Carlos Lozano is the longtime director of Voz, a weekly newspaper in Colombia with historical ties to the country’s Communist party. Colombia’s right wing accuses Lozano of being a supporter of the FARC guerrillas. While he recognizes that he has had contact with the guerrillas – he has served as a facilitator for past attempts at dialogue – Lozano insists that his goal is to convince them to negotiate, to abandon the armed struggle in favor of practicing politics.
More recently, Lozano has joined Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba and other civil-society leaders in “Colombians for Peace,” an ad hoc group that has engaged in a series of public, written exchanges with the FARC. In more recent communications, the Colombians for Peace have called on the FARC to abandon the practice of kidnapping. The guerrillas have so far responded by releasing six hostages in early February, and by telling the group (falsely, most believe) that they currently hold only nine individuals for ransom.
Due to his pro-dialogue stance, which he has held in a high-profile way for decades, Lozano has rarely criticized the guerrillas directly. This in turn has fed accusations that he supports them. Because of that past, it is significant that Lozano has adopted a stronger, more critical tone against the FARC in recent days.
On March 29, Lozano wrote a letter to the editor of El Tiempo, Colombia’s most-circulated newspaper, condemning in strong terms a reported FARC plan to assassinate the newspaper’s director, Enrique Santos, and his brother Juan Manuel, the minister of defense.
I reject with indignation any FARC plan against the lives of Enrique Santos or his brother. Such stupidity and absurd behavior go against the effort of Colombians for Peace to open favorable political spaces for the negotiated and peaceful resolution of the conflict. This degraded conflict already has enough horror and barbarism wihout the guerrillas resorting to personal assassinations. Nothing justifies it, and no rational person should accept it. Disagreements must be laid out in the battle of ideas, in peaceful and civilized ideological confrontation. A plan like this does a poor service to the cause of peace. I hope that this is a “false positive” [a fake plan thought up by Colombian intelligence], like so many that we have seen. I raise my voice in protest, and if the echo makes it to the deepest jungle and to the ears of [FARC leader] “Alfonso Cano,” of whom we expect a greater political accent in the FARC’s actions, that they reflect and abandon any violent act against his life and his family. Don’t even try it!
These were important words coming from one of the principal voices of Colombia’s ultra-left. Lozano repeated them in an interview with El Tiempo yesterday.
Q: Why such strong words for the FARC?
Lozano: The political solution of the conflict demands the will of the government and the FARC. We have to make opportune criticisms when the lack of will is most evident. The moment to negotiate has arrived, this can’t go on any longer. To insist on armed confrontation is irrational. We must be very incisive and critical with all parties, including the guerrillas.
Q: Don’t you think this demanding tone should have begun when the number of kidnappings exceeded 3,000 per year?
L: We have always been critical of the guerrillas. For example, on the issue of kidnapping the Communist Party and its directors have been critical and we have distanced ourselves from that. Perhaps we hadn’t done it as strongly and publicly as we do now.
Q: You have asked “Alfonso Cano” to adopt more of a political accent. What are you referring to?
L: The FARC have demonstrated in their most recent pronouncements that there is some interest in a political accent. Reality demands that much more political accent is required of the guerrillas to contribute to a political solution to the conflict. I hope that “Cano” and the whole Secretariat reflect on this.
Q: You said that Colombians for Peace must demand of the FARC a commitment with regard to kidnapping and use of landmines. What would that be?
L: The three letters from Colombians for Peace have in common the issue of the humanitarian exchange [to free FARC hostages], but also the issue of kidnapping. The guerrillas have to understand that the intensity of the conflict must decrease, especially issues that affect the civilian population like kidnapping and mines.
Q: Before any dialogue, should the FARC abandon kidnapping?
L: Of course, and the government should make commitments too. It is required that a peace process begin with commitments from both sides: no more forced disappearance, no more kidnapping, no more “false positives,” no more mines.
Q: President Uribe asks the FARC to cease [hostilities] for 4 months in order to create conditions [for talks]. Does that sound acceptable?
L: A cessation of hostilities on both sides sounds acceptable. We won’t get anything out of it if military operations against them continue. That would make compliance inviable.
The three remarkably new elements in Lozano’s analysis, which had never before been so clearly stated, are:
- Recognition that Colombia’s Communist Party should have been more openly critical of kidnapping in the past.
- The demand that the practice of kidnapping cease before new dialogues begin.
- The tacit acceptance of President Uribe’s proposal for a four-month cessation of hostilities, as long as it is bilateral.
We have no idea whether the FARC will respond positively to any of this, especially as Colombia enters another election season and the issue of peace becomes very politically charged. But Lozano’s words – both because of their content and because of their messenger – are very welcome and a source of hope.
April 10th, 2009 at 11:05 am
This comes at an interesting time but in many ways it is part of a more long term trend. The Communist Party of Colombia has always had an uneasy relationship with the FARC and letters and proclamations like this have always been testament to this. For example, in 1966 the head of the Communist Party told media throughout the world that he did not support the newly formed FARC and the armed struggle in Colombia; he believed (like most old school urban communists) that the conditions were not right for revolution.
Also, I am looking to access Voz for my own research, does anyone know if they have an online website, or where I would be able to access their collection from the 1970s and 1980s?
On a small note, I know that El Tiempo and other past national newspapers had always had ties to the Liberal and Conservative parties, but I did not know that the Dir. of El Tiempo was the minister of defence’s brother, and I thought media-political fusion was bad in Canada…
April 10th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
It’s all very easy to suddenly be against kidnapping at a time when the FARC can’t effectively do anymore kidnapping because the army’s got them on the run. Now that Colombia is on the edge of victory, it’s like saying one was on the winning side all along. (While doing none of the heavy lifting.) I think Lozano just wants to salvage of FARC what he can, and instead of countenance FARC’s total destruction, make them part of the ‘peace process’ – consequence-free of course. FARC gets as many ‘free’ village massacres and kidnappings as it likes before it’s rewarded with seats in the assembly. That’s the Lozano plan. Actually earning those seats, after killing your potential voters, is too much work.
I’m not impressed. It’s all very easy to join the winning side at the end of the war.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Like I said, the Communist Party’s distancing from the FARC is nothing new…
April 10th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Eric: They got the vice president, too! Pacho Santos used to be an editor at El Tiempo, too, when he was kidnapped by Pablo Escobar and was later written about by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Santos is the cousin of the other Santos. These people know how to overlap!
April 11th, 2009 at 7:10 am
I can think now of half a dozen right-wing blogs where they said, in uppercase letters, that this would NEVER happen. They repeated it over and over again: FARC were NEVER going to be criticised by left-wing leaders. Now the idea that anyone opposing “democratic security”, forcing ministers to pray, distorging national budget in comunal councils, harassing the opposition, etc, are part of the “intelectual front” of the guerrillas is becoming more and more difficult to support by the day.
Using the FARC wildcard to justify any restriction of civil liberties is a dirty trick that paid off, but is now overused and not very effective. The president has to think of something else.
The idea of re-writting the history with fake data, this project Jose Obdulio Gaviria is allways so keen of, is, on the other hand, still very popular. Camila is much more honest than most of the followers of Uribe, because she does not claim to know anything at all about the history of the comunist party, but still she assumes, on no information, that communism is equivalent to kidnapping. It is probably easy to sell people like her the idea that communism is also equivalent to drug dealing, and that the state had nothing to do with the anihilation of “Union Patriótica” through the assasination of nearly 5.000 people in the 80s; and these assasinations were just a lot of isolated drug-trading related murders.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Yes, very commendable that Lozano says that kidnapping and murder is bad.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:31 am
“I hope that this is a “false positive†[a fake plan thought up by Colombian intelligence], like so many that we have seen.”
Where did you pull out the definition of a false positive? It’s ridiculously off mark. A false positive is simply a mistake.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Don’t be silly, Lanark. I know the communist mind very well.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Some kidnap. Some don’t kidnap. All condone, even if silently, so long as it’s their man doing it. If it is some other guy doing it, then it’s a ‘human rights violation.’ For the communist, whose philosophy is purely based on materialism, the end always justifies the means. Remember: ‘By Any Means Necessary.’
April 11th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Camilla, you are out of time. You still dwell in the cold war of the fifties. Must have a home made bunker in case of a soviet fallout. Communists? suck my finger