Abstract
This chapter analyzes the context of production of the historical memory initiative developed under Law No. 975 of 2005. By reviewing the tensions caused by the forming of the Historical Memory Group, this chapter looks at both the perceptions of this group’s members and researchers regarding the scope of their work, and the points of criticism and debate that were raised among victims’ organizations over the involvement of such researchers in a state-guided memory policy in which many victims do not see themselves represented.
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Notes
- 1.
Under the direction of historian Gonzalo Sánchez, the GMH team was formed by, among others, anthropologist María Victoria Uribe, political scientist Iván Orozco, and social worker Martha Nubia Bello, all of them widely renowned for their research experience on the subject of violence in Colombia.
- 2.
Historian Gonzalo Sánchez and several of the group’s researchers have underlined in various occasions that the leading “virtue” of the GMH lies in the fact that, because of its academic nature, its role is independent from the state.
- 3.
It should be noted that the mandate that guides the work of the GMH clearly differs from the scope of a truth commission. However, as will be shown below, that mandate also contains certain particularities typical of truth commissions, although in a conflict rather than post-conflict context.
- 4.
Historical testimony is that which, for example, is requested by historical truth commissions; judicial statements are testimony given in court upon request of a judge as part of legal proceedings; and biographical accounts are published or unpublished accounts requested by a publishing house or as the result of an individual undertaking.
- 5.
Law No. 975 establishes mechanisms that grant legal benefits—alternative sentences—for convicted paramilitaries in exchange for a full and truthful confession, the surrendering of properties, and the offering of apologies to the victims.
- 6.
In part, Mancuso’s statement contradicts the explanation given by the CNRR for the emergence of the AUCs. According to the CNRR, the AUCs are explained by the seizing of government institutions by private business more than as a result of a state strategy: “Paramilitary groups can be defined as armed groupings operating nationwide that, under the pretext of combating insurgent organizations, amassed territorial, institutional, and economic power, attacking and displacing defenseless communities and individuals whom they viewed as support bases for guerrillas, convinced that the resources used by the state under the rule of law were ineffective for combating insurgency or its social base.” For the CNRR, what distinguishes the AUCs from similar groups is “the gradual seizing of state institutions by private interests, starting from the local and as far up as the national level” (CNRR 2007a: 24–25).
- 7.
A spontaneous statement (in Spanish, versión libre) is a statement given in a judicial setting whereby the accused willingly confesses to his or her actions without being questioned or interrogated by the other party. In the Justice and Peace Act, it was the space given to those who applied for the benefits provided under that law in exchange for an account of the criminal actions perpetrated by them as part of their involvement in an illegal group.
- 8.
These mobilizations were promoted, in particular, by the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE). While MOVICE emerged simultaneously with the Justice and Peace Act as a mechanism for guaranteeing the rights of the victims, some of its members, including victims’ organizations such as the Association of Relatives of Detained-Disappeared (Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos, or ASFADDES), and the non-governmental organizations that are part of its support committee, such as the Popular Research and Education Center (Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular, or CINEP), the José Alvear Restrepo Group of Lawyers, the Colombian Commission of Jurists, and the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners, had a long history of fighting against impunity and advocating for the rights of victims of crimes committed by state agents.
- 9.
Yet, if the victims of forced disappearance, mass killings, or torture at the hands of the paramilitaries had indeed been guerrilla collaborators or supporters, would such crimes really be justified? In fact, several paramilitaries also justify their crimes by claiming their victims were drug dealers, rapists, or pimps, but does that make the perpetrators any less criminal?
- 10.
The due obedience argument, a common denominator in different dictatorial scenarios, also operates here under the perpetrator’s need to dissolve his responsibility in a collective entity and cover up his crimes with the idea of an enemy and a threat that are widespread and found throughout society. Due obedience entails accepting that there was in effect a process of desubjectivization resulting from the horrors of war or from membership in an armed group. In this sense, appealing to the “humanity” of each perpetrator, as Pilar Calveiro rightly observes, is not a way of absolving him, but of excluding him from the monstrous, from that indiscernible field that falsely thrusts him into the war machinery, to include him in the field of the judgeable (Calveiro 2006: 140).
- 11.
This is closely connected with the extrajudicial executions, that is, all those actions in which murdered civilians are passed off as guerrillas killed in combat by the army. These cases are popularly known by the military term “false positive.”
- 12.
This differential listening was clearly evidenced when paramilitary chiefs Salvatore Mancuso, Ernesto Báez, and Ramón Isaza appeared before the national congress. In that opportunity, a congress packed with senators, journalists, and politicians listened absorbed to the three paramilitaries. But when in late July 2007 it was the victims’ turn to be heard in congress, as they spoke they watched the senators leave the room one by one until it was nearly empty.
- 13.
This is evident in different justice and peace hearings, in which victims and some of their relatives have limited access to the perpetrator’s confession, as these audiences are normally carried out in departmental capitals, while the actions of paramilitary groups were carried out in rural areas and the victims and their families have no resources to travel. This is compounded by the constant threats against victims, or their murder, as noted above.
- 14.
In early 2007, on the day set to start giving his spontaneous statement, paramilitary chief Ramón Isaza said he had nothing to say about what had happened, maintaining that he was suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s and as a result had forgotten everything.
- 15.
In particular, the appointment of Ana Teresa Bernal Montañez, designated by the president of Colombia to represent civil society; of Patricia Buriticá Céspedes designated by the president of Colombia as civil society member; and of Régulo Madero Fernández as representative of victims’ organizations, prompted a huge debate and great discontent among civil society organizations and victims’ organizations.
- 16.
“The CNRR does not have judicial powers, as did, for example, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was authorized to grant amnesties. Under the Justice and Peace Act, the bodies that are competent to administer justice are the Justice and Peace Unit of the Office of the Public Prosecutor and the higher judicial district courts. However, pursuant to the functions assigned to it by law, the CNRR, in close collaboration with the Attorney General for Justice and Peace and the Ombudsperson’s Justice and Peace Unit, must guarantee the participation of the victims in judicial proceedings; secondly, it must issue recommendations for the most appropriate use of the resources of the Victims’ Reparation Fund; and lastly, it must support and guide the regional commissions for the restitution of property, which shall address the demands of the victims whose property has been misappropriated and guide them toward the corresponding judicial instances” (Comisión Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (CNRR) [National Commission For Reparation and Reconciliation] 2006). Nonetheless, even though guaranteeing the participation of the victims in judicial proceedings is among the functions of the CNRR, such participation is limited by the same law, which assigns a secondary role to the victims in the investigation of the facts.
- 17.
The Manuel Cepeda Vargas Foundation, among other organizations, called a meeting of Historical Memory Group (GMH) researchers and victims’ organizations to discuss the effects on the victims’ organizations of these researchers’ participation in a group that supported the transition policy proposed by the Colombian government. Although the spaces of dialogue took place in particular over the course of the year 2010, there are still mixed opinions within the victims’ movements. Some victims are upset by Vice President Francisco Santos’ heading the protocol ceremonies in which GMH reports are presented, but at the same time see the researchers’ commitment as commendable. Others view the presentation of the GMH reports as a “dialogue of lunatics” to the extent that it entails a performance involving government actors who are in some way responsible for the very acts of violence described in the reports (Interview with M.D., 2010).
- 18.
The methodology chosen by the GMH included the selection of emblematic cases. This methodology will be examined later on in the book.
- 19.
In this sense, see, for example, the article “El fin de la Academia,” by journalist María Jimena Dussán (Semana, July 18, 2009).
- 20.
In this regard, Iván Cepeda states that in this type of spaces, “there are a number of persons and institutions, as in any great political debate, who believe it is possible to generate, within the framework of the institutions themselves, currents of opinion favorable to justice and truth processes, and I think these positions are valid—these are valid positions, but not others that play a more conscious role in developing the ideological arguments of a political project” (Interview with I. C., 2010).
- 21.
In this regards, see the interview with Gonzalo Sánchez, “No somos comisión de verdad” (El Espectador, September 26, 2009).
- 22.
For example, there is a previous report on the Trujillo case issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Commission for the Clarification of the Violent Events of Trujillo, 1995). In the case of the La Rochela mass killing, there is a judgment by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), where it rules against the state. In its judgment, the IACHR, among other things, finds that the Colombian government must carry out several victim reparation actions, including symbolic reparation. The report issued by the GMH is actually meant as a form of symbolic reparation and thus part of the enforcement of the IACHR’s ruling.
- 23.
In this regard, see “No somos comisión de verdad” (El Espectador, September 26, 2009).
- 24.
Speech delivered by Vice President Francisco Santos at Museo Nacional de Colombia on occasion of the public launching of the report on the El Salado mass killing (Bogotá, September 2009).
- 25.
According to the report, “The mass killing of El Salado questions not only the state’s omission, but its actions as well. Omission in the unfolding of the events, as the failure of police and military forces to prevent or neutralize the actions of the paramilitary is inexplicable. A mass killing that went on for five days and engaged 450 paramilitaries, of which only 15 were captured a week after the massacre. More serious still is the fact that the paramilitaries killed five more people on February 21, when marine forces had been stationed in the town since February 19. An ethical question is also raised by the fact that a territory was left without military protection because the troops were called on an operation to recover stolen cattle, an inadmissible fact because marines cannot perform police duties in a context of war without the support or coordination of the national police. But the responsibility is not only with that force. The Historical memory Group deems that it is necessary to ethically question the state for its responsibility in allowing the CONVIVIR watch groups to fall into the hands of paramilitaries, and the regional co-opting of the state through the organic connection between the regional elites and the paramilitary groups” (Comisión Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (CNRR) [National Commission For Reparation and Reconciliation] 2009: 254–255). However, the debate in the media focused on the actions of the process of reconstruction of the municipality; that is, in the unfulfilled promise of Vice President Francisco Santos. The El Salado reconstruction campaign, which included the reconciliation wristbands, was led by Fundación Semana, and supported by, among others, Fundación Carvajal, the Carulla supermarket chain, the corporate group Fundación Éxito, and the company Coltabaco, as well as by the National Commission on Reparation and Reconciliation, the International Organization for Migration, and Fundación Red de Desarrollo y Paz de los Montes de María. More information on the campaign is available at http://www.ytuqueestashaciendoporcolombia.com/. As can be observed, the “spirit” of the campaign not only embodies the logic of corporate social responsibility but also of a post-conflict scenario, something that is also evident in the very idea of “reconciliation wristbands.” In the end, any discussion of the state’s responsibility both in the deaths and in the process of reparation is brushed aside.
- 26.
The limit with respect to making public the testimonies of violence, in particular those referring to sexual violence, and the ethical and political dilemmas this entails, as well as the limits placed on listening, are examined by the GMH in the Bahía Portete report (Comisión Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (CNRR) [National Commission For Reparation and Reconciliation] 2010).
- 27.
Saunders takes up an idea posited by Ewick and Silbey (1995) to illustrate how these accounts emerge as subversive, to the extent that they are accounts “that ‘do not aggregate to the general, do not collect particulars as examples of a common phenomenon or rule’, and that ‘recount particular experiences as rooted in and part of an encompassing cultural, material, and political world that extends beyond the local’,” and how they are constituted in opposition to the narratives that can be useful for sustaining hegemonic tales, as they “not only reproduce existing ideologies and relations of power, but function as mechanisms of social control, organize experience into a coherent ideology that resists challenge, and ‘conceal the social organization of their own production and plausibility’” (Saunders 2008: 62).
- 28.
In its plan, the CNRR’s Historical Memory Group notes, “In Colombia, the start date for the internal armed conflict is a subject of enormous controversy, not just academic, but political as well. When does it start? In 1991, with the institutional shift undoubtedly caused by the Constitution, viewed as a peace accord with the insurgents, or at least with a significant part of them? With the so-called Palace of Justice holocaust in 1985? With the emergence of the contemporary guerrilla forces in 1964? Or in 1948, a turning point in the history of twentieth century Colombia? Whatever date is chosen, putting a date on the origins of the conflict in Colombia in itself entails insinuating responsibilities, it entails including some and excluding others. It entails waging the first battle for memory” (Comisión Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (CNRR) [National Commission For Reparation and Reconciliation] 2007c: 2).
- 29.
That is how, for example, Saunders’ observations of the South African case can be understood: “[W]hile victims of human rights violations who participated in the TRC appreciated the disclosure of truth, the opportunity to tell their story, and the chance to confront perpetrators, many also felt as if they had been re-traumatized by the experience and underwent a ‘significant deterioration of overall physical and psychological health after testifying’.” They “felt that the TRC had broken its promises in regard to reparations, that this failure was an ‘act of disrespect, breach of trust, and exploitation’, that they had been rendered vulnerable by testifying in public and having their words and experience appropriated by the Commission and other ‘experts’ for other purposes; that perpetrators often did not tell the truth and remained arrogant and unremorseful, and that the TRC had contributed to their trauma by failing to provide either follow-up information on their cases or psychological counseling services after they had testified” (Saunders 2008: 61–62).
- 30.
All the reports were produced with funding either from international organizations or state institutions.
- 31.
Various victims rejected the invitation of the CNRR and the GMH to work with them in the drafting of the reports. One notable case is that of the Association of Humanitarian Zones and Biodiversity Zones of Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó, which sent a letter to the chairman of the CNRR expressing its rejection of the Commission’s interest in conducting a memory research project in these areas.
- 32.
While, for example, the El Salado report observes that “the narratives of contemporary conflict must unavoidably include what was hidden, that is, the point of view, the memory of the victims” (Comisión Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (CNRR) [National Commission For Reparation and Reconciliation] 2009: 8), and while this idea can be raised as an ethical imperative, it does not necessarily take into account the power/marginalization order that may affect the transition into the public, of memories that are on the margin. The premises of “giving voice,” “creating scenarios for listening to the other,” and “putting what happened into words,” however commendable, are not an end in themselves and are not without ethical or political limits.
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Aranguren Romero, J.P. (2017). Voice, Testimony, Truth, and Memory. In: Managing Testimony and Administrating Victims. Memory Politics and Transitional Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45895-3_3
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