Caracas, 7 mar (PL) El plan de secesión del estado venezolano Zulia forma parte de un proyecto general creado por Estados Unidos para enfrentar a Venezuela, denunció hoy el ministro de Ciencia y Tecnología, Héctor Navarro.
En su programa semanal Conciencia y Vida, transmitido por Radio Nacional de Venezuela, el ministro venezolano indicó que en el mismo contexto se incluye el Plan Colombia, creado en teoría para frenar la producción y el tráfico de drogas en ese país.
Sin embargo, Navarro aseguró que “no es un plan de paz, ni tampoco para Colombia; realmente es un plan para Venezuela y se une a otros proyectos en curso en América Latina de separación, secesionismo y división entre países hermanos".
Entre los planes separatistas para América Latina está el del estado Zulia “con apoyo del Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos, el Comando Sur, la Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA) y el Buró Federal de Investigaciones (FBI).
Además de esto, agregó, Zulia está incluido en los objetivos del Plan Colombia: su separación de nuestro país es parte de ese plan, aseveró el ministro.
Navarro recordó al respecto que las operaciones contempladas en el llamado Plan Balboa, diseñado en 2001 para la invasión militar de Venezuela por parte de fuerzas norteamericanas, plantea el derribo del puente Rafael Urdaneta, sobre el lago de Maracaibo.
Con esa acción –precisó- quedarían cortadas las carreteras hacia Zulia para apoyar la separación de Venezuela.
El funcionario recordó asimismo que a finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX hubo un movimiento separatista zuliano que llegó hasta a imprimir monedas y estampillas que decían República Independiente del Zulia.
El plan secesionista de ese estado occidental, rico en hidrocarburos y otras materias primas, ha sido denunciado por autoridades, que acusan a los diplomáticos estadounidenses de impulsar ese proyecto anti-nacional.
En particular el ex embajador estadounidense aquí William Brownfield, actualmente destacado en Colombia, utilizaba públicamente la denominación de República Independiente de Zulia, lo cual motivó llamadas de atención de las autoridades.
Friday, 7 March 2008
2005 Petras warned: The US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Caracas, March 5 ABN (Aurelio Gil Beroes).- The murder in Ecuadorian territory of the guerrilla leader from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP), Raúl Reyes, and other 16 members of that insurgent group, filled the complete region of tension.
Reactions from the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan Governments did not take long. President Correa retired his ambassador from Bogotá, expelled Colombia's and called Uribe a lier; while President Chávez ordered to close Venezuelan Embassy to Bogotá and to expel the Colombian diplomatic corps from our country. Hours before that, the Venezuelan president had
prepared the mobilization of troops towards the shared frontier area.
A few days after the unilateral release of captives Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Perez, Orlando Beltrán and Jorge Géchem on behalf of the FARC-EP, a fact which might be considered as a warrant for the humanitarian agreement and the subsequent peace agreement for Colombia, the Government of Alvaro Uribe progressed a military operation on Ecuadorian territory, in the midst of an action that shows disdain and contempt to
the peace in his own country and, now, in South America.
It is as well an act of rejection to the efforts that previous presidents had done in order to get close to the end of one of the most extended armed conflicts of contemporary history.
Peace efforts
Despite President Uribe has until now denied to give political belligerence status (acknowledgement as political actors) to the main insurgent groups, the FARC-EP and the National Liberation Army (ELN), five presidents in the period of 20 years comprised between 1982 and 2002, accepted the political status of the Colombian armed conflict and
recognized, in fact, their condition of political agents. Likewise, they endeavored to achieve peace agreements as much as possible.
The origin of this war seems to be diffuse, but it can be generally located on April 9 1948, in Bogotá, when a murderer hand killed Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, people's leader from the Liberal Party and who represented the aspirations of justice of the immense majority of poor in Colombia.
This situation set off the furiousness of the people, firing Bogotá during three days, seeking to whom charge for their anger and frustration, and which led to 'La violencia', name given to the conflict which took place from 1948 to 1953, which trascended its term and still has not ceased.
Armed insurgency
After the 'Bogotazo', as it was named that historical event, the Government of conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez suppressed violence. Liberals, defeated, retired to the countryside and organize the resistance joined to the communists.
During the consecutive years, armed groups of different nature appeared and the violence of both parties generalized in the country, until June 1953 when General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, in a bloody coup which counted with liberal and conservative's consent, took power with the slogan of
pacification. Three months later, with an offer of amnesty for those raised in arms, Rojas Pinilla managed the liberal guerrillas to endorse an armistice.
Marquetalia
The communist guerrillas remained active and strengthened mainly in Marquetalia, a rural area located in the midst of the Andean Range, at the south of the Department of Tolina.
However, ten years later, President Guillermo León Valencia, authorized by the Congress, ordered a military operation destined to assassinate those armed groups, charging them of creating an “independent Republic”. The attack did not achieved its aim and in response to that, on May 27,
born out the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP).
Two months later, on July 4, at the Simacota municipality in the Department of Santander, starts the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second Colombian guerrilla force speaking in numbers.
Belisario Betancur's initiative
Two decades had to pass so the Colombian State issued its first reaction in order to search a solution to the situation of the armed conflict, and it was during the Belisario Betancur's administration when it was endorsed the first bilateral cease to fire between the FARC-EP and the Government, on May 28 1984, in La Uribe, Department of Meta.
The agreement was endorsed by Manuel Marulanda, on behalf of the insurgents, and by president Betancur himself. It envisaged the constitution of a National Committee for the Verification of the agreements, periods of proof and the cease of confrontations, warrants and encouragement for the incorporation to the political and social life, as well as political and social reforms.
The accord, ratified in March 1986, was preceded by the Law 35 in August 1982, proclaimed by Betancur himself, which stated amnesty for the armed groups and norms to reestablish and preserve the peace in Colombia.
Thanks to this agreement started the Union Patriótica (Patriotic Union), a political group formed by the communist party and other left-wing organizations, which rank and files in a short time were decimated by the State's security forces and the rising paramilitary groups. Approximately five thousand leaders and political commissions were killed.
Virgilio Barco accords with the M-19 and the EPL (1986-1990)
President Barco, who took post on August 7 1986, not only maintained the peace commissions and verification of the agreements achieved by his predecessor with the armed organizations, but four years later, on March 8 1990, he undersigned a peace agreement with the Movimiento 19 de Abril
(Movement April 19, M-19) a group which did not returned to the arms despite the killing of his leader, Carlos Pizarro León-Gómez, on April 26. Barco also achieved peace with the People's Army of Liberation (Ejercito Popular de Liberación, EPL), on May 16 of that year.
FARC dialogues with Gaviria despite Operation Centauro (1990-1994)
This process of searching the peace was interrupted on December 9 1990, when the recently inaugurated President Cesar Gaviria, trying to surprise the FARC-EP high command, orders 'Operation Centauro', against the Secretariat headquarter of the organization in La Uribe, Department of Meta. The action did not succeed
Despite all of that, the FARC-EP and Gaviria's government retake the talks, and in May 15 1991 they meet in Cravo Norte (Department of Arauca); then in Caracas, on September and October of that year; and then in Tlaxcala, Mexico, where they hold two new encounters: on March 10 1992 and on October 10. However, on October 31, in Bogota, Gaviria declares the end of the negotiations and decrees “integral war” against
the guerrilla.
Ernesto Samper searching for conditions (1994-1998)
By the half of his term, on August 12 1996, President Samper announced through radio and television the creation of a “exploratory mission” responsible for “defining the terms and conditions” in which “a first negotiation of peace might be held” with the armed groups, but the initiative did not progressed.
In different opportunities, Samper expressed to be interested on the peace process which took place in Guatemala and which finished successfully at the end of 1996.
Pastrana meets three times with Marulanda (1998-2002)
Out of Uribe's predecessors, maybe it was Pastrana who went further in the search of agreements with the armed groups.
This president met in three opportunities, at the Colombian jungle, with the FARC-EP chief, Manuel Marulanda, and he undersigned the 'Shared Agenda for the Change towards a new Colombia', a document formed by 12 items which defined the perspective for a debate upon the basis of the building of a new country.
The negotiation process between Pastrana's administration and the FARC-EP lasted three years and ended up without making specific decisions, but with the record of a relevant experience.
Uribe, point of inflection (2002-2006 / 2006-2010)
Nowadays, Alvaro Uribe govern his second term and though his emissaries held six unsuccessful round of negotiations with the ELN in La Habana in 2007, since his first term in office he marked a point of inflection in the negotiation line of the Colombian governments with the armed groups.
An article published on May 28 2002, in La Jornada journal, from Mexico, regarding Uribe's first press conference, elected for the period 2002-2006, clearly defined his point of view:
“Santa Fe de Bogotá, May 27.- The elected president of Colombia, right-wing Alvaro Uribe, requested an international mediation leaded by the UN aiming for a dialog with the ilegal armed groups, after he had focused his electoral campaign in military proposals to confront them, and asking military help to the United States in order to combat terrorism.”
Uribe has reiterated that the democratic progress in his country does not justify the insurgence, just as he did -in accordance with a press release- on August 31 2007, during the setting off of the fourth meeting of South American intelligence chiefs:
“Bogotá, August 31 (Xinhua) – The president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, affirmed today, again, that the guerrilla groups who operate in his country should not be labeled as insurgent because their actions answer more to terrorism.”
Finally, on January 11 2008, in a communique to answer President Chávez's request of recognizing political belligerence to the FARC and the ELN, Uribe described those groups as “terrorist organizations which changed their old ideas of Marxist revolution for mercenariness, financed through ilegal drugs and, besides, caused paramilitary terrorism.”
Hope persists
Hopefully, the FARC-EP have expressed that the murder of Reyes and their 16 comrades will not change the organization's disposition to concrete a humanitarian swap.
However, in the midst of the tension prevailing in the region, new contacts with this purpose appear to be improbable. Still less to think about peace agreements, at least for the time being.
Reactions from the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan Governments did not take long. President Correa retired his ambassador from Bogotá, expelled Colombia's and called Uribe a lier; while President Chávez ordered to close Venezuelan Embassy to Bogotá and to expel the Colombian diplomatic corps from our country. Hours before that, the Venezuelan president had
prepared the mobilization of troops towards the shared frontier area.
A few days after the unilateral release of captives Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Perez, Orlando Beltrán and Jorge Géchem on behalf of the FARC-EP, a fact which might be considered as a warrant for the humanitarian agreement and the subsequent peace agreement for Colombia, the Government of Alvaro Uribe progressed a military operation on Ecuadorian territory, in the midst of an action that shows disdain and contempt to
the peace in his own country and, now, in South America.
It is as well an act of rejection to the efforts that previous presidents had done in order to get close to the end of one of the most extended armed conflicts of contemporary history.
Peace efforts
Despite President Uribe has until now denied to give political belligerence status (acknowledgement as political actors) to the main insurgent groups, the FARC-EP and the National Liberation Army (ELN), five presidents in the period of 20 years comprised between 1982 and 2002, accepted the political status of the Colombian armed conflict and
recognized, in fact, their condition of political agents. Likewise, they endeavored to achieve peace agreements as much as possible.
The origin of this war seems to be diffuse, but it can be generally located on April 9 1948, in Bogotá, when a murderer hand killed Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, people's leader from the Liberal Party and who represented the aspirations of justice of the immense majority of poor in Colombia.
This situation set off the furiousness of the people, firing Bogotá during three days, seeking to whom charge for their anger and frustration, and which led to 'La violencia', name given to the conflict which took place from 1948 to 1953, which trascended its term and still has not ceased.
Armed insurgency
After the 'Bogotazo', as it was named that historical event, the Government of conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez suppressed violence. Liberals, defeated, retired to the countryside and organize the resistance joined to the communists.
During the consecutive years, armed groups of different nature appeared and the violence of both parties generalized in the country, until June 1953 when General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, in a bloody coup which counted with liberal and conservative's consent, took power with the slogan of
pacification. Three months later, with an offer of amnesty for those raised in arms, Rojas Pinilla managed the liberal guerrillas to endorse an armistice.
Marquetalia
The communist guerrillas remained active and strengthened mainly in Marquetalia, a rural area located in the midst of the Andean Range, at the south of the Department of Tolina.
However, ten years later, President Guillermo León Valencia, authorized by the Congress, ordered a military operation destined to assassinate those armed groups, charging them of creating an “independent Republic”. The attack did not achieved its aim and in response to that, on May 27,
born out the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP).
Two months later, on July 4, at the Simacota municipality in the Department of Santander, starts the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second Colombian guerrilla force speaking in numbers.
Belisario Betancur's initiative
Two decades had to pass so the Colombian State issued its first reaction in order to search a solution to the situation of the armed conflict, and it was during the Belisario Betancur's administration when it was endorsed the first bilateral cease to fire between the FARC-EP and the Government, on May 28 1984, in La Uribe, Department of Meta.
The agreement was endorsed by Manuel Marulanda, on behalf of the insurgents, and by president Betancur himself. It envisaged the constitution of a National Committee for the Verification of the agreements, periods of proof and the cease of confrontations, warrants and encouragement for the incorporation to the political and social life, as well as political and social reforms.
The accord, ratified in March 1986, was preceded by the Law 35 in August 1982, proclaimed by Betancur himself, which stated amnesty for the armed groups and norms to reestablish and preserve the peace in Colombia.
Thanks to this agreement started the Union Patriótica (Patriotic Union), a political group formed by the communist party and other left-wing organizations, which rank and files in a short time were decimated by the State's security forces and the rising paramilitary groups. Approximately five thousand leaders and political commissions were killed.
Virgilio Barco accords with the M-19 and the EPL (1986-1990)
President Barco, who took post on August 7 1986, not only maintained the peace commissions and verification of the agreements achieved by his predecessor with the armed organizations, but four years later, on March 8 1990, he undersigned a peace agreement with the Movimiento 19 de Abril
(Movement April 19, M-19) a group which did not returned to the arms despite the killing of his leader, Carlos Pizarro León-Gómez, on April 26. Barco also achieved peace with the People's Army of Liberation (Ejercito Popular de Liberación, EPL), on May 16 of that year.
FARC dialogues with Gaviria despite Operation Centauro (1990-1994)
This process of searching the peace was interrupted on December 9 1990, when the recently inaugurated President Cesar Gaviria, trying to surprise the FARC-EP high command, orders 'Operation Centauro', against the Secretariat headquarter of the organization in La Uribe, Department of Meta. The action did not succeed
Despite all of that, the FARC-EP and Gaviria's government retake the talks, and in May 15 1991 they meet in Cravo Norte (Department of Arauca); then in Caracas, on September and October of that year; and then in Tlaxcala, Mexico, where they hold two new encounters: on March 10 1992 and on October 10. However, on October 31, in Bogota, Gaviria declares the end of the negotiations and decrees “integral war” against
the guerrilla.
Ernesto Samper searching for conditions (1994-1998)
By the half of his term, on August 12 1996, President Samper announced through radio and television the creation of a “exploratory mission” responsible for “defining the terms and conditions” in which “a first negotiation of peace might be held” with the armed groups, but the initiative did not progressed.
In different opportunities, Samper expressed to be interested on the peace process which took place in Guatemala and which finished successfully at the end of 1996.
Pastrana meets three times with Marulanda (1998-2002)
Out of Uribe's predecessors, maybe it was Pastrana who went further in the search of agreements with the armed groups.
This president met in three opportunities, at the Colombian jungle, with the FARC-EP chief, Manuel Marulanda, and he undersigned the 'Shared Agenda for the Change towards a new Colombia', a document formed by 12 items which defined the perspective for a debate upon the basis of the building of a new country.
The negotiation process between Pastrana's administration and the FARC-EP lasted three years and ended up without making specific decisions, but with the record of a relevant experience.
Uribe, point of inflection (2002-2006 / 2006-2010)
Nowadays, Alvaro Uribe govern his second term and though his emissaries held six unsuccessful round of negotiations with the ELN in La Habana in 2007, since his first term in office he marked a point of inflection in the negotiation line of the Colombian governments with the armed groups.
An article published on May 28 2002, in La Jornada journal, from Mexico, regarding Uribe's first press conference, elected for the period 2002-2006, clearly defined his point of view:
“Santa Fe de Bogotá, May 27.- The elected president of Colombia, right-wing Alvaro Uribe, requested an international mediation leaded by the UN aiming for a dialog with the ilegal armed groups, after he had focused his electoral campaign in military proposals to confront them, and asking military help to the United States in order to combat terrorism.”
Uribe has reiterated that the democratic progress in his country does not justify the insurgence, just as he did -in accordance with a press release- on August 31 2007, during the setting off of the fourth meeting of South American intelligence chiefs:
“Bogotá, August 31 (Xinhua) – The president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, affirmed today, again, that the guerrilla groups who operate in his country should not be labeled as insurgent because their actions answer more to terrorism.”
Finally, on January 11 2008, in a communique to answer President Chávez's request of recognizing political belligerence to the FARC and the ELN, Uribe described those groups as “terrorist organizations which changed their old ideas of Marxist revolution for mercenariness, financed through ilegal drugs and, besides, caused paramilitary terrorism.”
Hope persists
Hopefully, the FARC-EP have expressed that the murder of Reyes and their 16 comrades will not change the organization's disposition to concrete a humanitarian swap.
However, in the midst of the tension prevailing in the region, new contacts with this purpose appear to be improbable. Still less to think about peace agreements, at least for the time being.
Underestimating Rafael Correa
By FIDEL CASTRO
I remember when Rafael Correa visited us, months before the electoral campaign when he was thinking of running as a candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador. He had been the Minister of the Economy in the government of Alfredo Palacio, a surgeon with professional prestige who had also visited us as Vice President, before becoming the President in an unexpected situation that took place in Ecuador. He had been receptive to a program of ophthalmologic operations that we offered him as a form of cooperation. There were good relations between our two governments.
A while earlier Correa had resigned from the Ministry of the Economy. He was unhappy with what he called administrative corruption instigated by Oxy, a foreign company that explored and invested important sums of money, but was holding on to four out of every five barrels of oil that it extracted. He didn't talk about nationalization, but about taxing them heavily; these taxes would be assigned in advance to specific social investments. He had already approved the measures and a judge had declared them to be valid.
Since the word "nationalize" had not been mentioned, I thought he felt apprehensive about the concept. It didn't surprise me because he had graduated as an economist with much acclaim from a well-known U.S. university. I didn't bother getting into much depth; I bombarded him with questions from the arsenal accumulated in the struggle against the Latin American foreign debt in 1985 and of Cuba's own experience.
There are high-risk investments that use sophisticated technology and that no small nation like Cuba or Ecuador could take on.
Since this was already in 2006 and we were determined to promote the energy revolution, --ours was the first country on the planet to proclaim this as a vital issue for humankind-- I had dealt with the subject particularly emphatically. But I halted, as I understood one of his reasons.
I related to him the conversation I had had a while ago with the president of REPSOL, a Spanish company. This company, associated with other international companies, would undertake an expensive operation to drill the ocean floor, more than 2000 meters down, using sophisticated technology, in Cuba's jurisdictional waters. I asked the head of the Spanish company: How much is an exploratory well worth? I ask you this because we would like to participate, even if it is for one percent of the total cost and we would like to know what you want to do with our oil.
Correa, for his part, had told me that for every one hundred dollars taken out by the companies, only twenty remained in the country; it didn't even get into the budget, he said; it was left in a separate fund for just about anything other than improving the living conditions of the people.
I abolished the fund, he told me, and directed 40 percent towards education and health, technological and highway development, and the rest towards buying back the debt if the price was favorable, and if not, investing it in something more useful. Before, every year we had to buy a portion of that debt which was becoming more expensive.
In the case of Ecuador he added oil policies verged on treason against the country. Why do they do it? I asked him. Is it because they are afraid of the Yankees or due to unbearable pressure? He answered: If they have a Minister of the Economy who tells them privatization would improve efficiency, you can just imagine. I didn't do that.
I encourage him to go on and he calmly explains. The foreign company Oxy is one that has broken its contract and according to Ecuadorian law it requires an expiration date. It means that the oil field operated by this company must go over to the State, but because of Yankee pressure the government does not dare to occupy it; a situation is created which is not contemplated by the legislation. The law just states that an expiration date must be set, and nothing more. The judge at the court of first instance at that moment was the president of PETROECUADOR and he made it happen. I was a member of PETROECUADOR and they called an emergency meeting to expel him from his position. I didn't attend and they couldn't fire him. The judge declared the expiration date.
What did the Yankees want? I asked him. They wanted a fine, he quickly replied. Listening to him I realized that I had underestimated him.
I was in a hurry because of a great number of commitments. I invited him to sit in on a meeting with a large group of highly qualified Cuban professionals who were leaving for Bolivia to be part of the Medical Brigade; it had staff for more than 30 hospitals including 19 surgical positions that could do more than 130 thousand ophthalmologic operations per year; all in the manner of free cooperation. Ecuador possesses three similar centers with six ophthalmologic positions.
Dinner with the Ecuadorian economist took place into the morning hours of February 9, 2006. There were scarcely any view points that I didn't cover. I even spoke to him about the very harmful mercury that modern industry scatters throughout the planet's oceans. Consumerism was of course a subject that I emphasized; the high cost of the kilowatt/hour in the thermoelectric plants; the differences between socialist and communist forms of distribution, the role of money, the trillions spent on advertising which people had no choice but to pay for in the prices of goods, and the studies made by university social brigades who discovered, among the 500 thousand families in the capital, the number of elderly folk lived alone. I explained the stage of university courses for all that we were involved in.
We became friends even though he perhaps received the impression that I was self-sufficient. If that happened, it was truly not my intention.
Since that time I have observed his every step: the electoral process, focusing on the concrete problems of Ecuadorians and the people's victory over the oligarchy.
In the history of our peoples there are many things that bring us together. Sucre was always a highly admired figure, along with The Liberator Bolivar; as Marti said, what he hasn't done in America remains to be done, and as Neruda exclaimed, Bolivar awakens every hundred years.
Imperialism has just committed a monstrous crime in Ecuador. Deadly bombs were dropped in the early morning hours on a group of men and women who, almost without exception, were asleep. That has been deduced by all the official reports right from the beginning. Any concrete accusations against that group of human beings do not justify that action. They were Yankee bombs, guided by Yankee satellites.
Absolutely no one has the right to kill in cold blood. If we accept that imperial method of warfare and barbarism, Yankee bombs directed by satellites could fall on any group of Latin American men and women, in the territory of any country, war or no war. The fact that this happened on undisputed Ecuadorian territory is an aggravating circumstance.
We are not an enemy of Colombia. Previous reflections and exchanges demonstrate how much of an effort we have made, both the current President of the Council of State of Cuba and I, to abide by a declared policy of principles and peace, proclaimed years ago in our relations with the rest of the Latin American states.
Today, with everything at risk, we have not been transformed into belligerent people. We are determined supporters of that unity among peoples which Marti named Our America.
If we keep quiet we shall become accomplices. Today they would like to have our friend, the economist and President of Ecuador Rafael Correa, seated in the dock; this is something we couldn't even conceive that morning of February 9, 2006. At that time it seemed that my imagination was capable of embracing all kinds of dreams and risks, but never anything like what has occurred in the early morning of Saturday March 1, 2008.
Correa has in his hands the few survivors and the rest of the bodies. The two which are missing prove that Ecuadorian territory was occupied by troops that crossed the border. Now he can cry out like Emile Zola: J'accuse!
I remember when Rafael Correa visited us, months before the electoral campaign when he was thinking of running as a candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador. He had been the Minister of the Economy in the government of Alfredo Palacio, a surgeon with professional prestige who had also visited us as Vice President, before becoming the President in an unexpected situation that took place in Ecuador. He had been receptive to a program of ophthalmologic operations that we offered him as a form of cooperation. There were good relations between our two governments.
A while earlier Correa had resigned from the Ministry of the Economy. He was unhappy with what he called administrative corruption instigated by Oxy, a foreign company that explored and invested important sums of money, but was holding on to four out of every five barrels of oil that it extracted. He didn't talk about nationalization, but about taxing them heavily; these taxes would be assigned in advance to specific social investments. He had already approved the measures and a judge had declared them to be valid.
Since the word "nationalize" had not been mentioned, I thought he felt apprehensive about the concept. It didn't surprise me because he had graduated as an economist with much acclaim from a well-known U.S. university. I didn't bother getting into much depth; I bombarded him with questions from the arsenal accumulated in the struggle against the Latin American foreign debt in 1985 and of Cuba's own experience.
There are high-risk investments that use sophisticated technology and that no small nation like Cuba or Ecuador could take on.
Since this was already in 2006 and we were determined to promote the energy revolution, --ours was the first country on the planet to proclaim this as a vital issue for humankind-- I had dealt with the subject particularly emphatically. But I halted, as I understood one of his reasons.
I related to him the conversation I had had a while ago with the president of REPSOL, a Spanish company. This company, associated with other international companies, would undertake an expensive operation to drill the ocean floor, more than 2000 meters down, using sophisticated technology, in Cuba's jurisdictional waters. I asked the head of the Spanish company: How much is an exploratory well worth? I ask you this because we would like to participate, even if it is for one percent of the total cost and we would like to know what you want to do with our oil.
Correa, for his part, had told me that for every one hundred dollars taken out by the companies, only twenty remained in the country; it didn't even get into the budget, he said; it was left in a separate fund for just about anything other than improving the living conditions of the people.
I abolished the fund, he told me, and directed 40 percent towards education and health, technological and highway development, and the rest towards buying back the debt if the price was favorable, and if not, investing it in something more useful. Before, every year we had to buy a portion of that debt which was becoming more expensive.
In the case of Ecuador he added oil policies verged on treason against the country. Why do they do it? I asked him. Is it because they are afraid of the Yankees or due to unbearable pressure? He answered: If they have a Minister of the Economy who tells them privatization would improve efficiency, you can just imagine. I didn't do that.
I encourage him to go on and he calmly explains. The foreign company Oxy is one that has broken its contract and according to Ecuadorian law it requires an expiration date. It means that the oil field operated by this company must go over to the State, but because of Yankee pressure the government does not dare to occupy it; a situation is created which is not contemplated by the legislation. The law just states that an expiration date must be set, and nothing more. The judge at the court of first instance at that moment was the president of PETROECUADOR and he made it happen. I was a member of PETROECUADOR and they called an emergency meeting to expel him from his position. I didn't attend and they couldn't fire him. The judge declared the expiration date.
What did the Yankees want? I asked him. They wanted a fine, he quickly replied. Listening to him I realized that I had underestimated him.
I was in a hurry because of a great number of commitments. I invited him to sit in on a meeting with a large group of highly qualified Cuban professionals who were leaving for Bolivia to be part of the Medical Brigade; it had staff for more than 30 hospitals including 19 surgical positions that could do more than 130 thousand ophthalmologic operations per year; all in the manner of free cooperation. Ecuador possesses three similar centers with six ophthalmologic positions.
Dinner with the Ecuadorian economist took place into the morning hours of February 9, 2006. There were scarcely any view points that I didn't cover. I even spoke to him about the very harmful mercury that modern industry scatters throughout the planet's oceans. Consumerism was of course a subject that I emphasized; the high cost of the kilowatt/hour in the thermoelectric plants; the differences between socialist and communist forms of distribution, the role of money, the trillions spent on advertising which people had no choice but to pay for in the prices of goods, and the studies made by university social brigades who discovered, among the 500 thousand families in the capital, the number of elderly folk lived alone. I explained the stage of university courses for all that we were involved in.
We became friends even though he perhaps received the impression that I was self-sufficient. If that happened, it was truly not my intention.
Since that time I have observed his every step: the electoral process, focusing on the concrete problems of Ecuadorians and the people's victory over the oligarchy.
In the history of our peoples there are many things that bring us together. Sucre was always a highly admired figure, along with The Liberator Bolivar; as Marti said, what he hasn't done in America remains to be done, and as Neruda exclaimed, Bolivar awakens every hundred years.
Imperialism has just committed a monstrous crime in Ecuador. Deadly bombs were dropped in the early morning hours on a group of men and women who, almost without exception, were asleep. That has been deduced by all the official reports right from the beginning. Any concrete accusations against that group of human beings do not justify that action. They were Yankee bombs, guided by Yankee satellites.
Absolutely no one has the right to kill in cold blood. If we accept that imperial method of warfare and barbarism, Yankee bombs directed by satellites could fall on any group of Latin American men and women, in the territory of any country, war or no war. The fact that this happened on undisputed Ecuadorian territory is an aggravating circumstance.
We are not an enemy of Colombia. Previous reflections and exchanges demonstrate how much of an effort we have made, both the current President of the Council of State of Cuba and I, to abide by a declared policy of principles and peace, proclaimed years ago in our relations with the rest of the Latin American states.
Today, with everything at risk, we have not been transformed into belligerent people. We are determined supporters of that unity among peoples which Marti named Our America.
If we keep quiet we shall become accomplices. Today they would like to have our friend, the economist and President of Ecuador Rafael Correa, seated in the dock; this is something we couldn't even conceive that morning of February 9, 2006. At that time it seemed that my imagination was capable of embracing all kinds of dreams and risks, but never anything like what has occurred in the early morning of Saturday March 1, 2008.
Correa has in his hands the few survivors and the rest of the bodies. The two which are missing prove that Ecuadorian territory was occupied by troops that crossed the border. Now he can cry out like Emile Zola: J'accuse!
Colombia's Cornered President
Colombia's Cornered President
High Stakes in the Andes
By FORREST HYLTON
Sadly, the operation on March 1 in which the Colombian Armed Forces shot and killed Luis Edgar Devia Silva, a.k.a. "Raúl Reyes," spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), along with sixteen other guerrillas in a camp across the Putumayo River in Ecuador, was yet another case of the oft-mentioned "death foretold" that characterizes the country's seemingly endless civil war.
Eerily, in a March 1 column, one of Colombia's most prescient political analysts, Alfredo Molano, predicted that a giant storm cloud was about to sweep across some portion of Colombia's borderlands. Molano described how President Álvaro Uribe had brought the war with the FARC to the Darien Gap joining Panama, the Catatumbo region of Northern Santander shared with Venezuela, and the frontiers of Pasto and Putumayo bordering Ecuador. In Molano's view, the fact that Uribe had been politically cornered at home and abroad made a widening war across national borders all but inevitable. As Justin Podur noted, domestic and foreign pressure for a negotiated peace-that is, a political solution to the armed conflict-has led to an escalation of the war by the stronger, more violent party, along Israeli lines.
Since the end of 2006, Uribe has been beset by the parapolítica scandal, in which some 77 political figures, including 14 congresspersons, nearly all of them staunch allies of the president, are under investigation for ties to rightwing paramilitaries. The scandal reveals how the president and the Casa de Nariño (presidential palace) in Bogotá are tied to the country's regions, where power and authority are delegated, hence most directly exercised. Indeed, most of the para-politicos investigated are local office holders-governors, mayors, legislators, etc. The bedrock of the paramilitary-politico alliance was sealed in 2001 with the "Pacto de Ralito" in Córdoba province. The pact led to the first and second election of Uribe with solid-indeed fervent-paramilitary support in congress and the regional state bureaucracies.
Parapolítica and the President
Politicians under investigation include Uribe's closest political ally and second cousin, Senator Mario Uribe, who fell under suspicion after former paramilitary chieftain Salvatore Mancuso testified to meetings he had with the president's cousin to map electoral strategy in Antioquia and Córdoba provinces. As Molano notes, what everyone knows and has long talked about in those provinces-relations between the Uribe family, land deals and landholding, rightwing politics, and paramilitarism-is but a step away from becoming a matter of public record. As early as 1987 and as recently as 2002, distinguished investigative journalists began looking into (and in some cases uncovering) these connections. Uribe has publicly lashed out at journalists digging into his past, forcing some to flee the country amid ensuing death threats. Now, it would seem, legal issues, and not merely personal honor, are at stake.
This explains, at least in part, Uribe's confrontations with the Supreme Court, whose authority he has repeatedly attempted to undermine in order to obtain "political" status for paramilitary commanders looking to whitewash their criminal pasts. As Senator Gustavo Petro highlighted in 2005 during debates about the "Justice and Peace" law regulating paramilitary demobilization, there is reason to believe that Uribe aims to protect family members from future prosecution with its passage. During the parliamentary debates about parapolítica in March 2007, Petro named Antioquia under governor Uribe (1995-97) as the birthplace of modern-day paramilitarism. Any investigation of its roots would need to begin there.
Claudia López, co-author of the most comprehensive scholarly study of paramilitary penetration of local and regional politics in Colombia between 2002 and 2006, recently remarked on the extent to which, especially compared to the Caribbean coast, parapolítica investigations have stalled in Uribe's native Antioquia. This is to be expected, as there is undoubtedly much to hide: Under Uribe's watch, paramilitary activity-along with murders and disappearances of thousands of suspected guerrillas-skyrocketed to record levels through close coordination with the military and provincial government officials.
Though Uribe has made numerous tours of Europe and the U.S. in order to sell peace with the paramilitaries and war with the FARC, the parapolítica scandal has become his Achilles heel. A number of leading Democrats and not a few Republican congresspersons are wary of a trade agreement with Colombia, given human rights conditions and lingering doubts about the president's ties to paramilitaries. In May 2007, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Foreign Relations Committee, reprimanded Uribe and sent him home empty-handed when he tried to sidestep the issues in Washington. Because of ties to organized labor, Hillary Clinton has kept her distance from him in this electoral season, while Al Gore refused to attend an event in Miami last year that Uribe was scheduled to attend. (Unsurprisingly, Bill Clinton has been less circumspect, hob-knobbing with Uribe at an event called "Colombia is Passion" in New York City in May.)
A bilateral "free trade" agreement with the U.S. has been one of Uribe's chief goals since coming to power in 2002, but it appears increasingly remote. European countries, meanwhile, are reluctant to contribute funds for war with the FARC or peace with paramilitaries, and their meager offers of development aid are of little import to him.
Chávez, Reyes, and the Hostages
Uribe has also been increasingly cornered by the foreign policy of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. In what constitutes the major achievement by a Latin American statesperson in recent memory, after months of negotiations (sanctioned by President Uribe), in January and February of this year Chávez convinced the FARC to turn over six hostages to his government-all of them former politicians who, upon release, began agitating for the release of the rest of the prisoners, particularly Ingrid Betancourt, a center-left politician with dual French-Colombian citizenship.
Betancourt's family, together with human rights organizations and NGOs, have mounted a relatively successful campaign of public awareness and political pressure in France: President Sarkozy's government has reiterated its commitment to free Betancourt, acknowledging the positive role Chávez and the Venezuelan government have played thus far. For Uribe, such meddling strengthens FARC diplomacy in Europe, which is why he wanted Reyes dead. In Uribe's eyes, Reyes and the FARC paved the way for Betancourt's family and European NGO's to damage his image and undermine his policy of war as peace. In 2001, as part of the FARC's "peace process" with former president Andrés Pastrana, Reyes toured Europe and deepened existing ties to European governments and NGOs. As recently declassified documents obtained by the non-governmental National Security Archive demonstrate, in 1998 Reyes established contact with a U.S. diplomatic mission in Costa Rica led by Philip T. Chicola, then director of the State Department's Office of Andean Affairs. For all intents and purposes, Reyes was the FARC's ambassador.
For Uribe, then, Reyes was a rival, a competitor, and according to the mafia rules that govern politics in Colombia, such people must die. There were scores to be settled: it was Reyes and the FARC who, in the mid-1990s, convinced allies in European government and society that Uribe's security policies in Antioquia were unacceptable in terms of human rights and international law. And it was Reyes and his pals (no women were invited) who charmed European politicians and solidarity groups in Europe in 2001. This set the stage for Uribe's damaged credibility in Europe after 2002. Since then, Reyes has presented his organization's position before the European Parliament: prisoner exchanges that lead to a negotiated peace settlement. There is strong support for such a policy in official European circles.
Reyes was not a charismatic leader, nor is Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, who has led the FARC since it was founded in 1966. The FARC does not depend on charismatic individuals for its survival. More important than Reyes or Marulanda to FARC coffers was Tomás Medina Caracas, alias "Negro Acacio," a former public school teacher who became the first FARC commander wanted for extradition to the U.S. after September 11, 2001, on charges of cocaine trafficking. At the time of Medina's death in September 2007, much was made of the putative "blow" it represented to the FARC, as Medina was the group's answer to Pablo Escobar, managing cocaine routes and protection rackets through Venezuela, Brazil, and the Guyanas. Since Medina's death, no one has mentioned him again, and it would be surprising if his routes had been disrupted or destroyed without proper media fanfare. At the time of his death, seasoned commentators were quick to note that as a matter of policy, the FARC have at least three people ready to take the place of someone like Medina at a moment's notice. As Fernando Cubides has argued, the FARC is an "armed bureaucracy."
Thus there is no shortage of trained personnel to keep the war machine running, and it is unlikely that the killing of Raúl Reyes will make much of a dent in its functioning, except in terms of negotiating the release of the remaining hostages and laying the foundation for a negotiated peace; in terms of politics rather than total war. This explains the reaction of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who said, "It is bad news that the man we were talking to, with whom we had contacts, has been killed. Do you see how ugly the world is?"
It may tempting to dismiss Kouchner's question, but his point may be somewhat more subtle: namely, that Uribe killed Reyes in a deliberate effort to block the French government from negotiating the release of Ingrid Betancourt. Were Betancourt to be freed, Uribe would likely come under international pressure to grant the FARC political status as a pre-condition for a negotiated political settlement, and might have to contend with Betancourt's efforts to build a broad anti-Uribe coalition at home and abroad.
It is doubtful that the United States was directly involved in killing Reyes, since Plan Colombia was specifically designed to give the Colombian government the hardware, surveillance, and training to carry out such missions on its own. The Bush administration, of course, has greeted the death of a top FARC "terrorist" with glee, legal niceties and political subtleties aside. Uribe does not appear to have asked permission to pursue Reyes into Ecuador, but in light of past episodes, he had little reason to fear a reprimand from Washington, and was likely emboldened by past precedent. Whether Washington gives the green light beforehand matters little, as long as Uribe's moves are sanctioned ex post facto, as they were on March 4.
High Stakes in the Andes
Ecuadorian and Venezuelan government responses came quickly and unequivocally: within 48 hours, both broke off all diplomatic ties with Colombia and moved troops, tanks, and planes to their borders. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa explained that in addition to the efforts of Sarkozy and Chávez, his government had been working on the liberation of 12 hostages-including Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. mercenaries-at the time Reyes was assassinated. He added negotiations were at an "advanced" stage. Chávez jumped in and labeled Uribe a "criminal, mafioso, paramilitary" in charge of a "narco-government." In one of his more restrained remarks, the Venezuelan president said, "It is very serious that a country arrogates to itself the right to bomb the territory of a neighbor and commit an incursion to take bodies, violating many international laws. Think of the consequences, not just for Colombia, but for your neighbors."
Predictably, Uribe engaged in an almost surreal effort to re-create the atmosphere of the build-up to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The smoking gun was Reyes' laptop, reportedly recovered at the scene. Head of Colombia's National Police, Gen. Oscar Naranjo alleged that the FARC had been plotting to get uranium for a dirty bomb: "When they mention negotiations for 50 kilos of uranium, this means that the FARC are taking big steps in the world of terrorism to become a global aggressor. We're not talking of domestic guerrillas but transnational terrorism." On March 4, the Colombian government announced that the FARC was building a dirty bomb. All of this would seem to be a transparent attempt to convince the U.S. government and the rest of the world that the incident-and the region-can be neatly slotted into the global "war on terror."
Though allegations have cropped up repeatedly, as ideologically needed, since Chávez came to power in 1998, no one has ever documented illicit ties between Chávez and the FARC; the Uribe government is apparently now free to invent them. Another item recovered from Reyes' hard drive purportedly demonstrates that the FARC received $300 million in payments from Chávez as recently as February. To Gen. Naranjo, this suggested clear proof of "an armed alliance between the FARC and the Venezuelan government." A third item allegedly contains a thank-you note from Chávez during his stint in prison after his failed coup attempt in 1992. Given the advanced division of labor within the FARC, it would be odd indeed if its ambassador kept such delicate-and, in the case of the "prison letter" from Chávez, dated-information so readily accessible. For good measure, the Colombian government also alleged that recovered documents linked the Ecuadorian government to the FARC.
The Venezuelan government was not fazed. Vice president Ramón Carrizales said, "We are accustomed to the lies of the Colombian government. Whatever they say has no importance. They can invent anything now to try to get out of that violation of Ecuadorian territory that they committed." President Correa met with his cabinet to inform them of his government's position: "They said we had a pact with terrorists, and that is completely false. We are dealing with an extremely cynical government."
Perhaps the most hopeful development to arise out of the whole morass is the new multilateralism in South America: the regional powers, Chile and Brazil, demanded an official apology from Colombia to Ecuador, and were followed by Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru; all countries were eager to find a peaceful solution through the Organization of American States (OAS).
There is even more diplomatic unity against Uribe than there was when he supported the U.S.-preferred candidate for Secretary General of the OAS in 2005. That was the first time since the organization was founded in Bogotá in 1948 under the watchful eye of Secretary of State George Marshall that the U.S. candidate did not win. In dealing with Uribe's incursion, South American countries may well make another end run around the U.S. and Colombia through the OAS, and at the very least, foreign ministers have agreed to conduct an investigation. Chávez has proposed to revive the Contadora group of countries whose governments helped broker peace agreements in Central America in the 1990s in spite of U.S. government obstructionism. The latest violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty could convince other South American countries of the need for such a group.
Poster for victims' march: "Memory and Dignity for the Displaced, the Murdered, the Disappeared, the Victims."
The protest march called for tomorrow, March 6, in Colombia and the world to commemorate the victims of paramilitary and state violence will be a test of the political temperature. A range of sectors have promised to participate: trade unions, human rights groups, families of the kidnapped and disappeared, women's and neighborhood organizations, peasant, Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and student groups. If this push for truth, justice, and a negotiated peace finds an echo in multilateral diplomatic initiatives, Uribe could find himself cornered yet again; a frightening prospect, unless progressive forces in the hemisphere prove strong enough to contain him and his northern patrón.
Forrest Hylton is the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006), and with Sinclair Thomson, of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007). He is a frequent contributor to NACLA, where this essay originally appeared.
High Stakes in the Andes
By FORREST HYLTON
Sadly, the operation on March 1 in which the Colombian Armed Forces shot and killed Luis Edgar Devia Silva, a.k.a. "Raúl Reyes," spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), along with sixteen other guerrillas in a camp across the Putumayo River in Ecuador, was yet another case of the oft-mentioned "death foretold" that characterizes the country's seemingly endless civil war.
Eerily, in a March 1 column, one of Colombia's most prescient political analysts, Alfredo Molano, predicted that a giant storm cloud was about to sweep across some portion of Colombia's borderlands. Molano described how President Álvaro Uribe had brought the war with the FARC to the Darien Gap joining Panama, the Catatumbo region of Northern Santander shared with Venezuela, and the frontiers of Pasto and Putumayo bordering Ecuador. In Molano's view, the fact that Uribe had been politically cornered at home and abroad made a widening war across national borders all but inevitable. As Justin Podur noted, domestic and foreign pressure for a negotiated peace-that is, a political solution to the armed conflict-has led to an escalation of the war by the stronger, more violent party, along Israeli lines.
Since the end of 2006, Uribe has been beset by the parapolítica scandal, in which some 77 political figures, including 14 congresspersons, nearly all of them staunch allies of the president, are under investigation for ties to rightwing paramilitaries. The scandal reveals how the president and the Casa de Nariño (presidential palace) in Bogotá are tied to the country's regions, where power and authority are delegated, hence most directly exercised. Indeed, most of the para-politicos investigated are local office holders-governors, mayors, legislators, etc. The bedrock of the paramilitary-politico alliance was sealed in 2001 with the "Pacto de Ralito" in Córdoba province. The pact led to the first and second election of Uribe with solid-indeed fervent-paramilitary support in congress and the regional state bureaucracies.
Parapolítica and the President
Politicians under investigation include Uribe's closest political ally and second cousin, Senator Mario Uribe, who fell under suspicion after former paramilitary chieftain Salvatore Mancuso testified to meetings he had with the president's cousin to map electoral strategy in Antioquia and Córdoba provinces. As Molano notes, what everyone knows and has long talked about in those provinces-relations between the Uribe family, land deals and landholding, rightwing politics, and paramilitarism-is but a step away from becoming a matter of public record. As early as 1987 and as recently as 2002, distinguished investigative journalists began looking into (and in some cases uncovering) these connections. Uribe has publicly lashed out at journalists digging into his past, forcing some to flee the country amid ensuing death threats. Now, it would seem, legal issues, and not merely personal honor, are at stake.
This explains, at least in part, Uribe's confrontations with the Supreme Court, whose authority he has repeatedly attempted to undermine in order to obtain "political" status for paramilitary commanders looking to whitewash their criminal pasts. As Senator Gustavo Petro highlighted in 2005 during debates about the "Justice and Peace" law regulating paramilitary demobilization, there is reason to believe that Uribe aims to protect family members from future prosecution with its passage. During the parliamentary debates about parapolítica in March 2007, Petro named Antioquia under governor Uribe (1995-97) as the birthplace of modern-day paramilitarism. Any investigation of its roots would need to begin there.
Claudia López, co-author of the most comprehensive scholarly study of paramilitary penetration of local and regional politics in Colombia between 2002 and 2006, recently remarked on the extent to which, especially compared to the Caribbean coast, parapolítica investigations have stalled in Uribe's native Antioquia. This is to be expected, as there is undoubtedly much to hide: Under Uribe's watch, paramilitary activity-along with murders and disappearances of thousands of suspected guerrillas-skyrocketed to record levels through close coordination with the military and provincial government officials.
Though Uribe has made numerous tours of Europe and the U.S. in order to sell peace with the paramilitaries and war with the FARC, the parapolítica scandal has become his Achilles heel. A number of leading Democrats and not a few Republican congresspersons are wary of a trade agreement with Colombia, given human rights conditions and lingering doubts about the president's ties to paramilitaries. In May 2007, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Foreign Relations Committee, reprimanded Uribe and sent him home empty-handed when he tried to sidestep the issues in Washington. Because of ties to organized labor, Hillary Clinton has kept her distance from him in this electoral season, while Al Gore refused to attend an event in Miami last year that Uribe was scheduled to attend. (Unsurprisingly, Bill Clinton has been less circumspect, hob-knobbing with Uribe at an event called "Colombia is Passion" in New York City in May.)
A bilateral "free trade" agreement with the U.S. has been one of Uribe's chief goals since coming to power in 2002, but it appears increasingly remote. European countries, meanwhile, are reluctant to contribute funds for war with the FARC or peace with paramilitaries, and their meager offers of development aid are of little import to him.
Chávez, Reyes, and the Hostages
Uribe has also been increasingly cornered by the foreign policy of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. In what constitutes the major achievement by a Latin American statesperson in recent memory, after months of negotiations (sanctioned by President Uribe), in January and February of this year Chávez convinced the FARC to turn over six hostages to his government-all of them former politicians who, upon release, began agitating for the release of the rest of the prisoners, particularly Ingrid Betancourt, a center-left politician with dual French-Colombian citizenship.
Betancourt's family, together with human rights organizations and NGOs, have mounted a relatively successful campaign of public awareness and political pressure in France: President Sarkozy's government has reiterated its commitment to free Betancourt, acknowledging the positive role Chávez and the Venezuelan government have played thus far. For Uribe, such meddling strengthens FARC diplomacy in Europe, which is why he wanted Reyes dead. In Uribe's eyes, Reyes and the FARC paved the way for Betancourt's family and European NGO's to damage his image and undermine his policy of war as peace. In 2001, as part of the FARC's "peace process" with former president Andrés Pastrana, Reyes toured Europe and deepened existing ties to European governments and NGOs. As recently declassified documents obtained by the non-governmental National Security Archive demonstrate, in 1998 Reyes established contact with a U.S. diplomatic mission in Costa Rica led by Philip T. Chicola, then director of the State Department's Office of Andean Affairs. For all intents and purposes, Reyes was the FARC's ambassador.
For Uribe, then, Reyes was a rival, a competitor, and according to the mafia rules that govern politics in Colombia, such people must die. There were scores to be settled: it was Reyes and the FARC who, in the mid-1990s, convinced allies in European government and society that Uribe's security policies in Antioquia were unacceptable in terms of human rights and international law. And it was Reyes and his pals (no women were invited) who charmed European politicians and solidarity groups in Europe in 2001. This set the stage for Uribe's damaged credibility in Europe after 2002. Since then, Reyes has presented his organization's position before the European Parliament: prisoner exchanges that lead to a negotiated peace settlement. There is strong support for such a policy in official European circles.
Reyes was not a charismatic leader, nor is Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, who has led the FARC since it was founded in 1966. The FARC does not depend on charismatic individuals for its survival. More important than Reyes or Marulanda to FARC coffers was Tomás Medina Caracas, alias "Negro Acacio," a former public school teacher who became the first FARC commander wanted for extradition to the U.S. after September 11, 2001, on charges of cocaine trafficking. At the time of Medina's death in September 2007, much was made of the putative "blow" it represented to the FARC, as Medina was the group's answer to Pablo Escobar, managing cocaine routes and protection rackets through Venezuela, Brazil, and the Guyanas. Since Medina's death, no one has mentioned him again, and it would be surprising if his routes had been disrupted or destroyed without proper media fanfare. At the time of his death, seasoned commentators were quick to note that as a matter of policy, the FARC have at least three people ready to take the place of someone like Medina at a moment's notice. As Fernando Cubides has argued, the FARC is an "armed bureaucracy."
Thus there is no shortage of trained personnel to keep the war machine running, and it is unlikely that the killing of Raúl Reyes will make much of a dent in its functioning, except in terms of negotiating the release of the remaining hostages and laying the foundation for a negotiated peace; in terms of politics rather than total war. This explains the reaction of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who said, "It is bad news that the man we were talking to, with whom we had contacts, has been killed. Do you see how ugly the world is?"
It may tempting to dismiss Kouchner's question, but his point may be somewhat more subtle: namely, that Uribe killed Reyes in a deliberate effort to block the French government from negotiating the release of Ingrid Betancourt. Were Betancourt to be freed, Uribe would likely come under international pressure to grant the FARC political status as a pre-condition for a negotiated political settlement, and might have to contend with Betancourt's efforts to build a broad anti-Uribe coalition at home and abroad.
It is doubtful that the United States was directly involved in killing Reyes, since Plan Colombia was specifically designed to give the Colombian government the hardware, surveillance, and training to carry out such missions on its own. The Bush administration, of course, has greeted the death of a top FARC "terrorist" with glee, legal niceties and political subtleties aside. Uribe does not appear to have asked permission to pursue Reyes into Ecuador, but in light of past episodes, he had little reason to fear a reprimand from Washington, and was likely emboldened by past precedent. Whether Washington gives the green light beforehand matters little, as long as Uribe's moves are sanctioned ex post facto, as they were on March 4.
High Stakes in the Andes
Ecuadorian and Venezuelan government responses came quickly and unequivocally: within 48 hours, both broke off all diplomatic ties with Colombia and moved troops, tanks, and planes to their borders. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa explained that in addition to the efforts of Sarkozy and Chávez, his government had been working on the liberation of 12 hostages-including Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. mercenaries-at the time Reyes was assassinated. He added negotiations were at an "advanced" stage. Chávez jumped in and labeled Uribe a "criminal, mafioso, paramilitary" in charge of a "narco-government." In one of his more restrained remarks, the Venezuelan president said, "It is very serious that a country arrogates to itself the right to bomb the territory of a neighbor and commit an incursion to take bodies, violating many international laws. Think of the consequences, not just for Colombia, but for your neighbors."
Predictably, Uribe engaged in an almost surreal effort to re-create the atmosphere of the build-up to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The smoking gun was Reyes' laptop, reportedly recovered at the scene. Head of Colombia's National Police, Gen. Oscar Naranjo alleged that the FARC had been plotting to get uranium for a dirty bomb: "When they mention negotiations for 50 kilos of uranium, this means that the FARC are taking big steps in the world of terrorism to become a global aggressor. We're not talking of domestic guerrillas but transnational terrorism." On March 4, the Colombian government announced that the FARC was building a dirty bomb. All of this would seem to be a transparent attempt to convince the U.S. government and the rest of the world that the incident-and the region-can be neatly slotted into the global "war on terror."
Though allegations have cropped up repeatedly, as ideologically needed, since Chávez came to power in 1998, no one has ever documented illicit ties between Chávez and the FARC; the Uribe government is apparently now free to invent them. Another item recovered from Reyes' hard drive purportedly demonstrates that the FARC received $300 million in payments from Chávez as recently as February. To Gen. Naranjo, this suggested clear proof of "an armed alliance between the FARC and the Venezuelan government." A third item allegedly contains a thank-you note from Chávez during his stint in prison after his failed coup attempt in 1992. Given the advanced division of labor within the FARC, it would be odd indeed if its ambassador kept such delicate-and, in the case of the "prison letter" from Chávez, dated-information so readily accessible. For good measure, the Colombian government also alleged that recovered documents linked the Ecuadorian government to the FARC.
The Venezuelan government was not fazed. Vice president Ramón Carrizales said, "We are accustomed to the lies of the Colombian government. Whatever they say has no importance. They can invent anything now to try to get out of that violation of Ecuadorian territory that they committed." President Correa met with his cabinet to inform them of his government's position: "They said we had a pact with terrorists, and that is completely false. We are dealing with an extremely cynical government."
Perhaps the most hopeful development to arise out of the whole morass is the new multilateralism in South America: the regional powers, Chile and Brazil, demanded an official apology from Colombia to Ecuador, and were followed by Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru; all countries were eager to find a peaceful solution through the Organization of American States (OAS).
There is even more diplomatic unity against Uribe than there was when he supported the U.S.-preferred candidate for Secretary General of the OAS in 2005. That was the first time since the organization was founded in Bogotá in 1948 under the watchful eye of Secretary of State George Marshall that the U.S. candidate did not win. In dealing with Uribe's incursion, South American countries may well make another end run around the U.S. and Colombia through the OAS, and at the very least, foreign ministers have agreed to conduct an investigation. Chávez has proposed to revive the Contadora group of countries whose governments helped broker peace agreements in Central America in the 1990s in spite of U.S. government obstructionism. The latest violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty could convince other South American countries of the need for such a group.
Poster for victims' march: "Memory and Dignity for the Displaced, the Murdered, the Disappeared, the Victims."
The protest march called for tomorrow, March 6, in Colombia and the world to commemorate the victims of paramilitary and state violence will be a test of the political temperature. A range of sectors have promised to participate: trade unions, human rights groups, families of the kidnapped and disappeared, women's and neighborhood organizations, peasant, Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and student groups. If this push for truth, justice, and a negotiated peace finds an echo in multilateral diplomatic initiatives, Uribe could find himself cornered yet again; a frightening prospect, unless progressive forces in the hemisphere prove strong enough to contain him and his northern patrón.
Forrest Hylton is the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006), and with Sinclair Thomson, of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007). He is a frequent contributor to NACLA, where this essay originally appeared.
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