General Rafael Pena Rios retired fiom active military
service at the end of 1987 at the age of 49. He had been
fighting guerrillas since he was sixteen. He graduatedfirst ofY
800 officers in the Chief of Stqffs course at Fort Leaven-
worth, and w’as commander ofthe XII Brigade in Caquetd. In
March 1988 he gave his first interview to Plinio Apuleyo
Mendoza of El Tiempo, from which this is drawn.
Are we at war, General?
We are at war. Just as they created two Vietnams, two
Koreas, there could be a Colombia divided into two.
What is happening? Why isn’t there an effective military
response to armed insurrection?
In order to develop, the guerrilla needs three supports:
one political, another social and the third economic. At this
moment it has all of them. The political support it was
lacking, it obtained through the peace agreements. Move-
ments arose which weren’t aiming to integrate the guerrillas
into legal activity, but were simply their political projection,
not explicit but camouflaged. Each guerrilla organization has
its political movement, broad in some cases, narrow in
others.
Don’t you think that the political groups are one thing and
the guerrillas another? The confusion of these two is danger-
ous. The linking of the UP and the FARC has produced many
assassinations.
The violence of the so-called paramilitary groups comes
from the transparent relationship between political groups
and guerrilla groups. It wouldn’t have arisen if from the
beginning in the agreements the former were made respon-
sible for what the latter did.
Luis Carlos Galan led an anti-corruption faction out of the
party to found Nuevo Liberalismo. Even with the barriers
to third party candidates, he managed to win 10.9% of the
vote in the 1982 elections against the official Liberal
candidate, former President Alfonso L6pez Michelsen.
The anti-Turbay backlash certainly contributed to the
victory in that election of Conservative candidate Beli-
sario Betancur. He succeeded by appealing beyond the
party machinery to the people, particularly the urban
middle class. He spoke of reform, and was viewed as
making a serious effort to deal with the violence-notjust
political violence, but also criminal violence, which had
reached epidemic proportions in the cities by the early
1980s.
Betancur launched an audacious initiative for negoti-
ating peace with the guerrillas, and dedicated himself to
the Contadora Group working for peace in Central Amer-
ica. He paid less attention to political reforms at home and
had no substantial economic and social program with
which to back up his peace initiatives. He faced strong
opposition from within his own party: and, while a few
selected Liberals participated in his government, the rest
opposed him from their congressional majority and blocked
any significant reform.” The paramilitary Right, mean-
Some years back, General, the army had more initiative, it
confronted the guerrillas, it defeated them, it recovered
stolen arms. Nothing of that is seen today.
The army lost its capacity for combat, because it was
taken away. It was taken away at the very moment when
military justice was deprived of its function of judging public
order crimes…at the moment army commanders began to
face charges, when their hands were tied. The army lost the
protection of the state….The basic problem is that the army is
not being used as a military force. It is being used as a
preventive force, as a civic force. Not even as a police force,
because the police have more powers. A simple interrogation
carried out by a military authority has no legal validity. It is
not, as it should be, a force of repression.
Repression is a taboo word…
The function of the army with respect to subversion is
repression. But today you can’t shoot before you’re shot at.
The Statute for Defense of Democracy was left with no
backbone when the Supreme Court annulled the right of the
armed forces to carry out searches….We are not asking for a
licence to kill. But just to arrest, search, keep a detainee for
eight or ten days and carry out an interrogation…
Don’t you believe in a political solution to the problem of
subversion?
I don’t. The aim of these groups is subversive, that is the
seizure of power by arms to change a system and a society.
It is not insurgency, it is subversion….Insurgency corre-
sponds to political, economic and social problems. When
those problems disappear, so does insurgency. If new politi-
cal spaces and reforms are open, insurgency loses its reason
for being. Subversion, no. It accepts dialogue for purely
tactical reasons, to strengthen itself, but it never abandons its
objectives….Here, there are politicians who say that we must
enter into dialogue with the guerrillas. They are people who
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASwhile, drowned his peace initiative in blood by stepping
up the dirty war against guerrilla sympathizers.
B Y 1986, COLOMBIA’S POPULAR MOVEMENTS
had reached a new stage, qualitatively and quantita-
tively. A more educated population was less willing to be
manipulated. No longer would they put up with condi-
tions tolerated at the beginning of the 1960s. People were
organizing around their real needs and sought no media-
tion from the parties.
These movements brought people into political life in
an unprecedented way, forcing both the orthodox and
revolutionary Left to question the elitism of the past and
show greater respect for popular organizations and their
autonomy. In 1986 the country’s first independent labor
confederation, the United Confederation of Workers
(CUT), was formed, with the majority of the country’s
trade unions affiliated.
Perhaps more significant were the newer “civic”
movements, which brought people together on the basis
of interests shared by a local community, sector or
region-such as the lack of water, sewers or other munici-
pal services-rather than the traditional class-based trade
unionism. These movements view the fundamental contra-
FARC guerrillas: The only organized force with a vision
already accept defeat and who want to win their [the guerril-
las’] favor or that of political groups in certain regions for
electoral interests or for protection.
How to defend the country better, General?
We must recognize that there are insufficient troops to
protect the thousand municipalities. Besides, civil support to
the police is not allowed as it is not legal. That would create
armed self-defense or paramilitary groups, it is thought. We
are at war, that is forgotten…
And how do you defeat the guerrillas militarily? Is itpossible
within the institutional framework of a democratic system,
without recourse to a dictatorship, which the democrats, the
immense majority of the country, all reject?
diction in society less as that between capital and wage
labor (which has won some privileges) than between
capital and the excluded (unemployed, underemployed,
street vendors, etc.) who are denied the means to a
livelihood. Not concerned with the seizure of state power,
these movements attempt to build alternatives from be-
low, independent not only of the traditional parties, but
also of the orthodoxies of the Marxist Left and the various
strategies of armed struggle. But with hardly any time to
consolidate, these young and fragile movements soon
found themselves working in semi-clandestinity and
subjected to systematic violent repression.
While the worst of the 1970s sectarianism had dimin-
ished, the Left remained locked in debate over whether
the popular movements should seek reforms through
existing institutions, or a radical transformation of Co-
lombian society as a whole. The Left made two attempts
to work within the electoral system during the Betancur
administration. Most important was the Uni6n Patri6tica
(UP), a coalition of the Communist Party and several
small left parties, founded in 1985 by the FARC guerrillas
as a result of peace accords signed with Betancur. The
effort was principally intended to be a vehicle for the
guerrillas to enter the political arena. Making use of the
It is possible. But the nation has to make the firm decision
to confront subversion as an adversary, an enemy. It must be
defeated. And in this struggle, all institutions must take part;
the Supreme Court must take into account the reason of state,
the fact of a country in danger, and not abstract legal
considerations. If there is will on the part of the government,
will from the parties, will from the court and the judiciary,
will from parliament, the armed forces will have the will to
fight and win….They don’t have it now for lack of support.
Many officers say, Why should we get ourselves killed for
those who judge us without taking into account that we
contribute our dead?
General, the country is aware of that. But it won’t accept the
dirty war. It doesn’t want torture, disappearances. The
complicity of the army in these activities has been con-
demned. For a democrat, that is to be rejected.
That dirty war exists, but the army is not linked to it. It is
caused by private initiatives, due to the absence and weak-
ness of the state and also to the pain caused by the subversive
groups. An energetic state would make the dirty war unnec-
essary.
What do you call an energetic state?
A state which gives us the instruments to act. It must
create legislation which supports our operations. It must
create legislation which protects the army’s witnesses. Which
makes it possible to take special measures, to restrict freedom
at a given moment. I am not speaking of arbitrariness nor of
despotism, but rather of the institutional framework adequate
for a war situation.
If this doesn’t happen what will?
A very serious power vacuum. Nothing will remain as an
alternative, neither one of the parties, nor the church, nor, as
people have come to think, the armed forces. Only subver-
sion. It is the only organized force with a vision.
