Now at the end of my second month in Bogota , Colombia, the overwhelming issue in the news here is the decision of President Clinton and the US Congress to decertify Colombia. As usual, there is much talk of narco-trafficers and the "drug war" and Colombia's "failure" to fight it effectively.

Despite all the media hype in the US and Colombia about the "drug war," there just so happens to be a war against "subversion" being brutally waged. It also happens that a large portion of US assistance has gone to the various military forces fighting this war. Massacres, assasinations, torture, social cleansing and mutilation occure here so often as to pacify public shock and outrage. Justicia y Paz reports that in 1995, 7 or 8 Colombians were killed per day for either political reasons or as part of "social cleansing" operations. This is more deaths per day than countries in a current state of war such as Bosnia.

In addition, few if any of those responsible are ever brought to justice in the draconian Public Order Courts paid for by U.S. AID. That Colombia is the largest recipient of US military aid and one of the worlds leading human rights violators should cause an outright scandle in the US. In the debate over certification, Human Rights should be the overwhelming cause for decertification. Nonetheless, all we hear about are drugs.

Clinton and the Congress supposedly decertified Colombia because of its ineffective attempts to stem the flow of narcotics to the US. As any rational observer will quikly learn, this is nonsense. The contradictions between public pronouncements and reality in Colombia and the US tell us otherwise.

The US gives big money to the Colombian Army and National Police to fight against the "narco-guerrilla" (a fabricated term). This while there is little doubt here that the trafficers have very strong ties throughout the Colombian Armed Forces, Congress, and, as you may have heard, President Samper. The existance of a "narco-guerrilla" is questionable, the presence of a barbaric, US trained, narco-military, narco-police, narco-congress, and narco- president, is not. The US government has known all this for years. They should, they started it all for a funding source in the 70's when Congress was feeling stingy. That they care at all about it now is a joke.

The drug war is the perfect pretext for oppression at home and in the Andean region, and serves to stifle attemps at bringing attention to the dire Human Rights situation in Colombia. This is not a conspiracy, it is outright policy.

The influx of drugs to the US from the Andean region began in the 60's and 70's precisely when the FBI's COINTELPRO conducted a virtual war against the Black, Brown, and Native communities starting to rise up around the nation. This is no coincidence. These policies had the intended divisive effects. Drugs were pumped into communities faster than activists and militants could do anything about it, upsetting the activist support base. Combined with "desegregation" policies that separated the black community economically and indoctrinated Black kids with Eurocentric propaganda, Black communities were left divided, addicted, and poorer than ever. Meanwhile, COINTELPRO sought the "elimination" (assasination) or "neutralization" (imprisonment) of the leaders of the Panthers, La Raza, AIM and others who chose to speak truth to power.

The message is clear for those who seek fundamental improvements for their communities: push your "constitutioal freedoms" too far and there are no bounds to what the US government will do to stop you. The drug war is an intrical part of policy in the US to maintain disorganized and fractured Black communites, and to throw Black and Brown folks in jail to build trinkets for the man.

Of course the blatant hypocricy of it all goes by the nose "watch dog media" like a warm breeze. For example, in his letter to the Wall Street Journal, Jesse Helms writes with indignation about getting tough with drug dealers and those who help them. Suddenly Mr. Helms is worried about "the poisening of millions of Americans with deadly narcotics." Surely he includes in his criticism the US companies who sell the chemicals necessary for cocaine and heroin processing to the cartels, or the export of glue to meet the in increased demand of hungry yet sniffing street children throughout Latin America. He must have forgotten to mention that for large quantities of drugs to enter the US, various customs and DEA officials are easily bribed to look the other way.

Was his letter a confession of guilt? Was he also speaking of nicotine? Does he now hold himself and Phillip Morris, the largest "cartel" in the world, in the same catagory for intentionally creating child addicts and forcing their product into markets in the US and the Third World? It must have slipped his mind that more people die each year from the effects of smoking and addiction to nicotine and alcohol than the total that die from illegal drugs. Was even a critical word about such important questions uttered in the media? No hypocracy here, not in the corporate owned and operated media.

If the US government is truly serious about all its tough talk about drugs, then yes, Colombia should be decertified. The extent to which drug money rules politics and law in Colombia is no secret to conscious Colombians. It is no mistake that there is now peace and, often, cooperation between the trafficers and the government in anti-subversive operations.

If the US is serious about stopping the flow of drugs, then they should also cut off all aid to the Colombian Military and Police, they being little more than functionaries for powerful trafficers, large corporations, and land interests. When drug busts actually occur, it is often only one of the little guys, trying to make a buck, or the result of some sort of inter or intra cartel rivalry.

If the US is serious about stopping the flow of drugs they should also "decertify" the US military, as well as the CIA, DEA, and FBI. These organizations have been entirely unwilling or unable to resist the enticements of big money and have used trafficing profits to fund operations that Congress either does not want to know about and does not want to openly fund.

If the US is serious about stopping the flow of drugs, perhaps they should "decertify" US based big business. In addition to the "legal" drug dealers and trafficers supported by the likes of Helms, various interests including chemical companies, shipping companies, large banks, and Wall Street investors make far more money off of the flow of illegal drugs and money laundering than either the cartel heads in Cali or brothers selling chopped junk on US streets.

Perhaps "decertification" should also extend to local police departments in the United States. There is hardly a police force in the United States that does not have a good portion of the cops on the take in one form or another. Cops shake-down dealers only to sell and use the drugs themselves at rates that are far too high to be "isolated" or "just a few bad cops." How many cops need to be exposed for corruption, for brutality, for racism, before we are finally allowed to generalize about the usefullness of this evil institution?

Finally, perhaps the US government should "decertify" itself. For too long the US government has openly and covertly pursued polices that not only do not slow the flow of drugs, but perpetuate and extend the influence of drugs into society. As mentioned, drugs of all types effectively and disproportionally disrupt Black, Latino, Native, and Asian communities. The supposed war against drugs further provides an excuse to throw them all in prison, justifies tighter control, monitoring, and intrusion into peoples' lives, provides large profits for the already too rich, replaces the "Red Threat" as an excuse for military intervention in Latin America, and is a name (narco-guerrilla) to call the tired, worn, tortured and brutalized peasants of the Americas who only want to lead simple lives, free from intrusions of greed, brutality, and lust for power.

When can we finally call a duck a duck? When will US attempts at "narcotics reforms" that make the problems worse rather than better be called the results of intent, rather than misguided but well intentioned policy?

The people of the US must see the white-wash occuring. They must! I pour over Colombian newspaper articles of the last 5 years, looking for indications of where the US arms and anti-drug money is really going. I see article after article that talks about "subversives" and "effective" operations against the "guerilla." I read about how the war against the guerrilla is priority number one. Then I read about the massacres, dissappearances, torture, rape, murder, social cleansing, and, in the end, impunity. Peasants tortured and slaughtered, then dressed in camouflage with weapons strewn about to make it look like they are guerrillas.

I have only spent two months here in Colombia and still have much to learn, but I have strong suspicions about who is responsible. I know what government is paying the bills down here. I see clearly the contradictions between rhetoric and actual policy. It is not just the bought and paid for Colombian government. It is the one for sale up in "gringolandia."

The bottom line for US policy makers is not drugs, it is definately not Human Rights, it is profits. As long as there are poor peasants who persist to resist the "right" of US multinationals to rape for profit, such policies will continue. The US government will continue to spend your tax dollars to slaughter and terrify poor Colombians and to dehumanize and imprison Blacks and Browns in the US. The drug war in Colombia has fronts in New York, Chicago, Miami, and LA. The victims of that war have more in common than they now know. We must unify these masses with forceful, confrontational resistance.

It is time that the people of "gringolandia" wake up. More importantly, the time is now for those suffering under the oppression of US anti-drug policies to become active. It is time to make those in Congress, even the "liberals," politically accountable for what they do, say, don't do, and don't say. I am not speaking of just the power of the pen, or merely words of resistance. This is a call for diverse forms of democratic action and protest.

Michael Lopez
US Human Rights lawyer working in Bogota , Colombia.
AA 31861
Carrera 15 No. 35-43
Bogot , Colombia
michael.lopez@lbbs.org

The voices of protest ranged from President Ernesto Samper, who called it an "act of intervention from a foreign power", to a local Colombian journalist, who was concerned about being considered a "pariah" in the eyes of the United States after this latest attack against Colombia's image.

It's understandable why Colombians are sensitive to false images, given the stereotype of the "narcotrafficker" which has been perpetuated by the corporate media. I'll never forget the time I was asked by an editor at an all-news radio station where I was once working where I was from. When I told him my mother was Puerto Rican and my father was Colombian, the joker blurted the question "Does that mean you are too lazy to sell cocaine?" Although he said it in jest, it pointed to the way people - in this case an educated journalist making decisions about how the station would cover news stories - perceive certain groups of people

Despite the justifiable concern about biased images and how they influence perceptions, I must call to question those sectors in Colombia and in the U.S. Colombian community who use the decertification of Colombia as a nationalist rallying cry based on the need to defend Colombia's image in the United States, or in the name of protecting Colombia's sovereignty against a foreign power.

For elite politicians, mainstream journalists, and community leaders here to raise these issues at this time is almost laughable. Where were the shouts of protest against U.S. intervention as Washington poured millions of dollars of military assistance into Colombia, the majority of which was used by the Colombian police and military against popular organizations and civilian opposition groups in the name of a war against narco and guerilla terror? Where were the journalists, politicians, and community activists when U.S. special forces were constructing military bases in Colombian territory without any consultation with the Colombian congress? Who has spoken out against the hundreds of Colombian soldiers trained in counterinsurgency courses at the United States Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, many of whom have been accused of some of the most egregious human rights violations in all the hemisphere? To speak out now in defense of national sovereignty is nothing but political opportunism of the worst kind.

Colombia finds itself in the midst of the worst political crisis in its history, a crisis which not only threatens the political life of a president and many members of Congress, but also raises profound questions about the legitimacy of a system which for too long has been controlled by the same political and economic interests who are now crying out against U.S. intervention. While the focus of Colombia's collective attention has been on whether or not Samper's 1994 Presidential campaign received $6.1-million in illegal contributions from the Cali cocaine cartel, hardly a word has been mentioned about how other major "legitimate" forces have influenced the direction of the Colombian political-economic system for generations.

It is an ailing system which has been challenged for years by many sectors within Colombia through different means - from the legal form of mass protest and social organizing, to the often chastised and perhaps currently misdirected armed struggle which in a way can be accused of benefitting from the system it is purportedly fighting against. This conflict has kept the country in a state of war throughout the second half of the 20th Century. It has created a climate of fear which has been portrayed in the U.S. media primarily as a drug trade-generated terror, overlooking the state-sponsored violence which for so many years has been supported by the United States.

Nevertheless, as the current crisis unfolds, and ex-campaign managers and treasurers toss around accusation after accusation, followed by a predictable response from the accused, the fundamental issue of how to resolve this long-standing conflict - this state of war - has been completely and permanently brushed aside by the dominant sector of Colombian society. The main victim of the current political crisis is not President Samper's integrity but the peace process itself, the call to bring justice to Colombia once and for all.

"As the crisis developed, President Samper began to ally himself with the most reactionary sectors of Colombia, abandoning altogether some of the positive steps towards peace which he had taken early on in his presidency," said Fernando Hernandez, President of the Human Rights Commission of the Colombian House of Representatives, and member of the Executive of the Socialist Renovation Movement.

In focussing all attention on decertification and its impact on the political crisis, Colombians have once again lost sight of the importance of achieving peace in Colombia as a major step towards restructuring Colombian society, or how restructuring society is a necessary precondition for achieving peace, depending on how you look at it.

A recent article in el Diario/La Prensa examined the dirty wars of the 1970s-1980s in Latin America. It exlpored how countries throughout the region are trying to reconcile their past experiences as military dictatorships with their present "democratic" reality; how governments and civilians from Guatemala to Chile, Brazil to Honduras, Argentina to El Salvador, are attempting to come to lay out the truth about the "dirty war" period in their respective countries.

What bothered me about the article and about most discussions relating to Latin American "dirty wars" is, as usual, Colombia was not mentioned once. The image of Colombian democracy which has been successfully promoted by the Colombian government at home and abroad, has led Colombians to forget if not outright deny that Colombia has lived through a dirty war itself, a dirty war waged against opposition parties, labour organizers, peasants, indians, human rights groups and other popular sectors.

"We are now waging a campaign to waken the national collective memory about the years of dirty war that we have been living in Colombia," said Ivan Cepeda, founder of the Manuela Cepeda Vargas Memorial Foundation, named after his father, a Colombian Senator of the Communist Party who was slain in 1994 in the streets of Bogota. "This dirty war resulted in the deaths of thousands of members of the opposition party Patriotic Union, including two Presidential candidates. If in Argentina and Chile national reconciliation requires an awareness of the past, why do we in Colombia expect to achieve peace if we continue to negate that this genocide ever happened?"

This dirty war, justified in the name of a counter narcotics and/or counter insurgency campaign, has been supported directly and indirectly by the United States, with little protest from those elite Colombians concerned now about Yankee intervention.

The decertification of Colombia is at best a hypocritical political maneuver by a President currying favour of a conservative electorate in a campaign year, and at worst a condescending public spanking of a clientelistic government which doesn't warrant the respect or the support of its citizens. Instead of dwelling on it, we should focus on how the political and economic elite of both countries have hidden behind images of a justifiable drug war while ignoring the majority of the people's unified call for peace and justice in Colombia.

If you wish to respond, contact: mmcompa@igc.apc.org.

As a graduate student in Latin American History who has lived and carried out extensive research in Colombia, I am very concerned about the grave political crisis in that country. I am even more concerned, however, about Colombia's terrible human rights record and high homicide rate. Therefore I am particularly distressed that the decertification of Colombia made no mention of the government's human rights violations. It is my understanding that even while cutting off development assistance and loan guarantees, the US government will continue to collaborate with the Colombian Armed Forces in their counterinsurgency and anti-drug campaigns. I am strongly opposed to US collaboration with a military force and a militarized police force that on a daily basis commit torture and murder against their own people.

In a small town where I lived for over a year, the police combatted drug trafficking in the following manner: they placed sticks of dynamite in the mouths of a dozen or so impoverished addicts and lit them on fire. Such brutal murders of "throwaways" by official forces in Colombia are common occurences.

The military, meanwhile, is known to collaborate with right-wing death squads in massacres of civilians. In the region of Uraba, which supplies the United States with bananas, the mayor, Gloria Cuartas (a personal friend) lives in fear for her life from the same right wing death squads that have killed hundreds of banana workers, while the military stands by and does nothing to protect her or the workers. Another friend of mine, Silvio Salazar, a well-respected youth counselor in the slums of Medellin, was shot down in front of his office recently. No one has been punished for this crime. I know of hundreds more such stories.

In many cases, as in the well-documented massacres of over a hundred civilians in Trujillo, Department of Valle, military commanders themselves ordered and carried out tortures and killings. Although the Samper presidency is weak, he did do more than his predecessors in terms of admitting, documenting, and even attempting to punish, human rights abuses on the part of his own forces. The result was that several of his own prosecutors and judicial officials were killed or forced to flee the country. The military continues to commit abuses in a climate of impunity.

I have long believed that the US should stop collaborating with the Colombian military and police on the basis of human rights abuses as well as corruption. Given the narrow focus on drug trafficking, however, I do not support the present policy of decertification. Given that Mexico was not similarly decertified, singling out Colombia appears to be a transparent political maneuver.

My fundamental problem with the whole notion of "decertification" is that I question the rationality of blaming other countries for what essentially are our own problems. Decertification in no way helps to solve our own problems of addiction, crime, and violence, and it no way addresses the even greater violence that plagues Colombia.

I love Colombia and I have many close personal friendships among Colombians. I in no way wish to contribute to Colombia's "mala imagen" or negative image abroad. I am concerned that while the US government demonizes Colombian politicians and drug traffickers, while continuing to do business as usual with the army, the police, and other institutions and individuals implicated in human rights abuses, we are not addressing Colombia's real problems. Nor are we addressing our own.