opinion

Many-sided violence
and the border
by Raúl Leis R. --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

Panamanian territory near the border continues to be for most people a kind of "wild west," a zone that's undiscovered, overgrown, wild, empty and now, as the result of the Colombian conflict, in flames.

The border regions are lands and waters touched by the sovereign presence of various states. In the case of the eastern border (the province of Darien and the Kuna Yala, Embera-Wounaan and Wargandi comarcas), this space has been effectively cut off from the government's social development and action plans, due to the lack of modern communication and transportation. It's an expression of an excluded periphery, one that's seen as separated and segregated from the rest of the national territory and its population, when this is not so.

The historic exclusion of the eastern border region and its peripheral role as a place from which resources are extracted create sufficient conditions to accentuate the zone's vulnerability. It's a space where the common denominator is poverty and social exclusion, as on each side of the border there's a low population density, with people scattered and isolated and afflicted by a high poverty rate. They deal with two realities along the boundary line: on one side, a country of 30 million people involved in an armed conflict and a spiral of many-sided violence; on the other, a disarmed and demilitarized country of three million inhabitants, which runs the risks of the resurrection of internal militarism that's dangerous for democracy and an external militarization that threatens its sovereignty.

With the crisis and conflict through which Colombian society is passing, the geopolitical construction of the eastern border is partly wrapped up in the contradictions flowing from this situation, which consists in a prolongation of the Colombian conflict from which we are not immune. The Colombian crisis is about a society that's deeply divided and heavily armed by groups with conflicting interests.

The border is something very close to the eye of a hurricane, being as it is next to a war zone. There's many-sided violence, with guerrillas, paramilitaries, the army, the drug traffickers and the common criminals disputing key points for their respective strategies and projects. In their plans our border area is seen as a place of refuge for some, but that makes it a target of reprisals and punitive missions by others and that has had as its effects the loss of life, economic damages and the violation of the human rights of the people who live there. The country as a whole doesn't escape from this situation, which extends across our land in certain situations of violence and organized crime.

It's critical that we increase the vigilance and security along the border, without militarizing ourselves in the process, while at the same time we must emphasize socioeconomic development and decentralization. It would be positive to open a wide space for dialogue about this subject that affects every one of us, and from that starting point begin some better and more appealing initiatives.