Bogotá
It’s a ridiculously hot day on Baru island in the Bahia de Cholon. A go-fast boat is anchored as three girls in bikinis dance on the shoreline to Zion & Lennox reggaeton blaring from the boat’s speakers. A large, white mansion soaks up the sun about a hundred yards away. It belonged to cocaine cowboy Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, a leader in the Medellin drug cartel now serving a 30-year prison sentence in the United States. Fiddler crabs move in and out of tiny holes by the house’s foundation like whack-a-mole. Lord knows what’s buried underneath. Despite the would-be glamour of the private beach, the boats, and the babes, saying there is a heavy feeling here is an understatement. It’s not crawling with crabs. It’s crawling with bad memories.
By an Oct. 2 vote, Colombian president and former Harvard man Juan Manuel Santos hopes he has successfully persuaded millions of voters to put that dark past to rest once and for all. To do so requires voters’ willingness to hand 10 congressional seats to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC. Since the elimination of the Medellin and Cali drug cartels in the 1990s, the FARC went from being the biggest Marxist guerilla movement in the hemisphere to being the biggest Marxist guerilla movement in the hemisphere selling cocaine. A peace deal was agreed on between Colombia and the FARC in Havana in August. The two sides are to sign the agreement Sept. 26 in Cartagena. A recent cease-fire resulted in the least violent period in Colombia since the hostilities began in 1964, which have left more than 200,000 dead and displaced millions.
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Talk to politicians and most professionals in Bogotá, and they will tell you that a “yes” vote is imminent. A quick look at the “Voto No!” bumper stickers on cars in the city and in wealthy port towns like Cartagena suggests there is a slight chance for a “no” vote surprise.
A “yes” vote is easy to understand. It’s about reconciliation with the country’s biggest brand of anti-government, anti-establishment ideologues. This type of politics — the humble campesino versus the mighty businessman and his political friends — dates back to colonial times. It’s in Colombia’s national DNA, if not all of Latin America’s. The “yes” voters see this as a way to move on from that.
A “no” vote is emotional and may be sprinkled with revenge. The “no” voters see this deal as giving men who kidnapped and killed their children a congressional seat. They see a band of “psychopaths” getting amnesty for their crimes. Part of the accord views FARC’s drug trafficking as a means to finance a “just cause” — fighting political oppression. Lastly, “no” voters also see their tax dollars going to pay the salaries of newly minted FARC politicians, adding insult to injury.
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This is Colombia’s Brexit moment. Santos has spent his entire time as a two-term president working this deal. His approval rating has gone from the high 80s in his first term to around 30 percent, based on an average of six polls.
Colombians still want Santos to win. Some 59 percent will vote yes, according to a Sept. 2 poll by Datexco. If the polls are right, Santos does not become Latin America’s David Cameron.
Peace deals with bomb-toting, gun-wielding insurgents have worked before in Colombia. The M-19 was disbanded in the 1980s in exchange for political legitimacy. The group’s claim to fame was a violent, document slash-and-burn raid on the Palace of Justice that was allegedly done in cahoots with Pablo Escobar. M-19 was the second-largest guerilla group after the FARC at the time and a good example of how cartels, paramilitary groups, and Marxist rebels, while not ideological allies, often complemented one another. The M-19 laid down its weapons shortly after, and its members were pardoned for their crimes. They became part of the country’s government; one of them even got to be mayor of Bogotá. They’ve since gone out of fashion as a stand-alone party, but some of their adherents are now members of other opposition parties. It’s been done before, it can be done again.
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For more than two generations, Colombia was a country within a country. Rebel groups sought revenge against a central government that often took their land and assassinated their populist leaders. It was a time when the United Fruit Co. ruled the roost, and, boy, did that company hate communists. For the rebels, their part of the country made money as protectorates to cocaine labs and later became the drug lords themselves post-Medellin and Cali. When that happened, the United States saw the FARC as just another Colombian drug cartel.
Under the peace accord, FARC members will not be extradited to the United States on drug trafficking charges. Washington has agreed to stand down.
Since the days of Santos’ predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, Colombian politicians have been implicated in FARC-related crimes. The entire accord, therefore, is seen as one part blessing that may yet win Santos a Nobel Peace Prize, one part get-out-of-jail-free card for FARC leaders and their friends in government.
In 2005, Uribe’s Justice and Peace Law ended the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. The paramilitary forces of the AUC were loosely associated with the Colombian government. Call them the anti-FARC, these unsavory characters gunned down leftists and whoever stood in their way in illegal mining and drug running. They also disbanded, but Uribe was roundly criticized for giving them lenient penalties for their crimes.
So today’s FARC deal is an upgrade on Colombia’s past peace accords. This is as good as it gets.
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The world has successful examples of central governments and insurgents reconciling. Nelson Mandela fought a white oppressive government and was considered a terrorist before becoming president of South Africa. Mandela was seen as a hero. FARC leaders, on the other hand, will be hard-pressed to sell themselves as heroes to the majority. In remote Colombian villages, they were sometimes admired for providing basic services. The official government was simply not present there.
The United States has similar examples of a central power giving a fig leaf to anti-government forces. During the Whiskey Rebellion, George Washington pounded anti-government militias in Pennsylvania. None were arrested. All were pardoned. The central government showed would-be rebel groups that it wasn’t an oppressive monarchy. It wanted unity and was willing to forgive.
“Yes” and “no” voters won’t forget 52 years of cocaine-infused guerilla warfare. A “yes” vote is no more pro-FARC amnesty than a no vote is anti-peace.
Meanwhile, the hard work will be successfully reeducating thousands of people raised to hate the middle class and the rich. Some FARC fighters know nothing else but to start their day in fatigues, toting a machine gun. A large number of them will join the radical National Liberation Army or the mini-cartels formed by disbanded paramilitary units. The past will haunt Colombia, but at least now Colombia has control of its entire country. Surely the FARC can be given some credit for that.
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General Mao Zedong wrote that if you defeat an enemy, but do not vanquish him, you have to be generous and lenient so as not to give them a reason to feel oppressed. It’s better to sit down with the enemy and make them disappear as a viable adversary.
“We have a similar saying in a Spanish proverb,” says Rodolfo Segovia, Colombia’s minister of public works from 1982 to 1986 and a historian. “We say: To the enemy that flees, give him a golden bridge.”
Kenneth Rapoza was in Colombia from Sept. 1 to 9. He is a contributing reporter covering emerging markets for Forbes Magazine in New York.