The FARC's "Manuals"
We are pleased to reproduce this commentary from Colombian human rights defender and security expert Nancy Sánchez, who has worked for 20 years in the department of Putumayo, the zone along the Ecuadorian border where U.S.-backed operations under “Plan Colombia” began in 2000. The guerrilla “manual” to which her article refers is here.
The FARC’s Manuals
Nancy Sánchez
In August 1998, along the main highway between Putumayo’s largest city (Puerto Asís) and its capital (Mocoa), I came across this poster at a gas station. Made by the FARC’s 32nd Front, it described “the rules for living in an honest and dignified community: punishments and fines.”
During this time, the 32nd Front, part of the FARC’s Southern Bloc, implemented some interesting regulations. It exerted control over many functions that should have been the state’s responsibility, such as environmental protection, avoiding deforestation and riverine pollution, and limiting residues of chemicals from coca paste production. Similarly, it set in place various regulations to control individual behavior in the community, such as curtailing “gossip,” maintaining cleanliness, and even avoiding fistfights at parties.
Beyond social and community regulation, however, it was evident that behavior that would risk the FARC’s territorial control carried stricter punishments and fines. For example, inviting the entry of unknown individuals (resulting in a fine of US$1,000), buying and selling properties to individuals without FARC authorization, transporting people and vehicles outside of certain hours, or bringing in prostitutes.
In this context, “the entry of prostitutes” referred to “new” prostitutes: women who had not previously lived in the area. This group of women, who were co-opted through this war, were used and regulated not only by the guerrillas but later on by the paramilitaries and the military to fulfill their “sexual needs.” Occasionally, they acted as sources of information about the enemy.
With the implementation of Plan Colombia in 2000, amid the paramilitaries’ actions and the FARC’s response, thousands of innocent civilians were assassinated, disappeared, or forcibly displaced in Putumayo. About half of the population—150,000 people from a population of 350,000—was forcibly displaced.
After 13 years of various stages of Plan Colombia, most recently the “Territorial Consolidation Plan,” the situation remains basically the same, or even worse. There have been cruel humanitarian consequences as the rural population continues to be subjected to strict social control by illegal armed actors.
The most recent “FARC Rule Book” (Manual de Convivencia de los FARC) was published at the end of 2013, as reported by the Catholic Church of Putumayo, after the FARC prohibited the performance of Mass in rural zones. This warning and threat was the most notable of the 46 points making up the current “Manual for Coexistence for the good functioning of communities” that now is not a poster, but an actual three-page bulletin that was distributed to rural communities.
I found the physical document this month, in Puerto Asís municipality, amid the anguish of some women who told me that they had to abandon their farms and villages because their sons had been forced into obligatory military service. Their children were recruited by the armed forces in surprise raids that military members carried out every year, and the young people had to comply.
Other people did not know what to do before the FARC’s strict order to “establish themselves” either in the rural zone or the town center. The thing is, this manual—unlike the last one—dedicates the majority of its points to carefully regulating all sorts of situations of transit and mobility between town centers and the rural zones, where they have control.
A few examples. If you are a farmer and have children studying in town, you can only bring them home during their vacations. This creates a dilemma for the parents: whether to take them out of school or pay for their room and board, because the school does not provide it. (It is worth noting that the majority of schools offering education up to 11th grade are located in town centers.) If you are new in the area and decide to settle there, you may not leave the zone for a year--the time period it supposedly takes to gain the FARC’s trust—at which time the FARC will decide whether you may stay or not. If you live in town and have a farm in the rural zone, which is very common in these regions, you have to choose to live in one or the other, or pay someone else whom you trust to take care of the land for life, while paying all community taxes.
Several points, like the fines, did not change much between one manual and the next. For example, the prohibitions on state-run social assistance programs and on the unauthorized entry of unknown individuals remain the same. Transit continues to be regulated, for both people and animals, at permitted hours that change along with the context: when combat is happening, it is stricter. No matter what, one may not move or leave without permission, not even for health reasons (the hospitals are in the town centers). Property rights are also strictly controlled in the new manual. Now even a cow cannot be sold without prior authorization, requested in person.
The rest of the points are similar to what was found in the earlier manual, except for one ordering better control of dogs in towns, and two new ones. The first refers to the population’s food security and the other regulates communications.
Under penalty of forced “social labor” and expulsion, the planting of yucca, plantain, corn, and home-grown vegetables is ordered. This reminds me of the year 1994, when the guerrillas ordered that the massive planting of coca crops be combined with subsistence crops, in a four-to-one ratio (if I recall correctly) because the region lacked food and even chickens had to be imported from Ecuador. This issue is taken up again in a commentary that I found in Puerto Guzmán, referring to the manual. “This time, the coca is going to go away, because the guerrillas are making us plant food,” some residents told me. Actually, there is not much coca in the area today, compared with the 1990s. The problem is that it is still the only crop from which the people make a living. Are the guerrillas really going to be able to do away with this crop if their manuals order them to do so? That’s a point for Havana.
The entry of mobile phones brings their regulation: the right to private communications is lost in these war territories. With the excuse of security, cell phones’ use is limited to two per person per family—these must be noted in a census—and they must not have cameras.
Finally, despite some interesting items about environmental protection, controlling common crime, regulation of parties and flea markets, this manual raises three concerns in particular:
1. Immediately, what is now being experienced: forced displacement or silent confinement of farmer populations, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. People who live in rural areas but require services in the town centers. To travel “to town” is not just entertainment. It means going to a hospital, to study, to pick up basic foods like grains or salt, to buy gasoline for electric generators, or to get in a long line to speak with the mayor, meet with a judge, communicate with relatives elsewhere, pay back loans from the Banco Agrario, to buy medicines for livestock,etc.
2. Meanwhile, this manual exposes members of the Community Action Boards [Juntas de Acción Comunal, legally established local advisory commissions] to a serious security threat. According to the manual, it is these leaders who are charged with monitoring and guaranteeing compliance with its 46 points. They must do so in a context in which, on one hand, the paramilitary groups—under new names—dominate Puerto Asís and the town centers of Bajo Putumayo, and on the other hand, the “Territorial Consolidation Plan” gives U.S. resources to the Colombian military to carry out public works projects in these zones (medical brigades, bridge construction, etc.). Projects that—again—require the coordination and collaboration of Community Action Boards. So between the “FARC Manual” and the “Consolidation Plan,” the civilian population has few options. It can be the object of armed or judicial repression from one side or the other. A point for Havana: if there is no hope for a cease-fire during talks, at least it would be important to consider a cessation of these strategies of territorial control that involve the civilian population. That way, finally, the people might truly feel the sensation that something is changing as a result of the peace talks.
3. In the long term, the manual gives us strong doubts about the model of life that the FARC are proposing for us in an eventual post-conflict.
March 2014