Bush's Colombia Deal
Currie, Duncan
When George Bush dropped by Bogota during his recent tour of Latin America, he became the first president to visit the Colombian capital since Ronald Reagan in 1982. His brief stopover was mainly...
...Before Uribe, however, the fate of Colombian democracy was a genuine question...
...The bipartisan compromise reached in mid-May will apparently allow the (much smaller) trade pacts with Peru and Panama to go through, but not Colombia's...
...downtown...
...Polls indicate that most Colombians favor the free trade agreement with the United States...
...Without drug money," said senior State Department official Deborah A. McCarthy in May 2003, "FARC units would not be able to arm themselves and dominate the amount of territory in southern Colombia that they do...
...Hardly...
...But Leahy believes that Plan Colombia has failed to lower the supply of cocaine, and he wants further army reform, pointing to atrocities committed against labor figures and other civilians...
...First elected in 2002 as a center-right independent, he has lobbied hard for "Plan Colombia," the American aid package that has sent more Bush's Colombia Deal Will Congress give the back of its hand to a valuable ally...
...What he has uncovered is ugly: It reflects the awfulness of Colombia's decades-long battle against the guerrillas and the drug barons...
...The right-wing paramilitaries obviously share his goal of routing FARC...
...As in post-Saddam Iraq, where the state could not provide adequate security, brutal private contractors filled the job...
...His brief stopover was mainly symbolic: a sign of the improved security climate and a tribute to Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, Bush's closest Latin American ally...
...But the ongoing scandals must be seen in context...
...Reliably pro-American—he backed the Iraq war but did not deploy troops—Uribe stands in sharp contrast with Hugo Chavez, the anti-Yanqui strongman next door in Venezuela...
...An aide to Leahy admits his boss "does not have evidence to support" charges of paramilitary ties against Uribe personally...
...It will be "a major setback," says Shifter...
...And because the intertwined drug and insurgent wars polluted all sides of the political spectrum, some of Uribe's political supporters appear to have unsavory connections...
...Inside the Casa de Narino, Uribe and Bush swapped praise and affirmed their partnership in fighting narcoterrorism...
...He has largely pushed the guerrillas and drug gangs out of the cities and into the jungles...
...Done deal...
...They show that the United States is engaged with the region...
...In one sense they're old news: Uribe's domestic opponents have dogged him with such allegations for years...
...Now Uribe is hoping Congress will endorse a bilateral free trade agreement signed last November...
...Any Colombian politician who rose to prominence in that area during the late 20th century faced the constant specter of assassination by the cartels...
...Shifter recounts recent meetings with "left-leaning" Peruvians and Chilean socialists who expressed "utter disbelief" at America's dithering...
...assistance to include military support against the rebels, noting the blurry line between "counternarcotics" relief and "counterinsurgency" cooperation...
...To Uribe's delight, Bush expanded U.S...
...Sander Levin, the top Democrat for trade policy on the House Ways and Means Committee, has fiercely criticized the trade agreement, citing labor gripes but also paramilitary infiltration of Colombian politics...
...This should send a signal to U.S...
...Should Congress spike the Colombia free trade agreement, warns Colombian vice president Francisco Santos, it would speak volumes about "how America treats its allies," and Bogota "might need to reevaluate its relationship with the United States...
...Business Week reports that "Colombia's stock market has soared fourteen fold since October 2001...
...At the same time, authoritarian populism has gained a foothold in the Andes, with the rise of Chavez acolytes Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador...
...Besides tackling the leftist insurgents and cartels, he has also sought to demobilize and curb the influence of right-wing paramilitary groups, many of which also deal drugs, while reforming a corrupt judicial system...
...As Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue puts it, "They're the only two presidents in the hemisphere that consider themselves 'war presidents.'" Educated at Oxford and Harvard, the 54-year-old Uribe has ample reason to hate Colombia's drug-financed guerrillas: They murdered his father in 1983, during a botched kidnapping attempt...
...Retired Foreign Service officer Phillip McLean observes that "the murder rates in Bogota and Medellin are now lower than in Washington, D.C...
...Congress is in a protectionist mood...
...The chief insurgent network, the Marxist-oriented Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, relies heavily on cocaine trafficking...
...They control less territory now than when Uribe took office...
...visit in early May...
...But U.S.-led trade and democracy promotion remain crucial to blunting the appeal of oil-soaked Chavismo and helping Latin Americans conquer the scourge of amiguismo, or cronyism...
...Just what Chavez has been telling them all along...
...This "investment miracle," marked by 6.8 percent growth in 2006, cannot be divorced from the security gains...
...Meanwhile, Senator Pat Leahy is delaying a portion of the Plan Colombia funding on similar grounds, demanding that U.S...
...lawmakers that Latin America's "leftward drift" has been overstated, and that moderate-left governments— such as those in Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica—are outside the orbit of Chavez-style radicalism and remain keen on market-friendly democracy...
...Even so, protests turned violent...
...Peruvian president Alan Garcia may have been indulging in hyperbole last fall when he spoke of a "cold war" raging in South America...
...Now the economy is booming, homicide rates have plummeted, the rebels are weakened, and thug-gish warlords sit in jail...
...Yet this one could easily fail...
...It would send a clear message to Latin America that the United States is a very unreliable partner...
...That said, Uribe's critics have yet to produce a smoking gun incriminating the president himself...
...officials investigate reports of "extrajudi-cial executions by the military...
...by Duncan Currie than $5 billion to Bogota since 2000...
...There's no evidence at all," says Shifter, "that links him with the paramilitaries...
...Even on the unions' own figures," reports the Economist, murders of trade unionists "have fallen to less than two-fifths of the number in 2001...
...Uribe has demobilized thousands of paramilitary soldiers and launched a brave campaign to expose criminal infiltration of military and civilian affairs...
...Murders and abductions have fallen significantly, and the economy is red hot...
...Uribe, unsurprisingly, is wildly popular...
...What to make of these claims...
...He previously served as mayor of Medel-lin, the hometown of the late drug capo Pablo Escobar, and as governor of Antioquia—a mountainous department in the north of the country that is fertile paramilitary recruiting grounds...
...And Uribe has lately come under fire for human rights abuses from Democrats, including Al Gore, who snubbed him at a Miami environmental forum in late April, and House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who publicly rebuked the Colombian leader during his U.S...
...Foreign direct investment and capital inflows have more than doubled, while real estate prices have tripled in many areas...
...Such trade pacts are "very symbolic," says retired Latin America hand Peter DeShazo...
...Not that Bogota is Peoria: According to the Washington Post, "Colombia put 21,000 police officers on duty, lining every road traveled by Bush and shutting down much of Duncan Currie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard...
...Indeed, Leahy "wants Uribe to succeed" and maintains "a very good relationship" with him, says the aide...
...One Chilean socialist who strongly backs both Uribe and the U.S.-Colombia trade agreement is Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States...
Vol. 12 • May 2007 • No. 36
