Top Quotes: “Evil Hour in Colombia” -Forrest Hylton

Background: I’m going to Colombia for Thanksgiving this year (!) and wanted to learn more about the country’s history. I’ve heard many vague things over the years about the country having a violent past, civil wars, etc. but wanted to get some actual knowledge before I land. This book was super dense and full of academic words — seems to be written for History PhD students — so it was hard to get through and I might suggest finding a more “user-friendly” book if you’re interested in Colombia. The main takeaway for me was that Colombia’s lack of a successful populist movement which kept conditions terrible for common people plus its mountainous and difficult to traverse geography which made it difficult for the central government to control combined with other forces like high unemployment to create its violent history.

Intro

“According to the Colombian constitution of 1991, one of the most progressive in the world, indigenous peoples have rights to collective management of land and political as well as cultural self-determination through cells of local government.”

“In the late ’90s, the FARC and ELN influenced politics in over 40% of frontier municipos.”

“State terror has provided the ‘oxygen’ without which insurgent terror ‘can not combust for very long.’”

“The more the U.S. government has backed the state against these insurgencies, the powerful the right wing state has become.”

“Poor transit and geographic isolation have had a critical shaping effect on the ruling groups…centralized military control was inherently difficult.”

The 1800s

“The social base of coffee agriculture in the late 1800s — if still highly unequal — offered tenants and shareholders hope of ownership and control of production — a contrast from Brazil and Guatemala where large plantations were worked by on indebted peasants or seasonal wage workers. However, it could not meet those expectations, and it crumbled in the face of widespread radical-popular mobilization.”

Early 1900s

“The failure to make a social revolution [like those that had occurred in other Latin American countries] had made violence the constant universal and omnipresent core of public life.”

1930s-1940s

“Landlords defeated tenants and sharecroppers and industrialists defeated organized labor. Unlike other countries in the region, neither urban populism nor agrarian social democracy lasted as a national force.”

“In the 1940s, there was a menacing background of killings in towns as political polarization and landlord violence spread incrementally; leaders wanted to return Colombia to an idealized internal colonial totality in which subalterns knew their proper places.”

“300,000 people were killed and 2 million forcibly displaced during La Violencia (1946–1957).”

“Liberal-communist guerrillas responded with riots when a liberal leader in government (Jorge Gaitan) was assassinated. Conservative ‘las pajaros’ fought back violently — cutting out tongues and eyes. Pregnant women were disemboweled and fetuses destroyed, so new members of the opposite party would not be born.”

1957–1982

“Guerrilla insurgencies’ longevity is due to the exclusion of popular — particularly peasant — demands from the mainstream political system.”

“Reform-minded fractions of the elite — public works and urban remodeling to generate employment — were limited because of regional power based on commerce and landed wealth.”

“Intensified repression diminished state authority and created a climate in which Left insurgencies thrived, which in turn challenged government death squares to consolidate themselves as regional paramilitary forces. Homicide became the leading cause of death among males.”

1982–1990

“Demilitarization and a serious discussion of problems was proposed by President Betancur. But with US-funded counterinsurgency wars in Central America moving into critical phases, the international context discouraged a negotiated political solution to Colombia’s military conflict.”

“In the late 1980s, paramilitaries erased the Left from the self-risk map and began to acquire vast landholdings, chiefly through massacre and expropriation. They became ever more enmeshed in the cocaine business.”

1990s

“Lack of employment made the narcotics business the country’s main engine of job creation and kept guerrilla, as well as paramilitary, recruiting high.”

“Unlike beefed-up insurgencies, cocaine mafias had the capacity to infiltrate the two political parties, the police, the military, and intelligence agencies. Through urban terrorism and assassination of leading judges and politicians, they brought the national government to its knees.”

“The 1991 Constitution’s rigid provisions for decentralization strengthened the power of local party bosses. This increased political corruption drove the country into fiscal deficit.”

“Coca became the only crop profitable enough to overcome the high transport costs that resulted from the lack of infrastructure.”

“The FARC took up tasks the state had failed to perform in remote areas — infrastructure like roads and irrigation and services like water, health care, and education.”

“Since they refused to enter the cocaine business, the ELN developed a dependence on kidnapping.”

“Many uneducated young women in rural areas preferred joining the guerrillas to displacement, unemployment, or prostitution.”

“Since a larger guerrilla threat, whether real or perceived, meant a larger military budget, minimal regulatory oversight, and insulation from public scrutiny, the army was the chief beneficiary of its own ineffectiveness.”

1998–2002

“Much of the population was convinced that the country’s problem was insecurity — kidnapping, drug trafficking, extortion, terrorism. The insurgencies were held responsible and this helped the rise of a ‘strong-hand’ ruler — Alvaro Uribe.”

“Under Clinton and Bush, Plan Colombia was designed to combat the explosion of narcotics production. Also at stake was control of Colombia’s potentially huge pool of future oil reserves. Colombia received aid far beyond any other government.”

“Plan Colombia succeeded in professionalizing the Armed Forces and fumigating large swaths of the countryside, but did not weaken the insurgencies or dent the narcotics business. The aid actually strengthened paramilitaries.”

“Plan Colombia caused widespread respiratory and skin infections, destroyed licit crops, and poisoned rivers and soils. DC and Bogota claimed unprecedented success because planting had been cut by 30%. However, net production remained close to pre-plan levels. Fumigation was even done in national parks and areas where <1% of the surface area was covered by coca.”

“Fumigation is chemical warfare whose hidden objective is to get settlers and peasants out of their regions to prevent them from helping the subversion.”

2002–2005

“In Bogota, paramilitaries controlled prostitution rings and engaged in widespread kidnapping and contract killing — the very tactics against which they were supposed to be fighting — in order to expand their holdings. Stores, taxi drivers, and mechanics paid taxes to paramilitaries. Curfew went into effect after 9pm and women were prohibited from wearing miniskirts or revealing cleavage.”

“EU human rights restrictions on aid led to Plan Patriota, which was to drive the FARC out of their headland and extradite leaders.”

“15 million hectares of rainforest were destroyed and planted with coca, 75 to 100 million for cattle. Paramilitaries grabbed 5 million hectares of land between 1997 and 2003, displacing many.”

2005–2006

“Uribe’s democratic security policies — integrating civilians into repressive branches of the state in order to defeat insurgencies and extend central government authority — are hailed as a model for counterinsurgency. But peace communities were displaced as neutrality was considered unacceptable and FARC continued to overrun towns.”

“Colombia’s ‘success’ was used as a template for the invasion of Iraq — the need for the government to clear Iraqi territories of insurgencies and hold them against insurgent threat.”