7 August marks one year of Colombia’s Historic Pact government led by President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Marquez. Their victory in last year’s elections secured Colombia’s first progressive government in history. Petro is a former militant of the M19 urban guerilla group who disarmed in the late 1990s to pursue a career in parliamentary politics. Lawyer Francia Marquez is a long-standing activist for land, environmental and indigenous rights. Offering a social democratic platform for class collaboration, Historic Pact argued ‘the business community today should be aware that their businesses only prosper in a fairer social coexistence…the basis of a new social pact’. One year later, shaken by assassination attempts, ‘law-fare’ and stalemate in Congress, this new social pact has been decisively rejected by Colombia’s ruling class. SAM McGILL reports.
Peace, land and cocaine
In 2016, after 50 years of civil war which killed 450,000 people and displaced eight million, a landmark peace agreement was reached between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government. Former centre-right President Juan Manuel Santos did little to implement the peace deal during his last year in power, whilst his successor President Ivan Duque (2018-2022) of the hard right Democratic Centre party actively blocked the process. Democratic Centre is the political party of Alvaro Uribe, whose 40-year stint in politics has been linked to the Medellin cartel and far-right paramilitary death squads. Uribe has 60 open investigations against him relating to paramilitarism, narco-trafficking and corruption. Between the signing of the peace accord and the end of Duque’s term, 320 former guerillas were killed and over 1,300 social leaders and trade unionists assassinated. Duque also pushed austerity measures in healthcare, employment rights and pensions, prompting a series of general strikes and uprisings that were brutally repressed by British-trained Colombian police.
In the face of this social unrest, the left-wing Historic Pact coalition was launched, winning the second-round run-offs in 2022’s elections with 50.44% of the vote. Promising to protect the Amazon, halt new oil exploration and introduce a series of social reforms, Historic Pact pledged to secure ‘total peace’. A peace deal and ceasefire were brokered in June with the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN), who were not included in the 2016 accord. Reaching disarmament deals with Colombia’s far-right paramilitary groups will be more challenging for Petro. Enjoying impunity and often complicity from official state forces, these groups are essentially mercenaries, deeply entwined with narco-trafficking and big business. The fruit company Chiquita has admitted paying $1.7m to paramilitary groups, whilst Coca-Cola and BP have been accused of hiring paramilitaries to assassinate trade unionists. The ongoing ‘peace tribunals’ of demobilised right-wing paramilitary leaders expose links to the highest levels of the Colombian state. However, ‘total peace’ is not just disarmament. Thanks to deregulated mining, free trade agreements, criminalisation of trade unions, private control of large land estates, inadequate access to health, housing and education, Colombia is the most unequal country in Latin America. The long-standing demand from revolutionary forces in Colombia is for a just and social peace. This would require the resolution of the political, economic and social inequalities at the root of the conflict.
Colombia produces half of the world’s cocaine. Between 2000 and 2015 the US poured $10bn into Plan Colombia, resulting in the criminalisation of poor coca leaf farmers, militarisation of rural areas and widespread aerial spraying with carcinogenic glyphosate herbicides. This ‘war on drugs’ attacked left-wing rebels, farmers, social leaders and trade unionists alike. Lambasted by Petro as a ‘categorical failure’ that ‘left a million Latin Americans dead’, the powerful kingpins of cocaine were left relatively unscathed. Without agrarian reform, the poorest farmers will continue to depend on coca to put food on the table. With a relatively short growth cycle, coca plants can yield three to four harvests a year compared to other cash crops like pineapple and coffee, which also take longer to establish. Approximately 120,000 families farm coca. Though thousands signed up to a crop substitution programme after the 2016 peace deal, six years of broken promises pushed many back to coca. By 2020 only 1% of participating families had received the full subsidies promised; others could not participate as they did not own the land they farmed. 75 community leaders advocating for crop substitution had been assassinated.
Hailing from Cauca, a remote coca area home to a large Afro-Colombian and indigenous population, Vice President Francia Marquez has argued for decriminalisation of traditional uses of the leaf, promising to continue the ban on fumigation and make land ownership and support for small farmers central to the solution. Plans to redistribute land to landless farmers have been put in motion whilst new constitutional articles have been drawn up, recognising the entitlement of campesino farmers to special rights and protections. So far, Historic Pact has attempted to avoid class conflict, offering to pay between 10-20 million pesos ($2,500-$5,000) per hectare, with Petro inviting owners of large estates to ‘walk the path of peace by accepting a pact that allows the best distribution of wealth. They’re not going to lose a peso, they’re not going to be expropriated, they’re just going to earn more because they’re in a richer, more productive society, which is no longer going to be used to kill each other.’ But even if the money for such a plan were there, this still would not buy off the ruling class.
Radical reforms challenge private profits
Colombia collects less tax (13% of GDP) than most countries in Latin America (regional average 16%). Challenging this, Historic Pact pushed through a major tax reform in the first three months of government. Though its implementation has been staggered, the reform is set to raise an estimated $4bn for state spending, with oil and coal producers taxed between 35-60% on top of royalties they have to pay to the regions they extract from. Corporate income tax has been raised to 15% whilst the richest will face the enforcement of inheritance tax and progressive taxation.
Other reforms are stalled in Congress, including a significant health reform which seeks to reduce the gap between urban and rural communities by redeploying health workers via a network of primary care centres across the country. Although public and private healthcare would co-exist side by side, changes to insurance seek to reduce private profiteering in healthcare. Previously, private insurance companies vied for private health clinics, receiving commission for every customer whilst the poorest were left with little coverage.
The ‘most ambitious labour reform of the century’ aims to gradually reduce the 48-hour working week, enforce double pay for night shifts, holidays and Sundays, end outsourcing, regulate the ‘gig’ economy, raise salaries to match at least the previous year’s inflation and enshrine protections for pregnant workers and those with disabilities. On International Workers’ Day on 1 May, the working class turned out across Colombia to demand the passage of the reform. From the streets of Cali, an epicentre of police violence in the 2019/2020 protests, Marquez exhorted: ‘We will no longer tolerate leaders who impose the neoliberal model which has condemned the Colombian people to death…Many people were horribly murdered, while others lost their eyes or were sent to prison. Today, we are with you and we will not forget you. Long live frontline resistance! Long live the labour reform and long live the health reform! Long live the pension reform! The people do not surrender, damn it!’
Though radical for Colombia, the proposed measures are far from revolutionary: the health reform allows the continuation of private healthcare, the tax and labour reforms do not challenge private ownership and nationalisation is not mentioned.
The land reforms seek to buy land rather than expropriate it. Nevertheless any encroachment on private profits and ruling class power is simply unacceptable for the Colombian elite, who are mobilising against the reforms on all fronts.
‘The invitation to a social pact for change has been rejected’
At the ballot box, Historic Pact obtained 20 seats (out of 108) in the Senate and 28 (out of 172) in the Chamber of Representatives. A scramble to negotiate a majority eventually resulted in a fragile agreement dependent on the support of traditional centre and right-wing parties including the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party of former President Cesar Gaviria and the Union Party of former President Santos. These latter three have now abandoned the coalition and are forming an opposition majority in Congress with Gaviria declaring, ‘Petro’s reforms will not pass in Congress…very soon we will recover Colombia’. Facing the limits of class collaboration, Petro tweeted ‘the invitation to a social pact for change has been rejected’. Replacing defecting ministers with leftist allies, he argued for an ‘emergency government’ to work ‘day and night…to lower the price of food, to deliver land to the peasantry, to have more food planted and, therefore, lower prices. Anyone who is no longer capable of doing this no longer has a place in our government…an emergency government has officials whose hearts are in favour of humble people and not simply earning a salary and commissions…We cannot wait any longer.’ The Petro-Marquez government has handed 1,000 hectares of land recovered from drug traffickers to 90 campesino families in La Cauca, organised a presidential dispatch to the predominantly indigenous La Guajira municipality devastated by drought and taken action through decree. As the next legislative period begins, the stage is set for a standoff between the presidential team and Congress.
There are constant machinations towards regime change. After threatening a coup, Colombia’s top military general Eduardo Zapateiro (now retired) refused to attend Petro’s inauguration last year. Colombia’s state forces, hands bloodied from decades of civil war, are not about to change their stripes. Marquez has narrowly avoided two assassination attempts whereas Petro has denounced a ‘soft’ coup led by Attorney General Francisco Barbosa, a close friend of Uribe. Along with the right-wing Semana newspaper, Barbosa has opened investigations against Petro, accusing him of hiding 3bn pesos ($755,000) of unofficial campaign funds and of involvement in the unauthorised phone-tapping of an employee of the former head of cabinet. Petro vehemently denies the charges; leaked audio files appear instead to incriminate his former ambassador to Venezuela, Armando Beneditti, who has since asked the US State Department for protection. Nevertheless these scandals are being used to demand Petro’s resignation. This is ‘law-fare’, throwing successive accusations until something sticks, paralysing the passage of legislation with investigation after investigation. This playbook has been employed against several left leaders in Latin America, most recently in Peru leading to the impeachment of Pedro Castillo.
With seven NATO bases to safeguard in Colombia, the US is weighing up its options. US Republicans propose limits on aid to Colombia, whilst the National Endowment for Democracy (which channels money to opposition groups in any country perceived to be hostile to US interests) awarded $12m in grants for work in Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador. By re-establishing ties with neighbouring Venezuela and returning Colombia to UNASUR, Historic Pact threatens US interests in the region.
Recognising the danger, Petro and Marquez have mobilised their support base. Though press coverage has focused on smaller opposition rallies, huge protests erupted in Bogota and other cities on 7 June in defence of the Historic Pact. Petro marched in the streets declaring: ‘This time, I will not be on the balcony. I will march alongside the working people…and I hope that those who voted to make a change in Colombia will now accompany me in all the municipalities of the country.’
Class reconciliation was doomed to failure. Colombia’s ruling class, represented by Congress politicians who earn 30 times the minimum wage, will not legislate away their power and profits. They will pull out all the stops to sabotage the Historic Pact government: media scandals, ‘law-fare’, lock outs, sanctions, military coups and assassination attempts. Only the mass mobilisation of the class-conscious working class and the rural poor can stop them in their tracks and guarantee social change.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 295 August/September 2023
