Editorial by José Girón Sierra
Partner and IPC analyst
The day of June 12 a new debate was held in the City Council of Medellín on the situation of security and coexistence, which was called to report the administration head of the Secretary for security. Most likely this debate was motivated by recent events such as the displacement of 79 families from the village of La Loma forced and 17 others from the village of San Gabriel in the corregimiento of San Cristóbal, intraurbanos new movements in the thirteen, the multiple killings of the past weekend commune and expressions of safety violent in residential units.
It is certainly a good time to evaluate that as effective has been the strategy put forward by the municipal administration in the field of security and coexistence. It is already showing impacts and not so much of advertising the long list of actions that sometimes authorities want to show that it works and even insinuate that this is changing the scenario of multiple violence afflicting the city.
Mayor Aníbal Gaviria raised his campaign from a mayor who would be as ‘Life and equity’ concerns centre and as a central concern of action: security and coexistence, hence the slogan: "Medellin, a home for life".
Two important developments has had this Administration: the creation of a Ministry dealing with the issue of security and the formulation of the comprehensive Plan for security and coexistence (PISC) in whose configuration is sought to align it to the constitutional provisions and policies on the matter has raised the national Government. Similarly, this plan collected partially analytical and research contributions that have been conducted from the Academy and the social movement in this regard. This plan is based on that diagnosis:
"The current situation of security in the city of Medellín is transversalizada by the existence of different criminal groups that are disputed territory in search of control of criminal incomes as extortion to public transportation, trade, drug trafficking, among others. and its transit to the economy legal, dabbling in business as games gaming, construction, facilities trade, to mention a few, given that criminal structures have sophisticated and beyond the illegal activities, to consolidate economic networks stimulated largely by criminal organizations. As a result, this has been reflected in the rates of murder, forced displacement of families and individuals and different forms of theft, among other events victimizantes and delinquent phenomena."
It also says:
"The consecration of life and equity as central concepts should lead to think it is ends in themselves, but any functional way to the higher goal of this Municipal Government’s proposal: the Integral human development." That is clear when, in the presentation of the approach of rights and capabilities, it is stated that "this approach defines the guidelines macro that guide the actions and strategies of the Municipal Administration towards the advancement of integral human development" (Mayor of Medellín, 2012: 29) 16
A global look at the strategy allows you to put in evidence the following situations:
Aspects that are worth mentioning:
1. There is a healthy intention to make an approach from different angles to the complexity of security and coexistence in a city hit by a conflict that has victimized the majority of communes for about thirty years.
2. Are collected centrally the policy pursued in the field of security and coexistence by the last two administrations as an expression of public accountability and set out recent contributions as the white book and research program PREVIVA who founded the public policy for the promotion of coexistence and the prevention of violence in the Aburra Valley2007-2015. This indicates an effort to take on the complexity of the problem and break in any way with the practice of being always starting from scratch.
3. It is an achievement that is intended to strengthen the information system for security and coexistence, which may enjoy the independence required in investigative work and non functional reactive data rulers when they do not favor them.
4 Elite where attend various State actors that allows coordination and coherence in action collects idea the creation of a body resolve a slow and ineffective State inertia. Unfortunately this space that should be a Centre for the orientation of all security policy will become a space only for objectives calls for high value that is nothing more than high catches.
Remarks:
1 A look general strategy, but the numerals above but consistent with your diagnosis, indicates that this strategy does not depart fundamentally from the idea that is the strengthening of coercive and police apparatus where the higher intentions are concentrated. In the integrationist effort more not of completeness, one gets to an urban version of Plan Colombia, political that turned out to be one strategy of containment and not an instrument effective for ending drug trafficking and insurgency military defeat as it was conceived. Partly a result, is the process that is being conducted in Havana. In Medellin is the purpose only the containment?
2. The characterization of agents producing insecurity restricted to organizations that are disputed territories to provide income, legal and illegal, ignored that reality is not so simple and we have structures that operate as that articulate local, national and enterprises globally in what has been called Mafia entrepreneurship with a capacity to innovate and transform far exceeding that may occur in organisms that fight them. This illegal entrepreneurship that moves in the world more than $ 465 billion per year according to the works of Francesco Forgione ("Mafia Export"), operates from a range of security always violent and has the ability to penetrate important areas of Government in all its scales. He have reached this entrepreneurship instances as the direction of prosecutors in Antioquia and the direction of the police in Antioquia can not be forgotten.
3 It is striking that identified the problem of legitimacy of the Government and the local State in general in emerge where the coercive apparatus corruption problems and problems of governance by the low credibility of State as security provider, very little progress in public policy in this regard. Imagine that a fund such as this situation is solved with communication strategies indicates a substantial flaw. Efforts in technological developments in security (734 cameras that are planned to have and the mobile and intelligent CAI) and increasing the foot of force, thus inconvenience standards superior to those accepted in the world, will be failed largely if the legality not disputed him effectively to illegal power. State must not only overcome the illegality in its coercive apparatus, should also be on credibility and confidence for the citizens and this has a route to be quite different. At least questions should promote the fact that, on one larger scale, today, as the drug policy, based on a huge war, is being seriously challenged even from the same us, because their failure is already pretty hard to hide.
4. The ICSP is conceived as a proposal in which citizen participation is, this is no more when the approach of human development and therefore it is assumed the rights approach. It is not clear how such participation is through, as it should be in monitoring and evaluation spaces and tables proposed this does not appear. One of the sources of public mistrust is the manipulation by the rulers of the participatory spaces, it is decisive that the Mayor’s Office established an effective citizen participation, this is, that the citizen feel that effectively his word is picked up by the ruling in their decisions. In security and coexistence does not make the mistake of reducing participation to the role of the complainant.
José Girón Sierra
June 2013
