Behind the Colombia / Venezuela Tensions

[Judi Lynn]

August 3, 2010
Operation False Positive
Behind the Colombia / Venezuela Tensions
By CONN HALLINAN

If you want to understand what’s behind the recent tension between Colombia and Venezuela, think “smokescreen,” and then go back several months to some sick children in the Department of Meta, just south of Bogota. The children fell ill after drinking from a local stream, a stream contaminated by the bodies of more than 2,000 people, secretly buried by the Colombian military.

According to the Colombian high command, the mass grave just outside the army base at La Macarena contains the bodies of guerilla fighters killed between 2002 and 2009 in that country’s long-running civil war. But given the army’s involvement in the so-called “false positive” scandal, human rights groups are highly skeptical that the dead are members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, the two insurgent groups fighting the central government.

“False positive” is the name given to the Colombian armed forces operation that murdered civilians and then dressed them up in insurgent uniforms in order to demonstrate the success of the army’s counterinsurgency strategy, thus winning more aid from the U.S. According to the human rights organizations Comision de Derechos Homanos del Bajo Ariari and Colectivo Orlando Fals Borda, some 2,000 civilians have been murdered under the program.

The bodies at La Macarena have not been identified yet, but suspicion is that they represent victims of the “false-positive” program, as well as rural activists and trade unionists. The incoming Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, was defense secretary when the murders were talking place. Santos also oversaw a brief invasion of Ecuador in 2008 that reportedly killed a number of insurgents. The invasion was widely condemned throughout Latin America.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan08032010.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. There are many very fine insights in this article. Thanks for posting it!

I'm quoting the entirety of the latter part of the article...

-------------------

...the attack on Chavez (by Uribe/Colombia re Venezuela 'harboring' FARC guerrillas) is also a proxy assault on the newly formed, 32-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the first regional organization not to include the U.S., Canada, or European countries.

Meeting in Caracas this past July, CELAC selected Chavez and the newly elected conservative president of Chile, Sabastian Pinera, as co-chairs of the forum that will draft statutes for the organization. While it seems like an odd pairing, the U.S. media’s cartoonish characterization of Chavez is not shared widely in Latin America. “Chavez…has shown himself adaptable to making major compromises in order to further Latin American and regional integration,” says Alexander Main of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

And while Pinera is very conservative, according to Main, “his toned down approach to international relations indicates that he too is prepared to act pragmatically.”

The Caracas meeting called for “political, economic, social and cultural integration” and affirmed the right of “each state to constitute its own political system free of threats, aggressions and unilateral coercive measures.” Tellingly, there was no mention of “free trade” or “open markets,” the so-called “Washington consensus” that characterized U.S. economic doctrine in the region over the past several decades.

As Latin America grows in economic strength and political independence, U.S. policy seems locked into a previous century when it was the major power in the region. Rather than retooling its diplomatic approach to fit the new reality in Latin America, Washington is expanding its military footprint.

It is will soon be operating out of seven military bases in Colombia and has reactivated its 4th Fleet, both highly unpopular moves in Latin America. Rather than taking the advice of countries in the region to demilitarize its war on drugs, the U.S. recently announced it is deploying 46 warships and 7,000 soldiers to Costa Rica to “interdict” drug traffic and money laundering. From 2000 to 2009, less than 40 percent of U.S. aid to the region went to Latin America’s militaries and police. The Obama Administration has raised that figure to 47 per cent.

Washington and Bogota may try to demonize Venezuela, but they are playing to a very small audience, and one that grows smaller—and more irrelevant—by the day.

http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan08032010.html

[COLGATE4]

2. More "fire bad, Colombia bad, Venezuela good." Yawn. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

3. Yup, Colombia is bad and that is the truth. And Venezuela and its people are trying to good--

educate everyone, provide health care for everyone, create prosperity for all and for the common good, not just for the predatory rich; hold transparent elections in which everyone can participate; create a good constitution, as an effort of the whole society, and obey both the spirit and the letter of its provisions.

Good goals. Working hard at it. Amazing, really. Have we lost that here--belief in the common good, passion for change and improvement, commitment to "all men are created equal," taking risks to achieve "life, liberty and happiness" for everyone? It makes you yawn?

Would lies entertain you more? Go listen to Hannity and Limbaugh. They won't tell you that the most conservative politician in Latin America (outside of the fascist thugs running Colombia) is working quietly, amicably and with common purpose alongside Hugo Chavez, whom the conservative respects. Chavez is not the clown or the dictator that your "entertaining" heroes create in their fascist fantasyland, but a respected public figure able to work well with others even across an ideological divide as great as that of Pinera and Chavez. They're working together for the common good of all Latin Americans. What are you doing?

[COLGATE4]

4. And your obvious expertise in Colombia is based on what?

[VioletLake]

5. You are correct about Colombia

"In particular, we heard horror stories about how the paramilitaries no longer just kill with guns; they use chain saws. They gather the community, pick the key people, and chop them up in front of everyone, completely terrorizing everybody. Sometimes, they make the villagers perform demonic acts with the bodies parts of their loved ones."

http://www.fatherjohndear.org/articles/road_to_colombia.htm

http://www.fatherjohndear.org/articles/report_from_colombia.htm

Chomsky on Colombia:

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200412--.htm

[COLGATE4]

6. Doesn't it strike you as somewhat odd

that a country that you believe has a tremendously effective and efficient killing apparatus at the state level has permitted Father Giraldo to live, unguarded in a convent in Bogota for some thirty years?

[eridani]

7. You must be so very proud that half of all union organizers who are murdered worldwide--

--are murdered in Columbia.

[VioletLake]

8. Are you trying to call into question the veracity of the info I posted?

More recent info:

http://www.canadianlabour.ca/news-room/statements/canadian-labour-congress-statement-passage-canada-colombia-free-trade-agreement

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-nicholls/mass-graves-and-alleged-e_b_660158.html

[VioletLake]

9. To answer your question anyway:

"...a country that you believe has a tremendously effective and efficient killing apparatus at the state level..."

The Colombian army and its paramilitary proxies? I KNOW it exists. I believe that at least one of my cousins is connected to the paramilitaries, but that's another story. They haven't killed Father Giraldo because they have been able to operate so far, virtually unimpeded, despite him. Remember Archbishop Oscar Romero from El Salvador? I'm sure Colombian oligarchy does.

http://www.uscatholic.org/oscar_romero