Right next door, a border conflict put Costa Rica and Nicaragua at the brink of war. Daniel Ortega is back as President of Nicaragua, following the "peaceful" devastation of his country by the neoliberals of the 1990s. In that decade, the "constitutional" President Arnoldo Aleman celebrated his wedding in a hotel in Miami, having diamonds brought from Paris and Beverly Hills and spending the miserly financial assistance Clinton had sent to aid the victims of Hurricane Mitchell on building a road from the airport to the gate of his mansion. During this period, tellingly, Nicaragua was plunging officially into its status as one of the ten poorest countries in the world.
One week before Uribe stepped down and Santos assumed office as President of Colombia, the largest common grave ever in the history of Latin America was discovered in Colombia--holding about 2000 bodies. I have to say this, although it's merely speculation: The number of bodies in that grave coincides suspiciously with the number of civilians massacred by American troops in the El Chorrillo neighborhood in Panama during the 1989 invasion. Those bodies were never recovered. As soon as Santos became president, however, news about the mass grave ceased.
Perhaps the most recent newsworthy event in Colombia was the removal of Gustavo Petro, the Mayor of Bogota, by Prosecutor General Alejandro Ordonez, one of Uribe's cronies. Gustavo Petro is one of the survivors of the M-19 guerrilla massacre following the "peace agreements" (see the full account at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_Petro), and even published an article in the New York Times entitled "Don't Trash Colombia's Democracy" (Dec. 28, 2013). As Mayor of Bogota, Petro had started a public garbage-collecting company that was soon doing a far better job than four private companies had done over a very long time. His removal as mayor of Bogota should perhaps come as no surprise, however. Ordonez's rule as Prosecutor General protects the private companies in which Uribe's sons are said to have weighty interests.
Let's Not Confuse Consequences for Causes
So, with reference to the title of his article, what Colombian "fundamentals"better than bombs" is Mr. Shapiro talking about? A formally civilian and "democratic" dictatorship whose record of violations of human rights approaches military dimensions? Or is it the human rights abuses run up by both the Colombian government and the Colombian elites over the ages that surpass by far those committed by guerrillas? As I've said before, even Colombian army generals get sick of American "smart" bombs, but they also abhor the political "fundamentals" Mr. Shapiro wants to recruit people for.
Mr. Shapiro cavalierly inverts causes and consequences. Here are the historical realities:
- Colombian peasants would have been happy to grow lettuce and sell it for Colombian pesos had the earnings been enough to provide a DECENT living. The truth is, however, that the government itself brings in foreign occupants to fumigate just everything.
- Peasants are thrown out of the countryside physically by violence, and "free trade" agreements destroy both the country's agriculture and industry.
- For its part, the government does nothing to stop violence, or simply favors it. Its only concern is the "stabilization" of foreign balances in order to preserve the fortunes of the elites in dollars.
- "Billions of dollars, pesos, francs, and "scoots' from the world over," which Mr. Shapiro claims are held by the guerrillas who "want to go straight," actually have been laundered by the Colombian power elites for decades.
- It is in fact the Colombian government, not guerillas, that (to use Mr. Shapiro's words) is "brutal and costing the U.S. in men and material, money that could be used in more productive arenas."
- To again get things right using Mr. Shapiro's own words, both "the confiscation of ranches" and the "killing of families for their rich farm land" are what the guerrillas protect the people against!
- Kidnapping of the rich is one of the things the poor (more exactly "the impoverished") of the whole world live on. So, what are the Colombian people's choices? They can join either the paramilitary or the guerillas, or grow drugs SPECIFICALLY for dollars.
This story is as old as colonialism. It didn't end, and here are other examples: Jacobo Arbenz, President of Guatemala, was also a bourgeois-democrat who needed the country's own land to be distributed among the country's peasants in order "to turn Guatemala into a modern capitalist state." But, first, the land had to be nationalized, since it was all in the hands of United Fruit. In the end, there was no one to support Arbenz but the Communists. He was overthrown in a CIA-mastered coup that marked the beginning of a genocide that took the lives of 200,000 people. Details about Arbenz's government have gone largely unnoticed and the genocide that followed remains largely under impunity to this day. But see the OEN article dealing with Guatemala by William Boardman, entitled "Reagan's Chickens Coming Home to Roost?" (See also the books by Piero Gleijeses, a Historian from John Hopkins University: The Shattered Hope, about Guatemala; The Hope Torn Apart, about the Dominican Republic, and Missions in Conflict, about Cuba's missions in Africa).
America's own recent history is replete with atrocities committed in the name of "freedom and democracy": a million people slaughtered and a cultural heritage looted and destroyed in Iraq; and the misery and suffering visited on Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. (The Hague Court even ruled in favor of Nicaragua in 1990, condemning the U.S. for aggression in the "80s and ordering the U.S. to pay war damages amounting to 18 billion dollars. Of course, not a penny has been paid, even to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro or Arnoldo Aleman.) Similar violations of human rights can be cited in the "Civilization against barbarity" case involving Paraguay in the 19th century; in the brutality of European colonialists in the 19th century--and, again, later in the 1950s-"70s, in seeking to suppress their subject colonies' struggles for independence; and, of course, very recently, in Libya and Syria. And let us NEVER forget the endless plight of Palestine.
The issue in Colombia today is not whether FARC's money becomes legal. The real issue--hard as it may be for defenders of the Establishment to admit--is that drug money is the business of the power structures. By how much do you think the value of the U.S. dollar would collapse if all of the drug business worldwide were to magically disappear in a single day? What would American drug addicts do? Would they start assaulting pharmacies and banks out of despair, or would they organize a sit-down protest in front of rehabilitation clinics, demanding treatment at public expense? (That would in fact be fair, IF the public money would come from what is absorbed by the budgets of the Pentagon, the Intelligence Community and the Prisons, and all of it ended up in private pockets every year!)
By the way: FARC commander Simon Trinidad was extradited by Uribe to the U.S., but he was acquitted of drug charges. Then a charge was fabricated accusing him of kidnapping three Americans, in spite of FARC's claim that he in particular had nothing to do with it. This led to Trinidad's being condemned to 60 years in prison, which tends to support FARC's claim that the "Colombia Plan" is in fact a counter-insurgency strategy that has nothing to do with, and may be purposely failing at, fighting drugs. Trinidad's case resembles that of one of the Cuban 5, who was condemned for the Feb.24, 1996 Cessna shoot-down incident, despite Cuba's claim that he in particular had nothing to do with it. (NOTE: How long must a sovereign country withstand provocations like Basulto's? Would Cessnas be tolerated, if they were found to be releasing leaflets promoting an "enemy" country's ideology while flying over Washington DC? Also, FARC denounced recently the inhuman conditions in which Simon Trinidad is held in Florence prison in Colorado, in which one of the Cuban 5 was held).
It's rarely discussed anymore that cocaine and heroine are indeed bad for your health, but I was told in private once that a marijuana cigarette is six times more likely to put you at risk of cancer than a Marlboro cigarette. It makes sense, then, for marijuana to be a pain-killer for those who are already sick with cancer. (Uruguay legalized marijuana, but users must be registered and the issue is not to be left "at loose ends.")
The fact is: People need to LIVE. And it doesn't depend on what drugs become legal, no matter where. Colombia's disgrace has been in luring "smart" people into criminal (power) structures. Colombia and the whole world need a new system--one that is not run by criminals who actually don't give a damn about the values they throw everyday into people's faces. Peace is possible only with SHARING, and, as is the goal of every revolution, this implies a redistribution of property, now on a global scale. It is in fact possible to stabilize a system like that, even financially, although Mr. Shapiro probably doesn't believe it and criminals in Washington and on Wall Street, and their serfs like Uribe, do everything they can to sabotage it.
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