Colombia: A New Beginning

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As preparations are made for military parades in major cities, and people begin to hang national flags outside their homes for July 20 in commemoration of Colombia's first attempt at independence from Spain in 1810, the 44.4 million people of South America's fourth-biggest country have a lot to celebrate.

The dramatic release of one of Colombia's most high-profile hostages, the French-Colombian national politician Ingrid Betancourt and her 14 fellow captives was executed on July 2 without a single shot being fired. It was the latest, and gravest, blow against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a Marxist movement that had been widely despised—and, until recently, feared—after having tormented much of the Andean nation since 1964.

The economy is faring well: The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean says Colombia enjoyed $7.6 billion in foreign investment last year. E.C.L.A.C. is also forecasting a growth rate of 5.6 percent for 2008. Joblessness has fallen by 30 percent since 2002 and a $38 billion infrastructure investment is underway. And tourism is taking off, with ships from cruise lines including Disney and Holland America disgorging more than 200,000 visitors at the Spanish colonial gem of Cartagena last year—as thousands of others flocked to the country's natural rainforests and snow-capped mountains.

Perhaps most surprisingly, most of Colombia's major urban centers such as Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali—once potent bywords for drug trafficking, criminality, and general chaos—are now serene. Nightlife has returned, the streets are filled, people are walking their dogs again, and, early this year, the United States Department of State downgraded its travel risk advisory. In fact, according to police statistics, these cities now possess lower per-capita murder rates than Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

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More at: http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3202.cfm

This article--which mentions some of Colombia's problems (nearly forty union leaders slaughtered by rightwing death squads so far this year, but that's cool, their deaths were "unrelated to their union activity"; unabated cocaine production, but that's cool, since it couldn't flood U.S. streets without transiting Venezuela and Mexico; the FARC guerrillas, fighting lo these 40+ years, still in control of large swaths of Colombia, but that's cool, cuz Ingrid Betancourt is free and the FARC is now on the run)--paints an ultra-rosy picture of Colombia, by citing Colombia's problems, one by one, and saying, but that's cool, cuz this or that government stat or Washington think tank avers that things are on the uptick.

You know, it reminds me of the rosy picture that warmongers kept painting of South Vietnam in the 1960s--and, indeed, of the rosy picture Bushites paint of Iraq today. The Bush regime has poured $5.5 BILLION of our tax dollars into military aid to Colombia, and that kind of money can buy you a rosy-fingered dawn, while the stupid-fucking Greeks pursue their stupid-fucking war against the Trojans, and their society is about to fall to pieces, in bloodshed and recriminations. South Vietnam was never a democracy. It was never even a viable country. It was a short-lived CIA construct purchased with billions of our tax dollars, and covered up with rosy-fingered dawn pictures much like this one of Colombia. Similarly, Iraq is a Bush Junta construct for the benefit of Exxon Mobil. It is not, and never will be, a viable country under a Bush-friendly puppet government.

Massive amounts of bucks and military violence can buy you a hiatus in a non-viable society. It can buy you a rosy picture that lasts long enough for you to accomplish your real purposes--in Vietnam, boffo war profiteering (2 million dead in Southeast Asia, before it was over, and more than 55 thousand U.S. soldiers dead, while the WW II war industry prospered as never before, and solidified its footing in the U.S. economy); in Iraq, massive amounts of bucks and military violence have bought a puppet government to sign the oil contracts, and agreements for continued U.S. military protection of those contracts. And in Colombia?

There is evidence now of a high tech military "war room" in the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, and of illegal numbers of U.S. troops in country. That tells you what this rosy-fingered dawn may be about: war. Colombia is, in Rumsfeld's term, a "lily pad" for hopping around the overwhelmingly leftist, democratic landscape of South America, and causing major trouble to Colombia's neighbors (oil rich Venezuela and Ecuador, for instance--both with hugely popular leftist governments that the Bushites lust to destabilize and topple).

Also, country after country in South America has been rejecting U.S.-dominated "free trade," neo-liberalism, World Bank/IMF loan sharks, U.S. political and economic dictation and the failed, corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs," and the new leftist governments (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Nicaragua) are fast creating a South American "Common Market" on principles of social justice and Latin American self-determination. Colombia is the light in Bushite eyes these days--one of the few places where U.S. corporate predators can wedge their way in deeper, with a compliant government, and, as Donald Rumsfeld proposed, in a Washington Post op-ed last December, wage economic warfare against the democratic left. (Rumsfeld calls Venezuela's democracy tyranny, but then he would.)

His purpose is to punish leftist countries economically--for instance, with Monsanto ag products and biofuels, dumped on their markets, competing with and destroying small peasant farmers ("free trade")--and to magnify corporate propaganda in the region with enhanced U.S. government propaganda weapons. His main purpose, though, is to maintain this launching pad for aggression, as various Bushite schemes mature--for instance, an in-progress scheme of supporting, funding and likely arming rightwing secessionist groups in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, who want to split off the oil-rich provinces into fascist mini-states, and free themselves of the social justice policies of their national governments (i.e., using the oil profits to benefit the poor).

Rumsfeld urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. I think this is what he means--swift military action, launched from Colombia (and from the newly reconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet)--in support of the "independence" of these fascist mini-states (the state of Zulia, in Venezuela; the eastern provinces of Bolivia; and the northwestern region of Ecuador), thus to cut out the oil-rich regions, for corporate exploitation, and stop the funding of social progress in South America. It is very like the strategy of fostering of civil war that we saw in Vietnam and that we have seen in Iraq. Divide. and. Conquer.

Rumsfeld doesn't mention these schemes, except in a roundabout way ("swift action" in support of "friends and allies" in South America; the Bushites don't have any "friends and allies" in South America, except for the fascist thugs running Colombia, the corrupt 'free tradists' running Peru, and the fascist cells within oil-rich, leftist countries, who are plotting coups). But this civil war scheme is very likely the impetus for his article. Colombia is essential to its success.

This article, "Colombia: A New Beginning," serves Rumsfeld's agenda, much like the rosy-fingered dawn portrait of South Vietnam served the war profiteers of that era, and all the rosy stories of "freedom and democracy" and the success of "the surge" in Iraq have served the current gang of military vampires, sucking the lifeblood out of our own country.

Military aggression and massive military funding can create temporary rosy-fingered dawns. It cannot solve a society's fundamental problems, and, most often, makes them much, much worse. This article follows the corporate/war profiteer propaganda script, on every point--from the giddy triumph of the Ingrid Betancourt 'rescue' to blaming Venezuela and Mexico for Colombia's cocaine trade--and laces it with visions of pleasure boats sailing into Colombia's harbors. I don't trust it, at all. I think it is purely a propaganda piece, possibly cut and pasted right out of a Bush/State Department playbook. And I think we need to be more alert to what $5.5 BILLION through Bushite fingers has actually been creating in Colombia--a "free fire zone" against labor organizers (i.e., "free trade"), a highly corrupt government that is protecting a cauldron of illicit drugs/arms dealings, and a Rumsfeldian "lily pad."

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Edited to add this:

"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

Also, some useful info sites:
www.venezuelanalysis.com
www.BoRev.net

Certainly the author didn't try to obscure or diminish the problems that still face Colombia, but I thought it interesting that he wrote about the improvements in Colombia since Uribe took office.

That Colombia's social order and economy has improved under the Uribe administration is a fact that many in this forum refuse to acknowledge.

The author, per the blurb at the end of the article, is listed as a "visiting fellow at the Fund for Peace". That organization doesn't strike me as having a warmongering agenda.

where the nearly forty reported murders of union leaders this year is only the tip of the iceberg of Colombian military and rightwing paramilitary violence and government corruption. You can buy a hiatus--a enclave of apparent order--with that kind of money. But it does not, and cannot, create a viable country or society. I trust Amnesty International that 92% of the murders of union leaders are committed by the Colombian military and closely associated rightwing paramilitaries. That stat tells us about the legitimacy of the Colombian government, and what it is built upon. I cannot trust stats from the Colombian government--any more than I trust stats from the Bush government. So, the picture that the writer paints of Colombia, using poverty stats or crime stats, is unreliable.

At every turn of the narrative, the writer gives the rightwing government the benefit of the doubt, as to whether things are improving. Yes, nearly 40 murders of union leaders (so far this year) is better than 100, or 200. But there are still nearly forty people dead, who shouldn't be. At some point, they're going to run out of people, in Colombia, who dare to raise their heads on labor issues. So there is a diminishing number of heads to blow away. The writer then goes on to quote a Bushite National Security Council director, without contradiction, that they were not killed for their labor activism, which is simply not believable--and is certainly not true, according to AI. The writer lost me right there. That quote was set up to endorse the view that the murder of union leaders in Colombia is really not a serious problem any more. That is a false view. The truth is that labor organizers are AFRAID--as are political leftists, peasant farmers, human rights workers, journalists, and others at risk from the death squads. You can smother a problem by killing sufficient numbers of people who express that problem publicly, and then you can slow down the killing, because your point has been made.