Peace as a ploy for impunity for crimes promoted by Cuba

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy)The strategy of 21st Century Socialism -or Castrochavism- is to legalize its organized crime nature by turning dictatorships into revolutionary governments, turning State-terrorism and the violation of human rights into “popular” defense, turning terrorist guerrillas and Narcos into “liberation” processes. It is all about turning very serious crime into political acts and granting impunity to criminals. With this agenda, the newly elected President Gustavo Petro now takes Colombia to dialogue with the National Liberation Army (ELN in Spanish), with Venezuela’s dictatorship as host, using peace as the ploy for impunity for crimes promoted by Cuba.

Petro’s actions, beyond opening the road to impunity for members of the ELN, covering up crimes against humanity, narcotics’ trafficking, and terrorism, has crafted the double effect to seek Venezuela’s dictatorship’s reinstatement as subject of international law, placing dictator Nicolas Maduro as a Head of State advocating for peace above and beyond his condition as head of the “Los Soles Cartel” and the international arrest warrant with a $15 million dollar bounty for his capture. Castrochavism’s international agenda, clearly designed by Cuba and now turned into Colombia’s internal and foreign affairs.

Colombia’s ELN, just as all the guerrillas that erupted in the Americas starting with Castro taking power in Cuba, are the creation of the Cuban dictatorship. It documents the 7th of January of 1965 as a date for its first operation with the taking of the municipality of Simacota, in the Department of Santander by a guerrilla group that replicates the ideology of the Cuban revolution and applies the “foquismo” (or planting the seed of dissent -SIC) doctrine.

There was ELN in Peru in 1962, led by Hector Bejar and was militarily defeated in December of 1965. The ELN was organized in Bolivia and operated in 1966-1967 as the Ñancahuzú guerrilla that ended with Che Guevara’s death. In Brazil it was organized as the National Liberation Command led by Murilo Pezzuti and operated from 1967 to 1969. In Argentina -amongst others- the Argentine Liberation Front or Argentine Liberation Forces operated from 1967 to 1973. In Uruguay, the Tupamaru National Liberation Movement since 1966. In Venezuela the National Liberation Armed Forces, created in 1962 as an armed branch of the National Liberation Front.

Guerrillas in the Americas were an expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship, organized and sustained -in the context of the Cold War- with a foquism (planting the seed of dissent SIC), anti-imperialist focus that blood-stained the region. There were over 50 guerrilla organizations of this type that were deactivated like Mexico’s National Liberation Zapatista Army or were militarily defeated such as the ELN in Bolivia and the Shining Path or the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA in Spanish) in Peru. Some of these, such as the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC in Spanish) were able to sign peace accords, while some others such as Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN in Spanish) took power.

The issue with the guerrillas is their criminal acts, riddled with crimes ranging from kidnapping, assassinations, terrorism, taking and exploiting hostages, subjecting individuals to slavery, narcotics’ trafficking and more. There is a point at which their proclamations for liberation and freedom are nothing but alibies for the serious crimes committed against the very same people and populations they say are defending and for whom they are in their armed struggle.

The self-proclaimed revolutionary legitimacy ends with the democratization of practically the whole of Latin America starting in the decade of the eighties in the past century, with the notable exception of Cuba’s dictatorship who continues supporting the operational guerrilla groups.

The rebounding of Cuba’s dictatorship starting in 1999 with Hugo Chavez’s support and the pilfering of extraordinary financial resources caused by Venezuela’s subjection, the corruption with Brazil’s federal funds and the establishment of narco-States turns 20th century Castroism into 21st Century Castrochavism and enables for the open protection of the Dictatorship-In-Chief’s criminal acts in the area of narcotics’ trafficking and crimes based on violence and attempts against democracy.

Colombia’s peace talks with the FARC, with Cuba -who is the sponsor and protector of the guerrillas’- as the mediator, and the results accomplished ignoring the Plebiscite on Peace Accords of 2 October of 2016 that rejected the accord, are a very important precedent. The FARC continues operating guerrillas and organized crime with the new label FARC-EP or dissidents, while kidnappers, narcotics’ traffickers, and rapist criminals continue to go unpunished and are now members of the Colombian parliament and politics. There is no peace in Colombia, but there is impunity.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas