We missed this the first time around: "Muscling Latin America"

[Judi Lynn]

Muscling Latin America
Greg Grandin
January 21, 2010

~snip~
Traditionally in most counterinsurgencies, the "clear" stage entails a plausibly deniable reliance on death-squad terror--think Operation Phoenix in Vietnam or the Mano Blanca in El Salvador. The Bush administration was in office by the time Plan Colombia became fully operational, and according to the Washington Post's Scott Wilson, it condoned the activities of right-wing paramilitaries, loosely organized as the United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC in Spanish. "The argument at the time, always made privately," Wilson writes, "was that the paramilitaries"--responsible for most of Colombia's political murders--"provided the force that the army did not yet have." This was followed by the "hold" phase, a massive paramilitary land grab. Fraud and force--"sell, or your widow will," goes many an opening bid--combined with indiscriminate fumigation, which poisoned farmlands, to turn millions of peasants into refugees. Paramilitaries, along with their narcotraficante allies, now control about 10 million acres, roughly half of the country's most fertile land.

After parts of the countryside had been pacified, it was time to "build" the state. Technically, the United States considers the AUC to be a terrorist organization, part of the narcoterrorist triptych, along with FARC and the narcos, that Southcom is pledged to fight. But Plan Colombia did not so much entail an assault on the paras--aside from the most recalcitrant and expendable--as create a venue through which, by defining public policy as perpetual war, they could become the state itself. Under the smokescreen of a government-brokered amnesty, condemned by national and international human rights groups for institutionalizing impunity, paras have taken control of hundreds of municipal governments, establishing what Colombian social scientist León Valencia calls "true local dictatorships," consolidating their property seizures and deepening their ties to narcos, landed elites and politicians. The country's sprawling intelligence apparatus is infiltrated by this death squad/narco combine, as is its judiciary and Congress, where more than forty deputies from the governing party are under investigation for ties to the AUC.

Plan Colombia, in other words, has financed the opposite of what is taking place in neighboring Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, where progressive movements are fitfully trying to "refound" their societies along more inclusive lines. In place of the left's "participatory democracy," Colombian President Álvaro Uribe offers "democratic security," a social compact whereby those who submit to the new order are promised safe, even yuppified cities and secure highways, while oppositional civil society suffers intimidation and murder. Colombia remains the hands-down worst repressor in Latin America. More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC.

It also seems that many right-wing warriors are not cut out for the quiet life offered by the Paz Uribista. The Bogotá-based think tank Nuevo Arco Iris reports mini civil wars breaking out among "heirs of the AUC" for control of local spoils. Yet Plan Colombia continues to be hailed. Flying home from a recent Bogotá-hosted GCOIN conference, the former head of Southcom wrote on his blog that Colombia is a "must see" tourist spot, having "come a long, long way in controlling a deep-seated insurgency just over two hours flight from Miami--and we could learn a great deal from their success."

More:
http://www.thenation.com/article/muscling-latin-america?page=full

[Peace Patriot]

1. "...and we could learn a great deal from their success." Chilling!

Look out, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio teachers' unions! You're next!

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"More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC.

"It also seems that many right-wing warriors are not cut out for the quiet life offered by the Paz Uribista. The Bogotá-based think tank Nuevo Arco Iris reports mini civil wars breaking out among "heirs of the AUC" for control of local spoils. Yet Plan Colombia continues to be hailed. Flying home from a recent Bogotá-hosted GCOIN conference, the former head of Southcom (Pentagon's "Southern Command") wrote on his blog that Colombia is a 'must see" tourist spot, having "come a long, long way in controlling a deep-seated insurgency just over two hours flight from Miami--and we could learn a great deal from their success.'" --from the OP (my emphasis)

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I doubt that a member of the Pentagon elite would openly advocate decapitating union leadership and murdering teachers to create a great "tourist spot." He was probably just studying budgets and thinking up sellable justifications for the Pentagon's backup gravy train--the U.S. "war on drugs" (segued into the "war on terra"). Or, depending on how Bushwhacky he was, believing and privately advocating mass murder of grass roots leaders AND playing gravy train games.

But the horror of what he was saying is nevertheless apparent. This is what our $7 BILLION in military aid to Colombia has bought for our corporate/war profiteer rulers--a 'must-see' tourist spot built on a human landfill of murdered bodies.

If I was an art installation artist and a Colombian, I'd lay out a red carpet for Miami tourists to Bogota, for them to walk on right off the plane into this tourist mecca, and imprint the carpet with the faces, names and photos of shattered bodies of the thousands of teachers and other victims of the Uribe/Bush Jr. terror in Colombia, so they have to walk on them to get to their tour buses or limos to their luxury hotels. Some Miamians would gleefully prance and stomp on such images, I imagine. But I hope that most would "get it" and at least walk off to the side and maybe give a thought or two later on, to what lay beneath the soil in Colombia. As in all other places, fascists never rule because they are the majority. They rule because they have Diebold, as in Florida, or $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid and a U.S. issued "license to kill" in Colombia.

The reason something like this art installation hasn't happened already in Colombia is that you, too, would be shot or hacked up and thrown into mass grave, if you did it. It's not over.