Conflict Resolution
In Medellín, the most violent city in Latin America -- maybe the world -- Hernando Roldán is famous for his ability to resolve conflicts and to construct a social fabric in even the worst neighborhoods. In an interview with Shine a light, he explained his methods.
First, one must distinguish violence from conflict. Every community has conflicts, and violent communities don’t even have more of them -- they have just lost the instruments by which people solve their quotidian differences. Violence is the only tool left.
Many people hope to reduce or end violence through negotiations with those who commit acts of violence, but Mr. Roldán does not believe that this technique works. Instead, he says, one must strengthen “social leaders,” those who work for the good of the community. In all violent neighborhoods, there will be conflicts between “civic leaders” (respected teachers, certain mothers, base community or church leaders, maybe the hairdresser or the baker) and “non-civic leaders” (gangsters, paramilitaries, maybe the police or the army). These communities are complex, and if we accept the non-civic leaders as legitimate, then they have already won.
To understand the process, one must understand where gangs get their power from. Yes, they have weapons, and people are afraid of them, but their real power has another source. Gangs provide services to the community: protection, jobs, money, donated food, even a sense of identity. Each service they provide takes away a little bit of the authority of the civic leaders. Thus, to undermine the power of violence, one must strengthen civic leaders.
How does one enter the community? Politicians don’t work: they are often slaves of the gangs, and they always have a different agenda. Instead, we have to find autochthonous leaders, people respected by their neighbors. It is often the barber or the “madrecita” (a typical Colombian figure: an older woman who plays the role of mother confessor for the community), sometimes a good football player or the woman who sings vallenatos at parties.
This person will only open the door to the community, because anyone who wants to end violence cannot affiliate h/erself with only one interest group. Once the door is open, s/he must create a network of all community leaders: the mother’s group, the gay leader, the black leader, the best dancer, the leader of the kids, the refugee spokeswoman... all of the non-violent leaders. Even more importantly, the proposed project has to benefit everyone. If you want to support small business, micro-loans must go to representatives of all interest groups. Building a football field for the boys won’t work if you don’t also make a volleyball court for the girls. Small scale leaders are used to being excluded, so their inclusion will turn them into firm allies.
The “leaders’ alliance” now has a plan, and the gang leaders can’t really oppose it. Gangs and guerrillas (left and right wing) justify their power through the goods they provide to the community, and they exercise their power through dividing that same community. They cannot oppose any plan that benefits everyone and that everyone supports.
This plan must also benefit individual gangsters, while providing no benefit to the gang-as-institution. Young gangsters must be able to play football on the field or find work in the new bakery; the gang gains strength because only it can help its members. When another person or institution offers a similar benefit, gang members have an option and can defect.
With the new community plan, tension will increase. The balance of power in the community has changed. As a solution, Mr. Roldán suggests a “Civic Contract,” written and signed by all members of the new social network. The process is slow, demanding door-to-door canvassing for the signatures of everyone who lives in the neighborhood.
Gangsters and guerrillas also sign the contract, but as individuals, not as a gang. They, just like everyone else, accept three conditions:
- Not to attack civilians
- To respect civic goods that serve the community (schools, churches, health centers)
- To respect public services that help the community
The last point is the most difficult, because the gangs refuse to respect the police. “The police don’t serve the community,” the gangsters and guerrillas say. “They don’t solve problems and stop crime, but we do!” Such a statement opens the door to a long conversation where the authority of the new civil society is paramount. Do the gangs solve problems? Do they prevent crime? Slowly, encouraged by their mothers, their priests, their barbers (everyone who has signed the Civic Contract), the gangsters realize that they don’t solve problems and that they have killed innocent people. The self-definition and self-justification of the gang is the “service” it provides to the community, and coming to terms with its basic untruth is a shock. They soon come to see that automatic weapons and bombs also hurt the community, as does “protection money.”
The gang has lost its raison d’etre.
Unfortunately, the collapse of self-justification does not mean the end to violence. In some cases, the gang will go on as it has, but accepting its own evil and forgetting the good it is supposed to do for the community. For exactly that reason, the community must formally forgive the gangsters and welcome them back into the civic community -- as workers in the bakery, players on the football field, even Sunday school teachers and high school students. The community must also take advantage of the ex-gangsters’ skills and strengths -- they have learned leadership and charisma in their gangs, after all.
This process has worked wonders in several Medellín neighborhoods.
Hernando Roldán
Calle 54 #64-10
Bloque 17, apt 302
Barrio Restrepo
Medellín, Antioquia
Colombia
57 4 5118347
hrs@epm.net.co
