Wednesday 2 December 2015

Colombians want peace, but ask to also include the issue of social justice (translation)

Originally published at: http://www.revistadebate.net/revista_debate_wp/?p=4510

Posted By: editor December 2, 2015
Felipe Rangel Uncacia y Francisco Ramírez Cuellar durante una conversación con la comunidad latinoamericana en Toronto.
Felipe Rangel Uncacia and Francisco Ramírez Cuellar during a conversation with the Latin American community in Toronto.

OSCAR VIGIL / TORONTO /

Colombia appears to be starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, given the end of the bloody armed conflict that has been going on for more than 50 years and left 220,000 deaths could be settled in the month of March of the coming year. But Colombia needs something more than the silencing of rifles, it needs a peace with social justice, explained the two leaders in Toronto last week.



Felipe Rangel Uncacia is an indigenous leader of the U’wa people of Arauca, Colombia, spokesperson of the Original Nations and land defender with the Association of Town Councils and Indigenous Authorities of the Department of Arauca, who assures that it is important that the dialogue between the Colombian government and the guerrillas might be taking up the issue because it is the problem that the peasants, the indigenous and African-descended peoples principally experience.


“There are many social problems in our communities, in our towns, and what we expect is that it truly acclimates and lowers the level of intensity of the conflict that we experience in Colombia. But the conflict is caused by certain factors: first by the state abandonment that the government has had for peasant, African-descended and indigenous communities in the country, and the other, also because the government has been implementing many policies that destroy the environment, that destroy everything related to the territory and it also has policies that go against a process for the Indigenous peoples and against all of society in general”, he assured.


Concretely, the Indigenous leader said that it should negotiate also the issue of the socio-economic model by which Colombia can reach a just and lasting peace.

“This process is of great importance because it is important that the war ends, but at the same time we need the government to commit itself and look more at the social issue, that is the most important. We have said also that it is important to converse about the issue of the economic model, because they are structural issues that have been affecting noticeably the Colombian people”, he explained.


Rangel Uncacia come to Canada to tour different cities of the country explaining what the situation is like for the peasant, indigenous and African-descended population, particularly in the context in which they are at the point of reaching the last agreements necessary for the signing of a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

In Toronto he was special guest of the Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA) in diverse activities with the Canadian, Latin American and Colombian communities, and in some of them accompanied by another special guest, the union leader, Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, member of the legal team of the United Federation of Workers (la Central Unitaria de Trabajadores), and responsible for the international legal actions in the civil jurisdiction of the United States, England and Canada.


Ramírez Cuellar also agreed that the Colombian peace process has remained limited in its scope. “That is a political negotiation that is necessary to do it because it disarms one part of the armed conflict, but we think that while it doesn't discuss the economic model, that is the motor that generates the violence, the inequality, the social, environmental problems, etc., of Colombian society, there there isn't going to be any possibility of peace”, he assured.

The negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC, which take place in the city of Havana, Cuba, started formally on the 18th of October, 2012 and comprised of four phases, the first was the stage of secret rapprochement , later the settlement of the agreements (in which it finds itself at the moment), the third is the ratification by referendum of the agreements and the fourth will be the implementation of these agreements.

In these rounds of negotiations, in which the highest leaders of the FARC, as well as high representatives of the Colombian government participate, have been addressing five topics: policy of comprehensive agricultural development, political participation, the end of the conflict, the solution to the problem of illegal drugs and reparations for the victims. A sixth separate topic will be address the issue of the implementation, verification and ratification through referendum of the agreements.

The agricultural issue is included, but both leaders agree that the scope of the issue will be minimal, for which it is necessary a wider and deeper negotiation that includes the social and economic issue. In contrast, the process is going to remain only in “a negotiation and a peace process, between quotation marks, like what South Africa, El Salvador and Guatemala had, that was a total failure, and new forms of social violence are going to emerge that express the application of a criminal model”, explained Ramírez Cuellar.

On her part, Sandra Cordero, co-ordinator of Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA) and organiser of the tour, said that many Canadians of Colombian origin that live in Toronto agree with the approach of the two leaders.

“Peace is being negotiated between two organisations to get rid of the armed link, that is very good, but in their agenda the issue of the neoliberal system or globalisation isn't included, and if this topic isn't there, there isn't going to be social justice, there isn't going to healthcare for the people, there isn't going to be public services or education or work”, she pointed out.




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