On Oct. 23, rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN) kidnapped two election observers from the Organization of American States (OAS)--Chilean citizen Raul Martinez and Guatemalan citizen Manfredo Marroquin--along with Colombian Juan Diego Ardila, a member of the Human Rights Commission of Antioquia department, while the three were traveling in San Carlos municipality in Antioquia. In a communique handed to the driver who was transporting the observers, the ELN's Carlos Alirio Buitrago Front took responsibility for the kidnapping and said the observers would be released the following week after the armed strike ends. Foreign minister Maria Emma Mejia and the rest of Samper's cabinet immediately offered to trade places with the kidnapped observers. "It is impossible that the international community should perceive that here in Colombia we don't even respect the sacred character of an international observer," said Mejia. From its headquarters in Washington, the OAS demanded the immediate release of its kidnapped members. OAS spokesperson Jorge Telerman told Buenos Aires daily Clarin that the kidnapping was the worst incident the organization has faced since the end of the cold war. In a communique issued on Oct. 24, the ELN called the kidnapping a "political-military action to sabotage the elections." [Clarin 10/24/97, 10/25/97]
Antioquia governor Alvaro Uribe Velez escaped unhurt on Oct. 25 from a rebel attack in San Francisco municipality, in the same area where the OAS observers were kidnapped. A priest was killed in the same attack. [Clarin 10/26/97] The ELN is demanding the demilitarization of four Antioquia municipalities, including San Francisco, before it will free the two OAS observers. [Diario Los Andes (Mendoza, Argentina) 10/26/97 from Reuter, AFP; El Tiempo (Bogota) 10/26/97]
The government is pressuring candidates and poll workers to keep participating in the elections, and has finally given in to demands to provide each of the 350,000 poll workers with a life insurance policy equivalent to 48 minimum monthly salaries, about $8,000. At the same time, the government is trying to encourage voting by offering a series of incentives to people who vote, including priority entry into university and a 10% discount on tuition; priority in public administration jobs; priority in government credits for housing; a one to two month reduction in obligatory military service; and a half day of paid vacation for public and private workers. The government will also award $500,000 to the municipality with the highest level of voter participation. [Clarin 10/25/97]
Another less subtle form of persuasion is being exercised in some areas by rightwing paramilitary groups. In a communique circulating in the municipality of Mistrato, Risaralda department, the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC) urged people to vote and threatened retaliation against those who abstain. A communique circulating in the same town from the Oscar William Calvo front of the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) made similar threats against all those who vote. [El Colombiano (Medellin) 10/23/97]
Meanwhile, the Pascual Bravo Technical Institute, an all-male public high school in Medellin, has been shut down since Oct. 8, when a video forum on revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara sparked a riot and students armed with rocks and firecrackers clashed with police and army units. Male and female students from other high schools reportedly also participated in the riot. Classes are set to resume on Oct. 28. [EC 10/23/97]
*3. US TO STEP UP COLOMBIA INTERVENTION
On Oct. 20, some 100 rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ambushed a group of high-ranking anti-drug police who had just finished destroying a cocaine processing laboratory in Puerto Toledo municipality and were starting to board five police helicopters to leave the area. National anti- narcotics police commander Col. Leonardo Gallego escaped unhurt in one of the helicopters, but his right-hand collaborator, regional anti-narcotics commander Maj. Jairo Alberto Castro, was killed, along with another officer. The attack took place just a day before Gallego planned to take US anti-drug chief Barry McCaffrey to visit the site. [Clarin 10/21/97; Reuter 10/20/97]
On Oct. 19, McCaffrey visited a US radar station on the outskirts of the Amazon jungle town of Leticia, strategically located close to the shared borders with Peru and Brazil and a major cocaine production and transshipment point. McCaffrey also inspected a military base in the area and met with Defense Minister Gilberto Echeverri and Foreign Minister Maria Emma Mejia. US officials will not say how many radar stations the US has in Colombia and the size of the US contingent that operates them. However, a Western diplomat recently told Reuter that at least 40 US military personnel and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents are based in Leticia alone. Leftist rebels say they have detected at least 14 US radar stations and bases in Colombia, and that US agents are providing counterinsurgency training to the military as well as taking a frontline role in the so-called war against drugs. US anti-drug aid to Colombia this year was more than $80 million, including extra assistance for the purchase of helicopters and other equipment [see Update #403]. [Reuter 10/19/97]
In a speech on Oct. 20 at a Bogota military academy, McCaffrey said both the FARC and the ELN were infested with "narco- corrupted cadres that have turned revolution into little more than a grab for drug dollars." According to Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida-based Latin American political analyst, McCaffrey is deliberately blurring the lines between the war on drugs and Colombia's counter-insurgency war. "What US policy is angling toward is a greater presence of US counterinsurgency advisers in Colombia," explained Gamarra, adding that a large number of US military advisers are already providing counter-insurgency assistance in Colombia. [Reuter 10/20/97]
Colombian armed forces commander Gen. Manuel Jose Bonett Locarno announced on Oct. 22 that he had been given the go-ahead to use US anti-drug aid to fight leftist rebels. Speaking the day after McCaffrey ended his three-day visit to Colombia, Bonett said he expected the US Congress might even approve a specific counterinsurgency package for Colombia. "The US can give all the aid it likes for counternarcotics operations, and now there's a strategic alliance between drug traffickers and guerrillas," Bonett told reporters. "Basically all the money that the United States gives now is for fighting drug trafficking and the narco- guerrillas," he added. "I don't think the day is far away when [the US] Congress decides to back our struggle against the guerrillas," Bonett said. The terms of the so-called End Use Monitoring Agreement, which governs the implementation of US aid, allows anti-drug funds to be used against guerrilla forces that are suspected of links to the drug trade, McCaffrey said. [Reuter 10/22/97] During the week of Oct. 20, a US House-Senate conference was expected to consider a proposal by the House leadership to give Colombian anti-narcotics police an additional $50 million for four Blackhawk helicopters and related aid. [Associated Press 10/18/97]
*11. A MILLION WOMEN DEMAND CIA-CRACK PROBE
A call for a serious investigation of links between the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and drug trafficking was the lead issue on the platform of the Million Woman March held in Philadelphia on Oct. 25. The march, organized largely by grassroots African-American women's groups, supported a platform of 12 issues; the first was "[n]ational support for Congresswoman Maxine Waters in the efforts to effectively bring about a probe into the CIA's participation [in] and its relationship to the influx of drugs into the African-American community." [Million Woman March web site, http://members.aol.com/lilbitz/platform.htm] Rep. Waters (D-CA) first called for the probe after an August 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News of San Jose, California documented the role of the CIA-sponsored Nicaraguan contras in the Los Angeles crack trade in the early 1980s [see Update #347]. The US government and mainstream media insist, in the words of the New York Times, that "[n]o evidence has linked the agency to such activity." Philadelphia police estimated unofficially that 300,000 people attended the march, despite intermittent rain; organizers say as many as 1.5 million took part. [NYT 10/26/97]
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