Michael Schwartz Schwartz is a
fifth-year sociology student who can be reached at [email protected].
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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.
 Illustration by CASEY CROWE/Daily Bruin 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.