The first year after the inauguration of Mr. Álvaro Uribe in the presidency of neighbor Colombia was completed yesterday. The right-wing leader took office promising he would smash the insurgent forces— unilaterally breaking the conversations and peace negotiations—and eradicate drug trafficking. In the government, he seeks to implement a radical neoliberal economic program—even in a moment when the continent displays increasing resistance and weariness to neoliberal experiences—and proposes a new anti-democratic political reform with a view to restore the anachronistic two-party regime of liberal and conservative political organizations.

The Colombian people replied Uribe’s policies with opposition. In a poll published this week in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 78% Colombians affirm they will abstain from voting in the referendum called by Uribe to legitimate his plans and establish a kind of constitutional dictatorship in the country. In an official note issued this week, many Colombian political and social forces denounced the instauration of an “authoritarian regime without precedents in the Colombian history”, calling for the unity of the popular forces against Uribe in the local elections, taking place in October, for abstention in the governmental referendum and also for a national civic strike and a march of farm workers on next Tuesday, August 12.

“Carnal relations” with the US

Colombia is presently the South American country which is closest to Bush’s policy, substituting the same canine loyalty and role played by Menem in Argentina throughout the 90’s. As a result, now Colombia is the third country in the list of those which receive more “help” from the United States after Israel and Egypt, with yearly allowances amounting to more than 2 billion dollars.

The Colombia Plan, designed during Clinton administration and launched in 2000, recently completed three years of existence. It was relaunched during Bush administration within the context of the United States’ new security policy of “fighting terrorism”, filing the Colombian guerillas under the category of “terrorist organizations” after September 11. Thus, one of the first initiatives of the present Colombian President was to start a diplomatic offensive in Latin America in order to make governments in the region accept such classification, what almost all countries, including Brazil, rejected, since pacification and negotiation are preferred to confrontation.

Supposedly designed to curb the increasing drug trafficking deriving from Colombia and destined to the United States—the greatest consumer market for drugs in the world—the Colombia Plan is intended to establish a military “spearhead” in the country with a view to impede sovereign and independent movements to be taken by South American countries.

The war policy led to a brutal offensive of the Colombian special forces, which were trained by the US to face left-wing guerillas, resulting in more than 415 thousand refugees. Nevertheless, after three years of its implantation, the coca cultivation increased, while consumption in the United States did not recede. But instead of putting an end to a conflict that has already lasted more than fifty years, the Uribe/Bush policy only increased the polarization of the Colombian society. Therefore, the way out to the pacification of Colombia, more than ever before, includes a negotiated solution to the armed conflict.

President Álvaro Uribe, when he was governor of the province of Antioquia, was a renowned ally and supporter of the terrorist mercenary forces known as “Autodefesas Unidas de Colombia – AUC” (United Self Defense Forces of Colombia), an irregular private army—or a kind of death squad—that practices the dirtiest operations, including the destruction of villages of peasants suspected to be prone to insurgency, the systematic violation of women and even the assassination of political and social leaders in the cities. Recently, Uribe made a pact with AUC to demobilize and “reintegrate” mercenaries into civil life—in fact, a maneuver to incorporate them into the State repressive apparatus, especially the intelligence forces. Moreover, the Colombia Plan also finances more than a million informants and delators at service of repression.

New US initiatives

This month the United States is planning a new diplomatic offensive regarding Colombia in the occasion of Robert Zoelick’s visit, the US Trade Representative, and Washington hawk Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense.

Zoellick’s visit takes place while the US economic strategy of implementing the FTAA begins to be weakened by the South American integration—due by the end of 2003—reaffirmed on August 4 in a meeting of chancellors from the whole region in Montevideo, Uruguay. The US government apparently seeks to establish bilateral free trade agreements with two South American governments (Chile and Colombia), with a view to undermine the subcontinent’s integration potential. Hence it intends to establish two agents to support its policy, one in Mercosur (Chile is a member State) and another in the Andean Community (Colombia, the second most populous country in South America), in an attempt to implode the South American economic zone and co-opt countries into the FTAA on an individual basis. This week, US senators explicitly asked Zoellick to sign the bilateral treaty with Colombia in “recognition of Uribe’s effort in the fight against terrorism”.

Rumsfeld’s visit, on the other hand, is intended to make sure Uribe is an unconditional ally in the White House’s war policy and strengthen the Colombia Plan as long as threats of occupation in the Amazon are concerned. It is also noteworthy that Colombia was the single country in South America to support the recolonization war in Iraq.
   
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Bush’s military offensive in Colombia will turn out as an enormous failure. Much to the contrary of the way they are presented in Hollywood blockbusters, the Amazon peoples will defend their independence and sovereignty in the forests, if need be, beating back the “Rambos” of Bush and his local aides.