Message to the anti-war movement
Why we must support rebels in Colombia
By Teresa
Gutierrez
Plan Colombia has placed U.S. intervention in Colombia on
the front burner for the progressive and anti-war movement in
this country. And even though the U.S. government's strategy is
still being formulated, the struggle in Colombia and how the
anti-war movement here relates to it is crucial.
When Plan Colombia was first initiated, the U.S. government
attempted to sell it to the people of this country as a war on
drugs. Now that phony campaign is failing and the pundits are
beginning to talk about "nation building in Colombia," such as
strengthening the Colombian judicial system.
It is not known if or when the Pentagon will send combat
troops to Colombia, but the stakes are high nonetheless as the
U.S. is preparing one way or the other for all-out domination
of not only Colombia but the entire region.
Goals are same as in Vietnam
When President Andres Pastrana traveled to Washington for
the umpteenth time in February, he stated that U.S.
intervention in his country was not going to be like the war in
Vietnam.
But while there are many important historical differences,
U.S. intervention in Colombia is very much like what the U.S.
ruling class tried to do in Vietnam.
Their aims are the same: to suppress a movement by a people
struggling to free themselves from the yoke of imperialism.
One of the same techniques Washington and the Pentagon used
in Vietnam is also being used in Colombia. An intense
disinformation campaign organized by the U.S. government is
being propagated by all the corporate media.
Disinformation campaign hatched in Pentagon
What is the real U.S. role in Colombia? Who are the players,
what are their interests and what do they want? The purpose of
this intense disinformation campaign is to obscure the answers
to these questions.
The word "narco-guerrillas" does not appear in any
dictionary. But it has come into vogue.
It has been coined by the Pentagon to confuse people about
the issues in Colombia. As has been done so often before, the
military's public relations people invented this term to
discredit the movement there.
In every U.S. news account, narco-guerrillas is used to
describe the movement in that country, specifically the
insurgents.
People are told that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-Peoples Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation
Army (ELN) are narco-guerrillas. They are described as drug
traffickers, a charge the U.S. has failed to prove. Even
Colombian President Andres Pastrana said again in February that
there's no evidence to sustain this charge.
Yet the slander continues.
The media distorts the situation in Colombia in other ways
as well. Whenever there is an incident, they immediately blame
the rebels. The Washington Post becomes the judge and jury in a
single mouse click, long before any evidence has even been
gathered.
This kind of disinformation points to the Vietnamization of
Colombia.
No one who remembers Vietnam would think it far-fetched to
accuse the Pentagon of being responsible for this campaign
against the Colombian people.
The real terror:
the U.S./Pastrana alliance
Hardly anything is written about the real horror going on in
Colombia today and who is responsible for it.
A war of repression and terror of horrific proportions has
been raging in Colombia. That terror is institutionalized and
state sponsored. It is decades long.
For over 40 years, the Colombian people have waged a heroic
battle against this repression. They have struggled to free
their country from domination by U.S. capital and themselves
from the resulting poverty and exploitation.
The first half of this century was filled with mass
resistance--but mass repression as well. By the late 1950s over
50,000 people had been killed in Colombia.
In the 1980s the insurgent movement put aside its weapons
momentarily to participate in the electoral process through a
mass organization called the Patriotic Union (UP). Its program
was so popular that thousands of its members were elected to
local and national offices. How did the government and
right-wing paramilitaries, backed by Washington, respond?
By killing more than 4,000 activists, including many mayors
and other elected officials.
This kind of terror continues. Gustavo Gallón,
director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, says his
organization estimates that from October 1999 to October 2000
there were 160 separate massacres in which 1,084 people were
killed. (New York Times, March 4)
Eighty-two percent of the deaths came at the hands of the
paramilitaries, specifically the so-called Self-Defense Units
of Colombia (AUC).
A report by Winifred Tate in the Feb. 16 Foreign Policy in
Focus magazine says that the precise number of people who have
died at the hands of the right-wing paramilitaries will never
be known. But it is known that over the past decade more than
35,000 Colombians have been killed, the vast majority by the
death squads operating in collusion with the Colombian
military. The military provides the intelligence, personnel and
logistics to the paramilitaries and blocks human rights
activists from reporting the situation.
The repression is incredible, but daily life is also a
grind. International banks, big business and the Colombian
oligarchy have brought untold misery to the Colombian
people.
While unemployment is officially over 20 percent, the actual
figure is much higher. Austerity policies imposed by the
International Monetary Fund have deepened the suffering.
The March 6 Hoy, a Spanish-language newspaper published in
the United States, reported that Colombia spends $134 million
every month to pay just the interest on its huge foreign
debt.
Another act of war is aerial fumigation. Supposedly a
measure to eradicate coca plants, it is used against the
peasants and their rights to the land.
The meager plots of land worked by thousands of Colombian
peasants are being eradicated by deadly mycoherbicides. Food
crops are being destroyed in many areas of the country.
Florida's Department of the Environment has deemed some of
these chemicals too dangerous to use in the state of Florida.
But they were sent to Colombia anyway to be sprayed in areas
where there is believed to be guerrilla activity--just as the
Pentagon used Agent Orange and other herbicides in Vietnam.
Over 2 million Colombians have been displaced by the
internal conflict. With decades long repression, with miserable
economic conditions, is it any wonder that Colombia has
produced the oldest guerrilla movement in Latin America?
The FARC-EP has been in existence since 1964 and the ELN was
formed not long after that.
Together, these guerrilla groups control 40 percent of
Colombian territory.
Although the horrific war now under way in Colombia began
long before Plan Colombia, the U.S. government's infusion of
$1.3 billion for military hardware is intensifying it,
strengthening repression and bringing new misery to the
people.
The money is going to a military that, according to Jack
Nelson-Pallmeyer, author of "School of Assassins," was trained
in the art of killing at the Pentagon's School of the Americas.
"More than 100 of the 246 Colombian officers cited for war
crimes by an international human rights tribunal in 1993 are
SOA graduates."
A U.S. disinformation campaign about the Colombian army and
the AUC seeks to legitimize and prettify them.
Support the guerrilla movement
In face of the destruction of human life and the environment
in Colombia, it is long overdue for the anti-war movement to
raise its powerful voice in mass protest--not against just one
aspect of the plan but all its aspects. Whether taken piece by
piece or altogether, the plan is an act of war.
Fortunately, the movement in this country against Plan
Colombia is growing. Organizations and individuals are holding
forums, conferences and demonstrations.
But much more must be done.
One of the most important tasks ahead is to raise the level
of understanding of what is happing in Colombia today, and
about the U.S. role.
The avalanche of disinformation about the struggle in
Colombia must be turned back by an avalanche of resistance
against Plan Colombia and in support of the struggle there.
One of the ways resistance can be built is by uniting to
support the rebels in Colombia and all those who are fighting
back in that country.
The Pentagon and Wall Street would prefer to see the
movement in this country confused and paralyzed on this issue.
It would prefer that we put an equal sign between the right and
the left or put "all the armed actors" in the same basket.
Two sides in a struggle
Whenever a union is on strike or in an intense organizing
drive, the bosses turn up the anti-union rhetoric to a fever
pitch. They put the union under a microscope, distorting or
falsifying this or that incident in order to break
solidarity.
Union leaders become targets of scrutiny. They are slandered
as corrupt or sell-outs, as if the bosses really cared about
that. The anti-union rhetoric aims to confuse the workers, to
make it look as if there are many sides, when there are really
only two: the side of the workers and the side of the
bosses.
Unfortunately, the disinformation campaign sometimes works.
Workers get confused, start questioning the union, support is
derailed and unity dissolves. They start turning away from the
union instead of defending it to make it stronger.
What the U.S. government is trying to do with regard to
Colombia is not so different.
When the media talks about the civilian population being
caught in the middle between the right and the left, the
Pentagon is elated. Why? Because it blurs the distinction
between the two sides in the struggle.
When the media equates the institutionalized state terror of
the paramilitaries and the Colombian military with the acts of
those defending themselves from that state terror, it means to
confuse the issue.
In the case of Colombia, no matter what Bush says, it is
clear that the U.S. government is on one side: the side of the
paramilitaries and the Colombian government. The Colombian
people being terrorized by them are on the other.
It is understandable that the people of Colombia do not want
war. They are exceedingly tired of the repression.
That makes it even more urgent for the movement in this
country to unite and turn full attention to the real source of
war in Colombia: the Pentagon, Wall Street, Washington and the
oligarchy that does their bidding.
That's why a mass movement to stop Plan Colombia is urgently
needed. So we can raise our voices loud and clear to demand
that the U.S. get the hell out of Colombia. So we can demand
self-determination for the Colombian people so that this
devastated nation can finally win the peace it so yearns for.
The Colombian people must finally be left alone to build the
kind of society they want, free of IMF and Pentagon
interference.
If the anti-war movement here and in Colombia grows and is
successful, that in turn will tremendously help other
struggles. It will help push Bush back and strengthen the
movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, for
unions, for women's rights, for lesbian/ gay/ bi/trans rights
and against racism.
When the oppressed and exploited of Colombia win against the
U.S. imperialists, we will be able to claim a victory for our
side. Now is the time to build a movement in solidarity with
the heroic people of Colombia.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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