Military Recruitment Breeds Inequality for Colombia's Teenage Boys
Military Recruitment Breeds Inequality for Colombia's Teenage Boys
Luke Finn
Red Hot Burning Peace
February 11, 2014
“They always send a working class boy to do the killing,” commented West Londons warrior-poet Elvis Costello on his lyrics to "Oliver's Army"—and you'd be hard pressed to find a starker example of this axiom than in Colombia. Like many countries in Latin America, Colombia has compulsory military service for all young men at 18 years of age. Unlike other Latina American countries, it has an ongoing civil war.
The dynamics of conscription reveal much about Colombia. For example, those with a high school diploma are only obligated to serve one year, while those without serve 18-24 months. Upon completion of your service, you are issued with a libreta militar (military card), without which you cannot own property, graduate from university, enter into a professional contract, or stand for office; as a deserter, you enter into a sort of 'civil death.' However, if you've got the money, you can buy a libreta militar, a process so common amongst Colombia's upper-middle classes that it is assumed to be legal (it is not). For example, the sons of ex-President Uribe, he of the “Strong Hand, Soft Heart,” did not serve in the military.
Within the military, too, “military service” can vary: in 2002, Francisco Santos, cousin and political enemy to the current President, commented, “the poorest of the poor do the fighting, and the rich people drive the generals’ cars, if anything” (though what he has done to rectify this situation in the 12 years since, is a mystery).
I can only comment of my own experience in combat zones and army bases around Colombia's Caribbean coast, but this delineation between the military service of the poor and that of the rich is most obvious in the army's racial make-up: Afro-Colombians at the more dangerous forward bases in jungle, and whiter Colombians serving in the well protected bases near urban centers—a reflection of the socio-economic disparity played out along racial/regional lines.
More:
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/2/11/military-recruitment-breeds-inequality-colombias-teenage-boys