AND on the seventh day, the threat of a shooting conflict receded to a safe distance. At a fortuitously timed Latin American summit in the Dominican Republic, a group hug between the leaders of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela last Friday signalled an end to a crisis sparked the previous Saturday by a Colombia military incursion into Ecuadorian territory, which was followed by a rapid escalation in belligerent rhetoric and the mobilisation of troops.

 

Despite the reported massing of troops by Venezuela and Ecuador on their respective borders with Colombia, an outbreak of hostilities was considered unlikely, given the extent to which the three Andean nations are economically co-dependent. However, the bitterness that surfaced in the wake of the Colombian action could well have lingered, and even minor border skirmishes could have prompted an escalation.

 

The display of camaraderie in the Dominican Republic was a most gratifying alternative, although the smiles and handshakes do not necessarily mean that resentments don’t linger. Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez haven’t suddenly been transformed into the three amigos. Uribe is the odd one out, not only in this configuration but also in the wider Latin American context. One of the most remarkable aspects of the crisis was Colombia’s isolation: the only unequivocal diplomatic support for Uribe’s government came all the way from the United States of America.

 

This does not mean that the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the guerilla group against which the Colombian army struck a crucial blow, is particularly popular throughout Latin America. National sovereignty, on the other hand, is a particularly touchy issue in that continent, and no government (other than the one in Washington) was likely to endorse the violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty that the Colombian operation entailed. Beyond that, there is every likelihood that Bogota’s extraordinary chumminess with Washington also provides a focus for resentment in a continent that has particular cause to be wary of inordinate US influence.

 

The raid on a FARC camp about a mile inside Ecuador succeeded in its apparent aim of targeting senior guerilla commander Raul Reyes. Another two dozen people – not all of them FARC fighters – also died in the bombardment, whereafter Colombian troops sneaked in to retrieve the corpse of Reyes. It did not escape the attention of analysts that the style of the attack bore a striking resemblance to US actions. Simon Romero commented in The New York Times on Sunday: “Mr Uribe took a page from the Bush administration’s playbook. The pre-dawn operation bears remarkable similarities to one carried out in late January by the United States in Pakistan.

 

“In that case, the Central Intelligence Agency used a Predator drone aircraft to drop missiles, killing Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior commander of Al Qaeda who had hidden from American officials for years. Both operations used local informants to track the men down. Both operations were carried out in foreign countries without getting permission beforehand. Both were tactical victories, killing enemies classified as terrorists…. Despite Colombia’s insistence that it acted alone, speculation persists as to whether the technological prowess of the United States was involved in the hunt for Mr Reyes.”

 

It is no secret that the US has played a role in Colombian “counter-insurgency” operations since the early 1960s. More recently, under the Clinton and Bush administrations, it has been engaged in what is billed as a massive anti-narcotics operation in Colombia, but there can be little doubt that the political angle, too, has been crucial to its intervention. Conveniently, there is widely believed to be a nexus between Colombia’s rural guerillas and narcotics traffickers (in another echo of the situation on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions).

 

This obviously does not redound to FARC’s credit, any more than its practice of routinely capturing hostages as a means of replenishing its coffers. The organization’s strength is said to have sharply dwindled in recent years, but the fact that it remains the largest group of its kind in Latin America, despite concerted efforts over the decades to eradicate it, suggests conditions in Colombia remain conducive to armed rebellion.

 

FARC was founded in 1966, effectively as an armed wing of the pro-Moscow Communist Party, and has been helmed ever since by Manuel Marulanda. Back then there were also active Maoist and Fidelista guerilla bands, but efforts at cooperation or coordination invariably came to naught. The Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), which also survives, looked to Havana for inspiration and briefly counted among its fighters one of Colombia’s more stirring political personalities, a lapsed priest by the name of Camilo Torres, who was killed shortly after he took up arms – and, like Che Guevara, acquired a larger-than-life status in the wake of his martyrdom. Torres is worth citing because his experience helps to explain why so many people found armed struggle an attractive option.

 

In Colombia, as in so many other countries, the Liberal and Conservative parties that alternated in power owed allegiance to the same oligarchy, and their majorities were often based on a small fraction of the popular vote, because the majority of people saw little point in exercizing their democratic right. When a significant alternative popped up within this framework, vested interests determinedly pre-empted it. A crucial event in this respect was the assassination in 1948 of the popular and progressive Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, which led to a spontaneous combustion in Bogota that threatened the established order. The uprising was leaderless, however, and the oligarchy survived. (Coincidentally, Bogota was hosting an international student conference at the time, and the delegates from Cuba included a certain Fidel Castro Ruz; the lessons of the experience were not lost on him.)

 

A couple of decades later, Torres took up arms only after his persistent efforts to establish an alternative to the right-of-centre Liberal-Conservative duopoly were thwarted. Again in the 1980s, after FARC had been persuaded to participate in the parliamentary process and managed to win a number of seats, supporters and members of its Patriotic Union were systematically targeted by right-wing death squads.

 

Latin America has changed dramatically in the interim. Back then, right-wing military regimes were the order of the day and armed resistance was a common phenomenon. Today Colombia is surrounded by nations where the grip of the oligarchies has been loosened through the standard democratic process. Tellingly, it is the only Latin American country that participated in the Iraqi misadventure. Another aspect of Colombia that sets it apart from its neighbours is a legacy of particularly brutal rural violence that pre-dates by a long stretch the animosities of the Cold War era.

 

If FARC seems like an anachronism whose actions render it unworthy of solidarity, the Uribe regime’s determination, under Washington’s tutelage, to pursue an exclusively military solution is equally reprehensible. Venezuela’s role in winning freedom for FARC hostages indicates its willingness to play a constructive role in resolving the strife that has plagued Colombia for so long. Ecuador and other countries can also chip in. A regional war would have been a profound setback, but last week’s crisis will, hopefully, impress upon Bogota as well as FARC the importance of a negotiated resolution to the conflict. Sooner or later, Colombia has got to catch up with its neighbours.

 

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