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hands off columbia!
On Aug. 27, 60 armed men entered a poor neighborhood in the town of Cienaga, on Colombia's Caribbean coast. They kidnapped 10 residents from their homes, dragged them to an isolated part of town, interrogated them, and then executed them. The massacre in Cienaga was just one of four which took the lives of 28 people that weekend. They were just a few more victims of a civil war which has claimed the lives of almost 35,000 people since 1990. Most of the 35,000 deaths so far, according to human rights groups, have come at the hands of the Colombian army or civilian death squads linked to it.
President Clinton recently went to Colombia to celebrate the $1.3 billion that the U.S. has committed to Colombia to help fight the "drug war." It's called "Plan Colombia." The $1.3 billion dollars we will give to Colombia this year is more than we will give in aid to the rest of Latin America combined. As the Daily News pointed out in an article, "most of the money and the 60 U.S. helicopters that are part of the package will go to the Colombian Army, which has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere."
President Clinton couldn't avoid the fact that the Colombian military has a less than spectacular human rights record, so he waived a requirement in the bill that Colombia show progress in its human rights record. Personally, I don't think that would have mattered, but I think it's revealing that Clinton didn't even want it addressed.
Although most of the people in this country are unaware, the U.S. military is slowly committing itself to a new war in Colombia. The Daily News pointed out that there are already more than 100 Special Forces troops operating in Colombia right now. We also have intelligence equipment, 60 attack helicopters and training troops positioned throughout Colombia.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Aug. 20 that "Congress quietly approved U.S. armed intervention in Colombia last month, complete with at least 60 Black Hawk and Huey-2 helicopter gunships with U.S. crews and U.S. Army Special Forces are already training two Colombian battalions in counterinsurgency."
On Sept. 2, The New York Times reported that a U.S. Black Hawk military helicopter crashed in the Colombian jungle. It had been engaged in a "counterinsurgency" operation against peasant guerrillas.
It appears that the U.S. military is following up on its history of biological warfare as well. The U.S. military is working with the Colombian military to develop a powerful biological fungus known as "fusarium oxysporum." When Agent Orange was invented, they told everyone it wasn't harmful to humans; we'll see what they say today.
Colombia is in the midst of a civil war. There are two different guerilla groups who are rising up against the Colombian government. One is the Revolutionary Armed Forces Of Colombia, the other is the National Liberation Army, and together their forces number over 20,000 strong. As the Los Angeles Times noted, the plan calls for "the elimination of the guerrillas, no matter their allegiance." The U.S. government looks at the guerillas as its enemy and the right wing paramilitary groups as its allies.
Last week, Time magazine ran a story about the leader of the largest right wing paramilitary group in Colombia, the Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). This past February, the AUC mutilated 28 people in the village of El Salado. The U.N. High Commission on Human Rights found that there were 403 massacres in Colombia last year, 40 percent of them directly linked to the AUC. The article pointed out that most of the over 794 people who have been massacred by the AUC this year were small farmers. It also stated that at least one million peasants have fled their homes in the past decade, and a fear of the AUC was a main factor. When approached about the people who were found tortured to death, the head of the AUC stated "nearly all were guerrilla spies."
On Nov. 23, the AUC carried out another massacre, this time in the fishing village of Nueva Venecia. The BBC reported that 17 people were executed in front of the other villagers. This was a warning not to support the guerillas.
These are the forces that the United States is supporting. Vietnam didn't just happen. We didn't just wake up and find ourselves in a war. We provided billions of dollars to help the French keep Vietnam as a colony and, when they failed, we stepped in. We sent "aid" first. A few advisors here, a few weapons there. Lyndon Johnson promised that the United States wouldn't fight in Vietnam in the same way Bill Clinton is promising we won't fight in Colombia.
Of course, we all know the outcome of Vietnam. Millions of Vietnamese were killed, over 50,000 U.S. troops were killed, and a nation was destroyed in order to "save it."
The people of Colombia do not want U.S. soldiers in their country. When over 6 million people marched in Colombia on Oct. 25, 1999, a principal demand was an end to U.S. aid. Yet we won't leave.
Colombia is too important to the United States economically. It has nothing to do with a "war on drugs"; we all know that. Just as the war on drugs fuels the prison industrial complex here in America, it provides a nice excuse for the United States' continued dominance of Latin America. It's important for us to be aware. It's important for us to be educated on what is being carried out in our name. In Colombia, 35,000 people have been killed in the last 10 years and the United States continues to support a military responsible for the majority of those deaths.
Two Republican presidents and two Democratic presidents supported U.S. aggression in Vietnam. Today, both George W. Bush and Al Gore support "Plan Colombia." The answer in the short run is simple: the United States must get out of Colombia now!
The article above originally appeared in the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper at UCLA. It's author is Youth for Socialist Action leader Mike Swartz.
