FARC on its heels with the help of $7.6 billion in mainly military aid from the U.S. under Plan Colombia.
Analysts estimate that the rebel forces who have battled the government for four decades now number 8,000 or fewer.
Still, analyst Alfredo Rangel said he sees little chance of any peace overtures from the FARC, which Cano had headed since May 2008 when the group's founder, Manuel Marulanda, died, apparently of natural causes.
"What his death is more likely to bring is an upsurge in violent incidents against the armed forces, infrastructure and Colombian society generally," said Rangel, of the Security and Democracy Foundation think tank in Bogota, the capital. "Their first order of business will be to avenge the death of their leader."
National University of Colombia political scientist Alejo Vargas agreed, saying he doubted there would be any short-term changes in the FARC's policy of belligerence toward the government
Both predicted that the FARC would begin the collective process of choosing its next leader, probably among survivors of the rebels' ruling secretariat, of which four members have died violently since March 2008.
Topping the list of possible candidates to succeed Cano is a rebel leader going by the alias Ivan Marquez, who is thought to be holed up near the northeastern border with Venezuela. Marquez made a highly publicized visit to leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, in November 2007 when Chavez briefly tried to broker a peace settlement between the Colombian government and the FARC.
Cano, whose real name was Guillermo Leon Saenz, was killed after a three-year military operation targeting him. His principal base of operations had long been thought to be to the east, in the wild Delicias Canyon area of Tolima state, but Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said intelligence last month located him farther west.
A few hours before the announcement of Cano's death, the Defense Ministry said that several members of Cano's security detail had been killed or captured and that seven laptop computers and other equipment had been recovered.
A graduate in anthropology and a member of a communist youth group who spent six months in jail for student activities at the National University of Colombia, Cano was considered the FARC's ideologue during much of his 33 years in the rebel ranks.
He represented the FARC in peace negotiations a decade ago, when then-President Andres Pastrana temporarily ceded a Switzerland-sized portion of Colombian territory to the rebels while ultimately fruitless negotiations were conducted.
The government also held him responsible in the planning of some of the FARC's most spectacular attacks, including the 2002 kidnapping of 12 state legislators in the city of Cali and the 2003 car bombing of an exclusive Bogota club in 2003 that left 36 people dead.
"'The Americans seem to be happy with their drug consumption. That's fine, but why should Mexico fight their drug war for them? Drugs only affect a small number of Mexicans The government should be concentrating on things which affect the Mexican people, like assaults, kidnapping...... . The Americans are not fighting a drug war, that's smart, i don't think they should. But, if they do want to let them fight it. Why should Mexico fight their drug war for them?'"
Armed with simple weapons and a lot of courage, the residents of a small mountain town in Mexico are engaged in an ongoing battle against illegal loggers and corrupt police who threaten their livelihood
By Hans Maximo Musielik, The Cover Story - Published: 00:00 February 1, 2012
Image Credit: Hans Maximo Musielik/The Cover Story
A makeshift barricade erected by the Cherán residents to deter illegal loggers. [5 other small images inside]
Since last April, the residents of Cherán, a small mountain town in the Mexican state of Michoacán, have been fighting an uphill battle against illegal loggers backed by heavily armed members of the local crime cartel, a corrupt police force and inefficient local politicians.
Sixteen thousand men, women and children of this indigenous community face increasing violence, which has been spreading throughout the country since Mexico's President Felipe Calderón launched an anti-drug war in 2006 - a war that has left at least 37,000 people dead.
The residents of Cherán, however, after years of sustained abuse and an ecocide of more than 40,000 acres of forest, have decided to take justice and their future into their own hands. Armed mainly with stones, sticks and an extraordinary amount of courage and resilience, they have decided to fight back against organised crime, setting a nationwide example.
With its mountainous landscape full of different tree species, the state of Michoacán has always been an important supplier of timber. Legally, about one million cubic metres are extracted every year. Although it's illegal, the state technically has enough forest to extract thirteen million cubic metres of timber a year. The state has approximately 3,000 illegal sawmills and 2,500 are located in the state's Purépechan heartland. Cherán's indigenous Purépecha community survives mainly on the collection of resin and by logging.
The presence of illegal loggers is not new to the Cherán community. Most of the residents are aware that the loggers come from neighbouring towns. But two years ago, this was a clandestine activity. Loggers would drive their trucks up the mountain to cut trees and drive to the illegal sawmill after paying law enforcement a previously agreed bribe for allowing their activity.
When the farmers and resin collectors of Cherán, which lies 400km west of the country's capital, Mexico City, eventually confronted the loggers, they were not treated kindly.
About two years ago, the local organised crime cartel offered the illegal loggers protection. After paying a fee, they were free to do as they pleased while the cartel would take care of police and members of the Purépecha community who complained. People who went looking for illegal loggers after hearing the sound of their chainsaws were warned and scared off with gun shots from automatic rifles. Later, nine community members were found dead and several others kidnapped for ransom. Four of those kidnapped are still missing.
Emboldened by their new protection, the illegal loggers began driving dozens of trucks along the town's main road in plain sight of residents. The community could only watch helplessly.
On April 15, 2011 the Purépecha community decided they had been humiliated and taken advantage of for long enough and took action. A mob of about 200 people armed themselves with bats and stones and ambushed several loaded trucks. They set the trucks on fire once they had pulled the loggers out. One trucker, armed with a gun, shot a protesting resident in the eye. The injured man remains in a coma at a nearby hospital. The captured truck drivers and illegal loggers were not treated with lenience but a week later, after being interrogated, the people of the town handed them over to the federal police.
If the Purépechans thought this was the end of the matter, they were mistaken. On April 27, 2011, in what was undoubtedly an act of revenge, illegal loggers shot and killed two Cherán residents who were patrolling the town's perimeter.
Following the incident, the community evicted the town's mayor and corrupt police force and began building over 200 barricades throughout the town, preventing vehicle access to most roads.
More than ten burnt-out trucks were towed and placed along the main streets as a reminder of the cause and to warn illegal loggers and members of organised crime groups. No one was allowed to leave or enter Cherán without identifying themselves at the main barricade. Law enforcement officials and politicians were not welcome. Only supply trucks, non-government organisations and national and international media were allowed in.
Children, together with their mothers, now occupy the barricades during the day. At night — the most dangerous shift — the men sit alert through the cold and rain. Like a well-greased machine, 16,000 residents have organised themselves into groups that control one of the four barrios or sectors that make up the town.
Tired of political inefficiency and corruption, the residents of Cherán have also formed their own government loosely based on tradition and custom.
With the help of a lawyer, they are negotiating more security from the state and federal government. They hope this will include the continuous patrol of the town's perimeter by the Mexican army, the only forces they trust. The federal police is stationed less than 2km away from town but local residents remain suspicious of them.
Several NGOs like Amnesty International have visited the town and issued recommendations to the Mexican government. But the authorities have so far shown little interest in resolving the situation.
Meanwhile, the people live off food donations from all over Mexico that are delivered to Cherán's main church and distributed. The 20 schools in town are empty. Children run through the streets helping their parents and holding banners and protest signs.
A town like Cherán wanting to develop its own security measures and to implement their own, more accountable government is nothing new to the Mexican government that had to deal with the rebellion of the Zapatistas. The result of that rebellion was the signing of the San Andres Accords on February 16, 1996, where autonomy and rights were granted to the indigenous populations of Mexico.
But former President Ernesto Zedillo ignored the agreements and further militarised the conflict area in the state of Chiapas.
As a member of the ILO (International Labour Organisation), Mexico is required to respect the C169 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989 where further rights and autonomy are granted to the country's indigenous communities.
Even though these conventions and accords are in harmony with the Mexican Constitution, the federal government is slow in implementing and enforcing them. Instead the government prefers that each state internally deal with problems that may arise.
While the brave but beleaguered residents of Cherán have set an example of courage, community spirit and bravery to Mexico's most marginalised people, their fight goes on.
Cherán, Mexico is a town of 16,000 indigenous Purepechan Mexicans set up in the western state of Michoacán about 200 miles from Mexico City. For years, illegal loggers, protected by drug cartel gunmen, have ravaged the area's communal forests and murdered a number of townspeople. When the residents of Cherán asked their municipal, state and federal authorities for help, they did nothing, so the community took justice into their own hands. About a year ago, the residents of Cherán rose up in an armed rebellion and kicked out the loggers, cartels, and the corrupt local government. Since then, they’ve implemented self-governance based on traditional customs. They defend the borders of the town with community patrols. In Cherán today, there are no political campaigns, no ballots, no political parties, no elections, and no alcohol.
Isolated in the middle of rainy, cold Michoacán forests, Cherán warms up at night around the barricades. The burning fires are gathering points for the citizens to organize and govern themselves.
During VICE Mexico’s recent trip to the community en rebelde, they spoke to Serafin, a young Purepechan photographer who has spent the last several years covering the conflict:
VICE: Where are you from? Juan Jose: My name is Juan Jose Estrada Serafin. I’m from the Turicuaro community and am a correspondent for a newspaper called El Cambio de Michoacán [The Michoacán Change]. I cover three local municipalities: Paracho, Cherán, and Nahuatzen.
What’s your experience of the uprising been? Other communities like Sevina and Turicuaro have defended their forests like Cherán has, but the conflict in Cherán has been different because of the presence of organized crime. It’s similar to the case of Comachuen and Sevina. Sevina accused Comachuen of illegally logging their forest. The truth is that people were actually logging their neighbors' forests because they didn’t have any resources.
How did you approach photographing Cherán? I’ve always had a thing for these kind of conflicts, so of course Cherán drew my attention. But at first it was very hard to gain access to the community. On the third day of the conflict I managed to sneak inside the community. Everything was done really fast and it was very tense. I sent some pictures back to the paper I was working for but they told me they were too shocking and couldn’t be published. They complained that the images were too graphic, guys with machetes pulling over trucks, but that was what just what my camera was capturing.
After that I got a contact who helped me get acquainted with the people involved in the movement so that I could take some more pictures. I met some old people there and they started asking me questions in Purepechan dialect. When I answered, they said, “Yeah, he can talk Purepechan and has a good accent.” So after that, I ended up going up into the forest to see what was going on. The forest was devastated. I went up with a brigade of about 70 armed people. With my images, they had some material to tell authorities about what was going on in their town.
I told the locals they needed to have some sort of media of their own because after seeing what the other newspapers were writing I realized how misinformed everyone was about the situation. Through help from a friend here, a webpage went up called micheran.com that was eventually shut down due to lack of funding.
You say there was misinformation by part of the mainstream media. What were they writing? The whole thing was being covered as if it was some internal problem and some government officials started talking about the issue as if it wasn’t a logging issue. As time went by, they started realizing that there was a huge problem involving the cartels and deforestation. The damage that was being done became evident. You could go down the road from Cherán to Carapan and see illegal loggers cutting down trees in broad daylight.
So afterwards you became part of the movement that you were documenting? I was definitely involved. In a certain way I helped people by giving them ideas and advice on what could be done. I’m now studying Intercultural Communications and we’re seeing this case from an academic point of view. I’m Purepechan and I know that by not having a space to express ourselves, our message will never be considered relevant. For me, it’s important for us to have our own media so we can have our own voice. In this country there are many communication channels but, who has the voice? Politicians are the ones paying for it. We, as natives, should have our own media so we can inform everyone, from the inside, about what’s going on, what we’re doing.
Is the autonomous form of government in Cherán working? Well yeah, it’s working. Everyone in the community participates instead of just having a few people making all the calls. From the campfire and street corners, entire families contribute their feelings on how things should be done. Those ideas reach the communal assemblies where general agreements are made. Each commission makes decisions to see what will be done in their own areas, but the overall general decisions are made in the communal assemblies. The communal assembly is the highest authority.
What will you do your photographs? It’s very difficult to find a place to exhibit the pictures because most people say things like, “Sure, I’ll invite you, but you take care of exhibiting them and you pay the prints.” So far I’ve taken my material to Chiapas, three times to Morelia, Mexico City, and Puebla for a meeting of indigenous communicators. I think I shouldn't be taking the exhibition to faraway places, considering the trouble is located right here. The thing is taking it to the communities themselves, so it can resonate locally. Leave it there for two or three days and then take it to a different community. It’s tough due to the economic situation. I have this project but resources are needed to move around and nobody is really willing to contribute with that.
By Laura Woldenberg and Juan José Estrada Serafín 3 days ago
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. (AP) — Google, so far, has won the search engine wars. Now it wants to target international crime, including Mexico’s powerful drug cartels.
Eric Schmidt, Google Inc.’s executive chairman, has taken a keen interest in Mexico, where more than 47,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels in 2006. Schmidt recently visited most of Mexico’s most violent cities, Ciudad Juarez, where civic leaders asked if he could help.
‘‘Defeated, helpless, these people have been so hardened in their experience with cartels that they have lost battles and they have lost hope,’’ Schmidt told a conference on international crime this week. ‘‘They were looking for a universal hammer to protect them. For me the answer was obvious. It was technology.’’
Experts told the conference that Mexico’s cartels often use more sophisticated technology than law enforcement. Cartel assets include mapping software that tracks the location of police from high-tech control rooms; remote control submarines; and military grade rocket launchers.
Drug-dealing organizations can intercept satellite feeds, including images broadcast by intelligence agency drones. They run money laundering networks that handle an estimated $25 billion a year in drug profits.
‘‘It’s a technological arms race, and at this moment they’re winning,’’ said Marc Goodman, founder of Future Crimes, who studies the nexus of technology and transnational crime. ‘‘But there’s never been an operating system that hasn’t been hacked.’’
Google’s immense intelligence assets can be brought to bear on the cartels, Schmidt suggested.
Google’s ideas include creating a network so citizens can safely report cartel activity without fear of retribution. It wants to make sharing real-time intelligence easier among police in different regions. It can identify how individuals are connected to each other, to bank accounts and even to corrupt government officials. It can create community Web platforms for citizens to share information and name and shame criminals.
Talk also addressed human and arms trafficking, exploitation of child soldiers, and airport and seaport security.
Just 20 percent of crimes in Mexico are reported because victims fear retaliation and don’t trust the authorities, said Mexico’s interior minister, Alejandro Poire. He challenged technology experts in the crowd to develop an application that would allow Mexican citizens, 80 percent of whom have cellphones, to report crimes anonymously to a call center that would direct officers to respond. Ideally, the system would allow watchdog groups to monitor police responses, he said.
Mexico’s undersecretary of information technology, Francisco Niembro, said the government has been developing a Web platform where law enforcement can get a national look at crimes and investigations. Today, he said, 8,500 of Mexico’s 36,000 federal police are dedicated to gathering intelligence — but analyzing that intelligence takes sophisticated staffing.
Nancy Roberts, a defense analysis professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, Calif., noted that in Mexico, police officials can tap phones, use tracking devices and tap into computer networks. But that does little unless someone can sort through the evidence.
‘‘Our jobs are making sense of all the data so law enforcement knows how, when and where to strike,’’ she said.
Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexico City-based security consultant, wasn’t optimistic that technology alone can disrupt narcotraffickers.
‘‘You should never underestimate the power of these guys,’’ Guerrero said. ‘‘They’re probably even aware of what’s going on here, and will figure out a way to use it to their advantage.’’
Even Google’s Schmidt conceded that better use of information isn’t enough.
‘‘I think at the end of the day, there really are bad people, and you have to go in and arrest them and kill them,’’ he said.
The conference in Westlake Village, Calif., was organized by Google’s think tank, Google Ideas, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Participants included Ian Biddle, an arms broker; former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff; Ron Noble, secretary general of Interpol, the international police agency; Anthoney DeChellis, CEO of Credit Suisse private banking; and Juan Pablo Escobar, son of the slain Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Juan Pablo Escobar talked about the challenges of quitting a drug cartel.end of story marker
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