Brazil and Colombia : Deadly Diversions
Morales, Pablo
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: guns der Pinochet’s direction. In 1985 Pinochet followed the example of the Reagan administration and began negotiating arms deals with Iran, with the...
...the scandal eventually brought down vladiin small-arms “diversion,” meaning the shifting of arms miro Montesinos, head of Peruvian intelligence during the from legal to illegal markets...
...arms into Paraguay before then was so voluminous paramilitaries] with weapons and ammunition”—obviously that many of the guns are still circulating...
...the study concludes that most of the foreign weapas Small Arms Survey 2006: Unfinished Business empha-ons arrived legally to Brazil or one of its neighbors and sizes, the paras are generally better armed than the guer-were then later diverted, mostly from Brazilian governrillas...
...and con-tenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the affair...
...military aid program to the Colombian negotiated through an israeli broker...
...we have fooled the authorities Possible (wiley, 2007), the FaRC got its guns by employing of four countries,” bragged an anonymous writer, identified the transportation services of victor Bout, the fugitive for-only as a “member of the aUC high command,” in the Comer soviet military officer whom a U.s...
...Congress or the Pentagon, since by then news of the Iran-Contra scandal had broken, forcing the Reagan administration to end its Iranian arms deals.8 In 1987 Carreño was to return to Tehran to sign the deal for the 15 F-5s...
...in the years lead-November 2001, the Nicaraguan government sold Panama ing up to the implementation of Plan Colombia, the multi-3,000 aK-47s and millions of ammunition rounds in a deal billion-dollar U.s...
...These fighter planes constituted the core of the Chilean Air Force, and the agreement caused an uproar among air force officers—including their commander in chief, General Fernando Matthei...
...Paraguay’s military government and private sources...
...In addition to not wanting to part with the planes, Matthei also feared retaliation from the U.S...
...their “U.s.-made R-15 rifles and M60 machine guns, ment stockpiles and private owners...
...state monopolies on the means of violence in the region More than half of the foreign guns were from the United are anything but secure in the age of transnational flows states (54.8%), followed by argentina (15.6%), italy (7.3%), and neoliberal markets...
...wealthier and better connected internationally and do-guns into Brazil has been somewhat contained since the mestically than guerrilla groups...
...this, foreign tourists in Paraguay could buy guns and ammuthe authors say, “implies that paramilitary groups are both nition with just a photocopied id...
...until 2002, the report says, “settle for cheaper, and even home-made, weapons...
...The first shipment of Avispas arrived in Iran in January 1986, and almost immediately the Iranian authorities reported that many of them malfunctioned...
...knowledge...
...at lower levels, civilians and military of-parachuted over FaRC-controlled territory in eastern ficials alike have often turned a quick peso by engaging Colombia...
...a third of the confiscated foreign guns were made by a But perhaps the most significant source of arms diver-single U.s...
...Paraguay, as is as well as israeli Galil rifles,” are expensive, sophisticated well-known, was a major source of the military-grade weapons compared to those of the guerrillas, who often weapons on Brazilian streets...
...drug-trafficking mirror one another, the aUC often paid its MARCH/APRIL 2008 report: guns was dispatched to Iran, where it upped the ante by initializing an agreement to sell 15 additional F-5s to Iran for $200 million...
...in 2003, authorities confiscated were foreign-made, according to “tracking caught a Paraguayan lieutenant-colonel trying to steal the Guns: international diversion of small arms to illicit a pair of machine guns...
...Northrop Corporation, as compensation for the faulty cluster bombs...
...counter-terrorism lombian daily El Tiempo...
...the phenomenon is frequent alberto Fujimori administration, who had negotiated an os-in the region—a “recurrent Latin american nightmare,” as tensibly legal aK-47 deal with Jordan through the U.s.-based the arms analyst Pablo dreyfus recently called it...
...very small potatoes compared Markets in Rio de Janeiro,” a 2006 study produced by the to Pinochet’s racket, of course, but nonetheless telling: international Peace Research institute and viva Rio/isER...
...in fact, well-known Brazilian trafficker Luiz Fernando da Costa...
...some of the most colorful anecdotes about small-arms Montesinos, who had long cultivated a stern, anti-guerrilla diversion—typically featuring a cast of characters that persona, reportedly collected $8 million on the diverted riincludes shady, cosmopolitan brokers...
...with more than 50,000 ammunition rounds that were found Brazil, too, is a magnet for diverted weapons, from both missing from a government arsenal...
...Pinochet immediately blamed the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front guerrilla group, and the following week, in apparent retaliation, five members of the Chilean Communist Party were “disappeared...
...in september 2006, he was senofficials...
...In 1985 Pinochet followed the example of the Reagan administration and began negotiating arms deals with Iran, with the direct approval of CIA director William Casey.6 Cardoen and a secret government delegation journeyed to Tehran, where they concluded a contract in which Chile would sell Iran 300 units of a newly designed cluster bomb called the Avispa, which was manufactured under a complex arrangement with Cardoen and FAMAE in a plant called FERRIMAR, controlled by Chilean industrialist Guido Pesce...
...today, U.s...
...Using a forged end-state, the FaRC guerrilla group, anticipating the enhanced user certificate (a document used to certify that an arms capabilities that the U.s...
...state United states suspended arms sales to Paraguay in 1996, department’s 2003 human rights report on Colombia noted it hasn’t stopped, the report says, because the wave of that elements of the Colombian military was “providing [the U.s...
...with full U.s...
...Germany (4.4%), and spain (4.1%)—despite the fact that all of these countries have signed on to one or more inter-Pablo Morales is NACLA’s editor...
...as they were shipped on the Panamanian-registered freighter douglas Farah and stephen Braun recount in Merchant of Otterloo to the port town of turbó, Colombia, where they Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War were received by the aUC...
...purchase 50,000 aK-47s (originally from East Germany...
...indeed, the U.s...
...A corrected version of the Avispa was sent to Iran the following June, but in a test run it prematurely detonated in a fighter plane.7 The Iranian government demanded that Chile turn over one of its F-5 aircraft, produced by the U.S...
...niving corporations—come out of the labyrinthine arms-arms demand from Colombia’s right-wing narcosmuggling networks that have arisen to meet the demand of paramilitaries has also diverted state guns...
...they were no means unique...
...while the flow of U.s...
...although most of the commander reportedly said the arrest had exposed the guns that Rio de Janeiro police confiscated between 1974 “systematic theft” of government munitions, likely sold to and 2004 were domestically manufactured handguns, the Brazilian drug gangs...
...almost son’s source...
...the deal, undertaken with spots drive much of the small-arms diversion in Latin amer-the blessing of the Cia station in amman, was for Peru to ica: the Colombian conflict and the Brazilian street wars...
...aid would give its adversaries, buyer is the final recipient and is not planning on transfer-began aggressively seeking fresh arms supplies (likely fi-ring them), the broker had told the Nicaraguans that the nanced using profits from its cocaine export deal with the guns would go to the Panamanian police force...
...duped government fles, directly from the FaRC...
...arms continue to flow still, the state remains a key source of the guns fuelling into Colombia, while reports of diversion to the country Brazil’s informal violence...
...Between december 1998 owned banana vessels under aUC control, as Phillip Rob-and april 1999, the authors say, a plane belonging to one of ertson, writing in the fall 2007 issue of Virginia Quarterly Bout’s front companies made at least four trips from Jordan Review, reports...
...But a day before he was scheduled to depart from Santiago, Carreño was kidnapped...
...sion to the Colombian paramilitaries is the United states...
...Reflecting the extent to which arms-and to Peru, delivering legally purchased aK-47 rifles...
...the paramilitary arms pipeline was official once called “the most powerful player” in illegal part of an elaborate smuggling scheme involving Chiquitainternational arms trafficking...
...Ninety-one days later, Carreño was released in São Paulo, Brazil, and flown back to Chile in one of Pinochet’s personal jets, appearing in the newspapers the next morning in a photo with the smiling dictator.9 by Pablo Morales overseas arms suppliers in cocaine, according to Robert-national agreements aimed at curbing diversion...
...majority of the high-caliber guns and assault rifles they this was not without precedent...
...corrupt military and police officials...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: guns der Pinochet’s direction...
...For example, in Colombian paramilitaries and guerrillas...
...company, smith & wesson...
...in January, a Paraguayan colofrom elsewhere in Latin america, including argentina, Ec-nel, major, and two officers, along with two civilians, one uador, and venezuela, have persisted since the Montesinos of them a pawnshop owner, were arrested in connection and Otterloo incidents...
...A Chilean military delegation headed by the general director of FAMAE, Carlos Carreño, Colombia and Brazil: Deadly Diversions P inochet may have reached the apex of corrupt govern-But, as the international press widely reported in ment arms trafficking in Latin america, but he was by 1999, 10,000 of the rifles didn’t end up in Peru...
...two hot arms broker sarkis soghanalian...
Vol. 41 • March 2008 • No. 2
