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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/07/setting-the-stage-for-an-encounter-at-the-colombia-venezuela-border/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/07/setting-the-stage-for-an-encounter-at-the-colombia-venezuela-border/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Setting the Stage for an Encounter at
the Colombia-Venezuela Border</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/gaguwe/"
rel="nofollow">W. T. Whitney</a> - March 7, 2019</span></div>
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<p>On February 23, The U.S. and Colombian governments
together tried to push humanitarian supplies from the
Colombian border city Cúcuta into Venezuela. The
humanitarian aid was a Trojan horse that, in theory,
would confront Venezuelan security forces with a
dilemma. These would supposedly step aside or desert. A
take-down of Venezuela’s socialist government would
follow. But the soldiers, police, and people’s militia
remained loyal to the emancipating legacy of President
Hugo Chávez. They blocked the trucks and the façade
shattered.</p>
<p>Fire consumed a truck heading for the border. The
rubble contained aid material but also whistles, gas
masks, steel cables, spikes, and wires. <u><a
href="http://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2019/02/26/venezuela-como-se-fabrica-un-crimen-internacional-como-pretexto-de-guerra/">Anti-government
rioters</a> </u>in Venezuelan streets would go
without. <u> </u></p>
<p>Colombia is a U.S. proxy warrior. It’s a partnership
prepared over the course of decades, one that is
dangerous for the neighborhood and central to U.S.
pretensions in the region. An understanding of why the
alliance is strong and how it persists may shed light on
the context of the Cúcuta incident and on what’s to
come.</p>
<p>The flow of money is one aspect. According to a report,
“<a
href="https://www.export.gov/article?series=a0pt0000000PAtWAAW&type=Country_Commercial__kav">The
United States is Colombia’s</a> largest trading
partner” and “U.S. exports to Colombia in 2017 [were]
valued at USD 13.3 billion.” U.S. direct investment of
$2.2 billion exceeded that of all other countries in
2017. The U.S. ultra-rich have soul mates in Colombia.
Millionaires there numbered 21,900 in 2007, 35,900 in
2012. One percent of Colombians own 40.65 percent of
the wealth there. Colombia’s <u><a
href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/how-the-panama-papers-spooked-colombias-elite-to-own-up-about-their-wealth/">income
inequality</a> </u>is second in the world only to
that of the United States.</p>
<p>Two big items cementing the alliance are: ideological
solidarity manifesting as anti-communism and high marks
earned by Colombia in Washington for reliability in
advancing common goals. Its ruling-class is well-known
for stopping at nothing to stay in power.</p>
<p>President Alfonso López Pumarejo governmentdid advance
liberal reforms in the 1930s. Otherwise, big landowners
have controlled Colombian politics with an assist
recently from business moguls. The post World War II
roll call featured a proto-fascist, President Laureano
Gómez; a military dictator, Gustavo Rojas; an assortment
of reactionary Conservative and Liberal Party
presidents; and the extremist Alvaro Uribe. His protégée
Iván Duqueis president now.</p>
<p>Colombia’s army murdered some 2000 striking banana
workers in <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ci%C3%A9naga,_Magdalena">Ciénaga</a>
on December 5-6, 1928. JorgeEliécer Gaitán, hero to
aroused Colombian masses, was murdered April 9, 1948
under strange circumstances. From 1986 on, dark forces
murdered 5000 members of the Patriotic Union electoral
coalition, mostly Communists. Since 2016 assassins have
taken <u><a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia-asesinato-lideres-sociales-defensoria-pueblo-20190110-0034.html">431
lives of activists</a>, </u>including labor leaders
and community organizers.</p>
<p>The targeting of leftists has been standard fare in the
United States, but without the blood. Resurrecting
red-scare, President Trump recently in Miami <a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/trump-socialism-venezuela-bernie-sanders-ocasio-cortez/583135/">delivered
a diatribe</a> hitting at Venezuela and socialism.</p>
<p>In a show of anti-communist collaboration, the United
States brought 20 Latin American nations to Bogota in
1948 to set up the Organization of American States. They
took the pledge to fight communism. The first OAS
secretary-generalColombian was Alberto Lleras Camargo,a
future president. Colombian troops joined U.S. forces in
the Korean War, alone among their Latin American peers.</p>
<p>Colombia’s government battled the Marxist-oriented FARC
insurgency from 1964 until 2016.The U.S. government
supplied its partner with military equipment, personnel,
and advice – and, between 2001 and 2016 with <u><a
href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/08/15-years-and-10-billion-later-u-s-efforts-to-curb-colombias-cocaine-trade-have-failed/">$10
billion</a></u>. Civilians and combatants killed in
the war <u><a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/08/24/the-staggering-toll-of-colombias-war-with-farc-rebels-explained-in-numbers/?utm_term=.f073ec3bac07">totaled
220,000</a></u>. But the United States remained
aloof from peace initiatives of the last decades of the
conflict. Its military settled into seven Colombian
bases.</p>
<p>To receive U.S. military aid, the Colombian army had to
demonstrate the good use it had been put to. For display
purposes Colombian soldiers, eager to please, dressed
the bodies of civilians they had killed in the uniforms
of FARC rebels, minus the FARC rebels. They were showing
the goods to their U.S. masters. The dreadful sham – <u><a
href="http://www.pacocol.org/index.php/noticias/ddhh/7581-ejercito-colombiano-mato-a-10-000-civiles-para-mejorar-sus-estadisticas">10,000
bodies</a> </u>have been found in all – lasted from
2002 until 2010.</p>
<p>The Colombian government has implemented only bits and
pieces of the peace agreement ending the conflict.
Prominent FARC peace negotiator Jesus Santrich, wrongly
imprisoned, faces extradition to the United States.
Fearing the same, head FARC negotiator Iván Márquezis on
the lam. Over 500 former insurgents, captured as
prisoners of war, remain imprisoned. The money faucet is
still open: “<u><a
href="http://cubamoneyproject.com/2019/02/16/colombia/">U.S.
government agencies</a> </u>have poured nearly
three-quarters of a billion dollars into Colombia since
2017,” reports Tracey Eaton.</p>
<p>In both countries abuse and neglect ravage the
underclass, and campaigns for social justice frighten
reactionaries imbued with anti-communism. Yet upper
echelons in the United States may even take perverse
reassurance from social ills in Colombia. To the extent
that resistance there is ineffectual, they probably
attribute such favorable results to suppression. And the
suppressors gain credit as reliable allies because they
are good at what they do.</p>
<p>Social distress is indeed overflowing. In La Guajira, a
Colombian state bordering Venezuela, <a
href="https://www.las2orillas.co/presidente-duque-un-concierto-por-la-guajira-tambien-es-posible/">5000
Wayúu</a> Indian children died of starvation during
the past 10 years. Over 58 percent of the people live
in poverty, <u><a
href="https://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a276196.html">25
percent</a> </u>of them in extreme poverty.
Buenaventura is a seaport on the Pacific coast and a
profit center. People there are 90 percent
African-descended and 80 percent poverty-stricken (41
percent live in extreme poverty). Some 71 percent have
limited access to water; 40 percent, no access to
sewage; and 65 percent, no jobs.</p>
<p>“<u><a
href="http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=253007">In
Cúcuta, with 750,000</a> </u>people,” as historian <a
href="http://www.rebelion.org/mostrar.php?tipo=5&id=Ren%C3%A1n%20Vega%20Cantor&inicio=0">Renán
Vega Cantor</a> observes, “40 percent of the people
can’t pay basic expenses; 70 percent work in the
informal sector; 25.3 percent have no access to
drinkable water. The poverty rate is 40 percent … and
the income for one percent of the population derives
from illegal sales of contraband goods from Venezuela.”</p>
<p>Ironies abound. On February 23 Venezuelan President
Nicolás Maduro broke diplomatic relations with Colombia.
Simon Bolívar, inspiration for Venezuela’s Bolivarian
Revolution, in 1819-1830 headed the nation called “Gran
Colombia.” Today’s Colombia and Venezuela were part of
it. It had a constitution, the “Constitution of Cúcuta.”</p>
<p>Almost 200 years ago, Bolívar proclaimed that the
United States was “destined by Providence to plague
America with misery in the name of liberty.” Soon Karl
Marx would identify capitalism as the true responsible
party.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>W.T. Whitney Jr.</strong> is a retired
pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.</em>
</p>
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