By Enrique Moreno Gimeranez
July 15, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Iván Cepeda Castro was representative to the House (2010-2014) and senator (2014-2018 and 2018-2022) for the Alternative Democratic Pole. From 2012 to 2016, he served as facilitator of the peace process between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) and had similar responsibility in the dialogues between the executive and the National Liberation Army (ELN) between 2014 and 2018.
For more than 20 years, he has devoted himself to the defense of human rights and the search for peace in Colombia. It has not been an easy road. Because of his work for justice for the victims in his nation, he has received countless threats against his life, had to remain in exile for several years and faced political persecution.
Iván Cepeda Castro is a man of principle who dreams and acts, as a citizen and a politician, for a better country. Representative to the House (2010-2014) and Senator (2014-2018 and 2018-2022) for the Alternative Democratic Pole, he served between 2012 and 2016 as a facilitator of the peace process between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) and held similar responsibility in the dialogues between the executive and the National Liberation Army (ELN) between 2014 and 2018.
Therefore, his views acquire special relevance to deepen in several issues related to the peace process in his nation. He kindly responded to Granma on different topics of current Colombian politics, of notable regional and global interest, taking as a starting point his assessment of Cuba’s role during the dialogues between his country’s executive and the FARC-EP…[sic]
“In each and every circumstance, Cuba’s role was fundamental, decisive, indispensable, because it created the necessary environment and context for the dialogues. A role that has been especially careful, respectful at all times of the Colombian State and its government and, of course, also of the delegation of the FARC-EP. The role of guarantor has been carried out with scrupulous care to avoid crossing that line where one begins to intervene in the dialogues, to try to guide them, or to break the independence that each of the parties must have.
“Cuba’s work as guarantor was impeccable, both in contributing to the solution of the problems inherent to the talks, facilitating the dialogues, fundamentally the rapprochements at the most difficult moments of the debate that took place at the Table. Also, at the most critical moments, with events outside the talks, the dynamics of the confrontation that continued in the country and another series of issues such as the fierce opposition of sectors that were not prone to dialogue, arose in Colombia.
“In all those moments of tension, in all those moments of difficulty in which dialogue was in serious danger, the work of Cuba and also of Norway was definitive; both teams of guarantors dedicated to seeking, precisely, to resolve the problems. This has also been the case in the implementation of the agreement, in which Cuba – together with Norway and also the United Nations Verification Mission – has played a central role”.
-More recently, the Cuba also played the role of guarantor in the peace dialogue between the Colombian Government and the ELN. What is your opinion of Cuba’s role in this process?
-It has also been fundamental in the dialogue processes that have taken place in relation to the ELN. A process which has allowed, for the first time in the history of the rapprochement with the ELN, the concretion of a negotiation agenda and also the beginning of the development of the points contained in that agenda.
“Unfortunately, the current Colombian Government has not had a congruent attitude towards such an effort. It has ignored the role of Cuba as a guarantor country in this context, ignoring the Protocol of Rupture that had been adopted and denying, not only the specific role of Cuba as a guarantor country, but also the role of guarantors in general in any peace process.
“The attitude of the Colombian Government towards these dialogues and towards the specific episode of this protocol is an attack, an aggression against the principle of legality of peace dialogues in any circumstance”.
-A few voices in the current Colombian government have deployed a series of hostile actions against Cuba…
-The Government has not only ignored this debt of recognition and gratitude towards Cuba with regard to its contribution to the peace process but has also taken an openly hostile attitude towards Cuba’s role in the international context and, in particular, with regard to peace in Colombia.
“It is part of a conception of International Relations that this government has developed, totally folded and absolutely subordinated to the interests of a radical and extremist sector of the White House policy today and that, fundamentally, obeys the electoral dynamics and the debts that Donald Trump has with a Republican political sector in the state of Florida.
“This is what, unfortunately, has led Colombia to assume the sad role of a kind of battering ram in US policy towards Cuba, Venezuela and the region in general”.
-In this sense, among the latest events in his country is the arrival on Colombian soil of the U.S. Security Force Assistance Brigade.
-Colombia becomes the platform and the laboratory of an aggression policy of the current US Government towards countries in the region. It is evident that it is serving as a leading government in the policy of aggression towards Venezuela and Cuba. “We are now witnessing what is called this “by invitation” military intervention, that is, the presence of an elite brigade of the U.S. Army Southern Command in our territory. This could easily become a scenario of international confrontation, of a multinational nature, in which not only would Colombia and the U.S. military forces be involved against Venezuela, but also, eventually, in a confrontation with other world powers such as China and Russia. It is clear that this scenario is highly dangerous and the policy of the current Colombian Government is being applied to it.
-The work of the High Commissioner for Peace, Miguel Ceballos, was questioned by you and other legislators during a debate on Political Control in the Second Committee of the Senate at the beginning of June. Can you give us more details on this?
-We argued in the debate on Political Control that High Commissioner Miguel Ceballos has produced a radical transformation in the responsibility he has in the Government. He should be the official in charge of peace policy and we see that his entire management has been oriented precisely in the opposite direction: in generating obstacles, difficulties and problems to make the implementation of the Peace Agreement already achieved practically impossible. In addition, in preventing the development of a peace process with the ELN and, within that function, of course, in having contributed to the aggression against Cuba. In particular, having actively promoted, as he himself accepts, the inclusion of Cuba in the list of those called by the United States countries that do not cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
-On 15 June, you and other congressmen also welcomed, through a statement, the decision of the Government of Iván Duque to maintain and consolidate diplomatic relations with Cuba?
-It is very positive that, in statements made by government officials, the status of Cuba as a guarantor country has been ratified, but we consider that to be insufficient. The problem that generated the lack of knowledge of the Protocol of Rupture of the conversations with the ELN must be left resolved. So that work of Political Control, which we exercise as congressmen, is going to continue and we are going to develop new actions seeking that the Colombian Government responds in an integral and full way to its commitments.
– What actions could the Government of Iván Duque undertake in support of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace?
-The only way for the current Government to straighten out the course of the country, after such an erratic and unfortunate leadership as it has had in these two years, is to move towards a serious peace policy, which includes the full implementation of the Peace Agreement, the resumption of the dialogues with the ELN and the promotion of a radically different international policy, oriented towards cooperation, integration and towards that objective of making our region a Zone of Peace.
In July 1925, 95 years ago, in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Monkey Trial” was held. It all began with the arrest of teacher John Scopes, who was accused of explaining to his high school students Darwin’s Origin of Species.
By Abel Prieto Jiménez
July 17, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
In July 1925, 95 years ago, in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Monkey Trial” was held. It all began with the arrest of teacher John Scopes, who was accused of explaining to his high school students Darwin’s Origin of Species.
He had violated a Tennesee law that forbade “the teaching of any theory that denies man’s Divine Creation as it is in the Bible, and replaces it with the teaching that he is descended from an order of lower animals.”
Many local people demonstrated in the streets with signs and shouts in favor of their religious values and against Scopes and Darwin himself, whom they saw as representatives of the Devil.
From the caricatured simplification of the thesis of evolution (“we are descended from the monkey”), the name with which the trial passed into history was born. It received great publicity in its time and ended up being presented as a duel between two sides, “creationists” and “evolutionists”, and between two prestigious lawyers.
The press in the North showed the clash between a world view that was typical of “deep America”, closed in itself, rural, moralistic, anti-scientific, very religious, and another “free thinker”, open to the debate of ideas and the advances of science.
Scopes was finally found guilty; although he was only sentenced to pay a fine and did not go to prison, as the prosecutor and the extremist sectors of the people wanted.
A theatrical piece based on the trial was released years later, and from it several versions were made for film and television. The sympathies in these plays tend to be on the “liberal” side, although, as in the U.S. entertainment industry, there is no serious investigation into the real causes of the conflict.
Within the questionable and undemocratic US electoral system, “Deep America” contributed decisively, in 2016, to Trump’s victory.
In that space, more cultural than geographical, analysts locate the “hard” electoral base of the ultra-right, associated with the stereotype of the white, Protestant, sexist, homophobic, illiterate, racist, hunter and gun lover, attached to Republican politics, the most conservative morality and the traditional concept of the family. With an exalted and messianic image of his country, he lacks curiosity about universal culture and that which thrives in New York and other US cities with a cosmopolitan vocation.
Joe Bageant wrote an incisive, exceptional book, Chronicles of Deep America, in which he characterizes the scam of the Yankee model and denounces the decline of the Empire on a planet controlled by corporations. His description of “that provincial America,” inhabited by churchgoers who “fanatically listen to the pastor explain the infallibility of the Bible in relation to all known matters, from biology to baseball rules,” and “are not even able–and do not care much about–to put Iraq or France on the map, assuming they have one, is very valuable.
Many believe that Trump is addressing this hard core of voters most of the time, in his speeches, in his tweets, in his permanent show.
The same irrational obstinacy of Darwin’s deniers reappears in Trump’s dismissive attitude toward science and scientists and in his erratic and criminal response to the pandemic.
Trump has also exceeded the political use of the Bible. On June 1, he ordered the removal of anti-racist protesters to walk through a park to St. John’s Church and “hold up a Bible in front of the cameras, like some kind of championship trophy,” as one journalist ironically put it.
Mariann Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Washington, said: “It was traumatic and deeply offensive. Something sacred was misused for a political gesture.
Last Friday, in Florida, at the Doral Jesus Church Worship Center, a refuge for terrorists, in a shameful rally where he avoided talking about the health catastrophe, Trump mixed internal and external enemies under the “caused” word socialism. The Democrats, he said, are standing alongside those who are knocking down statues. And he accused them of wanting to do the same with the statues of Jesus Christ.
An evangelical Christian of Cuban origin went so far as to say that Trump is “God’s chosen one” to stop the communist threat in the United States.
Let us remember that in the 2016 campaign this “chosen one” used inquisitorial language to refer to Sanders and Hillary Clinton: “He made a pact with the devil. She is the devil.” This is the kind of medieval insult used in 1925 by the people of Dayton to attack Scopes and Darwin.
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