In Latin America, some political parties and former guerrilla movements have been able to positively take roots in their respective country while other still struggle to have a respectable place within their own. This is the case particularly for the FARC, for instance. On the other hand, the FMLN and the FSLN are well accepted as political parties and are respected in the political arena. Indeed, these parties won elections in their respective countries. Typically, the FMLN produced a president in 2009, with the election of Mauricio Funes. But why has the FARC difficulties to be accepted by the Colombian society? Is its legacy not valuable anymore? Has the Colombian conflict lasted for too many years? Did its strategy tire the population?
Similarities and
differences
There are three
important political parties in Latin America that are coming from former
guerrilla movements. Historically, the most known but maybe forgotten in the
world today is the Nicaraguan Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional,
or FSLN. The others are the Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional
in El Salvador, or FMLN, and the well-known nowadays Fuerza Alternativa
Revolucionaria del Común or formerly Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia, known as FARC in Colombia.
Besides the fact
that they were former guerrilla movements, there are similarities and
differences regarding their rise to power in their respective countries. There
are two possibilities. Either by forces of circumstances, or by the conclusion
of peace treaties. The first case concerns the FSLN, and the second case, the
FMLN and the FARC. Indeed, circumstances have made that the FSLN came to power
by overthrowing the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. In El Salvador and
Colombia, peace treaties arose from the fact that it was impossible end a
conflict that lasted for a long time.
Moreover, the
three guerrillas stem from ideologies that were nurtured by inequalities in
their countries. Each claim to belong to a communist wing because their
countries were in a situation of extremely inequal distribution of wealth, that
is, in land, resources, and income. This is particularly the case in El
Salvador and in Colombia.
In El Salvador
and in Colombia the distribution of the resources was absolutely inequal. In El
Salvador, 10% of the population possessed 80% of the country’s wealth. This was
approximately the same in Colombia. The consequences were that it created
tensions within the border of the countries. In Colombia, farmers created a
powerful movement whose claim was to reform the society under a communist
model. The result was the dislocation of various haciendas in different
parts of the country and whose actions were brutally condemned the terratenientes:
15,000 farmers where murdered between 1945 and 1948. However, the political
system was a democracy. Typically, in 1948, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a potential
left-wing president has been murdered, nobody knows by whom.
This was not the
case of El Salvador and Nicaragua. In El Salvador, the political system was a
dictatorship that lasted from the 1930s. The society was inequal and the
opposition was strongly controlled. Given the inequalities, an indigenous and
farmer rise has been brutally repressed: there were close to 30,000 deaths
among them. The 1970s saw the first organized left-wing movements with the
creation of the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación Farabundo Martí (FPL).
In Nicaragua, the FSLN succeeded in overthrowing the dynastical dictatorship of
the Somoza Family.
Acceptance
and not
The condition of
living under the dictatorships both in Nicaragua and El Salvador was calamitous.
There was a poor alphabetisation rate, tyranny and repression. Begin with
Nicaragua. The most notorious crime committed by Somoza García was the murder
of the general Augusto César Sandino who was a revolutionary leader in the
country. Anastasio Somoza García took the power in 1937. The general Sandino
has been murdered before he arrived at power when taken in prison. Apparently,
this has been ordered by the American ambassador at the time. This is the
origin of the movement’s name taken by the revolutionary movement forty years
later. Exactions happened quite a lot in the Somoza’s regimes and the Sandino’s
case was no exception. To keep its power, the regime built more and more
prisons to put opponents in there as the opposition increased. The symbol of
the regime’s oppression on population was the Guardia Nacional, the
national guard. It became, with the years, the family’s personal protection
corps who terrorised the population. After overthrowing the Somoza dynasty, the
FSLN came with a program which, under the conditions of living, was well
seductive. Between others there was an agrarian revolution, women emancipation
and suppression of the national guard.
The case of El
Salvador was quite the same. Strongmen were in power starting from the 1930s
and keep the resources for themselves. 2% of the population received the
revenues from almost all the lands. We have to know that the majority of the
revenues of the country came from the cultivation of coffee. When the price of
coffee in the markets dropped, the remaining of the farmers (who made the
majority of the population) cultivating this Cash Crop rose and this uprising has
been brutally repressed and has been known as La Matanza, the “Slaughter”. This
is an example of the situation that took place in El Salvador which helped the
birth of leftist movements in the country. Another example was the
election in 1972 which was mined with fraud for the benefit of the military-backed
Partido de Concertación Nacional. In the continuity different protestations
were brutally repressed like the one on 28 February 1977, after the fraudulent victory
of the President Molina. The armed forces opened fire and killed between 200
and 1500 people. These kinds of events gave rise to a civil war between the
governments and the FMLN until 1992 where a peace accord was signed between both
parties. Then, the FMLN has been accepted as a political party.
On another side,
the origins of the FARC in Colombia seemed legitimate. The division of
resources and income where absolutely inequal, like in El Salvador. However, Colombia
did not suffer any dictatorship at the time, but the situation gave rise to social
tensions. So why is the FARC not well accepted nowadays? We can say that the
organisation within the movements was not likeable in the mind of the public
opinion. Indeed, they recruited minors of age, smuggled hard drugs, killed
civilians, raped women and kidnapped people. Because of that, the movement has
been named as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union. Moreover,
the duration of the conflicts made that the public is now fed up. It is true
that it has lasted for more than fifty years.
Conclusion
We have seen
that the acceptance was made in El Salvador and in Nicaragua but not totally in
Colombia. It is true that the conflict in the latter has blazed the population by
its length and its organisation. But the conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua
was made in another context: dictatorship for the national side, and Cold War
in the international side. The latter side has maybe avoided a certain type of
funding: The USSR sent arms and support to the guerrilleros and not in the
case of the FARC who were to fund themselves.