Democracy and Plan Colombia
Mondragón, Héctor
President George W. Bush has asked the American people to “be patient” so that Iraq can become like Colombia—so that the Iraqis can defeat terrorism and establish a stable democracy like the...
...The departments of Putumayo and Caquetá have been paralyzed for well over six months, and in many areas of Colombia the army cannot guarantee anyone’s safety...
...Obviously, these “other threats” to Colombian security do not refer to extraterrestrials, but to forces like the Chávez government in Venezuela and the indigenous mobilizations in Ecuador—forces that represent anti-neoliberal, anti-imperial changes in South America by way of democratic elections and popular mobilization...
...It has organized general strikes in December 2002 and October 2004...
...The guerrillas had been hard hit in the last year of the Pastrana government and during Uribe’s first year, in part thanks to U.S...
...Throughout 2003, 2004 and the beginning of 2005, moreover, the paramilitaries exported a huge quantity of the cocaine they had stockpiled, knowing that anything sold prior to the amnesty would be pardoned under the peace agreement...
...But these were locations the guerrillas knew well and where they enjoyed solid popular support, allowing them to soundly defeat the military...
...Today, however, they openly finance entire electoral campaigns...
...of the killing of 4,000 trade unionists...
...Many have criticized this agreement, arguing that it amounts to an amnesty for crimes against humanity...
...Of course it was...
...Before paramilitary narco-dollars arrived, this civil resistance was able to elect the mayor of Bogotá and defeat a referendum in which Uribe sought to change the constitution to nullify our democratic rights...
...Every day those of us in social movements risk our lives to change Colombia so that our country will stop moving against the grain of the rest of Latin America...
...Colombia is becoming an eternal battleground, in order to secure the country as a base of operations for controlling Ecuador, Venezuela and possibly even Peru, Brazil and Bolivia...
...Today they have penetrated the stock market, laundered their drug money in the form of treasury bonds and gained a foothold in the electoral process...
...To the contrary, the plan’s only success has been to guarantee a majority to the parties that supported Uribe in the Congressional elections of March 2006, and to guarantee Uribe’s own re-election last May...
...Today the guerrillas—especially the FARC—have gained political momentum after having launched an effective counter-offensive...
...Nevertheless, the U.S...
...And like an emperor of ancient Rome, Uribe was able to provide the populace with “bread and circuses” prior to the presidential elections of May 2006...
...This was a relatively small-scale operation...
...Because Colombia serves as its base for attacking the democratic processes taking place in neighboring countries...
...Any other national bank or federal reserve system would intervene to curb such inflation, knowing that such rapid unchecked increases in value—which are not the result of growth but of pure speculation—will eventually cause a terrible recession...
...this is just a portion of the billions of dollars and euros that the paramilitaries have laundered...
...There is a much more important explanation: the agreement with the paramilitaries...
...It takes the money from its left pocket and lends it to its right pocket, and whereas a moment ago it had only four dollars, it now has eight—four dollars plus a certificate proving it has borrowed another four...
...and a popular consultation against the free-trade agreement in indigenous regions, in which more than 86 percent of the population voted...
...What is the primary objective of Plan Colombia...
...Every day we risk our lives so that Colombia can be united with Venezuela and Ecuador, with what the MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) is building in Brazil, with what the Uruguayans are doing, with what our people are doing these days in Los Angeles...
...And although those in Uribe’s party who have been publicly identified as drug lords were purged, they created their own parallel pro-Uribe parties and have gotten themselves elected to Congress...
...But this doesn’t explain the whole story of Colombia’s spectacular growth...
...This is the true cause of the enormous wave of speculation—a sea of illicit funds entering Colombia...
...Washington has now spent $4.7 billion on Plan Colombia, and if you include the expenditures of the U.S...
...we’re on our way to Iran...
...In the past, drug traffickers financed electoral campaigns from the shadows, financing publicity and paying for hotels and travel...
...So Colombia receives billions of dollars from the United States as part of Plan Colombia, and the Colombian government then lends the money back to itself...
...Be patient with Iraq...
...This is the reality of U.S...
...How was this possible...
...of the displacement of three million peasants from their land—and of transnational capital, which finds abundant cheap labor now that its trade unions have been violently destroyed...
...Later on, it was discovered that the plan had the further objective of defeating the guerrilla movement, though that component of the plan was never acknowledged by Washington while Bill Clinton was in office...
...The paramilitaries finance not only their operations, but also their lifestyles with the country’s largest drug-trafficking operations...
...When Uribe was first elected, his primary campaign promise had been to defeat the guerrillas, and to accomplish this, he instituted a one-time war tax...
...For example, the Colombian state buys its own treasury bonds...
...But all of this discussion has obscured the economic essence of the agreement, which is to allow the legalization of billions of paramilitary narco-dollars...
...Was Washington aware of this...
...This is not to say anything of those drug lords who have not been publicly identified and who remain on Uribe’s party’s lists...
...The future of our country is in the balance...
...This has not occurred anywhere else since the 1920s, simply because no other country would allow it...
...Over the past year the Colombian military’s losses in the civil war have considerably surpassed those of the U.S...
...President George W. Bush has asked the American people to “be patient” so that Iraq can become like Colombia—so that the Iraqis can defeat terrorism and establish a stable democracy like the one Washington has nurtured in Colombia...
...In Colombia we are used to the fabrication of news that prevents us from seeing the reality that Uribe’s government reaps a harvest of terror...
...Héctor Mondragón has been a human rights worker in Colombia for 35 years, working closely with homeless shelters, labor organizations, human rights and church groups, and a number of indigenous groups...
...we’re heading to Venezuela and Ecuador...
...It proposes a different country—one not ruled by drug barons, where food is secure and where the social movements that have resisted decades of terror have the political weight they deserve...
...Yet despite failing to fulfill his main electoral promise, Uribe still managed to be re-elected...
...The reality is that, far from being defeated, the guerrilla movement in Colombia is today much stronger than when Uribe began his presidency...
...Agency for International Development (USAID) in that total, it reaches $7.7 billion...
...It was, however, made explicit in subsequent versions of the plan devised by George W. Bush’s administration, which identified its principal objective as combating “narco-terrorism,” thus conflating the drug war with the anti-guerrilla struggle...
...Stock exchange values have increased 1,100%, meaning prices have multiplied 11 times...
...Southern Command and the Uribe government committed a huge military error known as Plan Patriota, which called for the Colombian armed forces to surround and annihilate the guerrillas in their interior strongholds...
...The government’s own statistics acknowledge that in 2005, $3 billion flowed through Colombia, with no record of how the money entered the country...
...Since negotiations between Uribe and the paramilitaries began, billions of dollars and euros in drug profits have entered Colombia...
...Like many other areas in the world, Colombia is experiencing a post-Iraq-invasion economic boom...
...Its primary stated objective was to end drug trafficking in Colombia...
...No one planted money seeds and grew the $3 billion...
...What’s going to happen when the government has to pay this money back...
...But despite this investment, the U.S.-supported government of Alvaro Uribe has defeated neither the drug traffickers nor the guerrilla movement...
...Trained as an economist, he has worked as an adviser to the Indian National Organization of Colombia and the Peasant National Council...
...military in Iraq...
...In Colombia this has not only been allowed, but actually encouraged through specific economic measures...
...Furthermore, the Bush government has proposed that the plan combat any other threat to the security of the Colombian state, a proposal that has since been repeated in a State Department document...
...technical assistance to the Colombian air force that allowed it to engage in effective anti-guerrilla bombing campaigns...
...of the destruction of workers’ rights...
...of 60 years of violence...
...The guerrillas had also suffered setbacks due to their own political and strategic errors, many of which negatively—and gravely—affected the civil population...
...Plan Colombia, a “pro-democracy” aid package provided by the United States to Colombia, was established in 1999...
...I would like to comment on this nightmare...
...Why does Washington, with its moral crusade, the War on Drugs, permit this...
...In his campaign for re-election, he proposed a second “one-time” war tax...
...To paraphrase Bill Clinton: It was the economy, stupid...
...They say, “Have patience with Colombia...
...Never before have drug traffickers had so much power in Colombia...
...massive indigenous marches called mingas...
...In Colombia, however, there is also a democratic civil resistance that rejects the guerrillas’ methods and that is often, in fact, victimized by the guerrillas...
...But Colombia’s boom may be the least sustainable of them all...
...It plays the same game with its public health and pension funds...
...intervention in Colombia...
Vol. 40 • January 2007 • No. 1
