October 2000

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Now It's Colombia's Turn

Robin Lloyd, director of Green Valley Media, a video production company in Burlington VT, and publisher of Toward Freedom magazine, has visited Colombia twice and made the video "Courageous Women of Colombia" (<rlloyd@together.net>)

In the '60s, it was "US out of Vietnam." In the '80s, it was "US out of El Salvador." And now, its "US out of Colombia." Forty activists, students, and concerned citizens met in Montpelier VT in mid September and created Vermont's first "US Out of Colombia" committee. We learned that there are similarities between the US involvement in Vietnam, El Salvador, and Colombia, but official explanations are different. The US government's justification for intervention used to be anti-communism. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, it's been the "War on Drugs." We knew that, under cover of anti-communism during the long sad period of the Cold War, democratic leaders were assassinated or overthrown (Lumumba in the Congo, Allende in Chile, Mossadegh in Iran, and so on), and countries were made safe for multi-national corporations. Now it seems to be Colombia's turn.

How can free trade, as enshrined in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), be spread to the rest of the Americas if there's a guerilla war going on? If rebels are blowing up oil lines? If unions are militant and farmers grow coca, then march to protest fumigation of their crops?

Colombian woman at a rally against violence, Mutata, Antioquia, Colombia. Photo: Robin Lloyd

This summer, the Clinton administration and US Congress voted to send $1.3 billion of basically military aid to Colombia. Tim Reiser, Senator Leahy's foreign policy expert, fought long and hard to attach human rights conditions to the bill, arguing that army units who receive aid should not be involved in human rights violations. But at the last minute, in the house/senate conference committee, Republicans insisted that the conditions could be waived if the President felt it was a national security emergency.

Surprise! Clinton felt it was an emergency and waived the human rights conditions, despite several recent high profile massacres of civilians in Colombia that point to collusion between the army and the paramilitaries.

How did this disastrous initiative become policy? Barry McCaffery, the former commander of all US forces in Latin America and now Clinton's drug czar, has been working on Clinton to do something about Colombia for some time. According to Newsweek, a year ago a pollster (commissioned by Lockheed Martin, the giant defense contractor) found that the public perceived that drug use was on the rise and was inclined to blame Democrats. This was alarming news in an election year. Occidental Petroleum--which has large investments in the U'Wa indigenous areas of Colombia--and two US helicopter companies weighed in with high-powered lobbying and campaign contributions. And so it came to pass. The Administration claims that the 60 helicopter gunships it is providing are essentially for agricultural purposes. "We have no military objective. Our approach is both pro-peace and anti-drug."

After our committee broke into issue groups, the participants concerned about drug policy tried to understand how intervention can be "pro-peace and anti-drug." How can helicopter gunships, armed with Burlington-made Gatling guns, together with cropduster airplanes, implementing a policy of forced fumigation not be seen by the people on the ground as an act of war?

Afro-Colombian family in refugee camp in Antioquia, Colombia. Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples make up a high percentage of displaced people of Colombia. Photo: Robin Lloyd

We read a statement by a woman coca farmer explaining why peasants in southern Colombia grow coca: "...Because the people who want coca come directly into our communities and purchase it from us. Nobody comes into our communities to buy corn. Coca is the only product we can sell to support our families. In Colombia, we've had aerial fumigation since 1994. When it began, Colombia was the third largest provider of coca leaves: now, we are the first. So fumigation has not served its stated purpose: instead it has created destruction and war."

To secure the coca growing areas for drug eradication, Washington plans to outfit the Colombian army to wage counterinsurgency war. We learned from visiting activist Matthew Knoester that Colombia's internal conflict predates the drug trade by several decades. A small and powerful elite that controls the government has refused to share power and implement agrarian reform. The poor have been pushed from pillar to post, and now to southern Colombia. Putting McCaffery's and President Pastrana's Plan Colombia into action with the "Push into the South" will create a refugee problem of unparalleled dimensions, which will spill over into adjacent countries. Pastrana has appealed to European countries to help mop up the mess created by the US funded military aid, but many are resisting. At a conference in southern Colombia in June, when guerillas met with Colombian government officials and international delegates to talk about alternatives to drug production, the government was warned that the European Union may reject Colombia's request for $1 billion in development aid. "The Europeans do not want to contribute the carrot while the US provides the stick," said a representative of the European Council of Drugs and Development.

We left our meeting with an ambitious list of ideas for action:

1. We must educate ourselves and others on the truth about US intervention in Colombia. If possible, travel there. Witness for Peace, Colombia Support Network and Global Exchange are planning delegations. Build ties with Colombian people; create sister city relationships. Speak out on this war/drug issue at electoral forums.

2. Take part in protests at Gore offices nationwide concerning the plight of the U'Wa indians. (The U'Wa are an indigenous community of 5000 living in the cloud forests of Colombia. US-based Occidental Petroleum, with the collusion of the Colombian government, wants to drill for oil on U'Wa land, although 3000 U'Wa have vowed to commit mass suicide if that happens. Al Gore personally owns more than $500,000 in Occidental stock. 200 people recently sat in at Gore's campaign offices in Olympia, WA to highlight the issue.)

3. Plan to attend and demonstrate at the Summit of the Americas conference in Quebec City in April of 2001 when plans will be made to expand NAFTA south of the Mexican border by 2005. The new economic entity is called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), described by some as "NAFTA on steroids." It includes all 33 countries of the Americas except Cuba. Its mission statement includes less environmental language than NAFTA, namely, very little indeed. As far as we can ascertain, it is weak on indigenous, worker, and women's issues.

4. Become active in ending the War on Drugs at home. Since 80% of the cocaine coming into the country is thought to be consumed by addicts (the rest by casual users), wouldn't it help cut the flow to provide treatment on demand for addicts? In fact, working for regulation of all currently illegal drugs, and for removal of coca and poppy plants from the international list of hazardous substances, might do more to knock the props out from under this mad scheme than any other effort. The conference was sponsored by the AFSC, WILPF and ACERCA (Action for Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America). For more information, contact Arthur Hynes at ACERCA: 863-0571.

Catalina

When Catalina heard the low-flying airplane approach she rushed out the door to call her children. "But there was no way I could protect them," she told me. "As our houses are made from wood, the poison filters in. It lands on the water and the food crops." She was talking about the chemical herbicide Ultra Glyphosate, which has been sprayed on coca crops in southern Colombia since 1994. Some of the children vomited after the fumigation, and later, their hair fell out.

I first met Catalina in November of 1996 when, despite the endemic violence around her, she was hopeful. Secretary of the Andean Small Coca Farmers Cooperative, she thought it possible that the international prohibitions against the coca plant might be modified so that the lotions, teas, and medicine she and others made from the plant could be marketed in Europe. Earlier, she was involved in organizing demonstrations against aerial fumigation in San Jose de Guaviare, a town in the remote southeastern part of Colombia where an estimated 97 percent of the local economy is derived from coca. "We organized a women's group that was open to everyone: farm workers, prostitutes, professors." An estimated 241,000 people participated in the marches--one of the largest peasant mobilizations in Colombian history. The peasants met with government officials, and promises were made to help them grow alternative crops, but nothing came of it.

I next saw Catalina at the UN during the big drug conference in June of 1998. President after prime minister chimed in enthusiastically about all the prisons they were going to build and motor boats they were going to buy. Six non-governmental organizations were given a mere five minutes each to address a large assembly of high officials, the sub-heads of state. They actually turned their heads and listened as Catalina and Marsha Burnett, an African-American woman and former cocaine addict, raised their hands together and said "We together, representing the two criminalized extremes of the drug problem--producer and consumer--say that we are united in seeking a sustainable way of life for our communities and to build a better world."

The following fall the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom invited Catalina to join a tour of four women from the supply and demand side of the drug war. Catalina's life had fallen apart. After leading peasant demonstrations she began to receive death threats. She left her farm, moved into town, and bought a house to start a daycare and women's center. But the house burned down. She had to send her four children to live with relatives, because her life was so insecure in San Jose de Guaviare. Several times on the tour the immensity of the problems she faced at home overwhelmed her. In fact all three of the women from the Andes could only tell their stories through tears.

I have not heard from Catalina since the fall of 1998. I'm sure she is acutely aware of something that most Americans haven't really thought about; that Congress recently allocated 1.3 billion dollars to spray her, and her community, again and again, with more effective and dangerous chemicals, perhaps even fungicides; and, to make sure the fumigation works, to accompany the crop duster with helicopter gunships, armed with gatling guns. Catalina may have decided to join the guerillas to learn how to operate a stinger missile so that she can respond in some way to the rapid fire attack on her land. Or maybe she has joined the paramilitaries where at least support money flows from large landowners and drug dealers, if you are willing to kill unarmed peasants and human rights activists, and where you have the illusion at least that you're on the most powerful side. Or maybe she's in hiding in Bogota, like millions of others, living from hand to mouth, waiting for it to be over. In any case, I fear for her; for her future, and ours.

--Robin Lloyd

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