COLUMBIA
I would like to present a country,
which is perhaps not in the headlines on a daily basis, but is nevertheless a very
interesting one, especially in relation to the US’s
influence in Latin America. First, let me just
give you a quick tour through Columbia’s
history.
Little is known about the various
Indian tribes who inhabited Colombia
before the Spanish arrived. In 1510 Spaniards founded Darien, the first permanent European
settlement on the American mainland. Possibly the most influential historical
figure of Latin America Simón Bolívar had a profound
impact on this country. Bolivar's Venezuelan troops won the battle of Boyacá in
Colombia in 1819 and independence
of Columbia was
attained in 1824. In the period between 1819 and 1830, Bolívar united Colombia, Venezuela,
Panama, and Ecuador in the Republic
of Greater Colombia, but he lost Venezuela and Ecuador to separatists. Two
political parties dominated the region: the Conservatives believed in a strong
central government and a powerful church; the Liberals believed in a
decentralized government, strong regional power, and a less influential role
for the church. In 1899 a brutal civil war broke out, the War of a Thousand
Days, that lasted until 1902. The following year, Colombia
lost its claims to Panama
because it refused to ratify the lease to the U.S.
of the Canal Zone. Panama declared its independence in
1903.
The Conservatives held power until
1930, when revolutionary pressure put the Liberals back in power. The Liberal
administrations were marked by social reforms that failed to solve the
country's problems, and in 1946, a period of insurrection and banditry broke
out, referred to as La Violencia, which claimed
hundreds of thousands of lives by 1958. Then, various generals and a military
junta (1956–1957) sought to curb disorder by repression.
Marxist guerrilla groups organized in
the 1960s and 1970s, most notably the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC), plunging the country into violence and instability. In the 1970s and
1980s, Colombia
became one of the international centers for illegal
drug production and trafficking, and at times the drug cartels virtually
controlled the country. In the 1990s, numerous right-wing paramilitary groups
also formed, made up of drug traffickers and landowners. The umbrella group for
these paramilitaries is the United Self-Defense
Forces of Colombia (AUC).
Colombia became a public battleground with bombs, killings, and
kidnappings. By 1989, homicide had become the leading cause of death in the
nation. Elected president in 1990 Trujillo
proposed lenient punishment in exchange for surrender by the leading drug
dealers. Andrés Pastrana Arango
was elected president in 1998, pledging to clean up corruption. In December 1999
the Colombian military announced that 2,787 people were kidnapped that year — the
largest number in the world—and blamed rebels. The murder rate soared in 1999,
with some 23,000 people reported killed by leftist guerrillas, right-wing
paramilitaries, drug traffickers, and common criminals. The violence has
created more than 100,000 refugees, while 2 million Colombians have fled the
country in recent years.
In August 2000, the U.S. government approved “Plan Colombia,”
pledging 1.3 billion dollars to fight drug trafficking. Pastrana
used the plan to undercut drug production and prevent guerrilla groups from
benefiting from drug sales. In Aug. 2001, Pastrana
signed “war legislation,” which expanded the rights of the military in dealing
with rebels.
Alvaro Uribe
of the Liberal Party easily won the presidential election in May 2002. He took
office in August, pledging to get tough on the rebels and drug traffickers by
increasing military spending and seeking U.S. military cooperation. In his
first year, Uribe beefed up Colombia's security forces with the help of U.S.
special forces, launched an aggressive campaign against the drug trade, and
passed several economic reform bills.
In May 2004, the
UN announced that Colombia's
39-year-long drug war had created the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere. More than 2 million people have been
forced to leave their homes and several Indian tribes are close to extinction.
Colombia now houses the third-largest displaced population in the world, with
only Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo having more. Uribe has produced
some impressive results in fixing his country's ills, however. According to his
defense minister, during 2003 more than 16,000 suspected leftist guerrillas and
right-wing paramilitary vigilantes either surrendered, were apprehended, or
were killed. Since 2003, the right-wing paramilitary group AUC has been
involved in peace talks with the government, but despite demobilizing 4,000
troops, the vigilante group seemed as vigorous as ever in 2005. Although the
two other major armed groups, including left-wing FARC, continue to finance
themselves through kidnapping and drug trafficking, governmental efforts have
been successful in significantly reducing the kidnapping rate. Peace talks with
the main left-wing rebel group, the Farc, collapsed in 2002.
Here, I would like to mention that it
has been 5 years since Ingrid Betancourt, a French pro-ecology politician, was
abducted. Despite many calls for help from her family, president Uribe still does not want to negotiate with FARC.
By 2006, the United
States had invested $4 billion into already mentioned ‘’Plan
Colombia’’,
the joint U.S.-Colombia coca antinarcotics plan begun in 2000. While officials
say the program has eradicated more than a million acres of coca plants,
Colombian drug traffickers are still managing to supply 90% of the cocaine used
in the U.S.
and 50% of the heroin—the same percentages supplied five years ago, when the
program began. Well, some intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, claim that the
‘’War on Drugs’’ in Colombia serves as a mere pretext for the US, which first
and foremost wants to prevent a leftist government from coming to power in a
country which is the staunchest US ally in the region. On May 28, 2006,
President Uribe was re-elected with 62% of the vote.
Economic growth and reduction in paramilitary violence were believed to be
responsible for his landslide re-election.
To conclude, I would like to point out Colombia
has substantial oil reserves and is a major producer of gold, silver, emeralds,
platinum and coal. It also has a highly stratified society where the
traditionally rich families of Spanish descent have benefited from this wealth
to a far greater degree than the majority, mixed-race population. With few
avenues for social mobility, this provided a natural constituency for left-wing
insurgents. In some aspect, this is a typical country where violence and
struggling for power made life for its people much worse than it could and should
have been.
Bozo Borcnik