By: Iván Gallo, content editor
Photo taken from: Wikipedia
The extreme right put in the mouths of its politicians and also its journalists – the first line of Uribismo, as Margarita Rosa de Francisco classified them – the indignation generated by Gustavo Petro’s tribute to Commander Carlos Pizarro by converting his hat into Cultural Heritage of the Nation. Voices were heard that did not hesitate to describe Pizarro as a criminal. Those who call it that are wrong.
Pizarro was the one who opened the door, within the armed groups, to a negotiated solution to the conflict. The first time that there was a real intention of dialogue from a guerrilla group was the ELN in 1975, after the disaster that the defeat in Anorí meant for them, which was on the verge of destroying them. In 1982 Belisario Betancur sat down to talk with the FARC, commanded by Jacobo Arenas and Manuel Marulanda, in the Uribe dialogues. The foundations of political participation were laid through the creation of a party, the UP, but it all ended in the massacre that was known to all and left more than 5,000 leftist militants murdered.
The history of negotiations between national governments and guerrillas has been plagued by non-compliance and betrayal. The first to believe that, despite everything, dialogue was the only possible solution was Pizarro. His first great teaching was forgiveness. The bloody retake of the Palace of Justice by the military was a clear example of the objective that officers such as Fernando Landazabal, Arias Cabrales and Plazas Vega had to take revenge on the M-19 after having made a fool of them with their publicized coups: the recovery for the town of Bolívar’s sword, the theft of weapons in the North Canton and the taking of the embassy of the Dominican Republic. Influenced by North American security doctrines, where it was intolerable to allow any left-wing dissidence, a part of the army teamed up with paramilitaries and decided to exterminate anything that smacked of Marxism.
While the ELN and the FARC were radicalizing, Pizarro believed in peace. He missed the murders of Iván Marino Ospina, Luis Fayad, Toledo Plata, the mysterious death of the leader and founder of the M-19 Jaime Bateman, was bigger than the hostile climate that surrounded the country. 1989 was the year in which Pablo Escobar decided to declare war on the Colombian State: an Avianca plane exploded in the air while flying through the Bogotá sky, a bus full of dynamite exploded in front of the DAS headquarters, there were murders in the Plaza de Soacha to Luis Carlos Galán, bombs were exploding on the corners, it was a country at war, with the extreme right unleashed with its paramilitaries and gangsters and yet Carlos Pizarro decided to wrap his weapon in the Colombian flag, hand it over and run for the presidency of the republic. It was on March 9, 1990 in the hamlet of Santo Domingo, near the urban area of Tacueyó. With his voice he dissolved the armed struggle of the M-19 “For Colombia, for peace, put down your weapons” “Officers of Bolívar, break ranks!”
Pizarro knew the risks he was taking. María José Pizarro even remembers the last time she saw her father. It was in a restaurant in Bogotá, in a brief moment in which the tight tour he had to do allowed it. He already knew they were going to kill him. That day the meeting was at a restaurant called Tamarindo, which is around the corner from Casa Medina. Someone scolded him because he wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. Unconfident, Pizarro shouted, laughing, “And why am I wearing that? “They know I’m wearing a bulletproof vest, if they’re going to kill me, shoot me in the head and that’s it.” The devastating logic disarmed María José and those who accompanied him. He told her that night to be prepared, that she had to know that he was going to be killed soon.
In April 1990, Luis Carlos Galán and Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa had already been murdered in that campaign. Despite the certainty of betrayal, Pizarro made it clear to Navarro Wolf, to Gustavo Petro himself, to his political lieutenants that there was no longer any possibility of resuming the armed struggle. The commitment to peace was total.
On April 26, 1990, Carlos Pizarro was murdered on an Avianca plane by a hitman who belonged to Casa Castaño. The DAS men killed the murderer inside the plane so that he would not speak. It was not just the order of a paramilitary wrapped in a cloud of bazooka but it had the support of armed forces, of some politicians, of the “front line of the extreme right.” Pizarro himself had already prepared the response to his death: swallow his anger and continue with peace.
Time has proven him right and 32 years after his murder his own daughter put the presidential sash on one of his men, Gustavo Petro. Pizarro and his legacy must live on and must be remembered in every school, in every street, in every young person: the only way is reconciliation.
Pizarro was no criminal. Criminals are those who not only rejoiced in his death but also those who want to erase him from history.
