Trading with Colombia
Currie, Duncan
Trading with Colombia President Uribe achieves a miracle—why won’t the Democrats help him? BY DUNCAN CURRIE Medell?n, Colombia Gregory Meeks is walking casually through what used to be the...
...So far this year, there have been around 30...
...Uribe has created a labor subunit in the prosecutor general’s offi ce and also established a special security program to protect trade unionists...
...Where gun battles used to rage among guerrillas, paramilitaries, and narcotics gangs, children are running through the streets, laughing and eating ice cream...
...Uribe has supported and cooperated with the investigations, but the scandal has weakened his administration and bruised its image abroad...
...The progress in Medell?n refl ects a broader Colombian renaissance...
...lawmakers down to Colombia, the Bush administration hopes to boost support for a bilateral free trade pact awaiting congressional approval...
...This city was made infamous in the 1980s by drug lord Pablo Escobar and his murderous cohorts...
...Much of the credit goes to President Alvaro Uribe, 55, the Harvard-educated lawyer who took offi ce in 2002 and was reelected in a landslide last year...
...What is especially striking, says Meeks, is how quickly it changed...
...It blows my mind...
...During their mid-November junket, American lawmakers met with some of the former paramilitary fi ghters at Medell?n’s Library Park Espa?a...
...But opponents in Colombia fear that domestic companies would be unable to compete with U.S.-based multinationals...
...Meanwhile, the number of convictions in cases of violence against trade unionists is slowly but steadily increasing...
...He has pushed the right-wing paramilitaries to disband, while continuing the fi ght against the left-wing guerrilla groups and the drug cartels...
...Secretary Gutierrez says that, among other things, it would swell U.S...
...In 2002, it was still 184 per 100,000...
...This is unbelievable,” says the fiveterm Democratic congressman from New York...
...As dusk falls, the neighborhood is bustling with activity, a sign of the vastly improved security climate...
...When he fi rst visited Medell?n in mid2003, “members of Congress were forbidden to come here...
...According to the U.S...
...Senator Hillary Clinton has cited Colombia’s “history of violence against trade unionists” as part of her opposition to the trade deal...
...By bringing U.S...
...investment, promote more favorable business conditions, and allow the Colombians to buy cheaper agricultural machinery...
...The U.S...
...His push to demobilize the paramilitaries—to date, more than 30,000 have laid down their arms—revealed their deep political infi ltration...
...How would it help Colombia...
...We take very seriously extrajudicial killings, and the Colombians have said they share this view and are working to continue their efforts to stop the violence...
...Their stats seem to run counter to the longer-term trends that have shown an overall decrease in violence in Colombia, so the issue needs to be looked at closely...
...The transformation is perhaps most visible in this hillside slum, known as Santo Domingo Savio...
...The Commerce Department is planning more such trips in the near future...
...Many Colombians fear that the demobilized combatants will return to illegal activity...
...showed “concrete evidence of sustained results” in reducing violence, especially violence against organized labor...
...embassy official explains, ordinary Colombians appreciate the risks he takes in visiting their communities...
...By virtually every metric—security, political, economic, and social—the long-beleaguered South American country has made remarkable strides...
...Uribe has survived numerous assassination attempts, including a roadside bomb attack during the 2002 campaign...
...The weekend before Thanksgiving, he was part of an offi cial U.S...
...government delegation led by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez...
...But the Medell?n of 2007 has come a long way from its brutal past...
...BY DUNCAN CURRIE Medell?n, Colombia Gregory Meeks is walking casually through what used to be the most dangerous area of the world’s most violent city...
...Administration offi cials privately fear it may never reach a fl oor vote...
...The U.S.-Colombia free trade pact would give American exporters the same market access that Colombian exporters have enjoyed under unilateral trade preference programs...
...Meeks, though, reckons that supporting the trade deal is “a no-brainer,” even if it means handing a political victory to a lame-duck president...
...Medell?n had over 6,300 murders in 1991...
...There have been some recent reports on extrajudicial killings,” says a Bush administration official...
...That year, according to Newsweek, “the annual murder rate was 381 per 100,000 people—more than 500 homicides a month...
...The improvement in Colombia,” says Meeks, who has visited the country several times since 2003, “is nothing short of a miracle...
...Now they can ride straight into the neighborhood via cable car and see the new Library Park Espa?a...
...delegation also attended an informal town hall-style meeting on the outskirts of Cartagena, a city on the Caribbean coast...
...The group included a handful of congressmen, mostly Democrats, and one senator, Oregon Republican Gordon Smith...
...Thanks to the security gains and some economic reforms, Colombia’s economy grew by 6.8 percent in 2006, its fastest rate of expansion since the late 1970s...
...The other cloud hanging over Uribe is the “parapolitics” scandal...
...These sessions were off the record, but the ex-paramilitaries in my group seemed optimistic about the societal reintegration process...
...Uribe’s policies have reduced corruption and made Colombia a hot new magnet for foreign investment...
...One said that the paramilitary forces have virtually “disappeared” in Medell?n...
...There, amid the sweltering heat and humidity, they saw Uribe interact with throngs of impoverished slum dwellers, most of them Afro-Colombians who either were displaced from their original homes by violence or were demobilized...
...lawmakers met with Colombian trade unionists both for and against the agreement...
...On the recent junket, U.S...
...In 2002, there were nearly 200 documented murders of trade unionists in Colombia...
...That “history of violence” is all too real, but also needs to be seen in perspective...
...As a U.S...
...In late June, Democratic House leaders announced they were postponing a vote on the agreement until Bogot...
...Last year, it fell below 30, making Washington, D.C., look bad in comparison...
...Whether they will sway a suffi cient number of Democrats to get the agreement approved is unclear...
...The locals were not shy about airing their grievances on such issues as housing and sanitation, but they seemed to admire and respect Uribe...
...Duncan Currie is the managing editor of the American...
...His national approval rating now hovers around 70 percent...
...This is bigger than politics...
...This isn’t about George Bush,” Meeks says...
...Democratic opponents of the free trade agreement also point to extrajudicial killings by the state security forces, which remain plagued by corruption...
...Between 2002 and 2006, homicides dropped by 40 percent, kidnappings plummeted by 76 percent, and terrorist attacks fell by 63 percent...
...embassy in Bogot?, “In 2006 and 2007, not one trade unionist enrolled in this program was harmed...
Vol. 13 • December 2007 • No. 13
