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IWGIA - THE INDIGENOUS WORLD - 2010
farming are due to the “evil effects” of NGOs and movements of the extreme Left, who have poisoned the minds of the peasant farmers. In line with this vision of agrarian issues, President Uribe proposes the central focus of his policy as being to defeat the guerrillas (democratic security), which is an essential condition for re-establishing investment confidence and for implementing an efficient agrarian policy in the country. Uribe is thus capitalising on the growing unpopularity of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) which, after half a century of struggle, has become trapped by the money it obtains from growing and marketing illicit drugs, used to fund its actions. A landowning class that is “supportive of and accustomed to combining all forms of struggle” (Alejandro Reyes)3 is also becoming stronger and, in alliance with the drugs cartels and their paramilitary forces, has embarked on a dirty war the end of which is not yet in sight. After huge investments (6.5% of GDP in 2009, plus North American resources from the Plan Colombia), Colombia’s military forces now number some half a million (its army is bigger than that of Brazil). And yet the FARC and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) are far from being defeated. According to a report from the Arco Iris Corporation, although Uribe’s democratic security policy has managed to dismantle the paramilitary’s machine of terror (the Colombian Self-Defence Units/ Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC), it may now suffer a setback due to the emergence of the so-called BACRIM criminal gangs which, with almost 6,000 members, are threatening the governability of some 246 municipalities in which they are involved in violent or illegal actions. The report notes that, as of the end of 2009, after seven years of the most costly military operation in Colombia’s history, the internal war is gaining fresh sustenance in a number of regions of the country, setting off alarm bells and putting the effectiveness of President Uribe’s democratic security policy at risk.4 This report also supports the hypothesis given in IWGIA Report No. 2 on the Colombian Pacific5 that the internal war being fought in the country is also aimed at removing the indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations from their territories. If this is the case, the uprooting being suffered by these peoples in the armed conflict is not simply “collateral damage”. It is the result of a regional intervention policy designed by legal and