On the evening of December 31, 2022, Colombian President Gustavo Petro stated that his government had reached a 6-year agreement with the country's five major illegal armed groups, including the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN). months of bilateral ceasefire agreements. At the same time, he also said on Twitter: "Comprehensive peace will be achieved."
However, after only three days, Petro's face was "slapped". On January 3, 2023, the ELN announced that they would not join the bilateral ceasefire announced by Petro, as they had "not reached an agreement on the matter" and would not accept "unilateral government decrees as an agreement".
In fact, Petro is not the first case of being slapped in the face by these illegal armed groups. As early as 2016, the Colombian government reached a peace agreement with great fanfare with the country's most powerful illegal armed organization, the "Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia" (FARC). President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize for it. But only three years later, a police academy in Bogota was attacked by a car bomb, and more than 20 students were killed in the attack. Subsequently, the Colombian government suspended the peace talks with the ELN, and in October 2019 restarted the military suppression of illegal armed organizations in the country.
The protracted civil war in Colombia has become one of the largest and longest-lasting civil wars in the world today. According to statistics, from 1985 to 2018, at least 450,000 people died in this civil war. Why is this civil war that has lasted for nearly 60 years so difficult to end? How far is the "comprehensive peace" expected by Petro?
Land annexation a sticking point in the civil war
In 1964, Manuel Maruranda, who came from a poor background, successfully integrated multiple rebels in rural Colombia and formally established FARC. Its political platform is "agrarian revolution, seizure of power, and establishment of a fair society". It is said that when Maruranda first started, he had only 14 comrades in arms, 10 kitchen knives, and 2 muskets. However, under the vision of "fighting the local tyrants and dividing the land", those poor people continued to join FARC. By the end of the 1990s, their number had increased to about 20,000, and at one point controlled about 40% of Colombia's territory.
As a result of the land sale, the richest 0.2% of people in Colombia control nearly 30% of the farmland.
In the year when FARC was established, in order to kill it in its infancy, the Colombian government dispatched more than 16,000 troops to encircle and suppress FARC. Since then, Colombia's nearly 60-year civil war has officially kicked off.
However, the real root of this civil war can be traced back to the "Assassination of Gaitan" in 1948. In 1948, Gaitan, the left-wing leader, was assassinated in the street while participating in the presidential election. The incident triggered a 10-hour riot on the streets of the capital Bogota, causing more than 5,000 casualties. The death of Gaitán also brought Colombia into a period of "decade of violence" terror, in which 200,000 people were killed, accounting for about 2% of the country's population at that time.
Gaitan is feared mainly because he opened one of the worst wounds in Colombian society: land annexation. Gaitan spared no effort to call for land redistribution to ease social conflicts. It was because of Gaitan's propositions that Maruranda admired Gaitan very much and actively promoted his propositions in his hometown, thus gaining the title of "Little Gaitan".
In fact, throughout the history of Colombia, "land annexation" has always been the main crux of the country's civil war. In the 18th century, after liberating Colombia, Bolivar, the South American liberator, did not share the land with the people, but kept it in the hands of the elite who had previously served Spain.
For more than a hundred years after 1823, the Colombian government sold a large amount of national land to repay the debts owed by the War of Independence. However, as a result of the land sale, the richest 0.2% of people in Colombia control nearly 30% of the farmland. In order to alleviate the turmoil brought about by land conflicts, the government has carried out no less than 14 land reform attempts since 1917, but with little success.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has pointed out that 82% of Colombia's productive land is in the hands of 10% of landowners. Colombia has 20 million hectares of arable land, but 30% of its food depends on imports.
The reason why every land reform in Colombia has had little effect is mainly because the "cheese" of the big landowners has been touched. Big landowners will hinder the implementation of land reform policies by cultivating politicians and even bribing officials. Former President Uribe, who was born as a big landowner, once criticized land reform on Twitter.
In order to suppress the people's demands for land, these big landowners will also form private armies (right-wing paramilitary organizations), such as the "United Self-Defense Forces" (AUC), to suppress FARC and ELN. These right-wing paramilitary groups violently evicted farmers from government-allocated land.
People lie in Plaza de Bolivar, Colombia, August 30, 2021, International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances, protesting the killing of civilians by security forces in the country's civil war
The harsh crackdown by Uribe's government laid the groundwork for peace talks in 2016.
In recent years, investigations by the Colombian Truth Commission have reported that right-wing paramilitary groups, local alliances of landowner elites, use deadly violence against peasant communities. On January 17, 2002, a right-wing paramilitary organization divided the villagers of a certain village into two factions and made them fight each other with sledgehammers and stones. Twenty-four people died on the spot in the fight, while Colombian government troops looked on. Government forces even set fire to villages after right-wing paramilitaries left.
It is under the obstruction of these vested interests that land disputes are circulating and historical tragedies are repeating themselves. Like Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude", the entire country of Colombia has been dragged into the endless abyss of civil war.
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