[News] US Representatives Trying to Beat Colombia Into Submission

[Anti-Imperialist News]

orinocotribune.com
<https://orinocotribune.com/us-representatives-trying-to-beat-colombia-into-submission/>
US Representatives Trying to Beat Colombia Into Submission
------------------------------

[image: 'Tell Congress to Stop the US Assault on Colombia's Sovereignty,'
among other slogans displayed across the compilation piece. Photo: Alliance
for Global Justice.]

'Tell Congress to Stop the US Assault on Colombia's Sovereignty,' among
other slogans displayed across the compilation piece. Photo: Alliance for
Global Justice.

By James Patrick Jordan  –  Jul 27, 2023

For years the US government has given the wrong kind of aid to Colombia –
billions of dollars for war and repression, and to secure profits for
global capitalism. It has made Colombia both a dependent state and a
crucially strategic military colony for US imperialism. What it has not
done is give any kind of adequate support for Colombia’s peace process or
for the Total Peace Plan proposed by President Gustavo Petro, despite US
responsibility for six decades of war. The US owes Colombia a debt of
peace, and that debt is long overdue. (The Pentagon’s Yarborough Commission
recommended in 1962 that the Colombian government organize paramilitaries
and acts of terror, along with unilateral assaults against autonomous
peasant zones. On May 27, 1964, following this advice, the Colombian Armed
Forces launched an unprovoked and massive assault on the Marquetalia zone,
beginning 60 years of armed conflict and civil war.)

In 2022, popular movements surged to elect Pres. Petro and his running
mate, Francia Márquez, Colombia’s first Center-Left administration, and the
first Afro-Colombian, woman, and grass roots activist to hold the
vice-presidency.  Even before they were elected, US actors were interfering
and trying to manipulate the process, and this continues today.
<https://orinocotribune.com/might-the-us-support-a-coup-in-colombia/>

The US government and its Wall Street overlords do not like the steps
towards independence taken by Petro and Márquez. These include the
normalization of relations with Venezuela, a call to end the War on Drugs,
and efforts to advance the Total Peace Plan. The plan would include
honoring commitments from the 2016 peace accords for rural development,
illicit crop substitution programs, modest land reform, and the return of
the displaced to the land they were forcibly removed from. These kinds of
steps taken by a sovereign and legitimately elected government are not
tolerable to the masters of the US Empire. The Empire’s aim is to either
tame the Petro administration or get rid of it altogether.

Getting rid of Pres. Petro and Vice-President Márquez is precisely what is
motivating efforts in the House to end all foreign aid to Colombia. The
Thursday, July 27 House Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the
Western Hemisphere held a hearing on “Colombia’s Descent into Socialism”
designed to defame the Petro administration and justify the total cut in
aid. The Republican led House is trying to legislate Colombia’s affairs
from Washington DC in disregard for the nation’s sovereignty.

The Republican House leadership has been coordinating with the Colombian
far right. However, the participation of Biden administration officials
from the Department of State and USAID as featured witnesses is a sign that
their efforts are not unwelcome to the Democratic Party establishment.

In fact, under Biden administration oversight, the DEA (Drug Enforcement
Agency) attempted to embarrass, entrap, and derail Petro’s campaign with
agents posing as Mexican narcotraffickers who wanted to be photographed
with the candidate and contribute to his campaign. Since then, the Biden
Administration has tried its best to tame Patro and bring him fully in line
with US policies and plans for Colombia and all of Latin America. Biden
administration participation in this hearing may be a sign that patience is
wearing thin.

Gustavo Petro is not a socialist and neither is Colombia. But he is
sufficiently independent and progressive and attuned to popular movements
to warrant the attention of all the oligarchs and their servants in both
Washington, DC and Bogotá. This has nothing to do whatsoever with
socialism. Rather, these efforts reflect the most savage and brutal aspects
of capitalism. Returning the dispossessed to to their territories,
advancing access of rural families to land, rural development would all put
some limited restrictions on transnational corporate and land baron access
to natural resources.

Ending the Drug War would expose the lie behind it: that it has nothing to
do with fighting drugs and everything to do with repressing and subjugating
popular movements and governments, and establishing US military power over
Colombia and the entire continent. In face, the very agencies that enforce
the so-called Drug War as often as not are protecting major
narcotraffickers. For instance, if one travels through the Naya region of
the Department of Cauca, one will see miles of coca plantations punctuated
by military checkpoints. Former Pres. Álvaro Uribe has even been recognized
by the US Defense Intelligence Agency
<https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB131/index.htm> as one of
Colombia’s top 100 narcotraffickers. Yet, he is the leader of Colombia’s
Center-Right and is one of those with whom the Republican leadership
regularly meets and consults to collaborate to undermine and topple
Colombia’s duly elected government.

Cutting all aid to Colombia is not what they country needs. What it needs
is support for peace. The US spends billions supplying the Colombian
military, police, and jails, but little to nothing to help advance peace
and an end to political violence that claims one life per day. The
country’s National Protection Unit cannot even commit to assuring that
working vehicles and other measures of security are available for the
escorts who protect the most threatened social leaders, human rights
defenders, and ex-combatant signers of the peace accords. The US has the
resources to turn this situation around. Rather than supply yet more
helicopters to the ESMAD riot police to harass popular movements and
protesters, it should provide vehicles to help ensure the safety of those
who risk their lives every day for peace in Colombia.

Instead, the leaders in the House want to punish the Petro administration
not for its alleged socialist tendencies, but because he wants to achieve a
Total Peace that would limit and inconvenience the vultures of profit. They
prefer endless war and constant repression.

As people of the US, we must not only act now to sop this latest effort to
isolate and neutralize Pres. Petro and the millions of voters behind him.
We must demand that aid to Colombia not be ended but that it be changed.
Not one dollar more for war in Colombia! Let’s fund peace instead.

(Alliance for Global Justice
<https://afgj.org/us-representatives-trying-to-beat-colombia-into-submission>
)



James Patrick Jordan

James Patrick Jordan is National Co-Coordinator for the Alliance for Global
Justice and is responsible for its Colombia, labor, and ecological
solidarity programs.
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