While the talks between Colombian FARC-EP guerrillas and the government are on standby, after the FARC-EP Peace Delegation announced a pause, on Friday, the guerrilla commander Timoleón Jiménez has published a piece called "What Santos did not want". The article, which was published by the FARC-EP Peace Delegation in Havana website, argues that "President Santos never misses an opportunity to manipulate".

The article goes on stating that "The President has publicly authorized to execute a countless amount of Colombians who are unsatisfied with his policies, which concurs with his injunction to the high command to be tough with those who promote public roads disorders. This is how, even if it is difficult to admit, the ruling classes in Colombia have been ordering killings, displacement, disappearances, torture, threats and political paralysis of fear for decades, with an air of apparent sanity and adherence to the law".

We publish here the full text of the article.

A country which he doesn´t like, because it doesn´t look like the London he dreams of, is on the streets, demanding changes, facing the authorities, calling for different policies.

President Santos never misses an opportunity to manipulate. After all, he’s a business man from the world of the big media, used to distort and belittle opposing points of view. He didn´t scruple to assert before the military High Command, that the commander of the FARC-EP had written an article complaining about the fact he was considered a high-value target. That’s his problem. On this side, we never resort to the distortion of what was said by the President, we prefer to interpret his words in their exact meaning.

Anyone who has read the letter of Timoleón Jiménez knows that what he criticized was the public presidential order to execute any FARC member who is in Colombia. The President cannot issue orders to kill compatriots, because the death penalty is banned in the country. Furthermore, such order is really dangerous when the president himself, his ministers and generals usually accuse popular leaders and opposition of being members of the FARC.

The President has publicly authorized to execute a countless amount of Colombians who are unsatisfied with his policies, which concurs with his injunction to the high command to be tough with those who promote public roads disorders. This is how, even if it is difficult to admit, the ruling classes in Colombia have been ordering killings, displacement, disappearances, torture, threats and political paralysis of fear for decades, with an air of apparent sanity and adherence to the law.

Santos himself acknowledged that when he was appointed trade minister by Gaviria, he was ordered to open the economy. Since then, his main effort has been to materialize in our country's a neoliberal design of globalization: total free trade, full entrance for foreign investment, privatization of public entities, giving away our natural resources to transnational capital, deterioration of working conditions of workers and increasing debts with international banks.

So the Colombian oligarchy doesn´t deny, but even boasts of having assumed the strategy of world domination of big capital, which, as everyone can see, leads to vast populations to the most distressing social crisis, environmental disaster, to total war crushing the people, the nuclear catastrophe and even a predictable extinction of human species. They are linking all their mechanisms of domination to this project, from public education to the mainstream press, through their armed and legal apparatus.

“Prosperity for All” is simply the Colombian version of the impositions of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the WTO, and all power groups that inspire them, like the famous Bilderberg or Trilateral Commission. The mining, agro industrial, infrastructure, housing and science ‘locomotives’, far from seeking the wellbeing of Colombian people, are designed to ensure penetration, empowerment and full control of the country by the international powers of world financial capital.

With whom the most important national economic groups are intertwined. They are the ones that increase their wealth in the shadows of foreign investors. While Santos, as a generous King Midas who turns everything he touches into gold, claims his policies to have lifted millions of Colombians out of misery and poverty, brought them food, education, health, housing, formal employment and juicy opportunities of prosperity, people of flesh and blood are taking the roads and the public squares to demand attention and justice.

The presidential alternative is to point out that there is no real reason for people to protest. Their government is doing everything that can possibly be done for them. And he doesn´t preclude the possibility that the protests are actually tricks, used by people interested in sowing chaos, like the guerrilla and some opposition figures. Despite this, he states that he respects the right to protest and dissent. That is, if people cry before the Wailing Wall; a cry unable to bring about any changes to their policies.

Now more than ever, it becomes clear that it was the big capital in Colombia, which demanded a definitive end to the conflict. For the implementation of their plans in the country and the rest of the continent, it is imperative to” remove the dead mule off the road”, as Santos said. He has done his homework judiciously; end the conflict by hook or by crook. And this is where dialogue and conversations enter the scene. Like the people, the guerrilla also deserves the opportunity to cry.

This is why the peace talks exist. To claim, with a soft and gentle voice, everything you want. Although nothing you´ll ask for will be accepted or granted. The international community, that´s to say, the United States and Western Europe, are willing to accept the demobilized guerrilla to be beneficiary of transitional justice, which would finally give us a precarious freedom, but leave us nullified in politics. That would be the Agreement, a relative pardon in exchange for the guerrilla’s support to neoliberal globalization in Colombia.

The first item on the Agenda, about comprehensive agrarian policies, is signed with some caveats, which are to be discussed later on. These exceptions are all the objections made by the FARC to the plans of big capital to change Colombia into a huge dispenser of mineral, biological, agro industrial and food resources, at the expense of the property and the tranquility of small and medium agricultural, livestock and mining producers, as well as black and indigenous communities.

Santos doesn´t think of giving ground in issues like democratization of national life, the second item on the Agenda, either. When he says that he is not negotiating the state, nor the economic model, nor the political system or the private sector, it is to reassure the big capital, pending of any weakness he could show at the conversation table. Take it easy, nothing is going to change here. This is only about the last chance we’re going to give the bandits to disarm and build their future life in the heat of our sacred institutions.

If they won´t do it, as he recently said, they will be the first affected, also politically, as in former processes. Although the President believes he’s playing with marked cards and sure to win, he's nervous. He promises and lies, threats and lies. Meanwhile, a country he doesn´t like, because it doesn´t look like the London he dreams of, is out on the streets, demanding changes, facing the authorities, calling for different policies.
The same policies we have been discussing for months in the Havana Peace Talks. What Santos didn’t want to happen.

Timoleón Jiménez

Commander of the Central High Command of the FARC-EP

August 22, 2013