[News] Welcome to Your Colony

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Welcome to Your Colony

http://www.narconews.com/Issue35/article1128.html


An Open Letter to George W. Bush on His Visit to My Country, Colombia





By Laura del Castillo Matamoros
Reporting from Bogotá, Colombia

November 22, 2004

His Excellency
GEORGE W. BUSH
President of the United States of America
Cartagena de Indias

Your Eminence:

It gives me great pleasure to greet you, especially now that we – in this 
disgracefully third-world country called Colombia, where, unbelievable as 
it may be, there are also newspapers and television – know that GOOD has 
won again. Liberty and democracy have won, those precious values of Western 
Judeo-Christian culture that motivate one to struggle against EVIL, 
manifested in gays, Muslims, feminists, activists, and other abominations 
of society that threaten YOUR international stability. That’s right, Mr. 
President: your devastating triumph in the last elections is an example of 
the manifest intelligence of a people concerned with preserving its sacred 
right to security, guided by a natural pragmatic Calvinist sensibility and 
basic kindness of spirit that conflates the fight against terrorism with a 
crusade of some very good gentlemen against some very bad guys. That’s the 
way things are – concrete, simple, basic, just like the average U.S. citizen.

That’s why you honor us by your presence here today in our country – excuse 
me, rather, I should say, in YOUR country – to meet with our own “Bushito” 
(an affectionate nickname, of course), President Alvaro Uribe Vélez, your 
most loyal and faithful servant, your “alter ego.” You are sure to be 
satisfied when he informs you how well Plan Colombia is going, thanks to 
which we have more long-distance weapons, missiles, and other devices 
produced by U.S. military genius. Weapons that sometimes fall, 
accidentally, into one rural community or another, or into some group of 
children playing soccer in the middle of the jungle. Who knows why the 
human rights groups get so outraged. What an overreaction! Everyone makes 
mistakes, right, Mr. President? Besides, with the technology the guerrillas 
have now, you never know, a soccer ball could also be a bomb.

Besides, those people don’t appreciate the noble gesture of Christian 
charity that your government shows when it allows us to invest a tiny 
fraction of the military budget in healthcare and education. Of course, it 
is very modest budget, one that involves the closure and/or privatization 
of public hospitals (but that should not matter, because an honorable 
Colombian should be willing to give his or life for his country, as the 
Army slogans say). In terms of education, there are those who complain over 
trifles, like the fact that 64 percent of poor children under the age of 
seven have no access to preschool. You just can’t please everybody! 
Besides, the multinational corporations do a lot for these children, 
teaching them from a young age the value of wage labor. And still they want 
more?

With respect to the proposed U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, another 
topic central to this important meeting, we could not more pleased that the 
negotiations are moving forward. Remember that the gates of our economy are 
wide open to all the products that come from your country, and to your 
great industrial conglomerates that are so good at exploiting our natural 
resources. Not like those indigenous 
<http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/beyond_oil/oxy/>U’wa fighting the oil 
companies, saying that petroleum is 
<http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Oil_watch/Colombias_Oil_War.html>the 
blood of the earth ... Can you believe them? What weird people!

Well, Mr. President, to speak now of more agreeable things, we hope you 
take with you a pleasant image of our country, above all because the 
meeting will be in the city of Cartagena, part of Colombia’s historic 
patrimony. Hopefully, you will always remember the walls of San Felipe 
Castle, the beautiful beaches that you will surely be able to make out from 
the Casa de Huéspedes Ilustres (“House for Illustrious Guests”), President 
Uribe’s residence in Cartegena, where he will have the enviable privilege 
of having lunch with you. And don’t worry about those potential criminals, 
those black people that the North American media have must have been 
showing these last few days, 
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4005233.stm>living among flood water 
and sewage, hiding from the rain in houses with cardboard walls and tin 
roofs. They must be reenacting the customs of some savage African tribe. 
What a horrifying sight!

But you can relax, knowing that all these people live far away, In that 
unsightly part of Cartagena that you won’t be seeing. And don’t worry, the 
next time you come to this, YOUR country, the “private justice” groups, 
made up of the members of elite families, will have been working to clean 
up the image of these zones where, unfortunately, Western civilization has 
still not arrived.

And neither should you worry about all those 
<http://colombia.indymedia.org/>vagrants, who will surely be there, all 
over the city, spewing their insipid slogans, and trying to provoke chaos 
in the streets. Your peace of mind will be insured by some modest security 
precautions, especially designed for your protection under the strict 
orders of President Uribe, consisting of 15,000 men who will guard you from 
land, sea and air. So those agitators represent no danger to you. In fact, 
better we let them shout and burn themselves out, demonstrating that there 
really is democracy here – don’t you agree? In addition to your special 
security force, we have an efficient team of riot police that know how to 
make those people really feel the relentless weight of the law coming down 
on their backs.

We hope you enjoy all this attention you so deserve. An entire street has 
even been especially prepared for the occasion in your honor. It is our 
simple way of saying thank you.

That’s right, Mr. President. Thank you, thank you so much, for letting us 
be the third country, after Israel and Egypt, that receives the most 
military assistance from your government. And you don’t just send guns and 
ammunition, but also more and more U.S. military personnel, who heroically 
risk their lives coming to an unknown and dangerous land to exercise their 
legitimate right to defend private property and the country’s institutions. 
And we can’t forget your expert advisors and private contractors, who train 
our soldiers in effective tactics to eliminate the enemy, to mistrust 
everyone, to see the enemy everywhere. In a country of criminals, even a 
little child might be a guerrilla.

Thank you for giving us the president of our dreams, made in your image and 
likeness. He even resembles a successful Wall Street businessman, the good 
son that makes his father proud and has your unconditional support. 
Remember that he was the only Latin American president that openly backed 
the arrival of those valiant U.S. troops in Iraq, that other inhospitable 
country that was outside of the World Order. So great is the admiration he 
feels for you that, in tribute to your “Patriot Act,” he designed the “Plan 
Patriota,” which has increased our military forces to 350,000 men. These 
soldiers will (possibly, with the indispensable help of the CIA) force all 
those who for some reason still insist on not joining government programs 
to “rethink” their stance. These troublemakers should follow the example of 
all those flawless, morally righteous Colombians who form the government’s 
nation-wide informant network. Who believe so much in the underprivileged 
youth of rural areas that they convert them into “peasant soldiers.”

Thanks to your government’s sponsorship of these philanthropic initiatives, 
Colombian civil society lives in greater peace and harmony as it is 
converted little by little into a second army, in order to guarantee that 
good people can live in peace. Every day, our society seems more like 
yours. In fact, if we follow the great example of your countrymen and 
reelect President Uribe in the 2006 elections, may someday soon we will 
become “twin countries.”

Thank you for supporting and promoting negotiations between the government 
and the paramilitaries. The time had come to give a political deal to those 
anonymous heroes, who have done nothing for years but defend their estates, 
their farms, and their wealth (obtained so honorably through the emerald 
trade in the 1970s and the drug trade in later years) from the guerrillas. 
How is it possible that the European Union, the International Criminal 
Court, and countless human rights organizations put those honest “paras” on 
the same level as international terrorists? Because of a few supposed 
little mistakes, such as killing entire towns with chainsaws and machetes – 
the product of the psychological pressure that they must experience from 
spending so much time in the jungle chasing communists? At least President 
Uribe and yourself have been like a guiding light for these poor martyrs to 
our country.

Thank you for encouraging multinational companies like Coca-Cola, Texaco 
and Nestle to set up shop in our country. They have invested here and 
allied themselves with our business associations, creating a fair 
distribution of wealth: the biggest share for them, a good-sized chunk for 
the associations of respectable elites.The few leftovers go tp labor, that 
is, for the wage-earners, who, instead of forming unions, should be 
thankful to have work and an opportunity to support our nation’s progress.

If the people from that last group don’t like the paramilitaries, if they 
feel pride in their work, the companies terrorize them, drive them from 
their land, and maybe apply some minor physical punishment, which the human 
rights organizations exaggerate and label as torture. And if lighter 
measures don’t work, sometimes harsher ones must be used. So, perhaps it’s 
better that no one mention the more than 184 trade unionists killed in 
Colombia in 2002 alone. Those people would have just challenged private 
property and tried to get out of working more than eight hours per day for 
next to nothing. That is, not given their labor away, which is what any 
good, self-respecting Colombian should do. Don’t they understand that work 
is what gives man his dignity?

Thank you for the millions of dollars that your government gives to ours to 
finance that “daughter” of the war on terrorism – the war on drugs. Thank 
you for sending us those experts from DynCorp to eliminate coca plants with 
that magic chemical substance called glyphosate, and to promote alternative 
development programs. But of course, it is impossible to please the 
peasant-farmers and the environmentalists. According to them, glyphosate 
kills the fish in the rivers, causes illness in entire communities, and 
even affects those same alternative development crops. Don’t these people 
have a Christian conscience? Can’t they sacrifice themselves for the good 
of others, for those American youth totally caught up in drugs because the 
money that should go to prevention programs up there is spent on 
fumigations down here? Besides, if the farmers get sick, all the better. 
That way, we free ourselves from those coca-producers and kill two birds 
with one stone. They don’t understand anything anyway. Underdevelopment
 
you understand, Mr. President.

Thank you for bringing your young professionals and white-collar workers 
here to take charge of directing our companies. It really is something we 
appreciate enormously. Especially when one can see Colombian professionals, 
with years of experience, who have the fortune to get a visa after years of 
waiting, carving out promising futures in your country
 washing dishes, 
sweeping floors, cleaning houses, watching your homes while you sleep. That 
is a real professional exchange.

Because of all this and more, Mr. President, our country is entirely at 
your disposal. All Colombians are working for you twenty-four hours a day – 
the businessmen, the workers, the housewives, the journalists, the 
MTV-watching youth, bankers, the common people who have entrusted their 
savings to the banks, and the parents going into debt with those banks to 
be able to buy their kids the latest Hot Wheels set this Christmas (another 
magnificent example of the cultural influence your country has exerted over 
ours). You will always find in us the potential consumers you need to 
maintain the harmony of YOUR supply chain. We feel so proud to be part of it


Well, to conclude, all that remains for us to do is to thank you, Mr. 
President, you and the political-economic-idealogical-industrial system you 
lead, for giving us the privilege of being second-class citizens, given the 
risk that a terrorist hides in each of our hearts.

Thank you for making us believe that we have a choice


for deciding our own fate for us


for showing us how relentless the wrath of God can be


Thank you


 From this, YOUR colony, I sign off


Resentfully,

Laura Del Castillo Matamoros
Bogotá, Colombia


The Freedom Archives
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