During the 1970s and 1980s, Colombia became famous as a source of cocaine and as a country scourged by political violence. The country, whose biggest legal exports are oil, coffee and coal, was embroiled in a guerrilla war against several different armed groups that sought to overthrow the government.
The biggest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC in its Spanish initials, in the 1990s began to move into drug trafficking and production to fund its efforts, sparking further violence and forcing the government to develop a much stronger response to the FARC and other groups.
The Plan Colombia was developed by the Colombian and U.S. governments to help train and equip the South American country’s police and armed forces for the fight against the armed groups. The plan has been a great success, cutting the murder rate from 77.5 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1999 to 34 per 100,000 in 2010.
“The Plan Colombia has allowed us to gain military and police capacities that we didn’t have before,” says Rodrigo Rivera Salazar, Colombia’s Defense Minister. “These capacities have been fundamental to our success against drug trafficking, terrorism and illegal drug cultivation. It’s not a plan that was conceived to last indefinitely, but rather with the goal of improving Colombian capacities, and that goal has been achieved.”
President Juan Manuel Santos has continued most of the elements of Plan Colombia put in place by his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe. The gains from Mr. Uribe’s policy of democratic security, and from President Santos’ focus on promoting the country’s economy, have managed to change the business community’s opinion of the country, and are helping to attract investments from abroad.
“Mr. Uribe turned the country around 180 degrees,” says Pedro Miguel Estrada, president of Compañia de Empaques. “In regards to foreign investment, Uribe created trust, and the will to invest and believe in the country.”
The military is also doing its part to help the economy. The Defense Ministry has organized the companies it owns, which provide logistic, social and security services to the armed forces, into the Social and Business Defense Group (GSED).
The GSED, which oversees 18 different companies, is tasked with contributing “in an efficient and measurable way” to peace and public safety in Colombia by supplying the armed forces with needed goods and services. The emphasis at the group is on increasing efficiency and productivity, to better help the military, security apparatus, and ultimately, Colombian citizens.
“Colombians have become increasingly demanding, they are demanding more and more results, better actions,” says Mr. Rivera Salazar. “This represents a major cultural change because it guarantees the continuity of this policy.”
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