Colombia: The Revolutionary Posture of Jesus Santrich

By Nelson Lombana Silva on July 11, 2019

The noble personality and revolutionary make up of comrade Jesus Santrich is not up for debate, on the contrary he generates admiration in such a historical period devoid of revolutionary commitment and human values. FARC leader, member of Colombia’s Congress and a negotiator of the peace accords who despite his physical limitations and advanced age, Santrich continues to write pages of heroism in every step he takes.

Therefore, the concern should not be his failure to appear before the Supreme Court of Justice on July 9, but his safety and the real motives that led him to make this decision. Is he alive? Is he one more missing person? Is he kidnapped? Could he escape the alleged and imminent physical attack against him that apparently was being cooked as a kind of chronicle foretold?

It is the state and the real President Álvaro Uribe Vélez disguised as Iván Duque Márquez who should really respond and should be questioned. They are directly responsible for the disappearance of the former commander. His non-compliance and his eagerness to push the FARC ex-combatants back into the crude armed violence being generated by their non-compliance with the agreements made in Havana and signed in Bogotá. It is here where the fundamental cause of the disappearances and courageous decision of the veteran communist leader lies.

While the big media morbidly spreads the non appearance of the peace negotiator to the Supreme Court of Justice, in between the story lines there were reports of two more ex-combatants murdered in Cauca.  The number of those murdered has now grown to 140. In other words, while the genocide against ex-combatants and popular, peasant, indigenous and union leaders is taking place, the government cynically goes on to say that Jesús Santrich betrayed his word and the peace process. Even uninformed sectors are repeating the same story.

The entire country must mobilize to demand the fulfillment of what has been agreed upon and the continuation of dialogues with ELN, while respecting life as the minimum guarantees that every human being has the right to have in any society. Demobilization of the long war cannot be to nourish the pantheons and continue to be the majority there, as unfortunately has been happening.

The media machine used by the bourgeoisie to hold on illegally and illegitimately to power must have some fissure, which must be used to discontinue the alienation of the Colombian people. The truth must somehow shine through. The state has not disarmed paramilitaries, the doctrine of national security is still in force, as is corruption and widespread terror.

It is the State that has really failed to comply with what was agreed upon in Havana. However, the media of the oligarchy presents the state as the compliant party and the former armed insurgency as non-compliant. A fallacy repeated a thousand times ends up being true in the alienated and uninformed people.

This has been nothing new in the ruling class of Colombia. In 1953 dictator General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla’s proclaimed an amnesty but once the insurgency of the plains was disarmed, the criminal wave against it began. In 1922 Bogotá falls and Guadalupe Salcedo, the great guerilla commander believed in the government of the day and then t thousands and thousands continued to fall in different regions of the country. The same thing happened with the M-19. The State assassinated without any mercy the most consistent and revolutionary sector, such as Toledo Plata, Pizarro León Gómez and many others. Why were Marulanda or Jacobo Arenas not assassinated? Because they never trusted the political will of the State. They knew for sure that in every peace process, the criminal and treacherous spirit of the government in power was lurking beneath the table.

That being the case, I do not believe that Comrade Jesus Santrich has freely decided to resume the armed struggle, because at this historic moment he is more useful in Parliament than in the mountains. What I do believe is that he has been forced to hide by the virulent onslaught of the criminal State directly against him or at worst he is disappeared. Trying to save life is both elementary and fundamental. As we have said before, why continue to fill the cemetery, when what we need are revolutionary lives to transform this crude reality that confronts us by the work and designs of the ruling class. Surely it wasn’t the best decision, but what else could he do? Wait for his murder around the next corner? Just wait for a public statement? The need of the moment is to think with more media independence and above all with political criteria to analyze and correctly read the political moment to enable us to project revolutionary actions and transformations. In all of this, the people must be the protagonist of the first order.

Source: Communist Party of Colombia, translation Resumen Latinoamericano North America bureau