Colombia’s armed conflict is a “finished topic”? Oh really?

There are numerous areas in which Colombia has improved in recent years such as the military weakening of guerillas. Yet serious problems still exist in the country in areas like suspected government corruption and links to paramilitary factions.

Thus, it has been nauseating to read the overly rosy picture of the country painted by Colombian presidential advisor José Obdulio Gaviria (image). An article in newsmagazine Cambio highlighted his visit to Washington last month in order to promote the policies of his widely popular boss, Alvaro Uribe. “The speech’s contents were neither the most strategic nor the most convenient” in light of the free trade debate, said the article.

Here are several excerpts (translated by me) from Gaviria’s controversial discourse:

The (armed) conflict is practically a finished topic…What we need to say is “we did not have a civil war, what we had was a terrorist threat that wasn’t faced”…

What we have said is that Colombia doesn’t have an internal armed conflict…Therefore, when the president says that “there’s no armed conflict” he means that the elements which define armed conflict don’t exist…

In Colombia all the conditions exist so that by 2010 the guerillas will cease to be…

Paramilitaries do not exist today…That terrible night is over…

The “Black Eagles” [ed. criminal group consisting in part by ex-paramilitaries] are a political tool used against the government…created to give the appearance of threats when they are convenient.

Sadly it appears that such a close member of Uribe's administration has been afflicted with foot-in-mouth syndrome. Gaviria had previously deemed as “a nuisance” international mediators seeking a peace agreement in Colombia, while in March he suggested that an anti-violence rally had been organized by guerillas.

Image- El Espectador

Sources (English)- Wikipedia, Plan Colombia and Beyond, The Latin Americanist, Reuters

Sources (Spanish)- Cambio