Colombia: Direct action in Medellin, an experience painted in party colors
From WRIWiki
By Martin Rodriguez
Speaking to and practicing nonviolence as philosophy of life and as political strategy in a country with a war in progress (in fact with a "tradition" of war), presents at least two obstacles when it comes to promoting this form of direct action and taking public action.
The revolutionary proposals and the form in which the movements are organized
The movement’s goals are clear and there exits a consensus for resistance and struggle for human rights and social demands. Nevertheless, the organic structures and political decisions in the interior of the social movements and the visibility of their demands are often based on the values that they want to transform such as obedience, submission and domination of these small political spaces where they are able to operate.
The context where the nonviolent direct action is carried out
One of the biggest difficulties at the moment of planning and carrying out an action, is found at the moment when the movement attempts to focus on an objective in the middle of a armed proliferation (among them the army and the police). To target one of the groups over another for direct action implies tacit support for the other group. Another factor is that although all the groups are armed and therefore based on militarism, they do not represent the same political ideas. When we decide to do a concrete action against the militarism of the State we, by default, align ourselves with insurgent groups, because we take action against the state institutions.
Creative response
Nevertheless... This difficulty forces the movement to be creative and embrace a festiveness that includes theater, dance, and music in order to get our message across. Besides being esthetically attractive, these activities must be able to educate and communicate our ideals: we want to live in better society, that we become more brotherly, more critical in our analysis, and above all that other nonconformist people join these acts adding fresh energy and helping to call others who are constantly questioning injustice to fight and to raise their voice. To maintain such a group to celebrate life, not just lament the reality of current events, but to transform them, we hold the conviction that this fight requires us to MAKE A CELEBRATION OUT OF THE POLITICAL FIGHT, so that we do not divide our lives daily routines and political work.
We plan the actions in the middle of meetings to make informal meetings more festive and to be able express our rage at the injustice we live night and day.
Relating to Colombia, in this moment we face an intensification of war and an increase in structural violence (poverty, exclusion, unemployment without remuneration), but in which we can make out several possibilities that promote nonviolence as well as challenges for ourselves:
A. To promote change from our own processes
B. To continue showing the force of nonviolent action, in spite of the adverse context and the proliferation of arguments that violence the only and determinant method to achieve changes and transformations
C. To continue promoting the youths, men, women and children that today dance and vibrate with theater, color, and music as they wager on nonviolent resistance.
To conclude:
Put effort into change and transformation can occur not only on a large scale but also in those small spaces where change of individual habits and thinking can happen. We also place ourselves in the context of a different type of globalization (than that based on capital). Therefore our territorial reality is not exclusive (perhaps there are different degrees of inclusiveness); we are part of a global reality and therefore it is necessary to maintain connections with other groups having the same interests and to understand other experiences and that at the same time facilitates the conceptualization and firms up the theory behind what we have been doing already. It shows us that the established powers will not yield anything that does not align with their interests and they will attack with even more violence especially if the nonviolent force comes from the same practical convictions of those who promote it. Our force, then, is situated in our own practical convictions, not only do we show effectiveness when facing the dominant powers, also our own experience demonstrates that it is possible to live and to relate to one another in ways different from what we have inherited. With difficulty those who we have been touched by these forms of nonviolent struggle and transformation will renounce this path if we are able to demonstrate that different roads to the forceful history of violence exist and are effective. However, we do not assume that all change corresponds to us, but we believe our advances will begin to leave legacies different from oppression, injustice and obedience.
