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American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Colombia’s pro-FARC land reform

Pres. Santos’s May 29th land redistribution decree is “right out of Cuba’s totalitarian playbook,” writes Mary O’Grady:
Colombia’s Chávez-Style Land Reform. Ranches can be taken if they are not in the social and ecological interest. (emphasis added)

To implement it, the Santos-controlled Congress granted him rule-by-decree powers much like what Chávez got from his National Assembly.

The land reform is the product of those powers and will advance the full FARC takeover of the country’s institutions. As FARC leader Iván Márquez asserted in an October 2012 speech in Oslo, “The concept of land is inextricably linked to territory.” They “are an indivisible whole that go beyond the mere agrarian aspect and touch vital strategic interests.”

Those interests are eventual iron-fisted control of the country. It is why the FARC demanded, in Havana, that the government claim arbitrary powers to expropriate land and redistribute it. Under Mr. Santos’s decree the state will rule on whether there is an illegal concentration of land and local committees will decide when the use of private property is not meeting social or ecological interests. Courts are sidelined; property is taken administratively.

And how does that advance “the full FARC takeover of the country’s institutions”?

The rural areas where FARC has concentrated for transition to civilian life are also areas where there will be new property titling. Those same zones are slated to become congressional districts, where newly-minted FARC politicians, flush with weapons and cash, probably will be the only ones on the ballot.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE

Here’s Santos yukking it up with his FARC buddies,

“How shameful!
“So much laughter with and homage of terrorists from @JuanManSantos and his administration, while Colombians ask to be heard.”

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Colombia: FARC still not disarming

Colombia’s FARC Says More Time Needed to Hand over Weapons

The FARC guerrillas won’t meet a May 29 deadline to hand over their weapons under the terms of last year’s peace accord with the Colombian government, a rebel negotiator said on Friday.

Completing the disarmament process will require at least two additional months, Jesus Santrich told a press conference in Bogota.

As. the old joke goes, “the check is in the mail, I love you, and . . .”

But I digress.

The Marxist guerrilla will have an additional 20 days to hand over its weapons and an additional two months to reintegrate into society amid delays and foot-dragging:

Among the key problems is that shipping containers, where the weapons were to be stored, haven’t been installed at some of the camps. The government also said that hundreds of weapons caches identified by the guerrillas were in areas too remote to be reached by the deadline.

Santos downplayed the delays Monday, saying they were “nothing, if it means ending 53 years of conflict, violence and fratricide.”

Here’s Santos televised speech (in Spanish),

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Colombia: Santos to visit Trump this week

Mary O’Grady writes on A Colombian Shakedown in Washington.President Santos is a better friend to Cuba and Venezuela than to the U.S

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos goes to Washington this week to seek Donald Trump’s blessing for his amnesty deal with the narco-terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. He also wants the $450 million that Barack Obama set aside for Colombia in this year’s U.S. budget. Back home Mr. Santos gets few blessings—a poll published May 8 by the market research firm Yanhaas found he has 19% approval. Mr. Trump might like to consider why that is.

On almost all counts Colombia is worse off than when Mr. Santos took the helm in 2010. Important economic reforms have languished, but last year the government sharply hiked taxes. The economy grew a scant 2% in 2016.

Mr. Santos has presided over a corruption boom.
. . .
Mr. Santos may feel smug when he arrives in Washington. He went around the Colombian Constitution to make his FARC deal law. Then he enshrined it above the constitution, even though the public rejected it in a national plebiscite. He also got his country’s Congress, which he controls, to give him rule-by-decree powers during its implementation.

Colombia is now a place where the president’s political enemies, or their relatives, often wind up in jail. Former President Álvaro Uribe’s brother Santiago has been behind bars since early 2016, though he has never been convicted of any crime.

Read the whole thing.

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Colombia: Santos snookered by the FARC, again

The FARC is not disarming, thereby violating the peace agreement, while Santos tweets that the new U.S. budget includes $450 million to support his FARC deal, writes Mary O’Grady.

First, Santos’s tweet,

“Bi-partisan accolade from the U.S.: Congress approved $450 million for Colombia Peace, 74 million more than in 2017”

Mary O’Grady writes about Colombia’s Perilous Deal With the FARC. The group promised to disarm, but it keeps getting caught with hidden weapons.

The latest proof that Mr. Santos was snookered by FARC is the discovery last week of another cache of FARC arms that were supposed to be handed in. Hidden weapons are like cockroaches. If you discover one, you can be sure there are many others unseen.

On Wednesday the Colombian army found 16 FARC rifles and 39 grenades near the border of the departments of Meta and Guaviare. The army said that the weapons had been used for extortion and to attack government teams eradicating coca. Last month another find in the same area included one M16, six magazines and 1,300 rounds of ammunition.

On April 20 the minister of defense announced the discovery of a FARC weapons cache in Putumayo. It included 54 rifles, six machine guns, three grenade launchers, 100 kilos of explosives, 200 land mines and 3,600 detonators. Two weeks earlier, the minister said, authorities had found 600 mortar grenades in Tumaco, in the department of Nariño.

As if to show who’s in charge, FARC leader Iván Márquez took toTwitter to characterize the discovery of the FARC weapons in Putumayo as an “assault,” complaining that it violated the agreement.

The child soldiers are not being returned, kidnappings continue (including a United Nations worker last week), and FARC are still active in the state of Amazonas.

Yesterday O’Grady tweeted Pedro Corzo’s op-ed in El Nuevo Herald,

Corzo asserts that Colombia is on the path to Chavismo,

El presidente Juan Manuel Santos ha sido un catalizador a favor del surgimiento y fortalecimiento de personas y fuerzas políticas contrarias a la democracia, como son los casos de las FARC y ELN, dos facciones que no han renegado de sus convicciones marxistas, ideología que sustenta gobiernos contrarios a los derechos ciudadanos.

Las características de los acuerdos de paz con las FARC y las conversaciones con el ELN propician el fortalecimiento de factores opuestos a la democracia.

[my translation] President Juan Manuel Santos has been a catalyst favoring the emergence and strengthening of people and forces adverse to democracy, as is the case with the FARC and the ELN, two factions that have not renounced their Marxist beliefs, an ideology supported by governments that oppose citizen rights.

The characteristics of the accord with the FARC and the talks with the ELN favor the strengthening of factions opposed to democracy.

Santos is leading his country towards disaster.

UPDATE
Colombian Guerrillas FARC and ELN Meet in Cuba to Discuss Peace Deals with Santos

Colombia’s ELN rebels ‘kidnap eight’

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Colombia: Trump meets with Uribe and Pastrana

Former Colombian presidents Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana met with Pres. Trump at Mar-a-Lago last weekend, in a meeting probably arranged by Marco Rubio:

In a tweet following the meeting, Pastrana thanked Trump for the “cordial and very frank conversation” about problems in Colombia and the region.

Uribe was unavailable for an interview, but his former vice president, Francisco Santos, said it was important that the Trump administration and U.S. Congress hear a more complete picture of the reality in Colombia. He described the meeting as short, but with a clear message. The former presidents raised concerns about the situation in Venezuela and Colombia, including damage they say the peace process has caused.

“We’re very worried,” said Francisco Santos, who is the Bogotá chair of Uribe’s Democratic Center political party and the current president’s cousin. “You have a perfect storm, and the government says everything is going fine and we’re living in peace. And that’s not true.”

The Mar-a-Lago meeting coincided with a letter Uribe wrote to the Trump administration and Congress, which he published on Twitter, warning that President Santos’ efforts to complete a peace deal with the rebels could lead to Colombia becoming an authoritarian state similar to Venezuela.

Here’s Uribe’s letter,

Related:
Prior posts on the FARC and the peace agreement.

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Colombia: Coming soon – FARC doctors and bodyguards

Former members of the world’s largest Marxist narc-terrorist organization have new career opportunities. Sabrina Martín reports that Cuba Offers Former Colombian FARC Guerrilla 500 Medical School Scholarships

Cuba has offered both the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas one thousand scholarships to study medicine in the island — their way of “contributing” to the peace agreement.

Carlos Eire points out that

It’s a neat scheme, a great way of indoctrinating and training a new generation of Colombian Castronoids on Cuban soil, without outside interference.

A great scheme within the “peace” treaty also proposes to turn FARC terrorists into security agents and bodyguards.

It sounds like a joke, but, unfortunately, it’s not.

Yes, foxes will now be inside the hen house, guarding the hens.

Martín explains,

In addition, the Colombian government approved 1,200 FARC members to work as bodyguards.

Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo signed a series of decrees that were approved by President Juan Manuel Santos creating a security guard program for FARC members and members of Voices of Peace, which represents the guerrilla group in Congress.

The program creates 1,200 positions for body guards in the National Protection Unit, which is responsible for assessing the risks of each person and ensuring their protection.

More at El Nuevo Herald and El Espectador (links in Spanish)

For details on FARC’S handiwork, go HERE and HERE.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Chile: Evidence of terrorist arson? Guess who may be involved

Mary O’Grady writes on Fire and Terrorism in Chile. Setting churches and forests afire is the modus operandi of guerrillas in the south.

More than one million acres in the center and south of Chile have gone up in flames since July 2016, with almost 70% of the destruction occurring last month. The affected area is larger than the state of Rhode Island. At least 11 people have died and more than 1,000 homes have been destroyed.

There is now evidence that

Some fires have been intentionally set and this has elevated concerns in rural Chile about the rise in organized violence against civilians and private property by left-wing extremists aiming to topple the democracy. Ms. Bachelet was warned about the threat during her first term (2006-10), as was former President Sebastian Piñera (2010-14). Neither acted.

O’Grady writes that “left-wing extremist groups—claiming to represent the indigenous Mapuche” in La Auraucanía, Los Ríos and Bío Bío have been linked in the past to not only the Chilean Communist Party, but also to – surprise! – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

As you may recall from my prior post, Brazil’s largest criminal organization, the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital – First Capital Command) is recruiting Colombian FARC members.

InSight Crime reports,

Colombia’s peace agreement with the FARC grants the guerrillas 10 congressional seats in 2018, but their transition from illegal armed group to political movement will most likely be concentrated in local positions in their traditional areas of influence.

In plain English, that means that the FARC is well on its road to becoming a political power in Colombia . . . while its members branch out into criminal and terrorist activities throughout the hemisphere.

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Brazil: PCC hiring FARC

The stuff gets real: Brazil’s largest criminal organization, the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital – First Capital Command) is recruiting Colombian FARC members (emphasis added),

as it seeks heavy-weapons and other expertise to help expand its hold over Latin America’s drug trade, investigators and officials in both countries say.

Defense and foreign ministry officials from both nations are scheduled to meet Tuesday in the city of Manaus in the Amazon region to share information on how the Brazilian criminal organization, the First Capital Command or PCC, is working to hire guerrillas in Colombia, some of whom opted not to participate in peace talks in that country. Colombia’s government last year signed a peace pact with the Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and most of its 6,000 fighters are now preparing to disarm.

The PCC wants to fight the Brazilian military, wipe out competition from other gangs, and deal directly with Colombian cocaine suppliers – whose coca production surged by 46% from 2014 to 2015.

The gang is seeking .50-caliber machine guns, which are capable of taking down helicopters and perforating bulletproof cars, as well as to enlist parts of the FARC’s network of seasoned fighters and expert bomb makers

Additionally, InSight Crime reports that the PCC is using Uruguay as a transit point for international drug trafficking operations in Africa and Europe, and operating in Paraguay and Bolivia. InSight Crime has noted that

PCC is capable of organizing drug trafficking operations and sending drug shipments abroad, as well as controlling shipments of marijuana and cocaine in both national and regional markets.

Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta mafia (which handles up to 80 percent of Italy-bound cocaine) is one of the PCC’s European partners.

Last week the Colombian government and the FARC announced a joint plan to fight against coca production.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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