Student protest and the crisis of education in Colombia

Sergio Andrs Rueda

Sectarianism, fed by fanaticism, is always
castrating. Radicalization, nourished by a
critical spirit, is always creative. (Freire, 2005,
pg. 37)

At a first sight, the reality of Colombian public universities can be interpreted simply as an
appropriate reaction to a civil conflict: universities patrolled by military personnel, laws regulating
undercover agents and their operations while on campus, routinely arrests of students and faculty
and an increased reliance on a mix of private security guards and electronic vigilance to maintain
order in the campuses. This is in fact, an official interpretation which has been successfully
integrated into the wider State propaganda effort to link organized dissent with either the two
main insurgencies, the FARC-EP, and the ELN, and delegitimize the claims of the student
movement (if any even remains).
In spite of the success of this official strategy, a powerful revolutionary imaginary remains in public
universities, where many left-leaning organizations usually achieve posts of representation, and
positions of influence within the community. One of the main themes of this imaginary is the
coincidence between the political and para-political elites of the country including, as a strategic
asset, control of the resources of the public universities, which are located in the capital of every
department of the country whose direction offers coveted financial and political advantages.
The truth of the situation remains unclear when only juridical rulings are considered as facts: there
have been processes against members of all sectors of the academic community for relations or
militancy in either one of the guerrillas, or a paramilitary organization. However, it is possible to
focus on a theoretical analysis and clear the situation, at least until empirical evidence becomes
widely available after a peace process. It is obvious that both the insurgency and the paramilitaries
would like to have, and in fact do have, presence in the universities. Both loose groupings of
organizations (which often fight amongst their own side) act through a series of fronts which
serve their interests, and both will support tactical allies who are unaware of their existence.
This divide which traverses the community itself, allows one to see its own broad ideological
identification as a nuanced field of complexities while at the same time reducing the opposite side
to its armed extreme. In this view, material and political causes disappear and the exercise of
freedom is used as an explanation for the existence of social ills. Some conclude that the Other,
who chose the wrong side, must be eliminated at all costs.
This formal structured is, of course, emplaced, in a concrete historical and political reality that is
the legacy of a constant series of civil wars that adapted international ideological frame to
Colombian conditions, often with little respect for the original form of the program. Between one
wave of civil wars and another, at some point during the fifties, the main focuses of peasant
armed resistance to the landowning elites started to disaffiliate themselves with the Liberal Party
and started to become closer with Communist cadres from the cities, starting what is now
considered to be a different armed conflict than the Liberal wars and considered to start in 1964
with the bombing of several autonomous farming communities deep in the jungles.
This legacy evolved into a complex community of loosely related movements which descend from
this common legacy, including partisan Communists, Maoists and Camilists, resulting sometimes
in organizations with common symbols and theoretical frameworks which are nonetheless not
necessarily connected organically or politically.
During the years that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, this militant subjectivity was widely
identified as belonging to the past, and those who maintained fidelity to it, as stuck inexorably in
the ideas of another era. This ideological triumph was accompanied by a reorganization of forces
in the war, now the paramilitaries were the only armed group with the aid of a superpower
(knowingly or not) and quickly recovered most of the territory lost with disregard for human rights
or international law. Their success was so wide that they became a national power, para-politics
became a common term, and even with the knowledge of the problem, several elected officials
today are family members of convicted para-politicians currently serving time in jail.
The sum of these conditions presents us with a deadlock that we have not been able to resolve,
and which accounts for the impotence of the Colombian left: the process Paulo Freire describes as
conscientizao, through which a victim recognizes itself as one, (Freire, 2005, pg. 36) so that
what was before recognized as freedom is then seen as a particular configuration, or status quo,
or oppressors and oppressed, is interrupted by this fixed ideological identification with an organic
community attacked by insurrection and dissent, so that, as iek writes: subjective violence is
experienced as such against the background of a non-violent zero level. It is seen as a perturbation
of the normal, peaceful state of things. (iek, 2009, pg. 2)Student discomfort, however
justified or understandable may be, are seen as a continuation of an original violence and from
which all other problems derive.
In this ideological constellation, the critical ideas of vanguard thinkers dissatisfied with the global
system of capitalism and its effect of education are rejected a priori for being part of a past best
forgotten, and its thinkers accused of not understanding the implications of the fall of the Berlin
Wall. In the imaginary of some political commentators, it is only through the friendship of the
insurgencies with people in activist circles in Europe, in national and international courts, in global
academia, and specially, in Venezuela, that there are correspondences between what Colombian
students are asking in the streets and what top level professors are saying in their classrooms, that
public schools are under assault not because they are failing (though some are) but because they
are one of the few public spheres left where people can learn the knowledge and skills necessary
to allow them to think critically and hold power and authority accountable. (Giroux) Despite wide
rejection of the violence involved with the protests, of the innate fear of a hooded individual, and
the suspicion of the effectiveness of the Latin American socialist macroeconomic model, the
Colombian community must recognize that the student radicals are fundamentally right: At work
here is a pedagogy that displaces, infantilizes and depoliticizes both students and large segments
of the () public. Under the current regime of neoliberalism, schools have been transformed into a
private right rather than a public good. Students are now being educated to become consumers
rather than thoughtful, critical citizens. (Giroux)
Of course this is not to say that the dissident groups are not determined by this frame they seek to
negate, it is far easier to repeat the term critical conscience a few times every speech than to
transform ones organization into a living community of militant action and thought, which is why
most organizations (radical or otherwise) dictate to, rather than construct with, their orientations
with their base militants.
None of the problems that we face are particularly new to Marxists, the proper concurrence of
theory and practice, the dialectic tension between the direction and the base, or debate between
the existence of non-political spaces against the inclusion of all aspects of life into class struggle, to
name a few. What is at stake here is our ability to break free from the deadlocks of twentieth
century politics and transform the imaginary associated with last the wave of Latin American
rebellion (which was the main influence for the political figures of the left today) in order to
update our militant project to face this concrete historical process. As this is impossible without a
political agreement that realistically is able to contain politics within peaceful means (in a conflict
with many more than two actors involved), the priority of any conscient radical should be the
realizing of the separate peace processes the government is negotiating with the FARC-EP and the
ELN and the developing of the legal and social framework for the reintegration of combatants.
Only the commitment to this goal can unite a fragmented left, connect it with an alienated people,
and allow for the emergence of a new militant subjectivity, a project largely abandoned despite
the empty homage paid to comrade Guevara.

References
Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Opressed. (M. B. Ramos, Trad.) New York: Continuum.
Giroux, H. (s.f.). Can Democratic Education Survive in a Neoliberal Society? Recuperado el 20 de 05
de 2014, de Truthout: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12126-can-democratic-education-
survive-in-a-neoliberal-society
iek, S. (2009). Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. London: Profile Books.