Colombia and corporate
profits
The Political
Economy of a Narco-Terror State
by Rachel Guevera
From the Oct. 2002 issue of
Z Magazine
http://www.zmag.org/ZMagSite/oct2002/feature/guevera1002.htm
Colombia is an extreme example of the local
oligarchy colluding with multi-national corporations and U.S. militarism
to make grotesque profits while the people and environment are
devastated. Billions of dollars from the U.S. and the drug cartels are
keeping the people from overthrowing the oligarchy, which kills 5,000 to
10,000 people every year. More than half of all legal Colombian exports
travel to the U.S.—if you add the value of cocaine and heroin, the
percentage goes to 80. Colombia has become a lucrative profit center for
the U.S., one based on violence and ecological destruction. The
Colombian oligarchy is the business partner for many U.S. corporations
and it is the ally of the U.S. and its foreign policy.
CZN and Exxon-Mobil Corporation
This Texas-based mega-corporation is also known as Exxon-Mobil Coal and
Minerals, Imperial Oil, ESSO and Monterrey Coal Company, Compania Minera
Disputada de Las Condes Limitada (Chile), Intercor (Colombia), and
dozens of other companies that produce a wide range of chemicals,
plastics, and consumer products. With $1.4 billion in revenues from its
Colombian operations in 2000, ExxonMobil was the second largest
corporation in Colombia after the state-owned Ecopetrol. It no longer
holds that title since it sold the massive Cerrejon Coal mine to CZN and
its copper mining operations to Anglo American this year.
Colombia is the fourth largest exporter of coal. For the last 15 years
an average of 15 million tons per year has been extracted from the
opencast El Cerrejon Coal Mine under its subsidiary Intercor. It is one
of the largest open-pit mines in the world (30 miles long). The CZN
Consortium purchased Intercor and Exxon’s share in April. The area of
the mine is inhabited by the Wayuu Indians who have opposed the mine
since 1980. At the start 5,000 Indians were employed, but most of them
were dismissed when the mine began operations two years later. In 1988
the last Indians were fired for union activities. Intercor evicted all
residents of the indigenous community of Tabaco to make way for the
expansion of the mine. Residents are resisting and claim that the
relocation arrangements made would break up communities and not give
people sufficient funds to buy land to live on. The Colombian army
guards the mine and has assisted strikebreaking in the past.
To extract the coal, Exxon sucked up the groundwater, dried up the
rivers, and, in the process, denuded the grasslands on which the Wayuu
depend for subsistence. Indians have also suffered from respiratory
diseases caused by coal dust and heavy noise pollution. An international
campaign organized by Greenpeace is targeting Exxon-Mobil as one of the
main obstacles to greenhouse gas reductions. Twenty-one percent of
stockholders recently voted for Exxon-Mobil to adopt a renewable energy
plan. CZN also has mining operations in Cerrejon Central and they are
actively pursuing new mining opportunities in Cerrejon Sur. Mine
expansions are imminent.
Drummond Inc.
Drummond has fallen from the 318th largest private company in 1999 to a
rank of 492. In 2001 it generated revenues of $615 million with 2,800
employees. It mines coal, produces coke, and develops real estate.
Drummond’s ABC Coke plant in Tarrant, Alabama is the largest single
producer of foundry coke in the U.S. Most of Drummond’s coal and
profits come from the La Loma mine in the Cesar region. Each year
Drummond exports about six million tons of coal from Colombia to U.S.
electrical utility companies.
Ligia Ines Alzate, a longtime labor activist and general secretary of
the Confederation of Trade Unions for the state of Antioquia, toured the
U.S. and spoke to groups in Alabama in April. A Colombian union,
Sintramienergetica, has sued Drummond Co. in federal court claiming that
Drummond hired hit men to kidnap, torture, and murder three men last
year for their ties to the union that represents Drummond workers.
Alzate said many foreign multinational companies hire paramilitary
groups to target union leaders during contract negotiations or when
restless workers protest company practices. Coca Cola is also being sued
for encouraging death squads to kill union members. The United Mine
Workers and the United Steel Workers Unions support the lawsuit against
Drummond.
Dole Food Company Inc.
Dole is the leading producer and supplier of fresh fruit and vegetables
and a leader in the production of bananas and pineapples (2001 revenues
of $4.5 billion). It has been expanding into fresh-cut flower production
and markets a growing line of packaged foods. Dole is the largest
employer in Colombia and employs 51,000 workers in Latin America on
44,000 hectares of prime farmland. They control banana production in
Colombia and in 1998 they bought 25 percent of the flower cultivation
industry. Colombia is the second largest exporter of flowers in the
world. Two-thirds of fresh-cut flowers sold in the United States come
from Colombia. Dole is the largest producer of fresh flowers in Latin
America with over 90 percent of production shipped into North America.
The industry has hurt the environment of a central savanna where most of
the flowers are grown. Aquifers there have dried up, requiring water to
be brought in from Bogotб. Toxic residues from pesticides banned
in Europe have turned up in groundwater. One-fifth of the chemicals used
in the Colombian industry’s greenhouses have been restricted in the
United States for health reasons (Aldicarb, DDT, Lindane, Aldrin, and
Metomil). Studies by local nongovernmental organizations have found that
nearly two-thirds of Colombian flower workers suffer from peculiar
illnesses, ranging from nausea to miscarriage. Dole employs 11,133
mostly women workers in the Colombian flower industry. Many make less
than 60 cents an hour and women who become pregnant are immediately
terminated from their jobs. Last year Dole agreed to participate in an
environmental standards program, but the government provides no
effective monitoring or enforcement of the standards.
The IUF, an international union of agricultural and restaurant workers,
has been waging a campaign for a year now against Dole Food. This
dispute originated over Dole’s treatment of banana workers and
subcontracted cooperatives in the Philippines. Dole gets about 40
percent of its bananas from Colombia and Ecuador. In Ecuador Dole is
considered the largest employer of child labor and is active in
resisting unions and improvements in working conditions. In mid-July
Dole agreed to pay $24 million to 3,000 Honduran banana workers exposed
to sterility and cancer causing pesticides used on company plantations
over the last 30 years.
Ecopetrol
Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe has named former Ecopetrol board
member Isaac Yanovich to head the state oil firm. He replaces outgoing
Ecopetrol president, Alberto Calderon. Oil is Colombia’s biggest
foreign exchange earner and the government’s top source
of revenue. Calderon has signed 60 exploration agreements with foreign
companies in the past 30 months. Oil generates $2 billion in government
revenue a year. Colombia’s Congress has slashed the amount of
royalties oil companies must pay the state on newly discovered oil
fields from 16 percent to 5.
Foreign firms say that lower royalties are crucial to continue doing
business in Colombia, where kidnappings and attacks on pipelines by
guerrillas, who have fought the government for 38 years, drive up
operational costs and scare off investment.
The city of Barrancabermeja is home to Colombia’s largest oil refinery
where 70 percent of oil exports flow down the Magdalena River.
Paramilitaries have intensified a terror campaign, murdering hundreds of
civilians in the last year. In June, USO oil union workers went on
strike to protest the assassination of union officer, Cesar Blanco. Two
hundred and one unionists were killed in Colombia in 2001—more than 80
percent of the world total.
An international consortium led by Canadian Occidental Petroleum expects
as much as 300 million barrels from a new oilfield called Boquerуn—the
nation’s third-largest deposit. Other major investors in Colombian oil
have included Exxon, Shell, and Elf Aquitane. They have helped boost oil
production 80 percent over the last decade.
Ecopetrol diverts most of its profit to federal and local governments,
but Colombians see little benefit. Officials face pressure from
guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries to pay protection money. Many
officials steal or squander the money. Arauca, a boomtown about 25 miles
from the Caсo Limуn oilfield, has received millions of
dollars annually in oil royalties but is ringed by shantytowns. In a
petroleum-rich central valley known as the Middle Magdalena, more than
70 percent of the 750,000 inhabitants live in poverty and nearly 40
percent are unemployed, double the official nationwide rate.
BP Amoco (British Petroleum)
Colombia’s biggest foreign investor is BP Amoco, formed when
British Petroleum merged with Chicago-based Amoco in 1998. The
London-based giant controls Colombia’s largest oilfield, a
1.5-billion-barrel trove called Cusiana-Cupiagua in the northeastern
province of Casanare. This region produces almost half of Colombia’s
total crude output of 600,000 barrels a day. The oil fields are operated
by BP, which has a 19 percent share in the project. France’s
TotalFinaElf has 19 percent and Triton Energy of the United States—a
subsidiary of Amerada Hess Corp—has 12 percent, Ecopetrol owns 50
percent of the project. A 444-mile pipeline called Ocensa carries BP
Amoco oil to the Caribbean port of Coveсas for export.
BP and Ecopetrol are studying whether to spend $130 million on a plant
to allow them to sell natural gas from Cusiana-Cupiagua. The Chuchupa
field, operated offshore off the Caribbean coast by ChevronTexaco Corp,
has similar reserves to Cusiana-Cupiagua and produces most of
Colombia’s current gas supply. BP maintains close ties with a number
of right-wing paramilitaries who it helped train in the early 1990s.
Occidental (OXY) Petroleum
This Delaware corporation based in Los Angeles and Houston operates the
Cano-Limon pipeline in northeastern Colombia. The Cano-Limon is 480
miles long and was bombed 79 times in 1999 by guerrillas (more than
1,000 bombings since it was built in 1986). Oxy claims to have lost $100
million since 1995 because of guerrilla attacks. At Bush and OXY’s
urging, the U.S. Congress passed a military appropriations bill that
includes an additional $98 million to pay for security on the pipeline.
The new aid package constitutes a public revelation of Bush’s shift
from the pretense of fighting the war on drugs to a strategy of
counter-insurgency. This aid will save OXY the $30 million a year it has
spent protecting the pipeline since the mid-1990s.
Colombia is the 7th largest supplier of oil to the U.S. and has the
largest untapped pool of petroleum in the Western Hemisphere. Al Gore
controls up to $1 million of family stock in Occidental. Lawrence P.
Meriage, Occidental’s public-affairs vice president, not only pushed
for Plan Colombia last year, but also urged a House subcommittee to
extend military aid to the nation’s north to “augment security for
oil development operations.”
They have temporarily pulled out of the disputed U’wa territory
because of international publicity and pressure from their main
stockholder: Sanford and Bernstein—parent company Alliance Capital.
Another big scandal with OXY involved its Florida-based subcontractor
AirScan who directed the cluster bomb attack of Santo Domingo near the
Cano-Limon pipeline in Colombia. This attack resulted in the deaths of
nine children and nine other civilians in 1998. Investigations continue
into this massacre.
Across the border in Ecuador, OXY is a partner in the OCP petroleum
pipeline—one of the most destructive and potentially catastrophic
projects in the Andes. This pipeline cuts through one of the most
biologically diverse regions in the world. Mud slides and earthquakes
are frequent threats to the area and now there will be crude oil flowing
through it.
DynCorp
DynCorp is one of the largest private contractors for the U.S. armed
forces with 2001 revenues of $1.8 billion; up 34.5 percent for the year.
It has assets of $644 million and 2001 profits of $102 million. DynCorp
is the 121st largest private firm in the world and performs
technical and consulting services, including aviation maintenance,
logistical support, telecommunications, information systems, weapons
testing, and management. In 2001 DynCorp received a $600 million
contract for Colombian fumigation and $35 million for
related services, says senior U.S. official Andy Higginbottom.
Many of the DynCorp executives are former CIA or military personnel,
others were formerly of Enron or Citigroup. The coca spraying campaign
is directed by Rand Beers, assistant secretary for the department of
state’s division of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs and the state department’s secretive Air Wing. DynCorp and its
contractor, Eagle Aviation Services and Technology (EAST), have made
millions of dollars spraying Monsanto’s Roundup-Ultra (Glyphosate)
over millions of acres of jungle and farmlands in Colombia. UK-based ICI
recently pulled their soapy surfactant ingredients out of the spray
mixture over concerns about liability and bad publicity. T.D. Allman in
Rolling Stone magazine said of DynCorp’s subcontractor EAST, “Once
upon a time these pilots and crews were called mercenaries. Today
they’re known as contract personnel. Many come from U.S. involvement
in clandestine warfare in Cuba and Central America” (May 8, 2002).
EAST Inc. is headquartered at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. Here
fumigation pilots are trained by the state department’s Bureau of
Narcotics and International Law Enforcement. EAST is incorporated in
several U.S. states, but has refused to discuss its operations in
Colombia.
Based out of Landria military base in Colombia, Blackhawk choppers fly
cover for fumigation pilots. Despite these escorts, American pilots
flying Vietnam-era Bronco DV-10s over the FARC-EP-dominated Caqueta
Department recently chose to abort their spray mission when they
encountered heavy fire from the guerrillas.
DynCorp’s contracts with the CIA include covert work in Colombia and
Peru, according to James Woolsey, former head of CIA, at Senate
hearings. Several DynCorp employees have been investigated for drug
trafficking and it is common knowledge in Colombia that these U.S.
subcontractors consume hard drugs and are above the law.
EAST has a long history of CIA and clandestine operations. DynCorp has
been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in defense contracts in the
U.S. and in Bosnia and scandals follow their every step. The spraying of
defoliants has damaged vast areas of food crops and sensitive habitat.
The International Labor Rights Fund has filed suit in U.S. federal court
on behalf of 10,000 Ecuadorian peasant farmers and Amazonian Indians
charging DynCorp with torture, infanticide, and wrongful death for its
role in the aerial spraying in the Amazonian jungle, along the border of
Ecuador and Colombia.
Military Personnel Resources Inc.
Insiders joke that MPRI has more generals than the Pentagon. This high
level mercenary oup has over 1,000 elite military and law enforcement
leaders on retainer, including General Ed Soyster, former head of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, General Frederick Kroesen, former commander
of the U.S. Army in Europe and a former assistant director of the FBI.
Many of its employees serve on the Council of Foreign Relations. The
president, Carl Vuono, was the army chief of staff during the invasion
of Panama and the Gulf War. He retired after the war and joined MPRI in
1991. One of his first big jobs was advising the Croatian government
when it split from Yugoslavia. He is credited with the victorious
military strategy of the lightning armor drives used against the Serbs.
MPRI is a military consultancy and supplies pilots, Special Forces, and
elite training and security services worldwide. They recently completed
an $800,000 contract to advise the Colombian military.
The Colombian Government Inc.
Every NGO, international agency, and most U.S. State Department and DEA
reports agree that an axis of evil has united against the leftist
FARC-EP and the poor people of Colombia to maintain the status quo of
violence and drug dealing. The U.S. played a decisive role in
establishing this nexus when it brought the AUC into the “killer
networks” that the U.S. established in 1991. Without massive U.S.
financial support the corrupt Colombian government would have fallen to
the FARC last year.
The UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention says,
“Deforestation caused by coca and opium cultivation is close to
340,000 hectares. Each hectare of coca costs four hectares of Amazon
forest.” When vegetation is cut on slopes, the water supply downstream
is affected, in addition to a loss of some 120-230 tons of topsoil per
hectare. Pollution of water sources results from use of herbicides and
fertilizers applied to the drug crops, and from solvents and chemicals
used in drug refinement “20 million liters of ethyl ether, acetone,
ammonia, sulphuric acid and hydrochloric acid are discarded from
laboratories into the tributaries that feed the Amazon and Orinoco
rivers—endangering 350 Andean floral species, 210 animal species, 600
birds species, 170 reptiles, 100 amphibians, and 600 fish species in the
Amazon and Orinoco alone.”
A phony drug war has become a bloody large-scale anti-guerrilla campaign
that is guaranteed to devastate the flora, fauna, and the peasants,
while making Colombia safe for massive, coal, oil, and mineral
extraction for U.S. markets. War crimes lawsuits are pending against
U.S. barbarity.