Colombia Action Network http://www.freespeech.org/actioncolombia
WASHINGTON POST, Sunday, 7 January 2001
Aerial Attack Killing More Than Coca - By Scott Wilson
LA HORMIGA, Colombia - Colombia's mammoth anti-drug campaign, backed by more than $1 billion of U.S. military and social development aid, has entered a new punitive phase of aerial spraying that is killing fields of coca as well as the legal crops of farmers here in the country's most bountiful drug-growing region. Using U.S. and European satellite photographs to pick targets, Colombian army and police aircraft have begun spraying herbicides on small farms in western Putumayo, the southern province that accounts for more than half the country's coca production.
The flights, paid for by the U.S.-backed anti-drug campaign called Plan Colombia, have occurred almost daily over several farming communities since Dec. 22 and have wilted hundreds of acres of coca, the key ingredient in cocaine, and legal crops, which often are planted alongside coca. Local people say the chemicals have sometimes fallen on towns and farmhouses, causing people to suffer fevers. They also blame the spraying for the deaths of some cows and fish.
"Those without coca are more affected than those with it," said Hilberto Soto Vargas, a local farmer whose banana grove was fumigated even though, by his account, he pulled up his coca plants two years ago when he became a member of a Pentecostal church. "All of this is dying now," he said, pointing to his fields. "All of it." Colombia accounts for 80 percent to 90 percent of the world's cocaine production and a growing share of its heroin. The fumigation in Putumayo marks a bold new escalation of Plan Colombia, a U.S.- backed $7.5 billion campaign to cut Colombian drug production by half in six years, by 2005. Until recently, spraying focused almost entirely on remote industrial-sized coca and poppy plantations that grow most of Colombia's drugs. Officials claim it has denuded roughly 125,000 acres of drug fields. Now the planes are targeting more populous farming areas like this one, where coca is seen by many poor villagers as a legitimate cash crop and is often grown side by side with corn, yucca, pineapple and livestock. Often it shares a plot next to the farmer's tin-roofed shack.
The new approach is designed in part to punish several coca-rich communities that have refused to join a U.S.-backed program that pays farmers to uproot illegal crops and replace them with legal ones. Some of the communities declined to join because of threats from leftist guerillas who profit from the drug trade.
In La Hormiga, a town 30 miles west of Putumayo's commercial center of Puerto Asis, town officials and residents say the fumigation has been devastating. In interviews, dozens of farmers said that the spray, delivered by small planes escorted by armed helicopters, has killed hundreds of acres of food crops, scores of cattle and hundreds of fish that washed up on the banks of the Guamuez River. On several occasions, several witnesses said, the aircraft dropped herbicide within the town itself.
U.S. drug control policy director Barry R. McCaffrey has said repeatedly that the herbicide, Roundup, produced by Monsanto Co., is harmless to humans and animals-he called it "totally safe" during a November visit to Colombia. However, in the United States it is sold with warning labels advising users to "not apply this product in a way that will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through drift." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says glyphosate-based products such as Roundup should be handled with caution and could cause vomiting, swelling of the lungs, pneumonia, mental confusion and tissue damage.
Several farmers here said they have experienced fever-like symptoms since being sprayed, but local doctors report only one hospitalization for chemical poisoning. Mayor Flover Edmundo Meza, whose own farm was fumigated last week, predicts widespread hunger throughout the municipality of 35,000 people because of crop damage. The loss could result in thousands of families leaving their farms, he said. "Our intention is to eliminate these crops-voluntarily-and avoid these damages, but the government is not listening to us," said Meza, who took office Jan. 1. "People will not be able to eat, and we don't have the resources to address this. We are asking the government to stop at once."
The U.S. Congress has pledged $1.3 billion over the next two years to Plan Colombia, most going toward such military hardware as the helicopters used in the fumigation missions. The U.S. contribution also includes money to build small businesses, health clinics, schools and roads that Colombian officials hope will help end two decades of coca cultivation in Putumayo. European nations have chipped in more than $200 million for social programs, but have roundly condemned the fumigation strategy. However, that approach is backed with enthusiasm by the United States; some U.S. officials in Colombia proudly display photos of denuded coca and poppy fields on their office walls.
About $81 million of the U.S. aid is available for the plan's alternative development program, which through subsidies and small loans seeks to coax farmers to abandon coca crops for legal ones. Of that sum, $30 million is marked for eradication programs that farmers must join if they are to avoid fumigation. In December, more than 500 families signed up for crop substitution programs in Puerto Asis, an area largely protected from guerilla forces by privately funded paramilitary groups and a nearby army base. But not a single farmer in La Hormiga or in the neighboring municipality of San Miguel signed on to the plan when it was presented here late last summer. Gonzalo de Francisco, President Andres Pastrana's point man for Plan Colombia, said the communities understood the consequences but might have been frightened off by pressure from guerilla forces.
De Francisco said the towns, which sent his office petitions pleading for an end to the fumigation six days after it began, will be offered another chance to sign the pacts in coming weeks. In the meantime, the spraying will continue. "Obviously, we take these reports [of harm from spraying] seriously and we are trying to get the best information we can so we can analyze the situation correctly," de Francisco said. Fumigation is not perfect, he said, and everyone would be better off if the villagers agreed to join the programs to end coca cultivation.
The central government in Bogota argues that the spraying is necessary because as much as one-third of Colombia's coca comes from small farms like the ones here. An estimated 66,000 acres of coca are under cultivation in the municipality of Valle de Guamuez, of which La Hormiga is the capital. That is almost double the acreage of food crops and accounts for a large fraction of the province's total coca production, which has been increasing. But a recent tour of the area suggested there is no way to fumigate from the air without harming legal agriculture as well as drug crops. "That is the thing that hurt me," said Rosa Elvira Zambrano, a 71-year-old widow, pointing to her neighbor's four-acre coca field, which lies across a barbed-wire fence from her withering grove of banana trees and yucca. Zambrano, who has lived on a seven-acre farm inside La Hormiga's city limits for 25 years, grows food and raises chickens to support her daughter, also a widow, and three grandchildren.
On the morning of Dec. 22, she said, a group of planes and helicopters passed over her farm three times, spraying herbicide on her crops while mostly missing her neighbor's coca. "It's the government that has ruined all this," she said. "How will I eat?" More than a dozen farmers said the aircraft appear to be spraying from high altitudes, perhaps for fear of guerilla ground fire. The result, they say, has been indiscriminate fumigation. A reporter's inspection of fields in the area suggested that food crops have been hit at least as hard as coca. Ismael Acosta, a 46-year-old father of five, cultivates an acre and a half of coca on his farm along the banks of the Guamuez River. He said that at noon last Wednesday, more than 10 aircraft passed over his farm, most of which is planted with corn and yucca, a common crop grown for its roots. One day later, his corn patch had turned brown and his yucca was losing leaves.
A few yards away, his coca patch showed signs of yellowing. In Puerto Asis, meanwhile, about 550 farmers are beginning a social experiment meant to end fear of fumigation. Last month, two-thirds of them signed agreements with the government to receive $1,000 payments if they pulled up their coca plants within a year.
The other third, who don't grow coca, received pledges of the same subsidy as a reward for staying out of the drug business. The farmers can keep the money or use it to buy farming supplies to get a new start with legal crops. The sum would be enough to pay for two milk cows, 50 chickens, an acre of banana trees and more.
More important, the agreements authorize the farmers to apply to a local nonprofit foundation for small-business loans from a pool of U.S. and European aid. Farmers are to get seats on the foundation's board and the chance to pitch ideas for putting such enterprises as cattle ranches and fish farms on former coca fields.
Fernando Bautista is a butcher who helps run his cousin's 15-acre coca farm along the placid Putumayo River near Santa Ana. Bautista has lost three brothers to drug-trade murders; now he says he wants to give his two daughters another way of life by starting a dairy farm with government help. He and his cousin, Ramiro Garcia, have joined with 20 other coca farmers to pitch the idea. They plan to pool their $1,000 government payments, then seek a loan to purchase 10 cows each, build stables and buy tank trucks. But the economics must make sense for Garcia to give up the $6,000 in annual profit he has been getting from the 35 pounds of coca paste that his farm produces each year.
Along the edge of his field stands a warning: a small patch of brilliant green plants resembling clover-infant coca bushes, enough to plant 25 acres. "If the government helps us, I will sell them or just pull them up," Garcia said. "If not, I'll plant them."
Copyright 2001 The Washington Post Company
Noticias sobre Colombia | Plan Colombia (ca) | Plan Colombia (en) | AGP
REUTERS, Friday, 5 January 2001
Twelve Dead in Second Colombia Massacre in Two Days BOGOTA - Gunmen killed at least 12 peasants on Friday in a mountainous region of northwestern Colombia where leftist guerillas and far- right paramilitaries are fighting for territorial control, police said. The killing, the second in the area in two days, happened between the towns of El Penol and Guatape in the department of Antioquia, regional police commander Col. Guillermo Aranda told reporters.
Police blamed paramilitaries for killing 11 people on Wednesday near the town of Yolombo but did not know who was responsible for Friday's attack. Several shotgun-toting men in combat uniforms went from house to house killing suspected collaborators with rival groups, Aranda said. “We don't know who is to blame for this massacre — we don't know if it was paramilitaries or guerillas,” he said. “They came murdering peasants ... these people did not have anything to do with the conflict in which these outlawed groups are engaged,” he added. Colombia, an Andean nation with 40 million inhabitants, is mired in a four decades-old conflict involving leftist rebels the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), paramilitary forces that rights groups allege have links to the military and the state security forces. Colombia's army denies paramilitary links.
The conflict, which has claimed more than 35,000 civilian lives and displaced 2 million people in the last decade alone, has intensified in recent months despite President Andres Pastrana's peace efforts with leftist rebels. Police recorded 205 massacres in Colombia in 2000 in which 1,226 people were killed. Most were attributed to paramilitaries, whom rights organizations allege commit the worst human rights violations in a “dirty war ” against guerillas.
Copyright 2001 Reuters
Noticias sobre Colombia | Plan Colombia (ca) | Plan Colombia (en) | AGP
Rethink Colombia Peace Drive, Politicians Say - By Jude Webber BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombian President Andres Pastrana has not yet given up on his floundering peace drive with FARC rebels — but he has considered it, government and party officials say. Pastrana interrupted a vacation to consult political leaders on the two-year-old peace process, regarded by many Colombians as increasingly futile, amid calls from across the political spectrum for an urgent re-evaluation of his policy of granting the rebels a demilitarized zone.
The peace process plunged into crisis after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) pulled out in November. It was dealt a fresh blow last week by the murder of a prominent congressman the army blamed on the FARC. “We don't want there to be this breakdown (in talks) but the government is ready, it too has thought about breaking them off,” the leader of Pastrana's own Conservative Party, Ciro Ramirez, told reporters after the meeting, which lasted hours Wednesday.
Pastrana's top peace commissioner Camilo Gomez, who plans talks with the FARC commander Manuel “Sureshot ” Marulanda in the rebels' enclave Thursday, said all was not yet lost — but indicated the government was also tiring. “We believe in a political and negotiated solution but it is undeniably important for advances to be made more concrete and certain situations to be cleared up,” he said.
Politicians described Thursday's talks as pivotal in the peace drive, which has so far yielded nothing tangible in terms of ending four decades of brutal violence. Gomez said it was up to the FARC to explain whether it murdered Diego Turbay, the president of a congressional peace commission, with his mother and five others last Friday. “By now, everyone in Colombia is convinced that the peace process cannot continue ... as it has until now,” opposition Liberal Party leader Horacio Serpa said before the talks. “There needs to be a ... change of direction.”
--- Critical Juncture ---
Ramirez urged a “180-degree turn,” saying the government knew it needed a more radical stance. Pastrana, who came to power on a peace ticket but has lost popularity amid recession and high unemployment, has insisted he is making progress. Critics say that ceding a sprawling tract of southern jungle to the FARC for peace talks in 1998 has been a disaster, allowing it to use the area as a fertile recruitment ground.
The enclave's future is also in the spotlight. It officially remains off limits to the military only until Jan. 31 and while Pastrana has extended it six times in the past, he may find it more difficult to do so again. With the economic and social development and drug- busting Plan Colombia — backed by U.S. military aid — set to begin this month, many Colombians fear an escalation of violence in 2001.
Gomez's talks with Marulanda were expected to focus on Turbay's murder and a tentative exchange of sick prisoners. Such a swap, dangled by Pastrana to try to lure the rebels back to talks, would be the first in Colombia's war.
The FARC pulled out of the peace talks demanding a crackdown on their arch enemies, far-right paramilitary death squads. With the FARC talks in crisis, Pastrana has pushed ahead with plans to allow Colombia's second biggest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), its own enclave for talks. But local residents fearing a repeat of the FARC experience.
Noticias sobre Colombia | Plan Colombia (ca) | Plan Colombia (en) | AGP
December 28, 2000, New York Times
Bush Could Get Tougher on Venezuela's Leader -By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - After two years in which the United States has carefully avoided a feud with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, the administration of George W. Bush will probably take a tougher stand against the populist leader, Republican officials and foreign policy analysts say. There is a growing belief in Republican circles that Mr. Chavez is undercutting American foreign policy by providing oil to Cuba, by opposing "Plan Colombia," which includes $1.3 billion in United States counternarcotics aid for South America, and by giving political support to guerillas and anti-government forces in neighboring Andean nations. There is also concern that Mr. Chavez, a former paratrooper who led a failed coup in 1992, is distorting the democratic free-market model advocated in Washington by consolidating institutions under his control and setting himself up as an elected dictator.
While there is no bipartisan consensus on whether Mr. Chavez is merely a nuisance or a real threat to United States interests in Latin America, Republican advisers to the Bush team say the friction is increasingly hard to overlook. "The Venezuela issue is likely to be troubling, or a hot spot in the first three to six months" as anti-drug battalions trained by the United States begin operations in Colombia, said Georges A. Fauriol, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy research center with close ties to Republicans. But the analysts also preach caution. The stakes are high, they note, as Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East and is America's fourth largest supplier. An openly hostile stance toward Mr. Chavez could do more harm than good.
"It's been a conscious policy of trying to engage with him on a positive basis wherever possible without rising to the rhetorical bait when he pokes us in the eye," said Bernard Aronson, a former assistant secretary of state for Latin America in the previous Bush administration. "His actions are getting harder and harder to ignore. I'm not sure the incoming administration is going to be as tolerant."
Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Toro Hardy, said that Mr. Chavez had legitimate concerns over Plan Colombia, including a fear that it will bring refugees, renewed violence and an arms race to Venezuela. "He is a president who believes a nation, no matter its size, has the right to act in a sovereign fashion," he said. "But it in no way is a hostile posture."
Some Clinton administration officials agree. One longtime diplomat who served in Venezuela said Mr. Chavez had not jeopardized the United States priorities of fighting drugs, protecting democracy and safeguarding the oil supply. "All of our interests are pretty well taken care of," the diplomat said. However troublesome Mr. Chavez's moves to purge the judiciary and neutralize political parties and labor unions, the envoy added, "what Chavez did he did on the basis of clean elections. So far he is functioning within the democratic structure."
Republican Party foreign policy experts say they would look to Mexico to help reduce America's dependence on Venezuelan oil, which currently accounts for 13 percent of United States imports. Mr. Chavez has helped in that regard, slashing his nation's oil production to drive up prices; in the process, Venezuela slipped behind Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico as a United States supplier. While governor of Texas, Mr. Bush built a comfortable relationship with Mexico's conservative new president, Vicente Fox, and he is expected to make United States-Mexican relations a cornerstone of his Latin policy. "We need to cultivate the Mexicans on this," said a Republican foreign policy aide who served Presidents Reagan and Bush. "They could conceivably be a much more reliable supplier."
The next administration is also expected to solidify contacts within the Venezuelan military, which is increasingly uncomfortable with Mr. Chavez, the Republican experts say. Unlike Mr. Chavez, many Venezuelan officers studied and trained in the United States and do not share his suspicions, they said. Rather than clash directly with Mr. Chavez, the Republicans say, they would favor a quiet effort to prod other Latin American nations to spurn Mr. Chavez and ignore his appeals to regional solidarity. Most of Venezuela's Andean neighbors have already voiced distress over what they say is meddling by Mr. Chavez in their internal affairs, but the most influential nation, Brazil, has taken a more benign view.
"Bush has an opportunity with Venezuela to say, I'm going to deal with the hemisphere respectfully, and to a certain extent, I'm got to let the hemisphere be the judge of Chavez's behavior," said Dan Fisk, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group. "What Chavez wants is to provoke some sort of overreaction from Washington." The incoming administration will also try to blunt regional skepticism toward Plan Colombia by providing a significant amount of development aid to Venezuela's neighbors, officials and analysts said.
Since Mr. Chavez took office in February of last year, he has seemed determined to display his independence from the United States, a posture that plays well with his nationalistic, mostly poor supporters. He spurned United States flood aid when American troops came to deliver it. He became the first head of state to break the international isolation of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, when he visited Iraq in August. He lavished admiration on Fidel Castro, and helped him combat the American trade ban by sending him oil in return for medical service for Venezuelans. He has fostered the greatest increase in tensions with Colombia in two decades, has reached out to Colombian rebels and has predicted that American military aid will lead to a regional conflagration. His expressions of sympathy for anti-government forces in Bolivia and Ecuador have drawn howls of protest from those countries.
He has barred American counter- narcotics pilots from flying in Venezuelan airspace, and he has led the charge in OPEC to force up prices by scaling back production. During the uncertain days after the United States presidential election, Mr. Chavez could not resist a jab at his northern neighbor. "We're willing to help out if necessary," he said. Such positions play well at home, and some analysts say it is occasionally difficult to determine whether Mr. Chavez's appeals to class resentment and regional leadership are merely bluster.
Toro Hardy, Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, argues that Mr. Chavez has been a reliable economic partner of the United States and has taken major steps toward market reform and privatization that have benefited American investors. "When two countries have such close economic ties you can't speak of conflicting relations," Mr. Hardy said in an interview. He denied that Venezuela provides any material support to rebels in the Andean region, and he attributed the concern over Mr. Chavez to "misperceptions." He said Mr. Chavez's five trips to the United States prove he is not anti-American.
Venezuela | Noticias sobre Colombia | Plan Colombia (ca) | Plan Colombia (en) | AGP