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There are six names. Six people of very different ideals and values. But all, according to their own confession, fallen by the bullets of that powerful killing machine called Farc-Ep.
Some of them play an enormously important role, such as Álvaro Gómez Hurtado (November 2, 1995), one of the signatories of the Constitution that governs us today. Brilliant man, cultured, argumentative and doubly victim of the rebels. First kidnapped by the M-19 and now, according to this revelation, assassinated by the Farc.
(Can read: The history of the murders that the FARC are recognizing)
“My father was also an indefatigable defender of peace when the National Front was created”, His son Mauricio wrote in a moving text published in EL TIEMPO, who, by the way, does not believe in this new version of the murder.
“And he was always a standard-bearer of democracy and the debate of ideas; his political initiatives in that sense are countless, and include the popular election of mayors, for example. He rejected all his life the use of violence as a legitimate means in politics and said that the country does not have to get used to hearing only the voice of the machine guns, “he added in his reflection in this newspaper.
“Álvaro Gómez was one of the architects and signatories of the 1991 Constitution, and there he agreed, which vindicates his credentials as a democrat and a man of peace, with his hijackers from the day before, the M-19. With them and many others, he helps to conceive that letter that for him was an agreement on what is fundamental: a pact of coexistence and a story of a much more just, democratic and inclusive country, “he argued.
Also on the list is Jesús Antonio Bejarano (September 15, 1999). How many men like him wanted peace in the country so much? Economist from the National University of Colombia, expert in conflict resolution, peace advisor in the governments of Virgilio Barco and César Gaviria, was killed on a cold September 15, 1999 when hooded men shot him in the corridor of the Accounting Building of the National University.
In his vast work are many of the theoretical keys to resolve our armed conflict. “You have to listen to the guerrillas to understand them,” he said. Their clamor was extinguished, now it is being known, by those same FARC.
When the FARC decided to assassinate Gómez Hurtado and Bejarano, what considerations would they have? With what logic would they make such a decision?
(Also: Ex-prosecutor of the JEP will ask for his release due to expiration of terms)
Because although “war is the kingdom of uncertainty”, as Clausewitz said, there are logics that are simpler to assimilate because, for example, they belong to different sides. Thus, on the other side of this unexpected list is General Fernando Landazábal Reyes (May 12, 1998), a tough man who faced them without quarter and with the conviction that it was his obligation as a soldier of the country.
Or the representative to the Chamber Pablo Emilio Guarín (November 15, 1987), who is pointed out as one of the founders of paramilitarism in the country.
Guarín was one of the main political leaders in Puerto Boyacá, a staunch anti-communist and always seeking to add combatants to his home. In fact, it is said that Iván Roberto Duque, alias Ernesto Baéz, of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Auc), was one of his political godchildren.
Guarín proudly defended that gigantic fence placed at the entrance to Puerto Boyacá that said: ‘Welcome to the anti-subversive capital of Colombia.’ On the way to fight the left, he allied himself with drug traffickers and far-right landowners, who eventually planted the seed for paramilitarism that ended up spreading more blood.
Álvaro Gómez was one of the architects and signers of the 1991 Constitution, and there he agreed, which vindicates his credentials as a democrat and a man of peace
And also on the list are Hernando Pizarro León-Gómez (February 25, 1995) and José Fedor Rey (‘Javier Delgado’), (June 30, 2002), two names that most Colombians do not say anything about. , but nevertheless, they wrote one of the scariest pages in our history.
It happened in Cauca, in that chain of cusps that form a splendid massif, of incomparable beauty, where the mist frequently settles and in which the ghost of an event still runs by which the oldest are sanctified when remembering.
Between November 1985 and January 1986, in Tacueyó, when ‘Javier Delgado’ and his closest lieutenant, Pizarro Leongómez, they murdered 164 of their comrades in a guerrilla group called ‘Ricardo Franco’ in cold blood. Yes. 164.
‘Delgado’ was a man of confidence of Jacobo Arenas in the Farc, where he had militated for years, but he had a delusion of grandeur that led him to believe that he would be able to found a more powerful guerrilla to take power. So he ran away with a million dollars and formed his own group.
(Do not remain unread: Gómez Hurtado’s family will ask the Prosecutor’s Office to summon Piedad Córdoba)
Little by little, its structure grew. A deluded student, a peasant from the region, a humble boy who dreamed of revolution. There were almost 200 combatants who followed him with blind faith, until one day he woke up with the idea that among them there were people infiltrated from the Armed Forces.
He then tied up half a dozen of them and ordered them to be tortured until they confessed. In the midst of the atrocities, a 15-year-old boy implored not to be harmed any more and that yes, it was true, that he was actually an officer of the National Army. The young man and his closest ones were stabbed to death.
There were some who protested because they knew it was impossible that at the boy’s age he was who he claimed to be. Delgado interpreted this as a gesture of solidarity with the traitors and ordered them to do the same. In this spiral, he thus assassinated almost the entire group, in the largest massacre of this type in memory in the country. Most of them were dismembered. “To avoid wasting bullets,” argued Delgado.
The images of the photographs of his victims with chains tied to their feet, hands and neck, while they awaited their execution, are part of the most shameful pages in our history. Later on they lost track of them until the FARC found them and killed them, as they just recognized before the JEP.
There are six names. Six stories as different and with origins as diverse as their ending resembled: fallen by the bullets of a guerrilla who fired for half a century.
Why? Why Gómez Hurtado? Why to Bejarano? We must take the title of this rigorous work by María Victoria Uribe Alarcón, Kill, finish and counter, to try to understand such delirium.
(You can read: The silence of the Farc party due to the reappearance of ‘Iván Márquez’)
Why? Joaquín Villalobos, former commander of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and today a respected academic, used to say that the only rule when a guerrilla is founded is that there are no rules. That, possibly, happened to the Farc. They lost their way and in this misguidance, whoever was not with them, interpreted in their delirium, they were against them. And without rules, it had to be removed from the road.
Their obligation – now that Colombian society has generously opened the doors to civil life with the peace process – should be a change in their line of action: truth, the truth and only the truth.
ARMANDO NEIRA
EL TIEMPO Policy Editor
@Armandoneira
