Colext/Macondo
Cantina virtual de los COLombianos en el EXTerior
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Carlos, estamos practica pero no fundamentalmente de acuerdo. La
solidaridad contra las causas sociales, economicas, "humanas",
proteccionistas, intervencionistas, etc., de la violencia, es un problema
que traspasa las fronteras nacionales. Por ello comparti, sin comentarios
personales, el articulo de Goytisolo.
La violencia oficial, no oficial y "comun", que tiene a Colombia mas alla
del abismo, comparte raices sociales, economicas e historicas con la
"violencia de la pobreza" en todo el mundo. Mostrar solidaridad con la
poblacion Africana en Espana, no me impide tener un compromiso solidario
participativo y profundo con "mi gente" en Colombia y su situacion como
"sociedad civil", en la agudizacion actual de un conflicto cronico de
privilegios; por el contrario, me ayuda en la contruccion de elementos
"objetivos" de analisis para participar en la unica alternativa que
considero viable: un proceso de reconciliacion (paz) respaldado por una
"sociedad civil" cansada de TODOS los elementos del conflicto armado, que
modifique las estructuras del estado y la sociedad y permita empezar a
construir una "verdadera" democracia (donde quepan los "jueputas" de Pio y
los "secuestradores" de Jaime) participativa.
Un grupo de colombianos que nos hemos autodenominado "Colombianos por la
paz", nos reunimos voluntaria y periodicamente en New York City con el
animo de elaborar un proyecto que impulse a nivel nacional e internacional,
la participacion de la "sociedad civil" colombiana en el proceso de paz.
Nuestra proxima reunion sera el 12 de febrero en el Skirball Institute, NYU
Medical Center, NYC. Por motivos de distancia yo no asisto a todas las
reuniones, pero todo mundo es bienvenido.
Un abrazo,
Carlos.
Carlos Davila <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> escribio:
>De acuerdo Carlos que esta grave lo de Espa�a, pero se me hace un poco
>dif�cil demostrar mucha solidaridad con los inmigrantes Africanos en Espa�a
>cuando hay tanto paramilitar, guerrillero, y criminal violando los derechos
>humanos de campesinos Colombianos, desplazados como inmigrantes ilegales,
>dentro de nuestro propio pa�s.
>C.D.
PD. Comparto articulo del "Washington Post" enviado por uno de los
participantes de "Colombianos por la Paz".
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 00:14:07
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Fwd: Fwd: Shades of Vietnam]
Sin comentarios
Shades of Vietnam
Washington Post, Feb 8, 2000
By Robert E. White
Although President Clinton seems unaware of it, the $ 1.6 billion he is
requesting to fight coca production in Colombia amounts to intervention in
another country's civil war. Neither the president nor the secretary of
state has given the American people any coherent explanation of what is at
stake in Colombia or of how massive military assistance can do anything
but make matters worse.
Americans have always been skeptical about the wisdom of intervening in
the civil wars of other countries. Although our diplomatic history is
studded with lapses, the doctrine of nonintervention still carries
considerable weight-enough to require that those advocating military
excursions be able to justify them in terms of global threats to national
security.
Our intervention in El Salvador's struggle did not truly constitute
intervention, President Reagan argued, because the revolutionaries were
not fighting in their own cause but as hirelings of Moscow and Havana. The
rationale for involving the United States in Colombia's civil war rests on
the equally specious ground that the FARC-the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia-are not an authentic insurgency but an armed drug cartel that
fights to protect illicit profits-"narco-guerrillas" to quote from the
charged vocabulary of the White House drug policy adviser, Gen. Barry
McCaffrey.
The largest component of the military assistance, titled "Push into
Southern Colombia," calls for $ 600 million to train two additional
special counternarcotics battalions with 30 Blackhawk helicopters and 33
Huey helicopters so the army "can access this remote and undeveloped
region of Colombia." Some of the funding would "provide shelter and
employment to the Colombian people who will be displaced." Although there
is $ 145 million for crop substitution, the emphasis will continue to be
on aerial spraying of herbicides to destroy the coca leaf. It is hard to
avoid the conclusion that this is a counterinsurgency strategy packaged as
a counternarcotics program.
To Gen. McCaffrey, with a thin background in foreign policy and a mandate
to win the war on narcotics, it must seem logical to reduce complex
political, economic and social forces to one manageable target and attack
it with military force. But is it too much to hope that experienced
diplomats will grasp the elementary proposition that an insurgency that
has acquired the strength and cohesion necessary to dominate 40 percent of
the national territory represents something authentic in the history of
Colombia, something not adequately explained by references to illicit
commerce?
Has it truly escaped senior administration aides that the Colombian civil
war is more about massacres of civilians and selective assassinations than
armed confrontation? Does it really not matter that to declare war on the
FARC puts us in league with a Colombian military that has longstanding
ties to the drug-dealing, barbaric paramilitaries that commit more than 75
percent of the human rights violations afflicting that violence-torn
country?
It is curious that a government as sophisticated as ours should cling to
the naive belief that spraying with herbicides can do anything but drive
the campesino cultivators deeper into the jungle. The campesinos grow coca
not just because it commands bonanza prices but because the traffickers'
planes land nearby and pay cash on the barrelhead.
Alternative production-rubber and palm oil, for example-could compete
because their prices, while lower, are more stable. But the isolated
farmers cannot get their crops to the city. The $ 1.3 billion in the
Colombia aid package for war could be more constructively used to build
farm-to-market highways that would peacefully carry the government's
authority into this remote zone.
Nowhere in the official statements on Colombia will Congress find any
discussion of risks vs. rewards or any measurement of objectives in
relation to resources. Recall that in El Salvador, our bloody, divisive
12-year pursuit of military victory proved fruitless. We finally settled
for a U.N.-brokered accord that granted the guerrillas many of their
demands.
The FARC-controlled territory that this program casually commits us to
reconquer is 20 times as large as El Salvador-roughly the size of
California. The Colombian military has no experience in carrying the war
to the insurgents. What will happen when FARC troops, at home in jungle
and savanna, repel the army and shoot down our helicopters? Will we then
swallow the bitter pill of political-military defeat? Not if Vietnam and
Central America are any guide. Far more likely we will plunge deeper into
the quagmire.
The writer, a former ambassador to El Salvador and Paraguay, is president
of the Center for International Policy.
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
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