2023-07-16 15:33:24
SEMANA: The Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) have proposed entering into ‘total peace’, but for now it is an absolutely bogged down process. Why?
Ricardo Giraldo (RG): The AGC are fully willing to be in ‘total peace’, remember that they have a unilateral ceasefire decreed since August 7, 2022. They are willing, but we are waiting for agility from the Government in what will be the legal framework, that the AGC be seated at a dialogue table.
SEMANA: But, for the government, in the AGC case there is already a path, the law of submission?
RG: President Petro orders language that is respectful of the ELN, since it is the same language that we have requested or demanded for the AGC. Because? We cannot sit down to negotiate telling another that they are going to die on a roof, that they are a little clan, neighborhood gamines. The subjugation law was a real failure, it is archived, it did not have a single debate, it was stillborn. The AGC have always said that they are not going to play the issue of ‘total peace’ if it is with submission.
SEMANA: Under what parameters would you sit down to negotiate with the government with certain advances?
RG: We have proposed transitional justice, that this actor in the conflict, the largest in Colombia, can make a transition from what is illegal to what is legal; Let there be truth, justice, reparation, guarantees of non-repetition. That at the table they talk about how to guarantee that emerging groups, dissidents, will not be born. Transitional justice is what would really guarantee ‘total peace’.
SEMANA: Do you raise the possibility of political participation of the members of the AGC?
RG: If you are referring to the power to elect and be elected, to reach the Senate, no commander of the General Staff has ever asked me to be a senator. They want to be on their plots, they are peasants, people imagine them driving Audis and Ferraris and with exuberant models, it turns out that they are not. The AGCs, and we have said this over and over again, are political actors, regardless of whether they want to recognize themselves as such. They have territorial control, social control, economic control. Go to the territories so that they realize who the State is there, the community is more afraid of seeing the Police and the Army than the AGC themselves.
Lawyer Ricardo Giraldo, who represents the interests of the leaders of the Clan del Golfo.
SEMANA: But there is something that cannot be denied, you call yourself the Self-Defense Forces, but the country knows you as the Clan del Golfo, a drug-trafficking and terrorist group, a criminal clan…
RG: It’s that you have to treat the party you want to sit with with respect. Let’s get out of the conflict; if you and I are going to sit down to talk and I can’t tell you that: “Hey, you’re a bandit, you deserve to die on the rooftops like Pablo Escobar.” No, that’s not respectful language. The AGC is too big and complex a matter, more than 9,000 men under arms, presence in more than 400 municipalities in Colombia. Don’t believe me, these are statistics from the Ombudsman’s Office. I am not going to submit if the Penal Code is more beneficial, with absolute certainty. Some actors in the conflict are in the curubito, on the negotiation pedestal, which is how they impose it.
SEMANA: Who are those who according to you are in the curubito and on the pedestal of the negotiation?
RG: I’m talking about the guerrillas, they are the ones in the curubito, they are the only ones who have political recognition. I want to see what their political project is.
SEMANA: Is the government being inequitable in its search for “total peace” in the face of the dissidents of the FARC, the ELN and the position it has acquired with the AGC?
RG: How is it not going to be inequitable, see President Petro’s ministers saying everywhere that with them it’s only submission, if not, they’re going to die. With the others, no matter what, they say you have to give them credit for sitting at the table. For God’s sake, how can you not recognize an important actor, name me just one, in Latin America, that is as big as the AGC.
SEMANA: You are right, there is no “total peace” if an organization with 9,000 men is not included, but it is an organization that traffics drugs, is behind strikes and is dedicated to illegal mining. Isn’t there a political project there either?
RG: With the illegal economies, all the actors in the conflict persist, absolutely all of them. That they traffic, no, they collect taxes and control the areas to prevent the arrival of drug cartels that arrive with violence, without opportunities, to squeeze and run over the areas in which they have high interference. It was one of the reasons to re-arm, gangs of traffickers and gangsters who came to extort, to force peasants to farm. Now, illegal mining, where there is an illegal economy there are always actors in the conflict. Do the ELN, the dissidences, Segunda Marquetalia, receive a government subsidy for the war? No. They want to give it to them so they stop kidnapping, extortion.
SEMANA: The criticisms of the negotiation with the FARC are due to impunity, because they did not pay jail time despite the crimes and violations of Human Rights. Are those of the AGC willing to have a custodial measure?
RG: They have expressly stated that they are, but transitional justice is not jail, that is, it does not just mean jail. The former AUC commanders have been talking for 18 years and people are surprised by Mancuso. There’s nothing new, they just didn’t want to hear it. The Government decided to make peace with everyone, that everything that is weak falls at once, that what has to be said has to be said so that this country can move forward.
SEMANA: Is there a double discourse of the current government regarding the negotiation?
RG: Not from the government. From former Minister Prada and Minister Osuna, here are the interviews. When one speaks without thinking, with anger for not being ideologically on one side, he says many things that will later be blamed. How can you talk about the humanization of a prison system and want to put another 9,000 from a single group in jail?
SEMANA: Today there is a debate about the possibility that the dissidences that signed the agreement will once again be part of a negotiation, but in the past there was also an agreement with the self-defense groups, and are the AGCs there?
RG: That is the point of debate, here we comply with the rules. If the State wants this to progress, if there is a strong, coherent, consistent political decision by the Government, without fear of what they will say, because it wants to gamble for ‘total peace’, it will have to make structural reforms. I am not saying that a Constitutional Reform so that they are not going to “massacre” me by saying that I already want a Constitution for the AGC, this is going to reach a point where a legal framework is needed. They are going to allow the extinct AUC to happen, many commanders have been in jail for 18 years, they were extradited, they were tricked.
SEMANA: But for continuing to commit crimes… not just because.
RG: Well, that was never proven in many cases. You have to know the context well, it’s not let’s all sit down to negotiate like little coachmen and we’ll go this way, no. We are going to tell the truth, but not the one that favors a certain actor. I like the way of negotiating in the United States, there an incomplete truth is a complete lie.
SEMANA: Since you are talking about the United States, Otoniel, who was the top boss of the Clan del Golfo, as you tell them, the Gaitanita Self-Defense Forces, considered one of the biggest drug traffickers in the world, do you have some kind of line in this negotiation? ?
RG: I have never spoken with Otoniel or his lawyers in the United States, but his sentence for the country is going to be a surprise because there they are practical, they don’t get into things that we do recognize him and we don’t recognize him, yes He was an actor in the conflict.
SEMANA: What is the country up to if there is no negotiation with the AGC?
RG: It will continue the same, being honest and being consistent with the reality of the country, do you think that the dissidents of the Farc, Border Commandos, EPL and ELN are going to remain calm in a peace process with the largest group breathing on them? in the neck?
SEMANA: That warning sounds like a threat… if they don’t negotiate with us, they will have to put up with 9,000 people armed and operating.
RG: It is not a threat, it is a reality of the country. Look, it is assumed that in Bajo Cauca and the Northeast the only group that existed were the AGC, which were the ones behind the strike. Is the mining problem fixed? No. Did the terrorist actions stop? No. Look who were the first to burn some buses after the ceasefire.
SEMANA: Be clear, what do you want to start a negotiation with certain advances?
RG: That the harassment of the families of the combatants and heads of the General Staff cease, they raid them, they go to schools and take photos of them, they say that they are going to hand over their father in certain physical circumstances. One: asks for respect of the institutional framework for those who have nothing to do with it; two: if there is going to be trust, let it be on both sides, both the government and the AGC. If they say that they did not carry out a certain military action, as happened in Bajo Cauca, in the mining strike, well, the least is that you have to believe them, well imagine me as a lawyer telling them: “Man, I don’t believe you”, well I what do I do here. Hopefully a multilateral ceasefire or hostilities could be signed. Don’t you think it’s good that there is a ceasefire between the ELN, AGC and Iván Mordisco’s dissidents?
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