Traficantes de sueños ("Dream Traffickers") has been an emblematic project for years, it has grown up not only as an interesting copyleft project but mainly as possibly the most important Spanish-speaking publishing house of the gender.

Traficantes de sueños was born in the 90s in Madrid as an answer to the necessity of an autonomous movement gathering small neighbourhood groups, the need of a place where self capacity building and the spread of materials for discussions were in the axe. It became a place of meeting and exchange around books. From the beginning an associative bookstore appears and they started to publish collective materials and related group’s books. In 2003 the self-managed publishing house Traficantes de Sueños has been consolidated as a solid project developing a regular publishing politic, discussing social movements, using Creative Commons licences and Copyleft and becoming the reference point of such activities in the Spanish-speaking world. 

The self description on their books may explain better their very own project:

“Traficantes de Sueños is not a publishing house, nor an independent publication that attempts to put together a variable collection of critical texts. Is, on the contrary, a project, in the strict sense of «gamble», that aims to chart the constituent lines of other life styles.

The theorical and practical construction of the tool box that, to put it in our own words, can compose the fight cicle for the next decades without indulgence on the arcaic sacrality of the book, without concessions on the literary narcicism, without any loyalty to knowledge usurpers, Traficantes de Sueños adopts straight out the freedom of access to knowledge. It is, therefore, in any imaginable format, allowed and open the partial or total reproduction of the published texts, unless the explicit will of the author and only in the case of the editions with profit motives in mind.”

The Publishing Centre of the Social Science Faculty (National University in Bogotá, that has already adopted CC licences for their own texts) and Karisma Foundation had join efforts to take advantage of Blas Garzón’s presence in Bogota to arrange a small familiar chat. Blas has been in the project since the beginning and is the main guest for tomorrow’s chat. Carolina Botero (Creative Commons co-leader in Colombia and Karisma’s member) and Maritza Sánchez (director of Altair, University of Antioquia lab communication web channel) will start and moderate a dialogue that, we expect, will lead us to understand this important experience of an associative bookstore, a publisher and a strategy for alternative distribution networks where the works can be freely downloaded, translated, and shared.

Wednesday, 25 March 2009
6:00 PM
Oval Room
Graduate School Building "Rogelio Salmona"
Human Sciences Faculty
Universidad Nacional de Colombia (National University of Colombia) – Bogotá
FREE ENTRANCE – LIMITED CAPACITY
Information at: editorial_fch@qunal.edu.co

If you are not around ATTENTION: Live transmission at http://radio.gathacol.net and http://altair.udea.edu.co

Germán Vargas Lleras’s statement claiming his party “Radical Change won’t become an obstacle for the approval” of the referendum seeking to allow another presidential re-election is still causing stir in the Colombian political world, specially because their support is unconditional, that is, the party agreed to approve the law project during its Senate proceedings "with no conditions." In other words, they will support changing the question (“had held” would become “had been elected”) which will open doors for President Uribe’s second re-election in 2010.

Why did Vargas Lleras give in?

The answer is hard for such a skilled politician, who has faced several storms during his public life, always emerging victorious from them: a survival question. After the division threat, when an important number of the centre-right Radical Change party he leads allied with Uribe, group headed by the unruly Roy Barreras, and the clarification made during last weekend’s party congress, thanks to former president of the Congress Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez, that it can’t become an enemy of Uribe, made Mr Vargas Lleras clearly see that, outside the support by Gaviria, Alfonso Valdivieso, and Germán Varón, the others were completely ‘Uribistas’.

If he had persisted in going against the tide, he would have run the risk not only of dividing his party, but also complicating his presidential candidacy and, besides, to cap it all, his authority within the party would have remain battered and, even worse, would open doors for former Environment Minister Juan Lozano, a staunch ally of the President, to take the direction by storm.

It was a tough decision, but Mr Vargas Lleras got what he desperately needs right now: time. With his supporters aligned for now, he can weather the storm and wait with blind faith the referendum to be defeated, either in the Constitutional Court or in the polls by the people if, as it can be predicted, the economical crisis worsening this year and the usual and traditional electoral abstention make the 7 millions and something of voters needed to stay at home.

With no referendum in the way, it is likely the rebel Congresspeople, whose loyalty is tied to the victory, come to close ranks in support of Vargas Lleras, taking his presidential candidacy up again, with good options of winning against the patchwork quilt of the party Uribe intends to create in order to unite his supporters, a Conservative party hungry for playing power by itself, a Liberal party short of ideas and charismatic leaders, and a Colombian left divided for the umpteenth time.

Forced by circumstances and with a risky bet whose results are up to third parties, Vargas Lleras is taking the gamble. But, just like the others, he prays for the Uribista contamination not to destroy his own aspirations.

For now, as controversial former presidential adviser José Obdulio Gaviria says, Radical Change’s boss is President Uribe.

This article was originally published 19 March 2009 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez

“…hitting terrorists who attack systematically the people of a country, no matter they are not inside its territory, is an act of legitimate defence”

Juan Manuel Santos
Minister of Defence of Colombia

Juan Manuel Santos at the event Colombia: Hostage Rescue & What Lies Ahead, held 23 July 2008 in Washington (Photo: Center for American Progress vía Flickr, CC-BY-SA licence)

Even though the premise is simple and it is based on an ancient institution —if I’m attacked, I have the right to defend myself—, its development is complex. It is not enough, as minister Santos, together with President Uribe^[1], that there is an armed enemy which puts the survival of the State at risk and which is taking shelter abroad, to pursue it and wipe it out.

It is not a matter of discussion the right the State has to chase inside its borders anyone who commits a crime and, if that were the case, to subdue it through force, sticking to the law. But that right becomes exceptional when criminals seek shelter abroad. 

One of the mainstays in the international legal order is State sovereignty. Accordingly, every State must have its territory, its institutions and, of course, its inhabitants respected. But it also admits exceptions because that is not a leeway for committing crimes at the expense of others.

There are extreme situations which can lead to such exceptions, as when a State becomes a threat against the others. In this case, those affected can intervene in it but through a multilateral organization, such as the UN, for example, where the case should be studied and the proper decision should be made.

Several tools exist in order to made the troublesome State to have recourse to the international rules. From censorship motions, condemnations in international courts, economical embargoes, expelling from supranational organisms or even armed intervention through multinational troops.

Weakness or tolerance may be punished too. If a State does not want to or is not able to judge those who inside its territory commit crimes against humanity, war crimes or genocides, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is granted full jurisdiction to intervene instead of the accomplice or weak State.

Crimes against fundamental rights may also prompt international intervention. Leniency, complicity, omission, negligence, etc. This time, international courts, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, may sentence States not only to repair victims but also to investigate and prosecute those liable.

Co-operation between neighbouring States is also possible, and that would allow, for example, the "hot pursuit", that is, the incursion of foreign armed forces into a neighbouring country in order to prevent the criminals to run away. This is the case of the recently signed agreement between Brazil and Colombia, which allows plane flights of both countries up to 50 kilometres inside the common border limit.

As it can be clearly seen, there are a whole set of options which can be chosen in order to pursue criminals wherever they are, without forgetting the existence of an international police which respond to arrest warrants, the fact that extradition treaties can be signed, etc., but any of these measures must stick to rules previously negotiated.

Breaking these rules erodes the international law and conspires against the coexistence of peoples. As justice of one’s own hands is not allowed for individuals, it is also not allowed for States. These coexistence norms were achieved after the countless wars from the past, specially the one caused by the Axis countries which in turn triggered World War II.

If for our case, presidents Correa or Chávez, or their subordinates, shelter FARC and it is impossible to obtain their co-operation to capture them, the Colombian government should have turn to the international instances. At the time, Uribe threatened the Venezuelan president with suing him before the International Criminal Court, but in the end he preferred the diplomatic channels, which was the same thing he should have done with Ecuador. Of course, it is not the same thing to face Venezuela than Ecuador.

Anyway, impunity for rulers is not as long and wide as it used to be. The arrest warrant issued by the ICC against Omar Al Bashir, President of Sudan, and the help asked to the UN Security Council to make it effective, shows that it is indeed possible to take a head of state into trial.

Other precedents in this sense also exist, such as Slobodan Milošević (former Yugoslavia) and Charles Taylor (Sierra Leone), both of them submitted to UN international courts. This should be a meditation issue for those in power who believe they can commit crimes as they wish, with no curbs.

The wheels of Justice grind slow, but at the end, they grind.

[1] At a community council meeting in Urrao (Antioquia): “They shall not dream with keeping themselves in impunity, because they are abroad, those ELN or FARC bandits. They’ll be captured. We go on searching for them anywhere under by responsibility. (…) Those bandits should go and find hideouts in outer space, because we’ll get them in this planet.”

This article was originally published 12 March 2008 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez

“In the late nineties, Horacio Potel, Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Lanús, fascinated by the possibilities offered by the internet, began a collection of essays and texts of his favorite thinkers. It started with a bit of Nietzsche and has since grown into a small library of philosophy on the web.

Potel is a man seduced by the thought of Jacques Derridá, so he developed a site (http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/index.htm) about this Algerian philosopher. What this university teacher could not imagine is that his effort was a criminal enterprise.

Indeed, Derrida’s publisher (the author himself died in 2004) has filed a criminal complaint and the Argentine Chamber of Books has launched a case against Horacio Potel. In the meantime, it has forced Potel to take down the Derridá texts from his site. Potel is facing a criminal sentence of between one month and six years prison.

According to copyright law Horacio Potel has everything to lose. The president of the Argentine Chamber of Books justifies the procedure as follows: "without intellectual property rights publishing is not possible, nor is intellectual production.".

However, this seems to be a clear example of what keeps happening without proofs or justifications: because it is not hard to imagine that Potel has given hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking readers to Derrida. His site, according to El Clarín’s article, receives four million hits."

US Secretary of Defence Robert M. Gates meets with Colombian Minister of Defence Juan Manuel Santos in the Pentagon on 11 March 2008 (Photo credit: Cherie A. Thurlby, United States Department of Defence, public domain)

After calling the “legitimate defence” to “hit terrorists” inside or outside Colombian territory theory on, Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos makes the headlines again. Colombia and her neighbourhood are worried, and they are right to do so. Though this is not the first time that Santos or his boss, President Álvaro Uribe, spread the Bush theory (or "doctrine"), it is surprising their insistence with such an inconvenient timing for Colombia.

It seems the Colombian government is not willing to realize that the international panorama is changing with Barack Obama as the President of the United States, putting the Bush doctrine aside, the same doctrine urging not only the “legitimate defence” argument which was the reason to embark on the costly Iraq war, but also the same which justifies the “preventive war” used by Israel, its unconditional ally, so often.

Meanwhile, in a complicated chess move which puts the US back into international law, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks in the Middle East about the "two state" solution and builds bridges to talk with Syria, and at the same time Obama negotiates with his Russian counterpart the anti-missile shield in exchange of Moscow to stop Iran’s nuclear race, Uribe and his minister Santos insist that the facts are above the Law.

But today Santos is discredited, by President Uribe himself in the first place, as it is forgotten that a few days ago the President claimed that there would not be any ground out of his reach for FARC bosses living abroad and, later, ordered a total war policy, consisting in scorched earth, extermination and peace, of course, the peace of the cemeteries.

The curious thing is that it is the terrorism the one ignoring international law, the one with no borders to perpetrate its excesses. And the message the Colombian government is sending is the same one issued by those it’s fighting. There are no sovereignty nor international instances, nor legitimate constituted governments nor diplomatic channels when it comes to “hit terrorists”.

It is seriously worrying that, besides Uribe himself, Juan Manuel Santos does it, as a candidate with possibilities of succeeding Uribe as President of the Republic for the next term. Therefore, does turning the "democratic security" policy into State policy mean to make permanent the disowning of domestic and international law?

As if this weren’t enough, and despite Uribe’s “rectification” of Santos’ words, asking in plural for “great care” on these remarks, which only was enough to become a “hint”, the concern deepens when it is realized that, besides the military top, 40 Party of the U congresspeople had come to support the minister. This means that the lawmakers, those constitutionally in charge of making the laws of this country are those who, as a single man, support the one which disowns them. Such an unique paradox, though, coming to think about it, if you notice this party is the one with the highest number of prosecuted for allegedly allying themselves with illegal groups, their position should not be seen with surprise.

But there are two more situations even more disturbing. The first one is the silence of the presidencial [pre]candidates. Neither the Uribistas nor the opposition ones have sharply rejected the Minister’s words. Some, such as former Defence Ministers Marta Lucía Ramírez (Party of the U) and Rafael Pardo (Liberal Party), only voice the inconvenience that the call for a Security Council had been made public, as was the request by Santos and the military top.

This shows how difficult this issue is and the fear of losing votes in a pre-electoral year. In short, the Uribe theory stating that qwhoever shows weakness when fighting FARC (or "LAFAR" ("the" + "FAR[C]"), as he calls them) is a friend of FARC has made a deep impression here. But Mr Santos’s rowdy spirit also shows that his presidential campaign has started, seeking to snatch space and prominence to former Agriculture Minister Andrés Felipe Árias, the Uribito ("Little Uribe," for his resemblance with the current president) who enjoys Uribe’s complete trust.

But, would it be convenient to be more Catholic than the Pope?

This article was originally published 5 March 2009 on equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez

On these days, it was revealed by the famous magazine Sports Illustrated that the baseball player from the New York Yankees, Álex Rodríguez, was positive in an anti doping control test in 2003, but this fact had stayed away from public knowledge up to now. This event gets back to the spotlight one of the more undesirable behaviours in sports: Doping, that is not another thing that to obtain a disloyal advantage in a competition by using illegal medications. In spite of the commotion that Rodríguez’s case could have caused in United States and nearby countries, where baseball is popular, here we will refer to some doping events, famous worldwide due to the relevance of the involved people and the sports in which they took place. 

Cycling: The usual suspect

Because of the long and exhausting stages of more than 100 kilometres a day that cycling competitions generally have, it has been a very frequent practice in this sport the consumption of forbidden substances to increase the endurance of the cyclists. One of the most famous, and tragic, doping cases in cycling happened in 1967, during the stage Marseille-Carpentras in the Tour of France. Climbing the terrible Mont Ventoux, the English cyclist Tom Simpson fell down suddenly from his bicycle, and staggering he got on it again, helped by the public that surrounded the road. Metres ahead, Simpson fell down for the second time, unconscious, and although he received medical attendance almost immediately, no one was able to do anything to save him. In the autopsy, a considerable quantity of amphetamine was found in his blood, which caused him an irreversible heart failure that triggered his death. It was the second time in which a biker died in broad competition. In 1960, during the Olympic Games of Rome, the Danish runner Enemark Jensen collapsed in the oval of the velodrome, victim of steroids. 

In 1988, the scandal surrounded the victory of the winner of the Tour of France, the Spanish Pedro (nicknamed “Perico” –the parrot-) Delgado, who was positive in a routine control test, after a stage. The second test was also positive, for probenecine consumption. This is a medication for the influenza, and Delgado, apparently drank it “without knowing" that it was prohibited by the International Olympic Committee, but conveniently, the UCI (that stands for Union Cycliste Internationale, in French) only included it in the list of illegal substances, in 1989. The small letters of rules favored the Spanish champion, but other winners of the Tour didn’t have the same luck.

In 2006, the US cyclist Floyd Landis, just after becoming the winner in the Champs Elysees of Paris, was deprived after his victory, when being proven his doping with testosterone and the title of champion was left in hands of the Iberian Óscar Pereiro. To make things worse, the next year, the Danish runner and easy leader of the competition when it was lacking four stages to the end, Michael Rasmussen, was expelled from the Tour, when refusing to attend to anti doping tests. Luckily, the first place was given to the Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, who was declared champion at the end of the last stage. These regretfully facts have tarnished the most important cyclist competition of the world, and they have even stained with doubt the historical feat of Lance Armstrong, the US runner and winner of seven serial French Tours (something that nobody else has achieved), after having overcome a testicle cancer that almost extinguish his life, and who was the target of a shameless doping accusation by the French newspaper L’Equipe.

Athletics: The war of the hundredths

If there is something in this sport that may be compared to win the football World Cup or being the winner of the cycling Tour of France, it is to win the final round of the 100 metres race in Olympics or in athletics World Championships. And if you can get some record, it would be better. It is a brief, too brief competition. But during those ten seconds between the departure shot and the arrival to the finish line, the whole planet holds its breathing. Along the decades, it has been a deadly war to go lowering the performance time, second by second, at the beginning, and hundredth by hundredth, lately. There is almost nothing from those days of 1936 in which Jesse Owens (R.I.P.) destroyed with his long legs Hitler’s theory about the supposed superiority of the Aryan race. And although he has been succeeded by great runners who won gold medals and set and broke records without the help of illegal drugs, like Carl Lewis or Donovan Bailey some years ago, and Asafa Powell in more recent times, maybe the biggest victory in athletics, was the biggest fiasco and the worst shame at the same time in the history of the so called basic sport.

The year is 1988, in the Olympic Games of Seoul. It’s the final round of the 100 meters. Carl Lewis, the king of the race tracks since Los Angeles 1984 and owner of the World Cup and the Olympic records, is the favourite one. The departure shot is fired, and the North American champion sees how aside him an anonymous Jamaican nationalized Canadian named Ben Johnson, runs faster than him and not only wins the racing for more than one meter of distance, but also he breaks the current Olympic record of 9.99 and the world record of 9.93 seconds with incredible 9.78 seconds. Johnson is applauded by the crowd and it is assumed that there is a new king of the world athletics. Two days later, the idol collapsed onto the floor. The first and second tests were both positive for stanozolol, and the glory became humiliation.

In those same games, in female category, a US athlete monopolized all the positions of honour. Florence Griffith Joyner (R.I.P.) won the 100 meters (and so far, she still has the World Cup and Olympic records, with 10.49 and 10.62, respectively); 200 meters (whose record of 21.34 seconds is also current); the 4×100 relay with its team, and she was the second place along with her partners in the 4×400 relay. What was more outstanding of this ebony champion was the exaggerated size of her muscles, which would be the envy of any body shaping fan. Although she was never positive in anti doping tests, her surprising death so young –she was only 38 years old- has been the focus of speculations on the fact that she was eager consumer of forbidden substances during her short but spectacular trajectory in the athletics tracks, and that this consumption was the cause of her premature death.

Football: The "pichicata" that can’t be absent

Obviously there has been, there is and there will be "pichicata" (a popular slang to refer to doping in Spanish) in football. The case that has had more impact was the doping with ephedrine of Diego Maradona in the FIFA World Cup United States 1994, not only for being him, but because it was the third time that he was positive in his sports career (the two previous positive tests had been with cocaine). It was the sad end in football courts for one of the best players of all times, who saw how the magic that he deployed inside the court was truncated forever because of those excesses that he committed outside the stadiums.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. From the 1960’s it was a blatant fact the presence of doping in the tournament known as Copa Libertadores de América. There were not anti doping tests at that time, and there were not until 1989. 

According to Fernando Gamboa, runner up in 1988 as player of Newell’s Old Boys of Argentina, and former coach of this same team, "there were strange things" in the final match with Nacional of Uruguay, as the so called “three-coloured” team were able to win 3-0 in Montevideo, after having lost 0-1 in Rosario. Gamboa says that it is not a simple coincidence the fact that the next year the Conmebol established anti doping tests, and Uruguayan teams haven’t won any single continental tournament of clubs since then.

There is still the legacy of the 1960’s dirty tricks from Estudiantes de La Plata team and their trainer Oswaldo Juan Zubeldía (R.I.P.), and the undeniable "pichicata" in the South American dressing rooms. From the former ones, we have living examples, like the needles to prick the rivals during the struggles in the corner kick shots, the cottons with Vick Vaporub® to put in the eyes of the rival team defenders, the spicy band-aids, etc.

And from the latter ones, there is only what is told and cannot be proven, because there are not tests, samples or second tests to demonstrate it, but it is too naïve to believe that there was no doping. Even, in later years it has been also spoken of a doping "that it was not doping" in the teams, even here in Colombia, directed by the late trainer Eduardo Luján Manera. The procedures consisted on extracting blood from each footballer, then freeze it and inject it back in the same person after some weeks. When injecting the blood again in the organism, an increase takes place in the number of red cells, which allows a bigger amount of oxygen in the blood stream, and therefore a better performance of the sportsman. As being expected, this doping system is not positive in any test, because it doesn’t involve the use of medical substances. The so called “blood doping” causes in the medium term hypertension and serious heart problems. Some experts assure that several events of sudden death in footballers in the middle of a game are a direct consequence of this procedure.

Is it near the day in which all sportsmen have to dope themselves to win? Shooting marksmen, with gun and bow already dope to reduce their heartbeats, and chess players take pills to avoid stress. When golf, curling and bowling players use illegal substances, it will be the end.

This last newspaper note was about the new “bracelet” system to allow prisoners to leave prison and have a controlled life under surveillance. The title of the story, "First prisoner to use electronic bracelet was condemned for buying pirate CDs”, caught my attention. The journalist tells the story of a young Colombian man (23 years old) who bought one day 16 music CDs on a Colombian street, the police asked for the bill, and he was taken to the police station; after signing a couple of documents, he was released. Few years later, after he joined the Police department, after a criminal background check he was taken to prison. The criminal procedure against him continued without his notice and he was condemned to 4 years in jail. The young man switched his position in just one day from police staff to prisoner.

In a country where people involved on economical fraud in form of pyramid schemes (hundreds of people lost their savings) receive 53 months prison, or paramilitary chiefs linked to homicides are condemned to 6 years prison, the story of this young man seems like a good movie plot, but it is true… and yet today many more Colombians will be buying pirate stuff on the streets… there is something really wrong when we use criminal law mainly as a threat as we forget the social consequences.

If you can read Spanish, you might find this other article interesting as well: La ideología de la propiedad intelectual, la inconstitucionalidad de la tutela penal de los derechos patrimoniales de autor.

Released Colombian army soldier William Giovanni Domínguez (L), police officer Wálter Lozano (R), and Senadora Piedad Córdoba arrive to the Vanguardia airport in Villavicencio on 1 February 2009 (Photo credit: Gabriel Aponte / © El Espectador).

Like it happened on the past hostage releases by FARC, in this week’s operations, when former governor Alan Jara, former local lawmaker Sigifredo López, the three police officers and the army soldier were freed, opportunism also was present. Everyone sought to be the centre of the attention and, of course, their own personal profits.

FARC

After Operation Jaque, where they lost some of their most important hostages, former congressman Óscar Tulio Lizcano’s escape a few months ago, and their consecutive political and military defeats, FARC want to reenter the international stage through the unilateral releases of the last two politicians kidnapped by them, as well as four low-rank Colombian security forces members.

In order to boost their international image, and enforcing the theory that Colombia is dealing with an internal armed conflict, they will keep the policemen and the soldiers with some kind of command hostage, and announce indeed their intention to stop kidnapping civilians in order to achieve the humanitarian interchange (swap of military and police hostages for imprisoned guerrilla fighters).

Thus, given the fighting nature of the hostages in their hands, the interchange they are seeking would happen exclusively between belligerent forces from both sides. With this measure, FARC put Colombian government on the defensive abroad and clean their image as a "kidnapping" organization at the same time.

Colombian government

President Uribe’s recklessness keeps playing dirty tricks on him. Using his emotions instead of the reasons, ruling in the heat of the moment, the Colombian leader gives orders and undoes them, chased by the ups and downs of the events, which shows improvisation and a lack of a true coherent policy for peace.

It is worrying that, while every effort was made in order to carry successfully the release of the four members of the security forces, there had been flights by military airplanes in the area, in a defying attitude, putting not only the life of the hostages but also the ones of the humanitarian commission at risk.

But, besides, denying the fact, and later admitting it after the appearance of video evidence disproving their words, and then, in a vindictive attitude, excluding the members of the humanitarian commision, and next allowing back one of them, Senator Piedad Córdoba, on ICRC’s (or First Lady Lina Moreno) request, clearly shows that Mr Jara’s words are true: Uribe’s administration is not interested in peace but military victory, no matter its cost.

Journalists

What journalist Jorge Enrique Botero did is blameworthy. Taking part in a humanitarian mission means prudence, discretion, and neutrality because the hostages’ lives come first. Breaking this rule and turning the mission into a journalistic competition ends up breaking this kind of backing schemes up into the future with unpredictable consequences.

The same thing can be said about Hollman Morris, who offered his services to the captors in order to make manipulated interviews, which, instead reporting objectively on the events, show a biased information which only seeks to whitewash the image of the guerrilla group.

This way, journalism, in the hands of these two reporters, stops being a witness of the events and becomes a part of the conflict, offering itself to their service, not as accomplice, as they were called by Álvaro Uribe in an irresponsible way, but as useful idiots of the guerrillas.

Simple, disposable figures

Amidst this interests, bets, and profits market, which includes poses and roles, are the kidnapped and their families, a simple article offered to the highest bidder. They are disposable figures later to be abandoned to their own luck, which will not be a huge one, because not everyone is lucky enough to be Íngrid Betancourt.

It’s just matter of social class… and opportunism, of course.

This article was originally published 4 February 2009 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez

Álvaro Uribe at the event Colombia & the United States at a Crossroads: A Conversation with President Alvaro Uribe, 2 May 2007 in Washington (Photo: Center for American Progress / Flickr, CC-BY-SA licence)

Muddy waters

The political year in Colombia has started quite wildly. With Senator Gina Parody’s resignation both to her Congressional seat and the ruling Party of the U, and at the same time opposing Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s second re-election, the breachs in the ruling coalition have become official. Though her absence from the Congress will not affect the number of votes favouring Uribe, the fact that Ms Parody had been one of his closest allies in the local parliament sheds light on the extent the re-electionist project has started to break down from its own entrails.

But Ms Parody’s resignation is not an exception to the rule. The presidential pre-candidate poses of Andrés Felipe Árias, Minister of Agriculture, or “presidentico” as columnist Antonio Caballero calls him, are striking. If a man as close to president Uribe as Mr Árias is daring to promote himself as an alternative to succeed him is because Uribe is aware that his immediate re-election is not that clear, no matter his efforts to prop it up, such as the nightly decrees issued to save the referendum.

If we add to this panorama the visits to the presidential residence paid by possible Uribista pre-candidates as Marta Lucía Ramírez and Rodrigo Rivera on 21 January, in order to show their intentions to run for elections, this means the dark clouds are foretelling a storm.

The blindness of the haughty

Power fascinates people and therefore president Uribe is still betting on victory, counting on the recently renewed Constitutional Court which, with the election of the remaining two justices, probably sympathetic to the government, could change the jurisprudence on the issue and approve the referendum, despite its legal failures. That is a risky bet, because reaching the top post in the judiciary implies a lot of responsibility, and it would be quite unlikely someone with a brilliant career would throw it overboard for doing political favours.

But the President either does not see this or does not care about it, is still confident that everything will turn out right for him, and starts making mistakes which can be quite costly at this time of the game. The bureaucratic retaliations against centre-right Radical Change party and the operations in order to divide it threaten to break the ruling coalition. Although President Uribe is a master when it comes to shady deals, Radical Change leader Germán Vargas Lleras is a hard nut to crack.

After the initial announcement by some Radical Change senators offering their support for the referendum for re-election in 2010, leaving their leader Germán Vargas out of the electoral game, his call to the order ended unifying the party again. They will support re-election only for 2014, a symptom that Radical Change is already seeing Uribe’s decline, bringing the presidential candidacy of Vargas himself out into the game.

Though the referendum law can still pass without Radical Change’s votes, the uncertainty is growing in the Uribista camp. And if you add to this the lack of financial clarity in the referendum campaign for signatures, mistakes of procedure during the discussions in Congress, and time running short in order to put it forward, together with the awakening of the Uribista leaders’ presidential appetites, the referendum for re-election is dying without a cure and, which is the worst thing, with no mourners.

When the cat’s away, the mice will play

Caudillism builds everything around the caudillo. When he’s gone, he takes everything with him, and Uribe is not the exception. Without Uribe, and because his votes are not endorsable, the task remains in hands of his supporters, which lack not only his charisma, but who are also facing a different country, which no longer votes based on fear but on their pockets, favouring chaos in the pro-government camp. But opposition is also facing difficulties, because it does not count with a leader uniting it and with a winning vocation.

With no strong candidate and no matter who wins, we glimpse a minority government, subject to provisional alliances which will force to a co-government system. Rule will not be for one, as it happened in the Uribe era, but for many, as it used to be before. The problem is that in the past there were strong parties which could handle local lords in order to preserve governability. This time there are only poor party imitations, with no cohesion, whose members only take heed on their pockets and, with everyone pulling to their own side, the country will likely stuck for a long time.

This is the price we pay for the Uribista de-institutionalization process. Without strong parties and institutions, Colombia will have to hit bottom in order to recover. But the crisis coming does not mean a debacle, or in Uribista terminology, hecatomb. Maybe we should learn from the Chinese, who write “crisis” (危機, wēijī) by putting the characters for danger and chance together. That is the key. But it will not be soon. The old actors are still on the platform, and after 2010, there will be a ex president conspiring in the shadows to return to power.

Nevertheless, no matter what happens, the important thing is not to repeat because, as T. S. Eliot once said, “if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way to be wrong”.

This article was originally published 24 January 2009 on equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez

Photos: Julián Ortega Martínez / equinoXio, with Creative Commons – Attribution licence

The march had been scheduled to begin at 11:00 on Tuesday morning. Gradually, more people came to the Palestinian embassy in Bogotá. At noon, around 150 demonstrators, most of them young people, departed eastwards, in direction to the building where the Israeli embassy to Colombia is located. Of course, some members of the Palestinian community in Colombia joined the demonstration. Mainstream media like teleSUR or Caracol TV, or alternative media as El Turbión covered this event.

Shouting slogans slamming Israel on its bombings and invasion to Gaza Strip in the past few days, some of them overtly anti-Zionist and others expressing support for a possible intifada (you can listen to the audios below), demonstrators walked first eastwards and then southwards, making a pause three blocks before reaching their final destination. Around 12:35, demonstrators gathered in front of the Caxdac building, whose 14th floor is the headquarters of the Israeli embassy in Colombia. There was no explicit support for radical group Hamas, though a small group of demonstrators made a shout using a pun with the Spanish word jamás ("never"), whose pronunciation is nearly identical to "Hamas". Two Israeli "flags" (actually made with cardboard and marker) were burnt.

(In Spanish) "Long live to the fight of the Palestinian people…" / You murderer Zionists!"

(In Spanish) "We support the fight of the Palestinian people…" / "Israel, Israel, murderers!" / "In-ti-fada, intifada!"

(In Spanish) Down with the Palestinian genocide!" "Yankees, get out from Palestine, Iraq, and Latin America"

(In Arabic and Spanish) "With our blood, with our soul, we defend Palestine!"

The demonstration had practically no incidents, and it was always escorted by the authorities. Nevertheless, when the concentration in front of the Caxdac building was about to end, there were some scuffles between some demonstrators and two Carabineros policemen, which allegedly used their horses to force some people, who were standing in the track of the avenue where cars were circulating, to step up to the median strip of that avenue. The police officers went back the same way they came.

Since the beginning of the so-called "Cast Lead" operation on 27 December, there have been three demonstrations in support of the Palestinian people, including the one held on Tuesday. At the moment we publish this article, the last death toll in Gaza is 660 dead Palestinians, around 3,000 injured, most of them civilians and many of them women and children, while there were 9 casualties on the Israeli side.