Plan
Colombia:
¿Plan de Muerte o Plan de Vida?
Keynote to Student Environmental Activist
Coalition Conference,
Wittenberg University, November 2, 2002
Presented by Margaret Knapke
It's a special pleasure to be addressing activists,
because I know at the outset that we share a passion for the planet and
for community. I hope you have had a chance to cultivate some community
among yourselves this weekend, because we have a lot of important work
ahead of us, and we'll need each other to share the difficulties of that
work, as well as the joy.
I take my dreams very seriously, and I want to tell you about a dream I
had last February. I awoke with an image that still haunts me. I saw a
person lying on a medical table, unconscious. Others moved around this
person, pinching, poking, shaking -- trying to wake him up. But the
person -- and in my gut I knew he represented our Body Politic -- just
slumbered on.
I want
to begin by suggesting to you that our job as activists, on a pretty
deep level, involves trying to bring that Body Politic out of its deep,
cozy slumber. And, of course, that includes making sure that we
ourselves continue to wake up from our own share of intoxicating
privilege -- which is something we do only by degree. Certainly, we have
to help each other resist the many temptations there are to go back to
the collective snooze.
One way to wake up, I think, is to cultivate a sensitivity to the
difference between rhetoric and reality. I know that you, as activists,
are aware that so much of what we are told in the mainstream media
advances a view of the world that favors an elite (including ourselves
as consumers), and that typically ignores or distorts the viewpoint of
the poor.
We need to ask ourselves, whatever our issue: What is that rhetoric that
keeps so many of us sleeping -- even as our governmental policies
destroy the environment, and harm, even kill, people by the many
thousands?
- First,
many believe or assume that our capitalist economic system offers the
best chance to most people in the world for a good life -- materially,
socially, even spiritually.
- Many believe or assume that we are somehow entitled to our affluence, and that our being affluent will somehow trickle down.
- Many
well-meaning people believe or assume that US policy makers always
intend to do the right thing, even if there are occasional "mistakes"
or "excesses."
- And many people sincerely believe that the US government
and its military are like a stern but well-meaning police officer,
defending the rights of people everywhere.
Now, we might find all this rather ridiculous, in light of the evidence
-- I know I do. But I also
remember when I believed it, and I recall how comforting it was. So I
want to suggest that we as activists are up against a strong,
collectively held belief system that is as comforting and mesmerizing to
folks as it is dangerous. We need to be persistent, and we also need to
be compassionate, in challenging those beliefs.
I'm here primarily to talk about Colombia and a war there which has been
going on for about 40 years. I went as part of a joint Witness for Peace
/ SOA Watch delegation this past August. We were 35 all together, but
broke into two smaller delegations which went to Barrancabermeja and the
Cauca region.
I want to talk about Colombia first from the
perspective of the dominant rhetoric pouring out of the State Department
-- and we did get that perspective from US Embassy personnel there, as
well as big business types and the Colombian military. And then, more
importantly as far as I'm concerned, I want to share with you the
perceptions of a wide range of Colombian people with whom we met:
these are people from the city and the countryside, peasants,
indigenous, Afro-Colombians, church people, unionists, feminists, human
rights workers, and drug policy people. These are the people who have, I
would argue, a much firmer grasp on the reality of the situation. It is
their view of Plan Colombia, what they call un Plan de Muerte or Plan of
Death, that I most want to share with you. And then, lastly, I want to
convey some of their requests to us in the US -- requests of us as
citizens and activists. So:
first Rhetoric, then what I submit to you is the
Reality, then Requests !
But first, let me say that I hope you will study
Colombia and US involvement there beyond what you hear from me tonight.
I always encourage people to do their own homework. But I also want to
suggest that, as you go looking for the facts, please remember that
there are faces and names and families behind those facts and
statistics. Please, don't let your study become a merely abstract
enterprise. To emphasize that point, I will be sharing some of the faces
and names of the Colombians I met in August.
We were there as the new President Alvaro Uribe was
being inaugurated. With few exceptions, the Colombians -- and many if
not most of them were already living under threat of death for their
organizing work, a threat heightened simply by agreeing to talk with us
! -- those Colombians told us that the repression would almost certainly
intensify after Uribe came into office. And that is happening.
So, on the one hand, I love to look at these faces
of some of the most incredible people I have ever met -- so full of joy
and courage and commitment, but it's also painful for me because I am
aware that they are at such grave risk. Indeed, one of the Food and
Beverage unionists with whom the Barrancabermeja group met was murdered
by the end of August.
Nevertheless, it is critical that you understand
that there is great joy in the struggle for justice in Colombia, as
there must be in our own struggle in the US.
As expected, the US Embassy staff gave us the State
Department line on Colombia, and why it is appropriate for the US to be
involved there, and primarily militarily. We heard the same view from
Colombian military officers and big business types, such as at the
Chamber of Commerce.
For those of you who don't know, Plan Colombia was
the aid package bestowed by the Clinton Administration in FY 2000.
$1.3 Billion US dollars began to go to the Colombian
government that year, most of it -- about $800 million -- in military
aid. It's important to understand that that military aid went to the
military with the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and about
10,000 of them were trained at the School of the Americas. Not only did
Clinton beef up this abusive army, but he waived the human rights
conditions for the aid! Nevertheless, the Colombian military is always
portrayed by the State Department as a majorally positive force for the
protection of civilian society from the irregular armies. Despite the
Army's abysmal human rights record, like the SOA (now called the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), they have learned to
speak the language of human rights.
Now, the situation in Colombia is unique in that
there are seemingly three distinct armed actors -- the regular Colombian
military I just mentioned, the Leftist guerrillas -- who formed in the
60's to address the political and economic disparities in the country,
and the Rightist paramilitaries -- who formed in the mid-80's to protect
the holdings of large landowners, and to help them acquire yet more
land. The US State Department and sympathetic sectors in Colombia
maintain that it is important to have a strong military presence there
in order to 1) fight the so-called narco-guerrillas on the Left, 2)
fight the paramilitaries on the Right, and 3) protect the planes
fumigating coca crops in the south. Those coca crops become cocaine
consumed in the US.
Regarding fumigation, the US Embassy maintains that
the aerial spraying of coca crops is very precise, and that the
glyphosate / Ultra Round-Up being sprayed is nontoxic to the environment
and to human beings, at worst an irritant to the eyes. The US Congress
has primarily gotten behind Plan Colombia as the only way they can see
to fight an effective Drug War. Since 9/11, the Bush Administration has
also been calling it one front in the War on Terrorism, and more
recently they've also started calling it a counterinsurgency campaign
against the guerrillas.
That's a very quick summary of how Plan Colombia,
and now Bush's Andean Regional Initiative with it's additional $300 -
400 Million in military aid for Colombia, is rationalized -- as being a
stabilizing and pacifying force in the interest of the Colombian people
as well as US vital interests.
Now for the reality check. Again, grassroots
Colombians describe Plan Colombia as un Plan de Muerte, a Plan of Death.
This view happens to coincide with major human rights reports issued by
Amnesty International, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights,
Human Rights Watch, the Washington Office on Latin America, and numerous
church groups.
What we heard over and over was this: that the war
is not really about fighting coca production, because there are cheaper
and more effective ways to do that. Rather, the fumigation and massacres
serve to move rural populations off their lands. For what purposes ? Oil
exploration is a big one, as well as stabilizing US access to Venezuelan
oil, as well as building up a system of trade corridors that will serve
corporate interests in globalizing the southern hemisphere.
The representatives of the popular organizations told us that
globalization is eroding their economic sovereignty.
- Countries in the developing world are forced to knuckle
under to trade and debt regulations that serve the interests of banks
and corporations rather than the interests of the majority of the
population.
- Labor and environmental and consumer protections are
eroded.
- People are forced to produce cash crops rather than
subsistence crops -- and then they become dependent on imports, which
they can barely afford.
Regarding fumigation, the reality there is that it
is far from benign.
- It kills all crops it touches -- and it is often sprayed
indiscriminately.
- Food crops are less resilient to the Ultra Round-Up than
the coca, so they are replanted with difficulty.
- The Round-Up poisons the water and the fish and wildlife
dependent on the water.
- It causes gastro-intestinal, respiratory, and skin
problems in humans; some children have died after being sprayed.
- When their food crops are destroyed, peasants are often
desperate for a quick cash crop -- and coca is the quickest -- so the
temptation is strong to simply go into the rainforest, cut down some
trees, and plant more coca.
- Coca production has actually increased since the onset of
Plan Colombia (by 25% according to the CIA). So arguably the fumigation
has stimulated the cultivation of coca !
- We were told over and over: There can be no end to coca
cultivation until there are viable economic alternatives.
By now more than 2 million Colombians have been
internally displaced from their lands -- in addition to the million-plus
who have left the country -- and these internally displaced person or
IDP's have to try to survive! So they gravitate to the large cities and
the "misery belts" around them, hoping to compete for the
scant employment opportunities there.
SOACHA
But again, let's make this a little more personal.
Let me introduce you to the people of
Soacha, a neighborhood within the "misery belt" outside
of Bogota. Through them we can see more clearly the nature of this war.
Afro-Colombians are officially recognized as 26%
of the Colombian population (at about 11 million). Together with
indigenous people, they are about a third of Colombia’s internally
displaced persons (IDPs). They have formed an organization called
AFRODES, the Association for Displaced Afro-Colombians.
The people of Soacha with
whom we met are also Afro-Colombians, and come from the Choco province
on the Pacific coastline. The people you see here came from a fertile area
called Rio Sucio, not far from the Panama border. These folks described
to us how, shortly after they were granted communal title to their
lands, the paramilitaries began committing massacres in their region.
They claim, as have many beleaguered communities throughout the country,
that the paramilitary massacres were clearly supported by regular
Colombian Army units.
Now, this is an important challenge to the
official rhetoric! Human
rights groups, including the State Dept's own Human Rights office, state
that there is widespread cooperation between the regular Army we finance
and the "paras." To the exact extent that the Army has cleaned
up its act, that its abuses have declined, the abuses of the paras have
risen. The "paras" have become the Army's deniability factor:
They fight the Army's "dirty war" for them, with intelligence
and logistical support from the Army. Together they commit 80% of the
abuses. That leaves about 20% for the two guerrilla groupings to share
between themselves. Unfortunately, in this war, there are no
disciplined, ethical armed actors who respect the right of civilians to
be neutral. Over the last ten years, 35,000 people have been killed,
mostly civilians.
We asked the Soachans why the army and
paramilitaries would want to repress them, and they were very clear.
They said that the Colombian government wants to build an inter-oceanic
canal through their lands, which would greatly facilitate the movement
of products between the Atlantic and the Pacific. They do have oil under
their lands, but they believe the trade route is the real objective.
Approximately 20,000 people have fled their small, self-sufficient
communities in the Choco region to cities in the interior since 1996.
The Soachans explained that, whereas they had been
very self-sufficient in Choco, with a spiritual as well as economic
relationship to the land -- in the various cities and misery belts they
need to have money, and they have few options for earning any. Many of
the women we met are single heads of households and single parents,
because their men were killed, and some have had to resort to
prostitution. The best option they have is to get jobs as domestics in
Bogota; do the 1 1/2 hour commute to work; work sometimes 16 hours a
day; on a good day get paid at the end of the day; and on an especially
good day not be sexually abused before leaving for the commute home.
Many of these women then return to children who have been alone all day.
My solidarity group in Dayton is planning to do
some fundraising for an AFRODES project to build a daycare center, so
that the women who are able to work can coordinate their childcare with
each other. This might seem like a small thing, and by itself it won't
bring peace and justice to Colombia -- but if you could see the
conditions there, and meet the children, you'd understand how important
it is. Talk to me if you think you might be interested in helping.
I was so struck by the strength and depth of these
people -- women, men, and children. And let me tell you, they fully
intend to return to their communal lands in Choco province! But in the
meantime, they must try to live with dignity where they are, and provide
for their children's needs as best they can.
Before we leave Soacha, I have to make the
observation that what these and other Colombians described to us as the
effects of globalization is perfectly consistent with a document from
the Pentagon called Vision 2020. Please, look it up! In it,
Pentagon planners say that, with globalization, the gap between the
"haves" and the "have-nots" will continue to widen.
They state that the job of the US military is to protect the interests
of the US in that developing scenario -- the US being, of course, the
major "have" in the entire world. For those of you with an
interest in history, I'd encourage you to look into George Kennan's
Policy Planning Statement #23 in 1948. Already then, shortly after WW
II, he stated very clearly that the role of US foreign policy was to
maintain our disproportionate share of world resources, regardless
of the effects on human rights and democracy !
ASFADDES / CSPP
Clearly the people of Colombia are experiencing
extreme suppression of their human rights, as well as their attempts to
attain economic and political democracy. One common technique used by
all the armed Colombian actors is the use of violence, sometimes
carefully targeted violence -- such as against unionists, human rights
advocates, and all kinds of organizers, and sometimes utterly random
violence. It is meant not only to stop the individuals murdered, but
also to intimidate other people from even trying to organize.
We met with these women who are variously working
with and receiving services from two organizations, the Association for
the Families of the Detained and Disappeared (ASFADDES) and the
Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP). Both
organizations have been repressed mightily, with leadership murdered,
but they keep on fighting. They exemplify to me how intimidation might
work for a brief time, but sooner or later people pull themselves back
together and defy the repression.
ASFADDES demands accountability from the government
for those who have been disappeared; they provide material, emotional,
and therapeutic support to the families of the detained and disappeared;
and basically they refuse to be intimidated -- which is not to say they
are not fearful, of course, but rather they continue despite their fear.
CSPP serves as a liaison to and advocate for prisoners, especially
political prisoners. It's dangerous but necessary work.
Portraits of the Popular Organizations
I said I would conclude by sharing some of the
requests of the various organizers with whom we met. Let me introduce
you briefly to some extraordinary role models, all of them doing their
work at great personal risk.
Marylen -- Marylen is a peasant
organizer who recently had to move to Bogota because she became too
threatened in her home in the Cauca region. She had a number of
important things to say:
-
One was that she and her compatriots would rather die
organizing than on their knees.
-
Another was that "the only viable response to the
demands of economic globalization is globalized solidarity." And
she asked repeatedly for our solidarity.
Andres of the community La Pedregosa, demonstrating a
finer point about their community organizing
Marcella of FUNDECIMA (the
Integral Commision for the Colombian Macizo)
Chucho, also of FUNDECIMA
Rene, also of FUNDECIMA
Peter and Paul Stuckey, with the
Colombian Mennonite Church. Peter asked us to bring back the message
that the Drug War is hypocritical. He said that if we want to solve our
drug problem, we should provide treatment at the demand end. He said
that as long as there is a demand, and many impoverished people living
in rural areas with no economic alternatives, there will be a supply.
Ricardo Vargas, drug policy
expert, whose works can be found easily on the internet. He agreed with
Peter's assessment, and also claimed that it is false to make the
guerrillas out as the big narco-players. He claims that relative to the
paramilitaries who control the trafficking, the guerrillas are merely
middle-managers. He asked us to educate ourselves and then our policy
makers toward an enlightened drug policy.
Efrain of SINALTRAINAL
Four of five murdered unionists in the world are Colombian, and
these Food and Beverage Workers have taken many hits, including at the
end of August, as I mentioned earlier. This is the union which is
confronting Coca-Cola, and they asked us to pressure Coke to stop using
the paras to suppress unions.
Gonzalo of SINALTRAINAL
Rodrigo of CUT (the Unified
Confederation of Workers). As
an example of how pervasive the terror has become, he gave an example of
paramilitaries fronting as street vendors and cabbies. If a unionist
were to get into the wrong cab, it could well be his or her last ride.
Henry Caballero, Peace Counselor
for Floro Tunubala, Indigenous Governor of Cauca.
Finally I can mention un Plan de Vida! Six governors in
southwest Colombia do indeed have an alternate Plan Colombia which they
call un Plan de Vida, a Plan of Life ! It calls for manual
eradication of coca crops, along with the deep economic reforms that
would make it possible for remote farmers to survive by growing legal
crops, with ways to get them to market, etc.
Jorge, et al., from CRIC (the
Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca)
Finally Hector Mondragon, an
economist who also works as an adviser to Indigenous communities.I will end with Hector, not only because he was one
of the more compelling people I met, but also because in his own way he
spoke to the need to distinguish between rhetoric and reality.
-
He
likened corporate control of the media to a net, and said, "It's sort
of like trapping a fish in a net -- they keep the truth prisoner, and
it's in this net that they keep it prisoner." His request of us was
that we come home and tear open the net, so that our countrypeople and
Congressional leaders can better understand the situation in Colombia,
i.e., without the State Department lens.
-
As
an economist, he had a lot to say about globalization, including, "The
FTAA will come to Colombia in the helicopters of Plan Colombia. They
want to break all resistance with Plan Colombia." His work can be found
at ZMag.
-
Hector
also specifically called for closure of the SOA, as someone who has
been tortured by an SOA grad himself. When asked how he could survive
such an experience, and continue working at such great risk -- the man
doesn't sleep in the same bed two nights in a row, never talks on the
phone, and has long since sent his family away -- he smiled and said,
"We are on fire with the love of justice. We find great joy in the
struggle. And we find joy in knowing you are a part of our
struggle."
So I will conclude by thanking you for your
attention, by asking you for your questions, and most importantly by
extending to you Hector's and Marylen's invitation to join their
struggle.