It is hardly normal that they compare the current scandal of President Petro with the inflow of money from the Cali Cartel in Samper’s presidential campaign in 1994. However, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. It is not the same river. The similarities hide enormous differences about the relationship between drug trafficking and politics in Colombia.
In 1994 it was directly the drug traffickers who provided the money. The Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, capos of the Cali cartel, called a meeting of drug traffickers to collect several million dollars. The reason was to have a friendly government…
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It is hardly normal that they compare the current scandal of President Petro with the inflow of money from the Cali Cartel in Samper’s presidential campaign in 1994. However, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. It is not the same river. The similarities hide enormous differences about the relationship between drug trafficking and politics in Colombia.
In 1994 it was directly the drug traffickers who provided the money. The Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, capos of the Cali cartel, called a meeting of drug traffickers to collect several million dollars. The reason was to have a friendly government, the usual. Underneath, the Rodríguez had a more ambitious plan. They hoped that Samper would support a policy of submission to justice with reduced sentences. The context was propitious. Pablo Escobar, the enemy kingpin who was waging war against the state, had just been shot down. The Cali cartel appeared to be the most powerful force, capable of summoning the rest of the drug traffickers. The prosecutor at the time, Gustavo de Greiff, was engaged in a policy of submission as a solution to drug trafficking.
But everything fell apart when the recordings linking Samper’s campaign to drug money became known. The president no longer had the political capital to offer a deal. In addition, when they summoned the other drug traffickers, they received a door slammed in the face. The bosses of Norte del Valle flatly rejected the proposal, they became the main cartel in the country. At the same time, a much more powerful paramilitary group, the AUC, was spawning. These private armies would control, together with the Farc, the main areas of cocaine production and trafficking.
Years of much war came. The state advanced. He demobilized the AUC and the Farc. And, although it can be argued that Colombia lost the war against drugs because today more cocaine is produced than ever before, it can also be argued that the war was won if the triumph is interpreted as the expansion of state authority throughout the territory. The armed organizations that exercise power over drug trafficking no longer dominate cities, they are increasingly withdrawn to peripheral areas. Its incidence in national politics is much less.
The contrast of the triumph of the state against organized violence is the increase in the political power of an economic sector that was strengthened with the accumulation of capital from drug trafficking. Launderers, smugglers, state contractors and corrupt politicians, without necessarily being linked to cocaine trafficking, were deteriorating democracy from within. As armed groups and mafias lost power, the influence over state agencies to protect illicit activities and ensure access to state resources began to become one of the main means of producing wealth in Colombia. A senator from a remote town, who became one of the great national voters until he was sent to prison for links to criminal groups, summed it up in one sentence: “politics is better business than drug trafficking.”
Since then, financing by businessmen specialized in public contracting, money laundering, and smuggling has become the determining force in the results of many congressional, gubernatorial, and mayoral elections. It is they, not the drug traffickers, who define an important part of the map of political representation in Colombia.
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The 2022 campaign reflects the situation of 1994 in light of these changes. Petro also offered a deal. He proposed “social forgiveness” as a mechanism to assimilate these forces to legality. Like Samper, the agreement fell into oblivion after being elected. Now that it is known, through his own son, about the financing of corrupt politicians and contractors, some previously linked to drug trafficking and money laundering, the chances of social forgiveness are even more remote.
Like Samper, his destiny seems to be to defend himself to avoid being deposed. It is the priority, above the social changes that he promised. The construction of majorities that ensure his governability will go through the purchase of those same politicians who have made democracy a business.
The state won the war but corruption won the state.
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2023-08-06 10:32:00
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