Just under a month after the inauguration of the president-elect of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, one of his predecessors, Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos claims to be 100% with the leftist in terms of his approaches to peace and justice. reparation —for now, applied only to ex-combatants and soldiers involved in the conflict with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas.
He also argues that the traditional war on drugs approach only tends to strengthen drug trafficking. “The solution is the legalization of drugs”, says the former president in an interview with Sheet. Santos will be in São Paulo this Friday (8) to participate in the Virada ODS event, which discusses the Sustainable Development Goals.
Brazil and Colombia have lived through a common drama, the murder of defenders of the Amazon, as well as the advance of mafias to seize the resources of the forest. How do you see the issue and the need for joint action between the two countries? The deaths of jungle guardians, environmentalists, ecologists, journalists and people concerned about the fate of the Amazon are a huge tragedy. There are immense losses of people who wanted to stop deforestation, with the few resources they had.
The main task is to fight the mafias, drug trafficking, smuggling, mining and illegal fishing, which are operating throughout the Amazon and other ecosystems in Latin America. These transnational mafias have enormous power, just look at the case of the Paraguayan prosecutor killed in Cartagena, allegedly by a Brazilian criminal faction. If we are not being able to collaborate among the countries in the region to prevent an aberrant crime like this, we are doing something very wrong.
These mafias are acquiring a lot of power and control regions that the state does not reach. The citizens themselves stopped asking the state for help and turned to the mafias, which, yes, solve their problems, but act as a criminal parallel state. I have a very radical position, a product of my own personal experience.
Which is? For many years, I was Minister of Finance and Defense. I have no problem assuming that I applied the recipes of the World War on Drugs. I worked to destroy coca plantations with chemicals that are destructive to nature and to man, I made drug arrests, I had more than 1,400 drug traffickers extradited. And yet, the drug trafficking business continued and continues, even greater than before. What did that teach me? That these solutions do not weaken the mafias. And that the solution is the legalization of drugs.
You promoted this idea on several occasions, and the criticism was very harsh. Is it easier to militate in favor of this type of cause after being president? When I proposed being president, they said that I wanted to poison the children. But this is the same as the US did when it legalized alcohol. It’s possible. With Fernando Henrique Cardoso, we are now making a worldwide campaign to abolish the prohibition of the commercialization of drugs, in a way that is based on evidence, on health, on human rights. I’m convinced it’s the only way to take the business and the power out of the mafias.
You will talk about the fight against poverty in São Paulo. Poverty has increased in the last 4 years in Colombia. In his two terms, he dropped from 37.2% to 27%. What’s the formula? We decided to adopt a different way of measuring poverty than the traditional one, a multidimensional way. It does not consist in measuring how much a family or a person earns, but what the basic needs are or are not satisfied. This way of measuring has allowed us to tackle poverty more successfully.
This method is more realistic. Whether a person earns $100 or $800 does not guarantee that they have access to healthcare or education, depending on how and where they live. But if we measure what people are lacking, regionally, then we arrive at a more accurate calculation, and the government can focus its public effort and investment where it is really needed.
Folha was in one of the Special Justice for Peace (JEP) hearings. Can reparatory justice be applied in cases other than those of the FARC? I believe this model is valuable, but it cannot be applied equally to guerrillas and criminal factions. They are different cases. What I advocate is submission to justice and that, yes, the penalties are not necessarily imprisonment.
In the case of the FARC, we were based on the idea that the most important thing was the victims’ families. Sessions in which guerrilla members commit crimes in front of victims are exemplary. What victims most want is to be rewarded and recognized as victims. Hence the power of this system to promote reconciliation.
We’ve already learned a lot, from the Nuremberg, Bosnia, Sudan courts. I believe it is time to admit that, in cases such as the Colombian one, it is essential to reach a consensus for the non-repetition of crimes. I don’t see why not do something different in other cases, keeping the particularities.
Do you believe that the new Colombian government is closer to achieving these goals than the losing option of the elections? I 100% support the new president of Colombia in his determination to implement the peace process and to have the JEP as a model for the pacification of the country. If one takes the trouble to read the 2016 peace agreement, one will see that it proposes several solutions. In addition to peace and violence, the question of land.
Colombia is a very unequal country, with 80% of the land concentration in the hands of a few families. Agrarian reform is one of the first articles of the peace agreement. We also deal with the inclusion of indigenous people, Afro-Colombians, and women. Just by applying the agreement, your government will bring about a transformation. And Petro knows that, so we believe we are on the right path, and in that he has our support.
X-ray | Juan Manuel Santos, 70
He was President of Colombia from 2010 to 2018 and Minister of Foreign Trade, Finance and Defense in other terms. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for achieving the peace agreement with the FARC during his government.
