The construction of a just peace in Colombia
René Mendoza Vidaurre[1]
Colombians, weapons have given you independence, but only the law will give you freedom.
Francisco de Paula Santander (1792-1840), Colombian leader
The law of the jungle should not be the law that our children follow
Seanna Wolf, ex Irish prisioner.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong
M. Gandhi
Colombia is the country with the highest level of inequality, the oldest democracy and the longest armed conflict in Latin America. It is a country that now has the opportunity for peace, strengthen its democracy and reduce its inequality, particularly the agrarian inequality. Will it be able to take advantage of this opportunity? Far from showing majority support, and improving laws so that they be given freedom, as Santander would suggest, the peace process appears to polarize society even more, making the “law of the jungle” bleed their social leaders, and contrary to the words of Gandhi, making forgiveness a sign of weakness. How can changes be generated that would lead toward peace with justice and shared prosperity? That question concerns us in this article.[2]
1. Introduction
The signing of the Peace Accords in November 2016 marked a before and after in Colombia. Society is involved in a broad debate. The most repeated words are: peace accords, reincorporation, reinsertion, demobilization, ex-combatants, reconciliation, normalization, forgiveness, illicit crop, territory, guerrilla, comrade, partner…They are disputed words: “worthy reincorporation into the legal system” versus “reincorporation of the communities against the system of injustice”; “normalization” versus “Who is normal?”; “peace accords of the government and the FARC” versus “rural communities do not know these accords and the governors of the regions are opposed to these accords” and “we already disarmed them, now let´s do what is in our interests, let´s ensure that they do not return to dissidence”; “Colombian democracy is the oldest democracy in Latin America” versus “it is a mafia-like, oligarchial and corrupt democracy”. They explain the meanings: “partner, in the war we would hunt some animal and the family would give us rice, or we protected them and they gave us food, that is why we would call them partner”; “demobilized from weapons, but mobilized by the ideals of justice and democracy”. And solutions for attracting excombatants abound: solidarity economics, inclusive business, cooperativism, corporations, Jesus Christ Savior, production projects…
After 52 years of war between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government, and even in the process of negotiation with the National Liberation Army (ELN), society seems more polarized about the peace process. The October 2016 plebiscite revealed this reality: half of the country said it should be ratified, the other half said no. What explains this polarization that is capable of undermining the peace process? There are at least two attitudes (see Figure 1), one that is cultivated by a society at war, manipulated by elites and resting on a brutal, even though resisted, inequality[3]; and the other that sees the peace process as the opportunity to economically, socially, and politically democratize the country.
Inequality is the key element for explaining the realities of Colombia, be those the armed conflicts or the successes that the peace accords might have. Consequently, following the words of Stiglitz in Bogotá in February 2017[4], “there can be no sustainable economic prosperity unless that prosperity is shared”. How can changes be generated that in the long term might lead toward a peace with justice and shared prosperity?
In this article we reflect on this question taking inspiration from some experiences in Central America, having shared with different actors in the framework of international events in Bogotá, and listened to friends in Colombian academia who are working so that this peace opportunity might help democratize the country. Our motivation is the conviction that if the most unequal country in Latin America deepens its democracy, all of Latin America will feel those winds of inclusion and democratic aspiration.
2. Perspectives on peace and democracy
Here I identify two models of interpretation of the conflicts and democracy. The first model is “top down”, from war to peace and from authoritarianism to democracy; or polyarchy, a system for containing the pressure of the masses for social change, where decisions and mass participation are reduced to choosing leaders in elections controlled by elites (Robinson, 1996, 2002, 2014[5]). In this perspective the conception is that the armed struggle is an obstacle for democracy, that democracy generates a society without conflicts, that society resolves its contradictions competing for votes, and is modernized based on free trade competing efficiently. Correspondingly, judicial and electoral reforms are done so that laws guide the masses, and the (neoliberal) economic model is fine-tuned, understanding that peace is established on the basis of development; and development means economic growth and the extraction of natural resources to the benefit of an elite (traditional extractivism), or neoextractivism that, as Escobar observed (2012)[6], is also to improve social infrastructure (education and health) and reduce poverty – in other words, the extractivist model is invariable- what varies is whether it is only for an elite or for more,[7] and whether the State plays an active role (iun the neo-extractivism).
The second model is the “bottom up” one, where the idea is that armed conflicts were, and now the social movements are, the basic conditions for resolving historical contradictions and promoting a sustainable democracy (Robinson, 1996, 2002, 2014). Correspondingly, the participation of the population is promoted with their respective life paths, that peace is established with alternatives to development where economic growth and markets, as Gudymas and Acosta argue (2011[8]), are subordinated to the model of wellbeing understood holistically, with social, economic and environmental sustainability. In this framework, peace is achieved to the extent that inequality cedes and the (neoliberal) economic model changes to one of collective well being.
Figure 1 and the words within which the entire country moves can be reread in the light of these two models. From the first model the peace accords express the victory of democracy over the armed struggle, which is why those who are demobilized should submit to the law, ask forgiveness for their fighting and integrate themselves into the neoliberal economy and formal democracy, while the government provides material and legal benefits to the disarmed groups and ensures order. From the second model the idea is that the armed struggle opened an opportunity for democracy to deepen, disrupting State institutions and markets within a perspective not of intensifying development, but of providing space for development alternatives, because it is precisely the reigning development model that produces the inequality and armed conflicts.[9]
Making these perspectives explicit can be reflected in the role of the State, the FARC, social movements, academia, the churches, cooperatives and international aid agencies. Let us give two examples. The first example, academia, following the example of model 1, it is seen armed with categories and methodologies that have sustained the model of development that has generated the inequality and that is opposed to peace; or, following model 2, it can be seen proposing new categories and methodologies coherent with the development alternatives model. The second example, international aid, following model 1, believes it knows the realities of the rural communities and it knows the solutions, which is why it aligned up project writers to hunt for profitable “production projects”, or that at least in the short term would keep ex-combatants from taking up arms again; or, following model 2, democratizes their decisions and opens itself up to understanding the multiple realities of the peasant, indigenous, and afro-descendent communities, and takes the risk of listening to and responding to solutions that maybe do not fit in the neoliberal economic model in which it tended to locate itself. Being part of the solutions and contributing to peace begins disrupting our own attitudes and comforts, that maybe are as authoritarian and centralizing as those of any institution or organization that we are happy to criticize.
3. What is concealed and what is sought to change
Having this broad perspective, we notice that the armed conflict with the FARC began with two key concepts, the agrarian reality and democracy. The Historical Commission on the Conflict and its Victims (2014) published 12 essays of authors who studied the causes and effects of the conflict in Colombia[10]. Even with different perspectives, all of them agree on the fact that the agrarian issue and the fragile liberal democracy were determining causes, which is why in their recommendations they highlight the fact that changes should happen in land use and access, and that work be done on an economic model where equity would prevail. If Colombia is the most unequal country in its income (CEPAL, 2017), the inequality is worse in the agrarian reality: the gini coefficient for income, where 1 is equal to complete inequality and 0 is equal to complete equality, was 0.530 and the gini coefficient in rural property was 0.897 in 2015; while that coefficient for income improved, because it dropped from 0.564 in 2009, the coefficient for property went up from 0.885 in 2009.
The agrarian question refers to landownership, its use, technology and markets. The key in that is access to ownership of the land. The graph and table 1 show that in the same period of the armed conflict inequality for access to property in Colombia has gotten worse: the Gini Coefficient from 1960 to 2014 went from 0.868 to 0.897.[11] In the same period 0.5% of total owners with more than 500 Hectares of land went from having 29.2% of total land to having 68.2%; while around 88% of total owmers with less than 20 hectares went from having 17.3% to only having 8% of total land[12].
| Table 1. Comparison of number of APUs and land used by range of size | ||||
| 1960 | 2014 | |||
| APUs | AREA | APUs | AREA | |
| <5 | 66.7 | 5.4 | 70.5 | 2.7 |
| 5 to 20 | 20.4 | 11.9 | 18 | 5.3 |
| 20 to 50 | 6.7 | 12.4 | 6.2 | 5.8 |
| 50 to 200 | 4.7 | 24.2 | 4 | 11 |
| 200 to 500 | 1 | 16.9 | 0.8 | 6.9 |
| >500 | 0.4 | 29.2 | 0.5 | 68.2 |
| 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | |
| Source: IGAC (2012) Atlas of rural property distribution in Colombia; 2014 Agricultural Census | ||||
The cause that generated the armed conflict intensified. This is even worse if we take note of the increasing use of mono-cropping and extraction of natural resources, as well as the financial barriers (e.g. credit in accordance with “capacity to pay”) and commercial barriers (free trade treaties) that affected around 80% of the property owners of the country. The impact of that reality on the country is alarming; socially, Colombia is the country with the largest number of internally displaced people in the world, and “violation of human rights has become a habitual practice” (Oxfam Internacional, 2017)[13]; politically, it is fragile democracy because of its liberal institutions where the connection between arms and politics prevails (Gutiérrez, 2014)[14]. Peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendent communities have suffered the dispossession of their means of life and culture, creating uprootedness and extreme poverty, which has contributed to the armed conflict. Behind that inequality and its impact are hundreds of years of distrust between peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendent families and the families of that group of less than 1% backed by the State and the ideas of “development”; this reminds us of the historian Wolf, who says that the French peasantry at the end of the XVII century had included a phrase at the end of the Our Father that they would pray every night before going to bed: “ and from justice, free us Lord” – that “justice” (State) that dispossessed them from their land and territories,[15] and which the agrarian scholar Machado (2009:54[16], confirms: “the facts show that State action continues breaking up medium size rural property, while large traditional property is not transformed, and small ownership gets even poorer; in other words, the State and society are supporting a bimodal rural structure in ownership as well as in their forms of controversial and not very efficient exploitation, that does not help promote economic growth; in addition, it is a structure that destroys natural resources, undervalues the rural reality and creates conflict between rural society and national society.”
At the same time, that agrarian reality should be qualified. In 1940 the urban population was 30% and in 2012 it was 74%, which is why obviously the weight of the agrarian reality and the notion of what is rural has changed drastically. We do not know the reliability of the Censuses for making distinctions about those changes; but given the large extensions of land that the war included, and the typical problems of legality and forms of land acquisition that our countries of Latin America have tended to suffer, it could be that the table on land ownership would vary, that that bimodal structure might be less and that therefore that structure might express more potential than it now expresses.
The peace accords happened within that context of the incease in inequality and the awakening in society that another economics subordinated to life and democracy is possible. In spite of the fact that after a year there may have been no land distribution yet, while the political opposition defending that 0.5% of large property owners is growing, the peace accords do provide an opportunity for the country to democratize. The question is: will it? Following the mentality of model 1, the problem and its solutions are understood as something technical-administrative, like a “lack of”, precisely to conceal that inequality produced by the fragile formal democracy and the conventional economic model – and to that we would add a perspective closed to the bimodal structure that only sees land and crops. Following the mentality of model 2, the problem and the solutions are understood within the framework of power relationships, change in the power structure (questioning land ownership) and in the people through a different model of improvement – and with that we would add an agrarian perspective that includes land, crops, crafts and recreation of identity). Consistent with the historical perspective and the data presented, we understand that the inequality is above all a problem of the assymmetry in the power relationships, not a technical or administrative problem.
4. Danger of using peace to heighten the inequality
The bigger risk is that in the name of peace that oligarchic belief is imposed that peace needs more development: economic growth with (neo)extractivism of the natural resources and mono-cropping. It is like saying, the regions of the country are impoverished because of lack of “development”, when it could be the opposite, they are impoverished because of too much “development”.
It is probable that this 0.5% of owners, maybe connected to the finance industry, agroindustry, commerce and the communications media, might see the peace accords as the opportunity to increase their wealth, in addition to legalizing the land that perhaps they obtained through illegal means. That is, far from ceding an inch of land and understanding its importance for peace, they see it as an opportunity for the expansion of the agricultural frontier (in addition to being able to use 70% of the arable land which is unused), new areas free for extraction and mono-cropping, repurchase of land that eventually the State might give out, cheap labor and members of private security bodies among the disarmed, zones free from the FARC in order to control them with armed criminal groups[17] and drug trafficking networks that respond to the demand of the US market, expansion of the financial and agro-chemical industries, “controlable” cooperatives that collect their harvested products and intermediate inputs to them…To take advantage of these opportunities they make use of trade rules, commercial treaties, usury, credit rules[18] and the rules of making policy; and they see the opening of roads, schools and health centers as support.
In a parallel fashion, the avalanche of more-of-the-same solutions makes the disarmed and the rural communities – peasants, indigenous and Afrodescendents –confused. “Inclusive businesses” where the anchor are private enterprises under the principles of “more volume, more profits” and “economies of scale”; cooperatives that discipline their members in mono-cropping, aid organizations responding with projects to “the lack of” technology, knowledge, capital and markets; bilateral aid agencies that with one hand support their own extractive companies and with the other finance actions that would mitigate the effects of climate change; religions (Catholic and Protestant) that win over individuals who would recognize their sins and find forgiveness and glory in the beyond. It is institutionalized technocratic conceit: elites believe they know the realities of the communities, they believe they have the solutions (money, knowledge and decisions) and they believe that change comes from above, while they are moved by a mentality of seeing the agrarian reality as in the past, only land, crops, technology and markets; the worst that can happen is to see the disarmed as agricultural producers and that agriculture is a matter of having land, equipment, inputs and buyers for what is produced.
These solutions also express centenarian and even millennial hierarchical structures. The mono-cropping structure is sustained by a transnational hierarchical structure – be they enterprises, aid industry, Churches, States or academia. The guerrillas also come from a hierarchical Leninist structure of “democratic centralism”. What is common among them is the centralization of decisions in an elite based on informal rules located in the mentality of model 1, not on rules like the Constitution of a country, that statutes of an organization, the agreements of assemblies or the rules of Afro-descendent communities. What is also common in them is the belief that there is nothing good in those “from far below”, and that is why the technician, priest and politician work on persuading. This institutionality, in good measure, tends to be reciprocated by those who are “from far below”, who have internalized that without the boss, commandante or patron, life has no direction; in addition, it becomes a social code: an ex-combatant that shows up to work on a mono-cropping hacienda is familiar with their “order-obey” structure; it seems normal to an activist of a social movement, turned into the director of an aid agency, to have the power to approve projects.
How can this danger be confronted where some good local institutions and communities with strong social and economic networks are being battered? “Everyone for themselves” is a common reaction, ex-combatants and ex chiefs who will seek their own paths in different areas and spaces; others will insist on the promised tangibles goods; many will organize to depend on external resources; in this dynamic, those who persist in their struggle for equality and justice, beyond individual benefits, will be described as terrorists, considered rebels[19] and candidates to be excluded from external benefits and to be part of those leaders physically assassinated[20] and then “assassinated by neoliberalism”. “Everyone help one another” would be more strategic; that is committed to the viability of family agriculture (small scale production or peasant economy) and crafts that would generate autonomy and energize the communal level; a peasant family that diversifies in agricultural and non agricultural activities, uses markets to scale up their income and ensure their food. Within this framework, if that family organizes in a cooperative to resolve collective problems and negotiate resources that inject energy into their production systems and endogenous institutions, they will be contributing to mobilizing their communities and with that, the resurgence of a more just and peaceful society. This does not deny the existence of monocropping and large transnational enterprise, but restrains it, makes visible what is at play in society and shows that it is not a matter of “persuading” and of responding to “the lack of”, but of creating the appropriate conditions in which changes happen in the mentality of society and its institutions
5. Imperative to focus the direction and the prospects for building an arduous peace
This step requires that the different actors (State, academia, aid organizations, Churches, popular organizations, unions, FARC) rethink their actions. Not only should they support mono-cropping and “the lack of”, but above all families in their agricultural and non agricultural activities, forms of organization and logic in territories of indigenous and Afro-descendent communities, and communities that as Arjona (2016) shows have diverse social institutions, which would have to be understood before prescribing “development” for them. Here we deal with the how.
Figure 2 illustrates the form of relationship between the aid organizations and the communities –populations, disarmed groups, small scale producers or family economy (agriculture, home made products, non agricultural activities). There we see that there is a certain amount of dispersion between the organizations and institutions and they have different discourses with the different rural communities – peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendent. But they coincide in relating to the communities through the “intermediate stratum of development”, who are the technicians, promoters, religious and aid workers. This “stratum” connects two worlds, that of the aid agencies and institutions, and that of the communities[21]; even though in practice the “intermediate stratum” might be more a prolongation of world 1, it tends to turn into world 3, interpreting world 1 and 2 from its perspective. For example, the State through the Reincorporation and Normalization Agency (RNA), has hundreds of technicians going to the communities, as do the aid agencies, churches or the FARC through their structures and technicians responsible for writing projects, encouraging and facilitating organizational processes. We predict that the peace process will be consolidated in its version of responding to “the lack of” with goods and services coherent with the perspectives of model 1, or its version of responding to the democratization of the country coherent with the perspective of model 2, or combining both versions, to a large extent depending on the work of this “intermediate stratum.”
What is common in this “intermediate stratum” molded by world 1? It tends to avoid the fact that the root of the problem is the inequality, underlying a mentality of the rural reality as equivalent to agricultural area and families in need of equipment and infrastructure, and assumes as a mandate the clamor of the aid agencies (“we want production projects”) and that of the government (“we are going to finance viable projects in market economies”). They assume that the work is persuading – be that about tangible goods like replacing illicit crops, the gospel, rules of associativity, productivity, commerce, democracy or gender equity. Each one has their reference in something external to the community: the religious, in the Bible; lawyers, in the laws of the country; agronomists, in the manuals for monocrops, the promoters of cooperativism, in the Statutes…All of them march to evangelize the communities in order to hear what they want to hear, and then returning to their offices they can also make the aid organizations hear what they want them to hear: number of technicians trained, people empowered, projects approved, people benefitted, cooperatives…
John P. Lederach, a Peace Accord advisor, said: “peace is achieved when each Colombian has respect for differences and establishes constructive relationships with the other, with that other that it has not wanted to, or not been able to listen to, for more than a half century[22].” Specifically the challenge is that this group from the “intermediate stratum of development” would overcome their logic of persuading and be capable of listening and observing, processing what is heard and observed, and learning from their conversations under the principle that “light comes from striking stones” – that light can be an idea about a project, awakening to alienating processes and their profound traumas, or paths for collective action. And that then, that “intermediate stratum of alternative development models” can talk with the organizations of world 1 and contribute to their change.
Let´s illustrate this perspective with the formation of a cooperative. According to the logic of persuading, a cooperative is organized with 40 hours of training in cooperativism, they name their manager, and it is provided resources and markets for their products; as a result, the criteria of success is forming hundreds of cooperatives without considering that this type of cooperatives fail quickly or end up being run as private enterprises in “cooperative” clothing[23]. With a logic of learning, the cooperative is organized when its members wake up in the face of an adversity,[24] and because they realize that there are obstacles that they cannot solve on their own, discover the value of their own resources, and that there is another way of organizing outside of the hierarchical structures of mono-cropping and the boss-followers – or as José M. Navarro would say, a member of the La Fábrica cooperative in Barcelona, “a cooperative enterprise opposed to capitalism”. Along this path the member families, studying their realities and experimenting with changes, discover their capacity to innovate, their citizenship (rotating leaders, complying with their rules and agreements, supervising that compliance), administering and investing their collective resources and strengthening their connections with the rest of the community, and recreating new identities within the framework of new realities that look beyond the agrarian reality seen as equivalent to crops. Table 2 shows some elements of this type of cooperative that responds to its members, and that it is possible to produce within a framework of mutual learning and in alliance with the three worlds in accordance with each specific context, and thanks to the creative and catalyzing role of the “intermediate stratum”.
| Table 2. Keys for successful cooperatives |
| · Interaction between the associative side (organs) and the business side (administrative-technical) |
| · Effective functioning of the holy cooperative trinity: oversight board, administrative council and assembly |
| · Organization around differentiated products (e.g. specialty coffees, organic products) because it requires coordination among several families, geographic concentration |
| · Distribution of earnings and definition of goals in the assembly |
| · Based above all on their own resources and on endogenous institutions (of aid) |
| · Accounting system that generates updated information to be used by the administration and the cooperative´s organs |
| · Organizing 1st tier cooperativen on the basis of their members, and organizing 2nd and 3rd tier on the basis of the 1st tier cooperatives, and not the reverse. |
This way of working, illustrated with the formation of a cooperative, requires accompaniment with a mentality of going to learn from the communities, from the disarmed groups. Said figuratively, the families in the communities know 50% of their problems, risks and opportunities, and their accompaniers (the restructured “intermediate stratum”) know the other 50%. The innovations emerge from among both sides (“from the striking of the stones”). Correspondingly, this group of accompaniers needs to unlearn in order to learn, increase their capacity to observe and dialogue so that together with the families they detect innovative practices and rules. In this way technicians and promoters will get ideas that they can turn into projects, experiments or initiatives; religious discern that God is in the people who seek justice and organize; administrators learn that the accounting information is not a tool for domination but formation (“informing is forming”)…The best guide that this type of work is on the right path is that both, the families and the accompaniers, awaken to the extent that they are learning.
For this purpose it is fundamental that all the actors from the different worlds rethink their role[25], in particular academia and international aid agencies. Academia, in order to contribute to the formation of that “intermediate stratum”, should produce appropriate categories coherent with model 1 as well as model 2. For that purpose it should organize basic research (e.g. sector analysis of agro and non agro) along with specific research combined with experimentation in specific territories, whose results would be the basis for organizing training. This, nevertheless, requires that academia understand that the source of knowledge is not just imported theories, but different communities with their multiple realities, all of them in need of being conceptualized within a framework of alliance and not just applying theories; and that requires that they include in their gamut of methodologies the organization of thoughtful immersion processes on the part of professors and students in those very territories[26]. The best critiques and policies of conventional theories, and rereadings of the land ownership table, will come from seeing the realities from the multiple perspectives of the countryside.
This strategic change from the “intermediate stratum” and the work of decolonialized academia, requires an active and renewed role of international aid. For this role, international aid should review their own practices in the last 3 decades, practices questioned in the entire world (see for example, Anderson et al, 2012)[27] because their aid has generally helped the type of “development” that has contributed to the inequality and have “ngo-ized” organizations (unions, cooperative and associative organizations) and social movements, dispossessing the families of their own organizations. This revision implies that the aid organizations in Colombia quit waiting for “production projects” from the “intermediate stratum of development”, and influencing the type of projects and centralizing decisions about those projects. This implies that they contribute to creating institutional environments in the territories where the different actors of each territory and the “restructured intermediate stratum” study those realities and produce ideas that really matter to them, and that the decisions about the projects that emerge be decentralized. It implies that the international aid agencies be conceived as allies of the peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendent communities, in favor of democracy and the reduction of inequality in those very territories – allying is like falling in love, and this requires that the “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” (aid agency) moves to the territories where their partner is.
If the communities feel that they have allies in academia and in aid agencies, who join their voices to those of the communities so that their leaders do not continue to be murdered and that they value the fact that they organize on the basis of their own good – and correcting the bad – institutions, then the peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendent communities with different degrees of connections with the FARC and other actors, will take their steps for improvement, will mobilize, will make their decisions more democratically and will understand that the reduction of inequality from the territory itself – with geographic variations – is possible, necessary and just.
6. Conclusions
The agrarian and (neo) extractivism realities continue to weigh economically, socially and politically on the country, which is why peace should be built on the basis of reducing inequality. The greatest obstacle to the peace process is the institutionality that sustains that inequality. This institutionality has to do with elite economic groups that want to consolidate the peace process with the same mechanisms that caused the armed conflict, and with an agrarian mentality from when the rural population were the majority in Colombia. These mechanisms are expressed in the extractivist and mono-cropping neoliberal economic model moved by the law of the jungle, even though clothed in democracy, a model that has been called “development” or “motors of the economy”. The paradox is that an attempt is made to consolidate peace with the same measures that led to the armed conflict.
This “development” model is clear, seen as the economic model of the elites; but it is not so clear to us that the actors who declared themselves in favor of peace had a functional modus operandi for this model. Because it would seem that there is not much difference between centralizing the decisions of approving “profitable productive projects” and the decisions of the political and economic elites concentrating land, between academia that believes it has solutions in imported theories and the aid organizations that believe they know the future of the peasantry without studying it, or businesses that think that the market knows more than any human being, between the hierarchically organized FARC and the Church and families also organized hierarchically…This shakes up our minds and wakes us up!
If waking up matters a lot, we identify the most important point of change is the “intermediate stratum of development” (administrators, technicians, aid workers, religious) who have served to convince the world of indigenous, peasant and Afro-descendent communities about the world of “development”. We suggest investing in retraining this “intermediate stratum”: that they move from a logic of “persuading” and writing projects for “the lack of”, toward a logic of “learning” and identifying along with the communities ideas in accordance with the different routes and rural institutions in which they move; from prescribing to knowing how to negotiate in the midst of uncertainty. To do so, we argue, the work of the university research centers and international aid agencies is needed; the former with alternative categories to the “development” model, and the latter constituting itself as serious allies of the different communities, recognizing that they are sources of knowledge and seeds for a more democratic and just society.
The peace process in Colombia is a global challenge that generates optimism. In Japanese culture we find two meanings for the word “optimism”: rakutenteki, the feeling of the future that a young person has about their adult life, and rakkanteki, when people accept their problems as challenges to be faced[28]. This optimism (rakkanteki) encourages us to review our own mentality and to recognize that peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendent resistance is also our resistance to inequality and the mechanisms that sustain it. Peace is possible, in spite of “development”, under the spirit of Santander, and as the “effect of justice” (Isaiah, 32:17).
[1] René has a PhD in development studies, is an associate researcher for IOB-University of Antwerp (Belgium), a collaborator of the Winds of Peace Foundation (http://peacewinds.org/research/) and member of the COSERPROSS RL. Cooperative. rmvidaurre@gmail.com.
[2] I am grateful to the comments of A. Bendaña, E. Baumeister and J. Bastiaensen for their commentaries on a previous version. The text is a draft to be improved and commented on by each person who reads it.
[3] CEPAL, 2017, Social Panorama of America Latina 2016, Table I.A1.2, shows the gini coeficiente for income for 14 countries in Latin America. In 2008 or 2009 Colombia is the country with the greatest inequality (0.564) and for 2015, even though it improved, continues being the most unequal country in Latin America (0.530). See: http://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/41598/4/S1700567_es.pdf
[4] Stiglitz, J., 2017, “Challenges and Opportunities for Colombia’s Social Justice and Economy”, power point presentation, see: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/sites/jstiglitz/files/Challenges%20and%20Opportunities%20for%20Colombia%27s%20Social%20Justice%20and%20Economy.pdf I am grateful to A. Grigsby for suggesting this text.
[5] Robinson, W., 1996, “Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S.,” in: Intervention and Hegemony. Robinson, W., 2002. Remapping development in light of globalization: From a territorial to a social cartography, in: Third World Quaterly, No. 23.6. Robinson, W., 2014, “Democracy or polyarchy?” in: NACLA. https://nacla.org/article/democracy-or-polyarchy
[6] Escobar, A., 2012, “Alternatives to development”, in: Transition Culture. Dave Chapman´s interview of Escobar, See: https://www.transitionculture.org/2012/09/28/alternatives-to-development-an-interview-with-arturo-escobar/
[7] It is thought that neoextractivism is generally the case of Bolivia and Ecuador, but more and more used in several Latin American countries.
[8] Gudynas, E. y Acosta, A., 2011, “El buen vivir o la disolución de la idea del progreso” in Rojas, M. (Coord.), La Medición del Progreso y del Bienestar. México: Foro Consultivo Científico y Técnico, in: http://www.gudynas.com/publicaciones/capitulos/GudynasAcostaDisolucionProgresoMx11r.pdf
[9] This duality of “development” / alternatives can also be seen in the duality between contemplation (leisure) and work (business) from the ancient times of Greece up to our times. It has moved from favoring contemplation to giving the highest moral value to work (business), passing though the religious thought of Calvin where leisure (contemplation) became sin and business like the glory of God (see: Rul·lán Buades, G., 1997, Del ocio al neg-ocio… y otra vez al ocio. Papers 53, 171-193. https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/papers/02102862n53/02102862n53p171.pdf). It is a duality that model 2 would seek to connect to one another.
[10] The 12 essays of the Historical Commission of the Conflict are in: https://www.ambitojuridico.com/bancoconocimiento/constitucional-y-derechos-humanos/los-12-ensayos-de-la-comision-historica-del-conflicto-y-sus-victimas
[11] Using indexes like THEIL, instead of Gini, the inequality is even worse. A more detailed study probably can demonstrate the weight of the medium strata, more than a bimodal structure, which would be important in light of more appropriate rural policies.
[12] For a more detailed study of the Agricultural Census in Colombia, see: Oxfam International, 2017, Radiografía de la Desigualdad. https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/radiografia_de_la_desigualdad.pdf
[13] See Oxfam International in Colombia: https://www.oxfam.org/es/paises/colombia.
[14] Gutiérrez, F., 2014, “¿una historia simple?” en los 12 ensayos de la Comisión Histórica del Conflicto y sus Víctimas. https://www.ambitojuridico.com/BancoMedios/Documentos%20PDF/una-historia-simple-1447167162-1460380556(1).pdf
[15] Wolf, E., 1982, Europe and the People Without History. University of California Press.
[16] Machado, A., 2009, La reforma rural, una deuda social y política. http://www.cid.unal.edu.co/cidnews/archivos/ReformaRural.pdf See also UNDP, 2011, Colombia Rural, razones para la esperanza. Informe Nacional de Desarrollo Humano 2011, http://www.co.undp.org/content/dam/colombia/docs/DesarrolloHumano/undp-co-resumen_ejecutivo_indh2011-2011.pdf
[17] Arjona (2016), contrary to the idea that war zones are chaotic, lawless zone, finds communities with social institutions where the armed structures becomes de facto governments and communities with strong justice institutions capable of negotiating with the armed groups. See: Arjona, A., 2016, Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War. Cambridge University Press.
[18] The norms for providing credit include “lending money to people with the capacity to pay.” This supposes that those who are not in monocroipping and do not have large areas, are outside of the credit system. This type of mentality was turned upside down in Bangladesh by Yunus and his team, in the 1970s they proved that everyone is capable of paying and that the bank needs to adapt to their realities. If more than 50% of the food comes from peasant families, why doesn´t the financial system respond to that reality?
[19] Hale (2002) observed in Guatemala how international organizations make distinctions of the indigenous organizations between the “permitted” ones, those who drop their agendas to take on the agenda and rules of international aidm and the “rebels”, those that resist and respond to the agenda of their members-communities. The former are given financial support and the latter are not. See: Hale, Ch., 2002, “Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala” in: Journal of Latin American Studies 34.3 Cambridge University Press.
[20] See the newspaper el Tiempo (17-Octubre-2017), “Líderes asesinados, la mayoría en zonas claves para la paz”: http://www.eltiempo.com/politica/proceso-de-paz/asesinato-de-lideres-sociales-fue-en-14-zonas-de-circunscripciones-de-paz-142126
[21] Academia (Universities and research centers) also are part of the block of aid organizations, but their relationship with the communities tends to be sporadic, which is why we have not included them in the figure, while their relationship with the “intermediate stratum” is strong because that “stratum” was trained in the universities and they also organize training courses in solidarity economics and other topics directly for that “stratum”.
[22] Interview of John Paul Lederach, “La paz lo construye cada Colombiano”, El Espectador, June 8 2016. See: https://colombia2020.elespectador.com/pais/la-paz-la-construye-cada-colombiano-john-paul-lederach
[23] Honesty is not lacking in the organizations of world 1 (figure 2): “it does not matter that these cooperatives or projects are not sustainable years later, the important thing is gaining time so that the ex-combatants do not go back to war”.
[24] The adversity is the inequality in land access, the commercial mediation that steals from them in the weighing of their produce, quality control and in prices, or in usury. A savings and loan cooperative that organizes in the face of usury, for example, begins on a good step, because having awareness of the adversity means having recognized (studied) and having realized that bringing their own resources together they can avoid the usury.
[25] For example, for the business actor, the persepective of Kaiser is interesting (2012, La fatal ignorancia La anorexia cultural de la derecha frente al avance ideológico progresista, http://ciudadanoaustral.org/biblioteca/23.-Axel-Kaiser-La-fatal-ignorancia.-La-anorexia-cultural-de-la-derecha-chilena-frente-al-avance-ideolo%23U0301gico-progresista.pdf). He observed that the business class and the right in Chile “do not understand nor believe in the power of ideas and culture as decisive factors of the political, economic and social evolution”, and that they only focus on productivity, technology and financial incentives, forgetting that human beings are moved by beliefs, values and ideas transmitted by the family, schools, books…Kaiser thinks that that bourgeoise and that right fell into a mental anorexia that opened the door to the left. From our perspective, that mental anorexia also is shared by the left and most of the organizations and international aid organizations today.
[26] Mendoza (2015) describes this methodology, precisely based on an experience of a Research and Development Institute in Nicaragua, that for some years was capable of based a good part of their proactive innovation on that methodology of immersion. See: Mendoza, R., 2015, “Inmersión, inserción, escritura y diálogo: Mecanismos de aprendizaje para el desarrollo territorial”, en: Bastiaensen, J., Merlet, P. y Flores, S. (eds), Rutas de desarrollo en territorios humanos. Las dinámicas de la vía láctea en Nicaragua. Managua: UCA Publicaciones. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/AGRO_Noticias/smart_territories/docs/RUTAS%20DE%20DESARROLLO_VERSION%20FINAL_LIGERA.pdf
[27] Anderson et al, 2012, Time to Listen: hearing people on the receiving end of international aid. http://www.elrha.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/time-to-listen-book.pdf
[28] This notion of optimism was expressed by Kishida Junnosuke, chief editor of the Asahi Shinbun newspaper, to the question of Peter Schwartz in 1984. See: Schwartz, P., 1991, The Art of the Long View. New York: Doubleday.
