------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the March 22, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- MESSAGE TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: WHY WE MUST SUPPORT REBELS IN COLOMBIA By Teresa Gutierrez Plan Colombia has placed U.S. intervention in Colombia on the front burner for the progressive and anti-war movement in this country. And even though the U.S. government's strategy is still being formulated, the struggle in Colombia and how the anti-war movement here relates to it is crucial. When Plan Colombia was first initiated, the U.S. government attempted to sell it to the people of this country as a war on drugs. Now that phony campaign is failing and the pundits are beginning to talk about "nation building in Colombia," such as strengthening the Colombian judicial system. It is not known if or when the Pentagon will send combat troops to Colombia, but the stakes are high nonetheless as the U.S. is preparing one way or the other for all-out domination of not only Colombia but the entire region. GOALS ARE SAME AS IN VIETNAM When President Andres Pastrana traveled to Washington for the umpteenth time in February, he stated that U.S. intervention in his country was not going to be like the war in Vietnam. But while there are many important historical differences, U.S. intervention in Colombia is very much like what the U.S. ruling class tried to do in Vietnam. Their aims are the same: to suppress a movement by a people struggling to free themselves from the yoke of imperialism. One of the same techniques Washington and the Pentagon used in Vietnam is also being used in Colombia. An intense disinformation campaign organized by the U.S. government is being propagated by all the corporate media. Disinformation campaign hatched in Pentagon What is the real U.S. role in Colombia? Who are the players, what are their interests and what do they want? The purpose of this intense disinformation campaign is to obscure the answers to these questions. The word "narco-guerrillas" does not appear in any dictionary. But it has come into vogue. It has been coined by the Pentagon to confuse people about the issues in Colombia. As has been done so often before, the military's public relations people invented this term to discredit the movement there. In every U.S. news account, narco-guerrillas is used to describe the movement in that country, specifically the insurgents. People are told that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) are narco-guerrillas. They are described as drug traffickers, a charge the U.S. has failed to prove. Even Colombian President Andres Pastrana said again in February that there's no evidence to sustain this charge. YET THE SLANDER CONTINUES. The media distorts the situation in Colombia in other ways as well. Whenever there is an incident, they immediately blame the rebels. The Washington Post becomes the judge and jury in a single mouse click, long before any evidence has even been gathered. This kind of disinformation points to the Vietnamization of Colombia. No one who remembers Vietnam would think it far-fetched to accuse the Pentagon of being responsible for this campaign against the Colombian people. THE REAL TERROR: THE U.S./PASTRANA ALLIANCE Hardly anything is written about the real horror going on in Colombia today and who is responsible for it. A war of repression and terror of horrific proportions has been raging in Colombia. That terror is institutionalized and state sponsored. It is decades long. For over 40 years, the Colombian people have waged a heroic battle against this repression. They have struggled to free their country from domination by U.S. capital and themselves from the resulting poverty and exploitation. The first half of this century was filled with mass resistance--but mass repression as well. By the late 1950s over 50,000 people had been killed in Colombia. In the 1980s the insurgent movement put aside its weapons momentarily to participate in the electoral process through a mass organization called the Patriotic Union (UP). Its program was so popular that thousands of its members were elected to local and national offices. How did the government and right-wing paramilitaries, backed by Washington, respond? By killing more than 4,000 activists, including many mayors and other elected officials. This kind of terror continues. Gustavo Gallon, director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, says his organization estimates that from October 1999 to October 2000 there were 160 separate massacres in which 1,084 people were killed. (New York Times, March 4) Eighty-two percent of the deaths came at the hands of the paramilitaries, specifically the so-called Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC). A report by Winifred Tate in the Feb. 16 Foreign Policy in Focus magazine says that the precise number of people who have died at the hands of the right-wing paramilitaries will never be known. But it is known that over the past decade more than 35,000 Colombians have been killed, the vast majority by the death squads operating in collusion with the Colombian military. The military provides the intelligence, personnel and logistics to the paramilitaries and blocks human rights activists from reporting the situation. The repression is incredible, but daily life is also a grind. International banks, big business and the Colombian oligarchy have brought untold misery to the Colombian people. While unemployment is officially over 20 percent, the actual figure is much higher. Austerity policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund have deepened the suffering. The March 6 Hoy, a Spanish-language newspaper published in the United States, reported that Colombia spends $134 million every month to pay just the interest on its huge foreign debt. Another act of war is aerial fumigation. Supposedly a measure to eradicate coca plants, it is used against the peasants and their rights to the land. The meager plots of land worked by thousands of Colombian peasants are being eradicated by deadly mycoherbicides. Food crops are being destroyed in many areas of the country. Florida's Department of the Environment has deemed some of these chemicals too dangerous to use in the state of Florida. But they were sent to Colombia anyway to be sprayed in areas where there is believed to be guerrilla activity-- just as the Pentagon used Agent Orange and other herbicides in Vietnam. Over 2 million Colombians have been displaced by the internal conflict. With decades long repression, with miserable economic conditions, is it any wonder that Colombia has produced the oldest guerrilla movement in Latin America? The FARC-EP has been in existence since 1964 and the ELN was formed not long after that. Together, these guerrilla groups control 40 percent of Colombian territory. Although the horrific war now under way in Colombia began long before Plan Colombia, the U.S. government's infusion of $1.3 billion for military hardware is intensifying it, strengthening repression and bringing new misery to the people. The money is going to a military that, according to Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, author of "School of Assassins," was trained in the art of killing at the Pentagon's School of the Americas. "More than 100 of the 246 Colombian officers cited for war crimes by an international human rights tribunal in 1993 are SOA graduates." A U.S. disinformation campaign about the Colombian army and the AUC seeks to legitimize and prettify them. SUPPORT THE GUERRILLA MOVEMENT In face of the destruction of human life and the environment in Colombia, it is long overdue for the anti-war movement to raise its powerful voice in mass protest--not against just one aspect of the plan but all its aspects. Whether taken piece by piece or altogether, the plan is an act of war. Fortunately, the movement in this country against Plan Colombia is growing. Organizations and individuals are holding forums, conferences and demonstrations. But much more must be done. One of the most important tasks ahead is to raise the level of understanding of what is happing in Colombia today, and about the U.S. role. The avalanche of disinformation about the struggle in Colombia must be turned back by an avalanche of resistance against Plan Colombia and in support of the struggle there. One of the ways resistance can be built is by uniting to support the rebels in Colombia and all those who are fighting back in that country. The Pentagon and Wall Street would prefer to see the movement in this country confused and paralyzed on this issue. It would prefer that we put an equal sign between the right and the left or put "all the armed actors" in the same basket. TWO SIDES IN A STRUGGLE Whenever a union is on strike or in an intense organizing drive, the bosses turn up the anti-union rhetoric to a fever pitch. They put the union under a microscope, distorting or falsifying this or that incident in order to break solidarity. Union leaders become targets of scrutiny. They are slandered as corrupt or sell-outs, as if the bosses really cared about that. The anti-union rhetoric aims to confuse the workers, to make it look as if there are many sides, when there are really only two: the side of the workers and the side of the bosses. Unfortunately, the disinformation campaign sometimes works. Workers get confused, start questioning the union, support is derailed and unity dissolves. They start turning away from the union instead of defending it to make it stronger. What the U.S. government is trying to do with regard to Colombia is not so different. When the media talks about the civilian population being caught in the middle between the right and the left, the Pentagon is elated. Why? Because it blurs the distinction between the two sides in the struggle. When the media equates the institutionalized state terror of the paramilitaries and the Colombian military with the acts of those defending themselves from that state terror, it means to confuse the issue. In the case of Colombia, no matter what Bush says, it is clear that the U.S. government is on one side: the side of the paramilitaries and the Colombian government. The Colombian people being terrorized by them are on the other. It is understandable that the people of Colombia do not want war. They are exceedingly tired of the repression. That makes it even more urgent for the movement in this country to unite and turn full attention to the real source of war in Colombia: the Pentagon, Wall Street, Washington and the oligarchy that does their bidding. That's why a mass movement to stop Plan Colombia is urgently needed. So we can raise our voices loud and clear to demand that the U.S. get the hell out of Colombia. So we can demand self-determination for the Colombian people so that this devastated nation can finally win the peace it so yearns for. The Colombian people must finally be left alone to build the kind of society they want, free of IMF and Pentagon interference. If the anti-war movement here and in Colombia grows and is successful, that in turn will tremendously help other struggles. It will help push Bush back and strengthen the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, for unions, for women's rights, for lesbian/ gay/ bi/trans rights and against racism. When the oppressed and exploited of Colombia win against the U.S. imperialists, we will be able to claim a victory for our side. Now is the time to build a movement in solidarity with the heroic people of Colombia. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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