THE CURSE OF THE BORDER

ARAUCA

THE CURSE OF THE BORDER

A horror movie title…

OMAR COLMENARES TRUJILLO

The Department of Arauca, is one of the most extensive of the Colombian territory, has an average temperature of 30 ° C. It limits by the north and by the east with Venezuela; to the south with the departments of Casanare and Vichada; and for the west with the department of Boyacá.

Arauca is the capital municipality of the department of Arauca in Colombia. Its full name is Villa de Santa Bárbara de Arauca (currently not used) and is located on the south bank of the river of the same name. It borders the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the north, with which it is connected by the José Antonio Páez International Bridge and communicates by land to the center of Colombia through the Libertadores Route that joins the cities of Caracas and Bogotá.

The department includes three major sub-regions: the piedmont, the jungle and the savannah.

Hydrography: Arauca River, Casanare, Meta and large pipes.

Economy: It is based on its oil wealth. In 1983, the Caño Limón well was discovered. The soils of the region have shown good conditions for the cultivation of cocoa, bananas, cassava, rice and fruits, as well as industrialized crops such as African palm, cotton, sorghum, soybeans and sesame seeds. Livestock is another important item in the economy of the department.

In this opportunity, I will address, from the once existing policy of democratic security, to perhaps demonstrate the cause, the causes of a peace that never arrived in this region. that the peace process with the FARC was perhaps a trigger for violence in this forgotten and isolated region of Colombia.

THE ETERNAL CURSE

Arauca is a department that due to its geographical condition and the wealth of economic resources it offers, has historically been a geostrategic region for armed and unarmed, legal and illegal actors.

From its physical-environmental characteristics, the importance variety of energy and natural resources. The plain has large areas of natural pastures suitable for livestock and vegetation of floodplain savanna. The foothills and mountains, meanwhile, are fertile lands for agricultural production, used today by guerrillas and paramilitaries to plant and control crops for illicit use. It also has important water resources to be surrounded by the Arauca, Casanare and Meta rivers and be connected to the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy (CEC, 2003), which despite its intrinsic benefits, have been at the mercy of the weak state presence .

In addition to the above, what characterizes this department at a national level is its wealth of energy resources, particularly its oil wells, which lie mostly in the area located between the Sarare region and the Plain. Since its discovery, these natural resources have been exploited, without rigorous state control, by national and international oil companies. This situation has led to the economy of the department having been centralized in oil production at the expense of the native population, its territory and the environment, in which it has not been invested in proportion to the high yields of the exploitation of the hydrocarbons.

WAR FOR TERRITORIAL CONTROL

Due to the geostrategic importance of the department, Arauca has been a territory of constant dispute of economic and political power over territorial control and land tenure. At first, colonization, especially in the foothills, was led by the State through the former Caja Agraria in the early years and by the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform (INCORA) from 1962 to the 1980s.

Despite the fact that colonization was promoted by the State, upon arrival, the settlers did not find the necessary state support, nor the development of infrastructure or living conditions that would allow an adequate settlement of the population. Faced with the precariousness of institutional and infrastructure conditions, the settlers "made themselves into a land, made it productive, without schools, without health posts and above all without roads" (CNAI, 2012-a). This meant that about twenty-five thousand people would be "trapped in their dream of having a fnca, but without communication possibilities" (CNAI, 2012-a).

PETROLEUM AND NARCOTRAFFIC

The discovery of the oil well Caño Limón in Arauquita in the eighties, would mark the beginning of oil exploration in the department. The operation of the field was in charge of the American multinational Occidental Petroleum (OXY), which was linked through the Cravo Norte partnership contract with the Colombian oil company Ecopetrol. From 198362 began the continuous extraction of crude oil from the region (Observatory DDHH and DIH, 2008 and Alcaldía Municipal de Arauca, 2011) and as a consequence of its exponential growth, during the last two decades, Arauca has supported its economy on the industry extractive oil, which constitutes 61% of the gross domestic product (Gobernación de Arauca, 2012).

However, this economy of "distraction" has not generated the productive linkages necessary for the construction of an endogenous economy that catalyzes opportunities for the new generations of Araucanians. On the contrary, when generating internal conflicts and a lack of opportunities, great budgetary efforts have been necessary to provide them with State services (Governación de Arauca, 2012, page 13). A clear example of this is presented in the municipality of Arauquita, precisely where the Caño Limón deposit is located63. Due to the great power of this legal economy, this municipality has faced members of the military forces that are sent to protect oil complexes such as Caño Limón, and guerrilla groups that attempt against the oil infrastructure as retaliation against the oil companies that do not yield to extortion.

The huge royalties that oil exploitation has left have not been allocated by government authorities to social development and infrastructure plans, investment in agricultural production projects and training to improve rural and livestock practices, among others, that seek to effectively guarantee the rights of farmers. the population.

The oil wealth has not translated into improvements in the living conditions of the Araucanians, at least in proportion to the wealth generated by oil exploitation. In effect, the oil complex was increasing territories in a massive way and its growth was simultaneous to the incursion of the illegal armed groups that sought to benefit from the profits, for which they began to demand "vaccines" and extortions.

THE ABSENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW

The historical political centralization of the Colombian State has made the border condition of the department of Arauca one of the factors that has contributed to its weak institutionality and the configuration of its political structures, which prevents the guarantee of social, political and social rights. of its inhabitants. Its history of late colonization, driven by the State itself, led this department to develop an economic dynamic marked by the oil industry and the exchange with Venezuela .

The abandonment of the social State of law has then translated into the situation of poverty and social inequality of its inhabitants, which, according to the 2005 census, places the department at a multidimensional poverty rate of 79% (DANE, 2005). Despite having one of the most important oil complexes in the country.

Revenues from hydrocarbon royalties have not changed these parameters or promoted the state presence in the area, on the contrary, "pro-oil development" has brought with it a persistent situation of human rights violation and institutional weakness (Social Organizations of the Center East 2012, November 21, 14 years after the massacre of the Cabuya, in Tame-Arauca, recovered on April 2, 2014). In fact, structural poverty has been deepened, among other reasons, by the incessant violence among all the actors of the armed conflict, being particularly dramatic the situation in the Sarare region (Human Rights Observatory and IHL, 2013, DANE 2005 and CNMH, 2013).

HISTORY OF AN ENDLESS WAR

For more than three decades, the department of Arauca has been the scene of the growing violence, both of the armed conflict and of that product of sociopolitical and economic interests that have hit the country as a whole. This violence, although constant and latent, has not been the same in time, since it has been mutating depending on the dynamics, interests and strategies of the armed conflict. For this reason, the recount of the manifestations of the violence in Arauca will be made from its current dynamics, taking as reference the year 1980, until 2013. These manifestations will be analyzed from four periods66, which are based on the changes in the public policies of attention to forced displacement in Colombia and the milestones of the internal armed conflict.

DISCOVERY OF OIL (1980-1988).

In the decade of the eighties, the National Liberation Army (ELN), through the so-called Domingo Laín Front, was the guerrilla group with the greatest presence in the area, a product of the capitalization of the deep social discontent generated by the directed colonization. Its strong presence coincided with the discovery of important oil deposits in the area and the beginning of oil exploitation through the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline, which at that time was the most important in the country (Observatorio DDHH y DIH, 2002) . One of the main objectives of the ELN in the department was to benefit from the oil economy, positioning itself along the Caño Limón pipeline that crosses three of the departments bordering Venezuela.

For its part, in the decade of the eighties, the presence of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the department was incipient and exploratory in nature. The incursion of this guerrilla group in Arauca began by strategic action north of the eastern cordillera with the capture of Fortul in 1980. Although in this period the FARC did not manage to position itself territorially towards the border of the Arauca River, its incursion into This geostrategic zone allowed them to later consolidate and control the foothills (Observatorio DDHH y DIH, 2002). During this period, both the ELN and the FARC took advantage of the territories of the Cocuy National Natural Park as a resting, replenishing and hiding area (Observatorio DDHH y DIH, 2002-a).

TERRITORIAL CONTROL (1989-1996)

Beginning in the 1990s, the FARC strengthened militarily through the Frente 10, also known as the Guadalupe Salcedo Bloc, consolidating its power by controlling the eastern cordillera corridor from Ecuador to Venezuela. The ELN, on the other hand, maintained an important presence in the region, which continued to be directed, mainly, to the attack on the oil infrastructure. This situation produced an increasing militarization of the area by the State, which brought with it an increase in armed actions among all the actors of the armed conflict, in the midst of which the civilian population was locked up and unprotected.

The dispute over territorial control between the guerrillas of the FARC and the ELN, characteristic of this period, contributed enormously to the escalation of the armed actions. Added to this was the occurrence of paramilitary actions associated with the dirty war dynamics that were being lived in the country at that time without the existence of paramilitary groups based in the territory. Evidence of the above is "the assassinations of civilians and left-wing activists [continued] throughout the entire decade of the 1990s" (Observatory Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, 2002), which intensified in the following period.

PARAMILITARISM (1997-2004)

Facing a strengthened FARC and a significant presence of the ELN, the paramilitary incursion in Arauca took place in 2001 with the creation of the Vencedores de Arauca Bloc (BVA) of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), led by Miguel Ángel Mejía Múnera, alias El Mellizo, alias Rubén and alias Cúcuta (Verdad Abierta, 2012, February 8, The delays in the investigation against Julio Acosta Bernal). The paramilitary incursion, which occurred from the department of Casanare through the municipalities of Tame, Cravo Norte and Puerto Rondón, came to "determine the new scenario of the conflict" (Observatory Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, 2002). The resurgence of the territorial dispute after the introduction of a new armed actor resulted in an escalation of attacks against the civilian population.

The BVA, led by the well-known drug traffickers known as Los Mellizos70 and whose men were mostly formed in the Casanare71 by the Centauros Bloc (Corte, 2012), entered Arauca with the objective of taking the profits of the economy from the guerrillas. oil and drug trafficking (Superior Court of the Judicial District of Bogotá, 2012). Its strategy focused on controlling the department from the mountain range of the piedmont, in the municipality of Tame, by the route that connects the capital of the department and thus be able to control municipalities of oil production and border crossings. In this way, the inhabitants of the region remember that the paramilitary objective of the ACCU (Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá) was dual, and for that they allied themselves with narcos: controlling the main economic routes internally and the connection route with Venezuela externally.

On the occasion of the violent paramilitary incursion from the southwest of the department and the increasing militarization of the border by the public force, the guerrilla groups began to withdraw to border areas on the Arauca river bed. In this way, the guerrillas retreated mainly in Saravena and Arauquita, where they had greater control over the Araucanian territory, as well as in La Victoria and El Amparo in Venezuelan territory. However, the paramilitary action managed to expand towards the north of the department and its fronts penetrated and came to have a presence in the Alto Apure area in Venezuelan territory.

The paramilitary plan with which it aspired to conquer the so-called Route of the Liberators, which connects the center of the country with the Venezuelan border, was marked with blood and terror (IHR Court, 2012 and Joel Sierra Human Rights Foundation, 2003). Indeed, as of the decade of 200073, the BVA, like other structures of the AUC, executed systematic and massive massacres in villages of the municipality of Tame such as La Cabuya, Matal de Flor Amarillo, Piñalito, Cravo Charro, Caño Seco and Caracoles , 74 among others. The massacres, accompanied by other repertoires of violence75, "had one objective: to attack all those persons designated as alleged members of the guerrilla and their families, journalists, informants of the authorities, unionized teachers, officials, businessmen, cattlemen and owners of large tracts of land "(Verdad Abierta, 2013, October 18, The terror that planted the Vencedores Block in Arauca).

PARAMILITARY TRUCE

The beginning of this period is marked by the process of demobilization of the paramilitaries of the AUC, within which the BVA78 Block was included in the framework of the so-called Justice and Peace Law (Diario Ofcial, No. 45.980, 2005, 25 de July, Law 975 of 2005, "Whereby provisions are issued for the reinstatement of members of armed groups organized outside the law, that contribute effectively to the achievement of national peace and other provisions are issued for humanitarian agreements" ). Following the paramilitary demobilization, the guerrillas of the FARC and the ELN mutually declared war for control of the territories and the parapolitical alliances that the AUC had abandoned in the region (CNAI, 2012). In addition, the two guerrilla groups had a presence in Arauquita when new oil wells were found, a situation that triggered a conflict over the control of company revenues (MOE CNAI, 2010).

THE SUCCESS OF DEMOCRATIC SECURITY.

From the second half of the government of President Pastrana, the state presence on the border with Venezuela began to increase significantly with the development of an inter-institutional offensive that aimed to regain control of the state over the department of Arauca and its municipalities, whose The budget and policies were co-administered by the ELN guerrillas.

This offensive is accompanied by the strengthening of the military police device available in the department with two primary objectives, to increase control of the roads-there were at the moment almost under the absolute control of the illegal groups-and to neutralize any war action against the pipeline. lemon coveñas that until then had suffered almost 500 attacks, with a catastrophic environmental and economic impact for that region.

The strengthening of the public force in Arauca was given by the military cooperation of the United States that in the framework of the global war on terrorism assigned at least US $ 100 million for the equipment of the brigade XVIII and deployment of carabineros mobile squads, thus strengthening the device assigned to the protection of the oil pipeline that connects one of the oil fields of Colombia with the export port located in the Caribbean.

The plan for Arauca begins to yield results at the end of the Pastrana government and the progressive recovery of the institutional space gives rise to the fact that, once the mandate of President Uribe was inaugurated, he deepens his work in this area; This is how the public force is dedicated to regain absolute control of the urban areas of the Arauca, Arauquita and Saravena populations, contributing in turn to broaden the range of action of the state control agencies and the judicial system, blocking maximum funding of illegal groups with official budgets.

In that order of ideas, the government decides to strengthen the actions in that region with the creation of a rehabilitation and consolidation zone defined as a geographical area affected by actions of illegal armed groups, in order to guarantee institutional stability, re-establish order constitutional, the integrity of the national territory and the protection of the civilian population, it is necessary to apply one or more exceptional measures.

This denomination for the territory of Arauca sought to guarantee a preponderant participation of the central government in the administration of the department and the municipalities through military authorities, when in this way a definitive blow is formed to the corruption networks built among local public officials. and illegal armed groups.

The Ministry of Defense gave continuity to the programs launched by the previous government and in the rural areas of this department were placed mobile squadrons of carabineros- police forces specialized in the control of rural areas- at least three platoons were deployed. peasant soldiers in what can be called the prime envion government for the recovery of territorial control in the framework of democratic security policy.

The Constitutional Court subsequently declared unconstitutional the decree regulating the operation of the rehabilitation and consolidation zones, sustaining the strategies implemented by the previous government began to give immediate results, ratifying that the key variables to recover Arauca were the decrease in access to the public budget by the guerrilla organizations and the sustained presence of military and police units in the areas of action, the first results proved it.

The attacks against the pipeline began to show a dramatic reduction; In a biannual review we can see a decrease of at least 50 percent between the last two governments of Pastrana and the first two years of the Uribe government, going from 89 attacks in the period 2000-2001 to 43 in 2002- 2003.

However, the intervention plan in Arauca is not repeated in the same way throughout the border, several areas did not allow it to do so, firstly, the serious situation in Araucania was not replicated in the same proportion in the other departments or did not have the same visibility, as well as limited availability of budgetary and military resources.

The combination of strategies in development from the Pastrana government with the democratic security policy allowed the government of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez to take the initiative away from the guerrilla groups in this department in just two years, restricting his actions progressively to acts isolated terrorists.

This progress was based on a 1994 percent increase in military operations in the department during the first two years of the Uribe government compared to the last two years of the previous mandate, which represent the fulfillment in the field of the government's objective to develop sustained operations. at the time that they did not give the guerrilla forces the possibility of reorganizing or regrouping.

The summation of the increase of the state military initiative, the location of Emcar territorial control forces and soldiers of my people and the judicial and intelligence offensive against the sources of guerrilla financing, ended up putting the indicators in favor of the state and locating the guerrillas of the ELN through a path of no return, by reducing its capacity for action to the minimum, so much so that some areas were absorbed by the FARC and in others they entered into confrontation with that subvertion organization.

In the early hours of October 21, 2003, about 31 public officials were captured in the department of Arauca, apparently because they formed a support network for the ELN service, in which the former government secretary of the current Governor Ricardo Alvarado Bestene stands out. , Mercedes Rincón Espinel, as well as Edna Benítez, former Departmental Secretary, Ana Emma Mojica, ex-manager of Enelar. And the president of the departmental assembly at that time, Ramón del Carmen Garcés for links with the ELN and allocate resources through contractors to these illegal groups.

The impact of the strategy against the ELN is of such magnitude that the public force was able to relocate resources in the offensive against the FARC in this department, without this meaning a space for the ELENO rearrangement. In fact, for this organization the loss of Arauca meant the reduction of its actions to a historical minimum, by mid-2004 the ELN had lost one of its main sources of financing the Araucan oil royalties.

The need that the state faced to combat a force that increased its presence in this border department, from the annexation of armed structures of the ELN and the administration of drug trafficking routes to Venezuela, meant that, in addition to the recovery of the territory, the security forces keep the siege on the structures of the Farc, minimizing the spaces available for rest, regrouping and coordination of offensives. The above definitely forced the guerrilla group to move their rear to Venezuelan territory, in the Apure state, where camps were located very close to the border, a proof of this is the murder of Venezuelan civilians and military members of the PDVSA commission in 2004 .

Regarding the pipeline's area, the general armed offensive of the illegal armed groups decreased considerably. In the case of sabotage, a reduction was achieved in all acts except those against the energy infrastructure that increased in an atypical manner, during the two years of the great government offensive, these acts ended up being an alternative for the guerrilla groups to obstruct the production and transport of oil, and send contradictory signals to the civilian population.

In 2004 and 2005 11 and 14 power towers of ISA were demolished and between 10 and 13 of ENELAR, (Arauca Energy Company)  according to the same ISA; for 2007 the sabotage indicators reached 0.

Armed strikes and checkpoints are two variables that had a negative behavior. In the first aspect, Arauca is the only department on the Border Strip where there were armed strikes, and in 2007 two of the four occurred since 2003; However, these armed strikes did not mean the resumption of control by the Güerilla of the border territory.

The illegal roadblocks, the number stopped being significant.

The data thrown up by the follow-up to acts of sabotage in the department of Arauca that passed in 2000 from 48 to 4 in 2007, reveal what the government strategy in that department turned out to be a success, with that section of the strip remaining for 2008 border under the control of the Colombian state and the guerrillas far from being able to undertake an articulated offensive.

The enumeration of these events may lead me to elaborate an argument whose main purpose is to argue that without strengthening the rule of law it is impossible for the department of Arauca to rise from the deplorable situation in which it finds itself, since it is the weakening of the state one of the triggers of violence and terrorism.

But of course, that this state of law, which I advocate so much, as that Leviathan capable of guaranteeing peace and order to all through arms, could not acquire its true dimension without the social and democratic, therefore public policies are required to stop the vertiginous ascent of poverty in our villages, which facilitate the economic growth, development and modernization of agriculture in this region separated from the eastern plains of Colombia.

THE SCOPE OF DEMOCRATIC SECURITY AND THE RECURRENCE OF THE WAR

With the coming to power of President Juan Manuel Sants Calderón, and the peace agreement with the Farc begins the gradual dismantling of a questioned and criticized policy from the interior of the country, as well as from neighboring countries, the democratic security policy according to the contractors only managed to corner the subversives, but did not settle the conflict, so the new president was given the task of undertaking a negotiation, the search for a true, peace, but his sickly obsession led him to commit the worst errors of state , he knelt to terrorism and yielded all the power of the state in order to achieve the signature.

He managed to convince public opinion that this peace agreement with the Frac was the best, led to an unprecedented jam in history, contracts and public money to the media, journalists, congressmen and even judges just to give endorsement of a process that would later have disastrous consequences for the regions and Aparatados peoples of Colombia such as Arauca.

Forgiveness and forgetfulness of the subversives, absolute impunity in disguise, the crime of drug trafficking related to the politician, the lack of truth, led the Colombians through the plebiscite on October 2, 2016, to say no to that agreement. peace, however, was so obsessed with that agreement that Juan Manuel Santos imposed it anyway, and dragged in its wake the rule of law and institutions.

The peace agreement was a success, if it was, so much that they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the president of Colombia, but that agreement would prove its flaws with the passage of months, that is, the increase of the military power of the Army. of National Liberation (ELN), the same Farc disguised as dissidences, because they gave us all the weapons, even after the signing of the agreement terrorist actions continued, as well as their drug trafficking activities.

Today Arauca continues to be besieged by the wildest terrorism of the FARC and ELN, as well as by paramilitary groups and criminal gangs, extortion, threats, armed strikes, murders and crimes, they are daily in a region that did not know peace, despite being Arauca considered a special area for the regrouping of the frac and special policies for reintegration, the truth is that the implementation was left without a budget and without clear regulatory decrees that allow consolidating what in principle a stable peace was wanted. and lasting.

Bibliography:

My thanks to:

-National Center of Historical Memory of Colombia: Cruzando la frontera: Memorias del éxodo hacia Venezuela caso del rio Arauca.(2015).

-Security and Democracy Foundation, Special report, Democratic Security Policy. (2004-2005).