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ABSTRACT
Institutions are historical products shaped by power and contestation which don’t necessarily respond to the purpose for which they were originally created. I will explore how ‘communal action’ institutions created to contain the advancement of the insurgent movement in rural Colombia in the 1950s were eventually used by guerrillas, notably the FARC-EP. Through them, rebels advanced their political agenda, reinforcing their organisational work in rural communities. The strategic impact of this contradictory process, cannot be over-stated, for it turned the struggle of rebels against the State into a struggle fought squarely within the very structures of the State they antagonised.
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Irish Research Council & the Conflict Resolution Unit of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Ireland through the Andrew Grene Postgraduate Scholarship in Conflict Resolution, under grant GOIPG/2015/2479. I want to thank Lorena Arias for her unflinching support throughout the research process and fieldwork. I am also indebted to Dr Christian Olsson (Université Libre de Bruxelles) for his observations and for encouraging me to write this text in the first place. I would also like to thank Dr Frances Thomson Fitzpatrick (SOAS) for the always stimulating discussion, for her insightful comments, and her extraordinary patience to listen to all of my random ideas. I thank Dr Francisco Gutiérrez, whose insightful production on Colombia and personal advice have inspired much of this writing. Finally, I thank the anonymous peer-reviewers who helped improve this paper enormously.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Balcells and Kalyvas, Revolutionary Rebels and the Marxist Paradox.
2. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America. Sluka, Heart and Minds, Water and Fish. Goodwin, No Other Way Out. An interesting account of the internal contradictions in counter-insurgency theory, and the contrast between its often lofty rhetoric with its typically brutal practice can be found in Olsson, “’Legitimate Violence’ in the Prose of Counterinsurgency”; also Gawthorpe, “All Counter-Insurgency is Local”.
3. Rich, “A Historical Overview of US Counter-Insurgency”.
4. See esp. the two Philippine chapters in Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam.
5. This notion owes much to Streeck and Thelen, “Introduction: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies”, who define institutions as ‘socially sanctioned, that is, collectively enforced expectations with respect to the behaviour of specific categories of actors or to the performance of certain activities’, 9.
6. Thelen, How Institutions Evolve, 31.
7. Leech, The FARC. Leech provides one of the best short and accessible histories of the FARC-EP in English. For detailed historical overviews, see Eduardo Pizarro, Las FARC (1949–1966) and Carlos Medina, FARC-EP, 1958–2008. Se also the oral history and narrative books of Alfredo Molano, Trochas y Fusiles and A Lomo the Mula.
8. Rojas, El Plan Colombia. Holmes and Gutiérrez, “Violence and the State”. For a critical assessment of the State consolidation over the last few decades, see Delgado, “Counterinsurgency and the Limits of State-Building”.
9. Sometimes translated as Community Action Boards.
10. Ávila, “Las FARC”.
11. By insurgency, I mean a sustained attempt at subverting the social order of a country. It is less intense than a full-scale social revolution, although it can lead to revolutionary changes. Insurgency is not limited here to armed combatants, consistent with the broad definition of a subversive tradition in Colombian politics in which various heterogeneous social sectors have contested historically the hegemony of the elites. See Fals Borda, Subversion and Social Change in Colombia.
12. Meaning “Violence”. The periodization of La Violencia is a matter of debate. Used here is the longest timeframe, from the coming to power of the Conservative party until the emergence of the modern left-wing guerrillas.
13. On La Violencia, see the classic works of Oquist, Violence, Politics and Conflict in Colombia, and Henderson, When Colombia Bled.
14. Rodríguez, La Influencia de los Estados Unidos en el Ejército Colombiano.
15. Randall, Colombia and the United States; Rodríguez, La Influencia de los Estados Unidos en el Ejército Colombiano. Among those military missions, two were paramount. The mission of 1959 and that of 1962, led by General Yarborough, see Rempe, “The Origin of Internal Security in Colombia”; Rempe, The Past as Prologue?; “Tab E: Planning and Objectives, Colombia Survey Team Recommendations for U.S. Action, 1965, Secret Report, Department of Defense”.
16. Gilhodes, “El Ejército Colombiano Analiza la Violencia”.
17. See e.g. Rempe, “The Origin of Internal Security in Colombia”.
18. Coleman, Colombia and the United States.
19. Communism in Latin America [Annex A] Secret Report, 18 Abril 1956, Department of State, Office of Intelligence Research.
20. Rempe, “The Origin of Internal Security in Colombia”.
21. Vega, “La Dimensión Internacional del Conflicto Social y Armado en Colombia”.
22. Zamosc, The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia. Palacios, Between Legitimacy and Violence.
23. Sanders, Contentious Republicans.
24. Camilo Torres would progressively radicalise over the course of the 1960s and would end up as a guerrilla in the ELN, dying in combat in 1966.
25. Herrera and López, Ciencia, Compromiso y Cambio Social.
26. Fals Borda, Acción Comunal en una Vereda Colombiana.
27. Programa Somos Defensores, Entre la Paz y la Guerra.
28. Valencia, Historia, Realidad y Pensamiento de la Acción Comunal en Colombia.
29. Summary of meeting re The Alliance for Progress, January 25 and 28, 1963 [Robert Anderson Papers, Box 233, Committee to Strengthen the Security of the Free World Feb. 1–15, 1963 (1)].
30. Londoño, “La Acción Comunal, Medio de Opresión Imperialista”, and “La Acción Comunal, Medio de Opresión Imperialista (Segunda Parte)”.
31. Leal, “El Sistema Político del Clientelismo”.
32. Randall, Colombia and the United States, 238–240.
33. FARC added to their name ‘People’s Army’ in the 7th Conference of 1982, therefore changing their name to FARC-EP.
34. Interview to Francisco Caraballo, Bogotá, 02/09/17. Phelan, “FARC”s Pursuit of ‘Taking Power’”.
35. Aguilera, Contrapoder y Justicia Guerrillera.
36. See note 28 above.
37. Seventh Conference of the FARC-EP (May 4–14, 1982). Main Report. Available at https://www.farc-ep.co
38. Plenary of the Central High Command, FARC-EP (February 17–20, 1987). Available at https://www.farc-ep.co
39. Military Conclusions of the Executive of the Central High Command, FARC-EP (February 16–18, 1987). Available at https://www.farc-ep.co
40. Plenary of the High Central Command, FARC-EP (November, 1997). Available at https://www.farc-ep.co My emphasis.
41. Interview to Antonio, 60th Front, Sinaí, Argelia, Cauca, 13/05/16.
42. Engagement in governance activities can’t be properly understood as solely an instrumental opportunity to ‘penetrate a community, obtain information about its members and their networks, gain legitimacy, and control civilian behavior’, as stated by Arjona, Rebelocracy, 73. For a discussion on how normative expectations can affect rebel action, see Gutiérrez and Wood, “Ideology in Civil War”.
43. Rid, “The Nineteenth Century Origins of Counterinsurgency Doctrine”. Gentile, “The Selective Use of History in the Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine”.
44. Gutiérrez, “Insurgent Institutions”.
45. PCCC, nd.:130, emphasis in original
46. Interview to Si-05-Ca-m, 26/04/17.
47. Phelan, “FARC’s Pursuit of “Taking Power”“. About the primacy of the quest for legitimacy in modern counter-insurgent aims, see Gawthorpe, “All Counter-Insurgency is Local”.
48. Interview to Si-02-Ca-m and Si-01-Ca-m, 28/07/15.
49. Ramírez et al., “La Apropiación Política del Territorio,” 180.
50. Interview to PB-03-pu-m, 26/09/15
51. The frequency of collective works varies from region to region.
52. Conversation with Si-03-Ca-m, 25/03/16.
53. Interview to Pl-02-Ca-m, 15/05/16.
54. Malešević, The Rise of Organised Brutality.
55. Interview to Si-m-Ca-05, 27/04/17. Now that they are demobilised, there is great uncertainty about what will happen to traditional mechanisms of discipline, punishment and adjudication.
56. Interview to Germán Ballesteros, GG Flying Column, 16/07/17. In Sinaí, Argelia, the FARC-EP once refused to tie up a young woman who had an affair with a married man to a tree, with a placard that said ‘hubby-snatcher’. Although this had been a JAC decision, they disagreed; however, they didn’t actively oppose it. Interview to Si-Ca-03-f, 16/05/16.
57. Velásquez, “Peasant Differentiation and Service Provision in Colombia,” 781.
58. See note 44 above.
59. In the course of the fieldwork it became evident that at times the FARC-EP had arrived to economic agreements with oil companies, while the JACs had opposed any understanding with them. In Tolima, on the contrary, the FARC-EP opposed the building of a dam in Las Hermosas which the JACs originally welcomed – only to regret it bitterly later. In both cases, the JAC position prevailed.
60. Representatives of a social or civil society organisation.
61. Programa Somos Defensores, Informe Anual 2018.
62. On the complex historical relationship between the state and right-wing death-squads, see Gutiérrez, Clientelistic Warfare, which treats specifically the period 1982–2007, yet, many argue, has continued applicability to the situation today.
63. Programa Somos Defensores, Informe Semestral Enero-Junio 2019.
64. Certainly, not all of these murders took place in regions with a strong insurgent tradition, but the overwhelming majority did.
65. Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador.
66. Both in La Marina and in Puerto Bello, case-studies in this research, many JAC members had been imprisoned or tried on spurious charges of subversion. See also Programa Somos Defensores, Entre la Paz y la Guerra.
67. See e.g., Fundación Paz & Reconciliación, 2015.
68. Arjona, Rebelocracy.
69. Interview to PB-07-Pu-m, 28/09/15.
70. Pizarro, Insurgencia sin Revolución.
71. González et al., Violencia Política en Colombia.
72. Molano, Algunas Consideraciones sobre Colonización y Violencia. On the role of dispossession in Colombia, a comprehensive analysis can be found in Thomson, “The Political Economy of Land and Dispossession in Colombia”.
73. Arjona, Rebelocracy. Empirical research in FARC-EP controlled regions falsifies claims that rebel control brought general disorder and chaos, as in e.g. Rosenthal, “For-Profit Terrorism: The Rise of Armed Entrepreneurs.” As any other social order, nevertheless, this was contested, not unlike numerous other cases of insurgency. See e.g., Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, noted earlier, especially the extent to which insurgent violence was central to popular rallying to the government in the Philippines and Peru.
74. Gawthorpe, “All Counter-Insurgency is Local,” 844.
75. LeGrand Palacios
76. Goodwyn, The Populist Moment.
77. Arjona, Rebelocracy.
78. See Romero, “Reformismo Político y Reacción Paramilitar en Colombia”; Palacios, Violencia Pública en Colombia; Fajardo, “Estudio sobre los Orígenes del Conflicto Social Armado”; Gutiérrez, “¿Una Historia Simple?”.
79. Gutiérrez Insurgent Institutions, particularly chapter IV.c. For a theoretical treatment of the process of radicalisation in the face of repression and the perceived shrinking of alternatives other than rebellion, see Goodwin, No Other Way Out.
80. Kasfir, “Rebel Governance,” 22.
81. Ibid., 36. I have borrowed the concept of intra-systemic actors to describe counter-insurgent paramilitary actors from Gutiérrez, Clientelistic Warfare.
82. In Arauca, FARC-EP and the ELN battled between 2006 and 2009. Scores of JAC leaders were killed in tit-for-tat retaliations.
83. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism.
84. See note 66 above.
85. García, El Bajo Cauca Antioqueño, 140.
86. Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State,” 188.
87. McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft.
88. Ballvé, “Everyday State Formation.”
89. For discussion of the FARC counter-state, see Ospina and Marks, “Colombia.”
90. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War. FARC-EP did attempt to create its own parallel structures; e.g., the Asambleas Populares (People’s Assemblies) in regions of Nariño. Examination of these is beyond the scope of my project, though it may be noted that the effort was stillborn.
91. A strategy described as co-optation in Mampilly, Rebel Rulers. However, as made clear in my presentation, in Colombia, to call this strategy co-optation would be reductionist vis-à-vis the agency of communities.
92. Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, esp. 105–110.
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José Antonio Gutiérrez
José Antonio Gutiérrez received his PhD from the University College Dublin (UCD) in 2019. He has lectured both in UCD and in Trinity College Dublin, and has extensive research experience in Colombia. He was research assistant to members of the Historical Commission on the Conflict and its Victims in the context of the peace process between the FARC-EP and the Government of Colombia. His research interests lie in conflict, peace-building, and State-building, with a special focus on Latin America, Colombia and Ireland. He is lecturer and researcher at the School of Law of Universidad Santo Tomás in Medellín, and he is also Research Fellow at the Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction (IICRR), Dublin City University Dublin, Republic of Ireland (Éire). His most recent article is “’A walk with the lads’: Masculinities” perspectives, gender dynamics and resilience in Soacha, Colombia”, co-authored with Dr Pat Gibbons, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (online).