By James J. Brittain (Upside Down World)
Dr. Miguel Ángel Beltrán Villegas
It has been well publicized that on March 1, 2008 the Colombian government, with support from Washington, carried out a series of attacks on Ecuadorian soil which violated the sovereignty of a foreign nation (and international law) and resulted in the murder of Raúl Reyes and two dozen other members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP). Less attention, however, has been given to the five Mexican academics present in the FARC-EP encampment at the time of the attack conducting research on the insurgency movement. Of the five only Lucía Andrea Morett Alvarez survived while Soren Ulises Aviles Angeles [29], Fernando Franco Delgado [28], Veronica Velazquez Ramirez [30], and Juan Gonzalez del Castillo [29] were violently killed.
Since arriving to power in 2002, the administration of Álvaro Uribe Vélez has repeatedly targeted any faction of society – be they human rights advocates, oppositional political parties, investigatory journalists, unionists, and so on – as terroristic if they demonstrate tendencies critical to government and military policy (see Isacson, 2008; Reuters, 2006; O’Shaughnessy and Branford, 2005: 62; Stokes, 2005: 127, 128). One sector of Colombian society increasingly silenced has been that of the academy (Brittain and Hristov, 2004). The past seven years have seen an escalation of harassment and imprisonment for scholars who have conducted research on Colombian society and politics and have published material critical of the state.
The most common tactic has been to classify such academics as members of the FARC-EP or, more recently, the ‘intellectual bloc’ of the guerrilla (also applied to left-of-centre politicians). Flatly associating professors and young scholars – without a shred of credible public evidence – with said revolutionary movement is exceedingly dangerous, as the accused subsequently become ‘justified’ targets of paramilitary (and state) reaction. For example, this past November 67 university students and professors had warrants issued under the belief they were members of the FARC-EP whom infiltrated Colombia’s university system (Colombia Reports, 2008c). Yet, in Colombia, things are not always as they seem and every rule has an exception. When concerning the November events it was not the state that acted first but rather it was paramilitaries who first labelled the above individuals as guerrillas and the state followed suit. Once again, the international community bares witness to the Colombian state mirroring paramilitary forces policy.
In mid-November the Águilas Negras (Black Eagles) issued what it declared to be a final ‘warning’ to various faculty and students at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. The paramilitary, which admitted they had already dispersed members on campus, stated roughly three-dozen individuals (and their families) at the university were connected to the FARC-EP and/or the Clandestine Colombian Communist Party (PCCC) thus making them ‘military targets’ (Colombia Reports, 2008a).
Rather than issuing a statement to protect those threatened or secure the university by sifting out the Águilas Negras therein the state began an investigation of some 55 students throughout various public universities thought to be associated with the FARC-EP. Ironically, no investigation was administered concerning paramilitary infiltration in these same institutions even though the Universidad Nacional de Colombia has received over 312 threats from paramilitaries (Colombia Reports, 2008b).
The threat of academic freedom and integrity has been greatly jeopardized and restricted by the actions of the state. One can only imagine how critical they can be in classes, lectures, or debates if they know right-wing paramilitary networks are in the midst. Nevertheless, arguing the FARC-EP has acquired a significant presence throughout Colombia’s public universities the Uribe administration established a specific wing of the Department of Administrative Security (DAS) to exclusively gain intelligence on campuses. In 2007, Cecilia María Vélez White, Colombia’s then Minister of Education, argued the government/military must “watch those students who might be recruited by rebels” and suggested universities and the state must start working together “to follow up on students and their professional futures to prevent them joining guerrilla groups … This is why we will insist on a campaign that strengthens young people’s social values” (as quoted in Xinhua, 2007).
On May 22, 2009 this fascist attack on higher education reared is ugly head once more when Dr. Miguel Ángel Beltrán Villegas, an internationally recognized and respected sociologist, was arrested under the charge of ‘rebellion’. Beltrán Villegas was expelled from Mexico where he was working on his post-doctoral studies related to Mexican politics with the Centre of Latin American Studies in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Independent University of Mexico (UNAM).
Upside Down World for more