523: The Ruling Elites and Violence in Colombia

It's that time of the week again, folks, this is me, your host Richard McColl, here in Bogota, Colombia, that's 2,600 meters closer to the stars, and this is episode 523 of the Columbia Calling podcast. This last week and a half, we've had the LATA, or the Latin American Studies Association in Bogota. Giving lectures. Hundreds of academics from all over the world specializing in Latin America, giving lectures, talks, roundtables, all on Latin America. I was able to attend a few of them at the Haudenosaunee University, and it was well, truly a. It was an incredible opportunity to see and listen to such people here in Bogota.

And about that, well, it's the end of the school year, so both of my children are on holiday and it is well. I'm finishing up polishing up another book for print and working on the MomPods project. And also we have our author, Fuller Vigil, my publishing company, our author Barry Maxwell, the author of Better Than Cocaine, Learning to Grow Coffee and Live in Colombia. He'll be in Australia in September, dates to be announced, but he'll be in Australia in September. So I'm working on getting books printed in Australia, to get into some independent bookstores there and hopefully organize some readings in Sydney and Melbourne.

So if any of you out there have any contacts or know of anyone who might be interested, please let me know. You can get in touch by all the regular ways, the best though being columbiacallingatgmail.com. It's with this in mind, and all that slew of excuses that I ask for your forgiveness. For repeating an older episode once again, today, I believe it's two months in a row that I've repeated an older episode. But imagining what's going on in Colombia and the uncertainty taking place at this current time, I've decided that this is a good time to. Or no better time than to revisit an episode with the research professor Jenny Pierce of the Latin America School, Latin America and Caribbean Center at London School of Economics.

And it's about the elite and violence in Colombia. This was written in conjunction with Juan David Velasco of the Havariana University. Once again, so we're going to revisit that episode. And my excuse is, of course, that I've been working tooth and nail and both of my children are on holiday.

So bear with me. But this month on, we will be having only new episodes. I've got a lot of people lined up and people's agendas are opening up. Now they have a bit more time on their summer holiday, so we will keep you. We will keep you. Accompanied in good company this summer with new and fresh interviews and conversations with people here on the Columbia Calling podcast.

And just before I go over and we go and listen to the Columbia briefing with Emily Hart, please, of course, check out her substack, just put substack Emily Hart, and you'll find it there. And of course, thank you to all of you who support us on Patreon.com. Forward Slash Columbia, calling now over to some words from our sponsors. And then Emily Hart. And then once back to Jenny Pierce with the elites and violence in Columbia. So thank you again, don't go away.

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The reform will also eliminate competition between public and private funds, creating a joint system in which the two complement one another. Retirement age remains unchanged at 62 years old for men and 57 years old for women. The bill will theoretically come into force in July 2025, though. Hard-right senators have announced they plan to go to the Constitutional Court to challenge the bill due to its having passed without debate. Despite finally gaining some traction with his reform agenda, President Gustavo Petro's approval ratings have sunk to 38, according to the latest Polimetrica survey.

61 of those polled also disapproved of his proposal for a constituent assembly. Vice president Francia Marquez now has an approval rating of just 29. Meanwhile, the man who narrowly lost the presidency to Petro, running on a mandate of anti-corruption, has been sentenced to 64 months in prison for corruption. The 78-year-old millionaire businessman Rodolfo Hernández, often compared to Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, has been convicted of improper contracting. The issue arose during his time as mayor of Bucaramanga, Santander, part of a waste collection scandal which also involved his son, known as the Vitalogic case.

Hernández will be allowed to serve his sentence at home as he is suffering from terminal cancer. He will also have to pay a fine and is barred from holding public office for 80 months, though he was already barred for the next decade due to another case relating to undue influence. In the 2022 presidential election, Petro won 50.4 of the vote and Hernández 47.4. Violence in Colombia's southwest continues, with ongoing terrorist attacks and massacres in the departments of Cauca and Valle del Cauca. Including an attack this weekend on the father and nephew of Vice President Francia Marquez on the road between those two departments, the man and six-year-old boy were unharmed. But clashes between FARC dissident groups and national security forces continue to rage in the area.

Yet another motorbike bomb was detonated this week in the centre of Jamundí, Valle del Cauca, injuring six people. The attack has been attributed to a front of the Estado Mayor Central group commanded by alias Ivan Mordisco. Security forces are to be boosted in the area in advance of the COP16 climate conference to be held in the city of Cali in October. 12,000 new uniformed personnel will be deployed throughout the Department of Valle del Cauca. Colombia has joined U.S. President Joe Biden's anti-trafficking task force, specifically targeting human trafficking mafias, which operate in the Darien gap on the border with Panama.

The task force, known as the Alpha Unit, will work with prosecutors in Colombia and Panama to build cases for extradition of trafficking kingpins. This work has a particular focus on Colombian armed group the Clan del Golfo, also known as the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia. Meanwhile, in other migration news, an executive order closing the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers has led to a spike in deportations of citizens of Latin, American and Caribbean countries. Earlier this month, Biden announced an executive order closing the border, the most aggressive border policy yet by this U.S. administration. Seen to form a part of his 2024 election battle against rival Donald Trump. The bulk of these deportations will be citizens of Latin, American and Caribbean countries, including Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela.

Other Central American countries, however, as well as Colombia and Ecuador, have also been receiving so-called repatriation flights. After 13 months of decline, inflation has now been stagnant at 7 for two months in a row, well short of the central bank's goal of 5.5. Some say that the issue is specific to the time of year and that the drop will continue as the year goes on. Food prices have, however, risen by 4.4 in the last year, and the cost of education has risen by over 10. Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio has personally called on Colombia's Congress to pass a bill which would strengthen traceability of livestock, seen as a possible mechanism to prevent deforestation. In the Amazon.

DiCaprio posted on social media urging Congress to approve the bill in order to protect the rainforest. As well as Indigenous communities, like those who live in the Chiribiquete National Park in southern Colombia, the bill is currently one debate away from becoming law. Those were your top stories for this week. Thanks for listening.

It's called elites, poder y principios de dominación en Colombia from 1991 to 2022.

Let's just start. We could ask you anything, but let's focus on this report. let's just start. How did you decide to compile this?

Because I can name some elites here and there, but this is a very in-depth investigation. So let's start with how long did it take?

Carpas gave me some money for expenses to come to Colombia, but otherwise everyone's been working voluntarily. And essentially, the idea was to produce something that actually had some rigour to the definition and to actually researching well, who are these?

And how did you define, then, what is an elite in the Colombian case?

No, because now power is in politics and is in the political elite, not the economic elite. And the argument was, well, ultimately, Marx hasn't shown why exactly the economic elites managed to control the state. So that's led to a sort of foundation of a kind of basic debate between liberal political theorists and Marxists, which has continued in various forms, but more nuanced until our day. But I would say you. First of all. We need to draw attention to the fact that for kind of the early part of last century, the notion was, let's focus on political elites. It's inevitable there will be elites, that elites emerge in all organizations, including trade unions as well as other organizations.

And ultimately, that's the society we live in. And one of the problems that Pareto the school felt, was the quality of these elites isn't always great. So you have a sort of circulation of elites, but that doesn't mean you have elites as meaning the best, which was sort of one of the ideas of the word. Then you had the sort of post-second World war in the states, you had right-wing, and you had the sort of people influence by the left. Coming back in saying, you can't understand power in the United States unless you understand the relationship between the corporate elites, the military elites and the political elites.

Robert Darwin Is pluralism? No, there's too much power, is not concentrated, it's dispersed, and so we have a plurality. And then you have the Marxists coming back with Poulancis and Miliband, for whom, yeah, Marx didn't show exactly how the economic elites, the capitalist class, controlled the state. But they don't have to control it directly, said Poulancis. You have a relative autonomy.

And then Miliband said, No. In the UK, you show that these elites come from the same school and enter the state. And now, just to get to the theorists who probably influenced me most in coming up with how we've understood elites and has been very important for our empirical work. Is Pierre Bourdieu? Because Bourdieu, the French sociologist who was looking at the shifts in the late 60s in France and the way? It looked as if a technocratic elite of the Haute Ecole was coming to control France rather than the capitalist class, and Bourdieu was influenced by Marx, but not a deterministic Marxist, but he was certainly interested in forms of capital. But this is the interesting thing.

First of all, he begins to say it's not just economic capital, though he does believe economic capital matters most. But he looks at cultural capital, which is tastes and knowledges, spaces you enjoy and you draw on that cultural capital. You have symbolic capital, which is reputation, which is recognition, prestige, and there's social capital, which is your social relationships and your family. So he begins to look at this notion that you have a range of different capitals being brought in and drawn upon by the most powerful. And they are in dispute as to whose capital is going to. This is the key sentence to dictate the dominant principles of domination, and this becomes a very key part of our work, because what Bourdieu gives us is to dictate the dominant principles of domination. Means that these various capitals are drawn upon to say in which field of capital, which principles will we all have to agree, are the principles of the elite that we all have to acknowledge are the most powerful.

And then, finally, Mike Savage, in my university, came up with the notion, also influenced by Bourdieu, of constellations of elites. So there's not one hegemonic elite, but constellations or groups of elites disputing themselves where these dominant principles lie. So it means that we didn't, in our work, believe that you actually had you just looked at the Bogota elite, or one elite that dominates Colombia? You have to look at dominant elites in a range of fields. And the capitals they draw upon to actually determine those dominant principles of domination. Anyway, sorry, that was a bit long.

But then if I'm thinking of, you know, and I didn't want to jump into this. But I looked into. You said, you've got the Ardila group, so they, you know, Bogotano, I guess, I think, I mean, are they Bogotano, Ardila, Lulei? And yeah, so there are RCN news and all of that poster. But also in Calca, so down there with the sugar that comes through and so on. So I see this in the constellations, very interesting.

So why then, if we're moving forwards and so on? And I keep looking at my studies, my looking at the sort of domination that took place. I have to ask, you know? And around the 1940s, and I know your studies. This report starts in 1991 new Constitution. Good place to start on any study about Colombia if you're going to do the actuality. But in the 1940s, when when Fernando Masuera came in as mayor of Bogota, four times or so. He was from the provinces. And from what I understand, I mean, what we would say, that provincia, it's kind of, you know, classist thing, it's the provinces. But that's how it was seen, and I'm thinking as well. He then married into the Kling family, and that gave him a certain prestige, which we still see today.

So how would someone?

Social capital, social capital, then there we go, there's your other one, social capital. Because then you start seeing his photos in society magazines. When I think previously he wouldn't have been, he would have just been a political figure.

So social capital is very interesting, like an influencer, isn't it that ghastly word?

But that's, I mean, that's so interesting, I want. Then, then there's something else that you you draw on massively, of course, is land reform. And if we just, and I know, we're jumping around, but I think, you know, for the benefit of my my listeners, that we just jump around. Like this, land reform has never taken place here, right? I mean, every other Latin American country has had some sort of land reform, as far as I know.

But land reform has never taken place, and, of course, point number one on the peace accords in 2016, and Gustavo Petro, President, has talked about the need for land reform. But, as you say in your report, this has been a uniting, a source of discord by these elites. Because it's not just politics and economics and so on. The land is connecting. It's like the ILO conductor all the way through. So how do we see this developing?

I mean, first of all, how do these people get all the land that they're just?

And so the notion of land and defence of the right to property. We see this as what we call these principles of domination. In the history of Colombia. That elites have tended to agree to as something that, although they might be constellations, you have elites in different sectors, it's not the same. The sindicato Antioqueño, the sort of those that have come out to the industrial sector of Medellín and Antioquia. As the Cauca elite, or the elite of the Valle de Cauca, where you've got the Azucareros, etc. They have very different sort of histories and very different processes. But at some level, there's an agreement that you don't touch property, the sacralización de la propiedad, we call it a sacralization of property. And so that's not the only issue of dominant principle domination, but it is clearly one that connects very much this study to the problem of violences. Because one has to ask, Well, why is it that? At the end of the day, the defence of property has led elites to rally round? To actually prevent any sort of agrarian reform, which could have been the source of democratization, opening up a different kind of agriculture, opening up possibilities for Colombia when it is one of the most unequal regions in the world. Certainly in terms of land tenure.

And so this history is particularly important. And when I compare it, say to England, for instance, in this sense, in the sense that elites in England. And I don't say this. What I'm about to say is not because I think elites in England have not used violence, because they absolutely have. But there was this moment of shift when the rural sector and the landed sector gave way politically to the industrial sector, the manufacturers. And so, I mean, I'm cutting a long story short.

But Barrington Moore, a famous historical sociologist, puts it this way Say, without a bourgeoisie, there's no democracy. So, in other words, you didn't have the emergence of a class that came out of a new constellation. If you like, that becomes dominant, puts forward different dominant principles. If you don't have that, you are then going to have. A society that is continuously exploiting an agrarian class, making it extremely difficult to make change, in any sense, peacefully. And also what's happened over time in UK and Europe, given in terms of agrarian change. We can also look at South Korea and places in the global South, which have become ultimately industrialized.

Agrarian reform played a big role in that, and it played an extraordinary role ultimately in transforming attitudes of elites in the sense that they began to invest. And this began happening earlier than the kind of rise of industrial bourgeoisie. But the sort of decision to accept a third party to sort out conflicts between elites, that's what I call the rule of law for the minute.

I mean, again, lots more to say about that. But it took centuries, and our elites continue to use violence overseas. But when you look at the history of Europe, the one form of violence that declined was interpersonal male or male violence. This has not happened in Colombia. And so this issue of agrarian reform that you've raised becomes incredibly significant. Because defending the right to property has led elites to use violence or to support violence.

And that, I think, is one of the key challenges the country faces.

Attempt to create some sort of social form. You have people like Nicanor Restrepo, who I interviewed, who emerged out of that. Who would consider himself, in some sense, a kind of more like our industrial bourgeoisie, if you like. But that industry collapsed, of course, that textile industry, and it's not, I think, a coincidence that the drug trafficking emerged just as that collapsed. And then, in terms of these other regional elites and their relationship to land and to economic development, I think these different sectors. What has been very important in Colombia is until the 1991 Constitution. You could say there was a kind of two-party, bifurcated elite that managed to divide the elite, but divided it through. Ultimately, a bogota concentration of the political elite. If you like, and a transactional politics. That is most evident in the Frente Nacional, the National Front pact, in which they divide up the state if you like.

And that I think that politics there. Something we want to look at more is how drug trafficking affected that transactional politics. In which the cost of the vote? I remember when I first came to Colombia in the 70s, the cost of the vote was rising. And so that ultimately had a great impact on the nature of the political system. But then we have the 1991 Constitution and what we found, and that's why we took that date. Was some shifts here of that bogota political elite no longer controlling politics? In quite the same way, the fragmentation of elites and the rise of regional elites. And I think this issue, and for us, for instance, in our study up till now, we've clearly looked at the elites in a national sense.

But what we haven't done yet is look at all the regional elites to explore each of those processes in every region. Because that's what we need to do. That's a very complex history. It is not the same the Costa Caribeño, you know what happens there, the Tachar and other sort of. It's not the same as what happens in Macauca or Casanare, where I've worked, or other places. And so, you know, this is something that we need to get a grip on more. There's obviously lots of people that have done very useful studies.

Now you did a lot of the investigation into this by interviews. How did you interview people and not tell them? Well, we think you're the elites, or did they just accept it?

Particularly, I was interested in how they understand violence, how they respond to violence, when do they respond to violence, and how do they. We started work and we already got quite a lot on this. On which elites began to support the peace accord in 2016, and who funded the campaign for supporting it, and who was against it? And so there's some issues here about, you know, we needed to know how, you know what were their motivations, and so so, very, very interesting, really. I mean, I could go into a lot of detail and there won't be time. But, you know, I could, you know. I've managed to sort of, I suppose, get a sense of of these great differences in the constellations and how sectoral interests make a difference. You know the difference if you're a coffee farmer, or if you're a cattle rancher, you're an industrialist, if you're a sugar plantation owner.

And so all these sectoral interests, you know, and then to try and find out, well, where amongst these interests is there something which could be brought to bear? On supporting a peace project, not just the accord, but the reforms and transformations needed to build peace. That is the great problem, because quite a lot of elites did support the accord, not all we know, but quite a few but we're. It's not really so clear that they actually bought into all the transformations that were going to be needed. Such as a grand reform, which would be needed in order to really make that piece of accord work.

You don't have to answer that.

You know, we know the sort of story that's out there that there was a great deal of reluctance to let the drug traffickers into the social capital. That you need to be elite, it's not so clear that they weren't willing to use the economic capital. And so there are these issues that become quite important, not just the Sindicato Antioqueño. I think the sort of economic capital from drugs is probably being quite significant and not talked about quite in the way it ought to be. For obvious reasons, but clearly it's a major issue in so many ways.

And in terms also of willingness for some elites to support, to what lengths would you go to support resistance to a grand reform? But also to insurgents? On the left, of course.

No, no, around about 50 to 60.

Okay, yeah, but I was looking at the figures here in your report, there's 1,281 people belonging to the elite, and then you sort of divide it up.

That makes 0.

02 of the population. I want to know a little bit, I mean, how does that? Because, you know, obviously the rest of Latin America very well. But how does that compare, for example, to a place like El Salvador or Guatemala, which have been obviously very traditionally ruled by?

And we also found that the military came from provinces, not from the sort of elite universities or schools that the elites come from. And so there's a kind of really big sort of differentiation between the military. And that's something that means Colombia stands out from other parts of Latin America. But in Guatemala, what's interesting and what's happened over the last sort of couple of decades is the served. The elites for a long time in Guatemala now want to be the elite, right? And this is a very worrying development.

So you have in Guatemala, you know, increasing role of the military in politics and society. They've always had a role, but now it's like they also want the status and the wealth that others have had. So there's this sort of issue there that's emergent in Guatemala that is particularly sort of significant. And then in El Salvador, which is a country I spent some time in and was there a lot in the war.

There, I think what you've got is a backlash to elites from a politician who comes from a new elite, right? Bukele, he's, you know, part of. And here I introduce a concept we haven't talked about yet, which is oligarchic elites. And I need to introduce that. Because, basically, Bourdieu, you know, believed that economic power was gave you a greater capital and resource than any other. To define politics and to define the dominant principles. What happens with an economic power is that the defense of wealth becomes important, which means you don't necessarily put all your eggs into the basket of one political group.

You can actually fund different political groups, but your defense of wealth is very important. So if you look at a family like the Zielinski in Colombia, right? You are looking at something rather like the Bukele in El Salvador. And you're looking at an elite that's emerged in the neoliberal era more than any other. They're not the old landowning elites, right? They're the elites, sort of, you know, emerging in a different way.

And those elites actually do look at politics differently. And of course, Bukele has been able. I mean, you know, it's not usual for oligarchic elites to go directly into politics, but Bukele, the son of a big business man, has done so.

But he did also give funding to Petro. And so you have there the kind of the defense of wealth means you hedge your bets rather. But, you know, that's still very powerful figures.

But when I was going to get on to the issue of the media, of course, jumping to it, the media, of course, you've got. You know the Sarmiento group, well, that's a Bukele Zielinski with Semana, Santo Domingo with Caracol that's 220 different branches, and Adela Lula with RCN. However many, that is, and they really do control the information. I mean, that's the truth of it. But I was looking at this and you said, you know, when you brought up the elite oligarchy, there's 46 people.

Yes, and in the tiny tiny number 46 when you think of a population.

But these are the we can pick up, the Char or the Araujo, the morenos, the masueras. And I just find it amazing that you've done this when you put this down and it's been in El Espectador and other people. Have these people responded to you, the people that you've put them there? Because despite the fact you say that this is for debate and for conversation. I mean, there's going to come with a negative, it comes with a negative slant, not necessarily from you, but the way we now perceive elites. You know, it's not a gentleman's club, it's certainly a man dominated club, but it's not like a gentleman's club of old. This is a very powerful, very small, very politically and economically powerful group, as I said.

So did any of them get in touch with you or even threaten you when you brought this out?

And for me, that is the critical, critical issue that it's hard to think of how Colombia is going to reduce the violences. And I talk always about chronic violences in many countries in Latin America, work because violence is a phenomenon, but it has multiple expressions. And so I've watched one of my years working in Medellín, I've watched the mutations, and I've also watched the fact that the measurement of violence just by homicides is not enough. I remember being in one of the comunas in Medellín and finding out that. Because Medellín was so concerned that its homicide rate gave it this reputation of being the most violent city in the world. The combos, the gangs were no longer going to kill, and you had to ask permission to murder, but they continued extorting and selling virginity of young girls.

And so, in other words, when you look at the violences in their reproduction in various spaces. And I haven't dealt with anything like the multiples expressions and the murder of social leaders that have taken place. The differential violences against the Afro-Colombian community, Indigenous communities. All the issues that we sadly know happen. But what can we do about these violences if you don't have a rule of law that's equitable, accessible for everyone? You don't have a sense of justice, you don't have a sense of social justice, you have entrenched inequalities, you have kids growing up in. Because Colombia is still a mostly urban country, 80 urban, and we talk about the violences in the rural areas, but there are multiple violences in the cities.

And if you're growing up in those environments with very little sense of a future, a long-term future. With drugs selling or trafficking offering incredible advantages that nothing else can offer, then that reproduction violence is going to happen. So the economy has to start looking after everybody, it has to start offering the generations that are growing up in this something new. Otherwise, we will reproduce the intergenerational cycles of violence in Colombia. And that, I think, is a really terrifying prospect.

I would say that if somebody is, you know, there's obviously the.

And the reason why? One of the reasons focusing on elites is because when we think of violence, we think of the poor. But I work as well with many poor communities in Latin America who experience violence. But it made me think, Well, where are the elites? They don't need security at a public level because they can live in gated communities, they can buy private security, and they live a life where they can protect themselves. Now. That began to break down in some areas, such as in Antioquia when they began to get fears of kidnapping, and in Monterrey, Mexico, the same.

And then they began to act right, and they began to support a different kind of thing. But you know, you're not going to get security as a public good. That really generates security for everyone, including human security, which I really like the fact that Petra is talking about that. You will not get that unless elites are prepared to pay taxes and support a public security provision that is genuinely accessible for everybody. And this is a great problem.

So are we seeing a shift towards the military becoming an elite?

Will you also get the elites rallying around to see how they can defend the principles they've always defended? And it doesn't mean that there aren't principles that are being contested. There are. We also talk about those in the document, such as over taxation, over the state's role in the regions, etc. etc. But I mean, issues like that. Would ever the Colombian elites actually imagine seeing a military man?

We still have no women in major political roles in politics. That would be a major shift, but it would bring up the possibility that you would think there could be major shifts in other senses as well. And who knows what that would mean and where that would take us? I mean, I don't see at the moment that the Colombian elite, which has had. Sort of you've got such a power amongst the civilian strata that I don't know the moment when they would call upon the military, things would have to get pretty, pretty bad in terms of Petro's program.

And I can't, at the moment, imagine that. But it's not. Colombia has a different history to other places where we.

Chile, I mean, to be honest, Chile.

No one would have expected the military to come in. But then you have the United States backing that. And and so you've then got the issue of the global, the shift in global power. And exactly, you know what the role of the United States will be. Because up until now, one of the principles of domination has been precisely to accept the U.S. as the policy reference point. Yes, this is true.

This is true.

When we talk about the people who have most suffered in this violence, the traditional communities, such as the Afro communities and the Indigenous communities, and then the deaths of social leaders. But this comes back to land again, doesn't it? And then so I ask, I ask you, this is that? The land, if it's being fought over, or, in the eyes of many, protected because it belongs to others? You know, we see these awful figures because we're in the city, so we just see them on the front pages and so on. We don't live it, but we see these awful figures of massacres or murders and contract killings. We capture the guy who pulls the trigger, but who are the people giving the orders?

I think that's my question at the end of that.

And so there clearly is a willingness.

To use violence to protect.

Already, we are seeing Indigenous people sort of feeling that they've got some sort of possibility now to regain land that they've lost. And we're now seeing responses to that from landowners and economic interests. Well, I'll say it fed again.

So these issues are about a whole economic model. And it's very worrying to think that there might be a group of powerful people paired to fund a sicarios, assassins, other armed groups to defend their right to own land. I talked about this a couple.

It's just not, but they keep pushing in the frontiers. And now when we talk about these constellations and the regions and cattle farming. I want to bring in my own personal experiences. Because everybody who listens to this knows I have businesses in Mon Pós Bolívar, and the politics is run by the Montes family, which you've put in the report. I mean, totally.

And even when they do their campaigning, or, let's say the person they have backed to be mayor, the campaign's poster is like, Montemos al Bus. I mean, they don't make any bones about it. And then I know that they put people into the Consejo in Bolívar from Mon Pós and so on, and so forth. And it's an open secret when it's not even a secret at all. It's like, Are you a Montista? or you're not a Montista?

And it's so, very interesting to see that it plays out on this level. And then across the river, I think it was San Zenón where the urns were burnt and so on. So it had one of the latest sort of local elections, election over. I mean, it must have been 400 people in that town. But the two parties were the Conservative Party and the Central Democratic Party.

But it's about who controls the territory. And then on that side, that's Magdalena, that's the Nieco, I don't know how you say it, and then the other people that we deal with. So we have the montes running mon pós and around, and then just over the way in Sucre, we have the garcias.

And everybody knows, and everybody knows what the Garcias did when he was mayor of Cartagena, and he kept taking half of the port with him. Tying up the health care system, finishing off social security, everybody knows, and yet it still just continues.

And I just don't understand it because to see it in your report, it's wonderful to see it in writing. But we live it, and I don't. In places like Sucre and Medio Magdalena, in the middle of Bolívar or the middle of César, I don't see it changing.

I'll jump in again. You've got the three or four options that academics have written down as how to. Sort of, it's not destroy elites. It's how to sort of go about decreasing the importance. And I tend to sort of veer towards the James Robinson solution. It's like just taking away their, I guess it's the importance again, taking it away, just gradually, so diminishing. But this is going to take time.

Would you be more towards Robinson or Piketty or elsewhere, because you've got a few up there? And Piketty, of course, has been advising petrol and economics, which has got a lot of people up, got their backs up a little bit. But I mean, perhaps you could talk to us a little bit about those different solutions.

So, but you know, the James Robinson one, the kind of, you know, we have to think, well, will the elites allow themselves to be disappeared? If you see what I mean?

And I So, my big question is, you know, you know, these are powerful people who have tended to come together when necessary. And even what you were just describing. Of all the elites in these regions and areas, the transactional politics, right, has meant that, you know, the bogota elite to run the country has had to depend on those people and allow them to entrench themselves right through the deals that are done for votes. And which means that, you know, we've had an increasing fragmentation, an increasing capacity of those elites to entrench themselves. And so, you know, it's hard to see what they would give up peacefully, right? This is my great fear.

And so I'm very much a peace I call myself an antropologo de la Paz, a peace anthropologist. I'm written a lot about violence, and I'm, you know, and my latest book was on a Politics Without Violence question mark. And so I'm sort of always looking, you know, to the fact. Actually found a way to have a policy, you know, to deal, address with the violences. We would do more politics and we would have more participation. And I suppose the part I like about Piketty is that I think he is talking. And his latest book, one of his very long, detailed books, is on participation, and I'm very into participation.

I tend to feel that until, you know, I feel. If we can work to reduce violences, we enable more participation to work on the conditions that reproduce violence. That sounds like a strange sentence, but it feels to me that there's an iterative process where, you know, we need to start saying, you know. Encouraging people to recognize, including the elites, that violence cannot be a way for defending their interests. If you're going to have a serious democracy, you cannot have it underpinned by violence. There has to be a rule of law and there has to, there cannot be impunity, and there has to be. I mean, I'm very into the work of AHEP in Begum, work on restorative justice. And at least to find a way forward. And who knows how far Petro's total peace will be able to be workable. But, you know, he's obviously putting out some something there, and he put in his inauguration. I really did welcome his emphasis on all the violences.

If we could make the sort of addressing violence one of the critical issues and encourage the elites who cannot want violence to touch themselves, right? So they can't allow it to touch others. And to have, you know, Latin America has more private police privately than it has state police. And I think Colombia is probably the same, although Colombia's done quite a lot of work on police reform, including General Narajo, who you mentioned earlier. But we still have a long way to go. Police are still not trusted, there's still issues of corruption, so you need a security policy. So, anyway, it's a long answer to your question, because your question is very, very complex. But, you know, I tend to feel to face realities. There is no evidence yet that the elites are going to allow their wealth to be questioned and to allow for the transformation.

I would like to see that a sector of the elites will see that that's the only way you will get a democratic country. And also a country that could be economically preparing for climate change and socially preparing, you know, and to deal with all those violences that are so horrendous and terrible. And a country with such an educated sort of strata as Colombia. To sense that you also live side by side with some of the worst violences in the world and the highest levels of inequality. There's something I would like to appeal to that, and perhaps James Robinson is thinking of this that, you know, ultimately, there could be some agreement they can do better.

I would put that in the same sort of umbrella as Santos, thinking that the idea of peace would just be enough to push through the, you know, the referendum. Of course, it wasn't because it was picked apart at every level. And I would love that. Just, you know, nice, nebulous phrases such as or terms such as decency and humanity might appeal. It's so tough though, isn't it? It's so tough when you think you know your wealth might be questioned.

And then, of course, when you have an opposition who's saying, we're all going to get poorer, everything's going to get more expensive, everything's going to do this. But it all, it all, they all tether together the taxes, the inequality, the landowning, the political participation, they all make. One final argument is one final discussion, but each strand needs to be addressed before we get anywhere. And I don't know, I find myself. I have moments of great hope, and then I have moments that perhaps not such great hope. I think that's it.

And I worry when I hear some people talking about this and that and it's like, Okay, you know, I may be socially conservative when it talks, and when you talk of culture and education and things like that. But on the other side, you know, I'm pretty liberal. It's like, surely we should be participating to improve situations and so on. And then I just feel like I'm some sort of hippie dippy. Because no, we've got to look after ourselves. And so I don't know. I think there's much more to be discussed here.

So I just take this moment to say, thank you so much for your thoughts and sharing the report. And when can we expect the next segment out?

I love it. And it has incredible social movements and organisations as well that are also building peace. You know, and doing stuff on the ground, which we don't often see. It's not as visible. That also always, but I connect with those people a lot and I think there's always hope in that. But clearly we all have to work together.

And the idea of this is, let's get this debate out there.

So let me take this moment and just say, thank you so much to Jenny Pearce, who is a research professor at Latin America and Caribbean Centre at the London School of Economics. Thank you for your time. I know it's late over there in the United Kingdom, all sorts of things going on. I heard something happened recently over there.

But let's not discuss that. But thank you so much for your time. It has been a real pleasure. And promise us when you get the next one out, we'll have you back.

And also our other sponsors. BNB Colombia Tours, experts in custom made travel throughout Colombia. The team at BNB Colombia Tours can provide you with fantastic private experiences, creating wonderful memories of Colombia for a lifetime. Check out the website at bnbcolombia..com, complete the free itinerary form. And tell them that Columbia Calling sent you to receive a further 5 off their already great prices, so that's bnbcolombia.com and, of course, Latinnews.com.

Thank you for everyone for listening, that's us, farewell, and, of course, check back next week.

AI.