1. Funding Restored to US Army School
2. Colombia Grants Oil Drilling License on U'wa Lands
3. Colombian Peace Talks Stalled?
4. Colombia: IMF Arrives, Economy Falls from Grace [.....]
5. International Protests Help Unionists [.....]
 

*1. FUNDING RESTORED TO US ARMY SCHOOL: Members of a US House of Representatives conference committee voted 8 to 7 on Sept. 22 to provide full funding next year for the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), rejecting a July 30 vote in the House of Representatives that would have cut the school's budget [see Update #496]. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) said the House conferees on the fiscal 2000 foreign operations spending bill voted to accept the Senate's position that provided $2 million in the State Department budget to pay the expenses of Latin American soldiers who attend the school at Fort Benning, Georgia. The $2 million represents about half of SOA's annual budget; congressional opponents of the school estimate that its real cost to US taxpayers is about $20 million a year.

While the action will not become final until the conference on the entire bill is concluded, Kingston said the section covering funding for the school has been closed and cannot be reopened. "The School of the Americas is in there," he said. "It's survived another year." Kingston said the House agreed to go along with continued funding for the school because members of the foreign operations spending panel did not want to lose jurisdiction over the school, which receives the other half of its budget from the Defense Department. The Defense Department also pays the salaries of the military officers who serve as instructors at SOA. Kingston said House conferees felt that the Pentagon would find a way to continue operating the school, even if the $2 million in training funds had been eliminated. [AP 9/23/99]

The House conferees who voted to cut SOA funding were Reps. David Obey (D-WI), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-MI), Marv Olav Sabo (D-MN) and John Edward Porter (R-IL). Along with Kingston, those who voted to keep the funding were Reps. Bill Young (R-FL), Sonny Callahan (R-AL), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Ron Packard (R-CA), Joseph Knollenberg (R-MI), Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and Roy Blunt (R-MO). [SOA Watch message 9/23/99]

The school has been the target of a 10-year protest campaign, led by religious activists, because of its history of training Latin American military officers linked to serious human rights violations. Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest who has spearheaded the campaign against SOA, said the latest conference committee action won't slow the campaign. "We are not going away," he said. "We're going to keep coming back to Washington and to the main gate of Fort Benning in greater and greater numbers every year until that school is shut down." [AP 9/23/99]

In an email message, SOA Watch--the group that organizes opposition to the school--noted that the latest legislative setback does not affect HR732 and S873, the House and Senate bills that call for the outright closing of the SOA. "We have another whole year to gather enough co-sponsors to bring these bills to a vote," writes the group. [SOA Watch message 9/23/99]

COLOMBIA GRANTS OIL DRILLING LICENSE ON U'WA LANDS:

On Sept. 21, Colombian environment minister Juan Mayr Maldonado announced that his government had granted the US oil company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) a license to explore for oil in the Samore bloc, on a site that lies just outside the newly demarcated land reserve of the 5,000-member U'wa indigenous nation, but within traditional tribal lands the U'wa hold sacred. "The U'wa people are rejecting and condemning this decision," U'wa spokesperson Ebaristo Tegria told Associated Press by telephone from tribal offices in Cubara. "This spells cultural and environmental genocide." [AP 9/21/99; U'wa Defense Working Group News Release 9/21/99]

"We are looking at the information to see what action the community will take," Tegria told Reuters. "Mass suicide is one option we are considering. The community must consider how best to defend its social, cultural, territorial and political rights." [Reuters 9/21/99]

In what was widely seen as an effort to defuse U'wa protests over oil exploration, in August the government enlarged the U'wa reservation from 98,000 acres (40,000 hectares) to more than 543,000 acres (220,000 hectares) [see Update #499]. Conveniently, the new license gives Oxy the green light to drill its proposed "Gibraltar 1" test well near the town of Toledo, just a few kilometers outside the limits of the new reserve. [Reuters 9/21/99; U'wa Defense Working Group News Release 9/21/99] Mayr denied that the expansion of the U'wa reserve was designed to block objections to the Oxy permit. "No way. They are totally different issues," he told a news conference. [AP 9/21/99]

Occidental Petroleum has tried for several years to obtain permission to drill for oil in the Samore bloc, believing it could contain as many as 2.5 billion barrels of crude. After first applying to explore directly on U'wa lands, the company backed down last year amid intense international criticism. In October, the company resubmitted an application to drill just outside the recognized U'wa territory. The permit skirts constitutional requirements that grant indigenous Colombians the right to manage their resources. If sizable petroleum deposits are found in the area, the company will have to reapply for a license to take the oil out of the ground. [AP 9/21/99]

Oxy has not issued a formal statement on the Environment Ministry's decision to grant the license. But technically, work on sinking the 14,000 foot test well, expected to cost some $30 million, could begin immediately. [Reuters 9/21/99]

COLOMBIAN PEACE TALKS STALLED?

Speaking at the Americas Society during a visit to New York, Colombian foreign minister Guillermo Fernandez de Soto said that peace negotiations with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) could resume in a matter of weeks. "We hope that the difficulties that we have at this point will be resolved in the next two weeks and we can go to the negotiation table," said Fernandez. His comments appeared to conflict with a Sept. 18 communique issued by the FARC-Popular Army (FARC-EP) in which the rebel group announced that the peace dialogue process that began on Jan. 7 of this year was "suspended indefinitely." [Associated Press 9/24/99; FARC Communique 9/18/99]

According to the FARC communique, the dialogue has been stalled by such factors as the government's failure to take sufficient action against rightwing paramilitary groups; the government's insistence on allowing international verification teams into the rebel-controlled peace zone to investigate alleged abuses; "pressures from the Colombian and US governments, through their embassies, to close off the FARC-EP's political space outside Colombia"; the lack of solutions to the basic economic problems affecting poor people; the "lack of political will on the part of the powers of state" to resolve a "humanitarian problem" by arranging an exchange of hostage soldiers and police agents for imprisoned FARC members; and because the "well-known alliance of Pastrana with the United States of America to step up the war in Colombia against the FARC-EP, under the guise of jointly combating drug trafficking, puts the government's peace intentions in doubt." The communique--signed by FARC leaders Manuel Marulanda Velez, Alfonso Cano, Raul Reyes, Timo Leon Jimenez, Ivan Marquez, Jorge Briceno, Efrain Guzman--ends by pledging the FARC's "unchanging political will to continue in the search for peace with social justice, independence and sovereignty for Colombia and its people." [FARC Communique 9/18/99]

COLOMBIA: IMF ARRIVES, ECONOMY FALLS FROM GRACE:

Colombia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have reached an agreement on a three-year $2-3 billion loan package, Finance Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo said after a meeting with IMF managing director Michel Camdessus in Washington on Sept. 24. Details are to be announced at a news conference on Sept. 27, and the agreement is expected to be approved formally by mid-October. Colombian president Andres Pastrana visited Washington earlier in the week of Sept. 20 to seek $3.5 billion in aid from international sources for a three-year plan to combat the drug trade, fortify the legal system and rescue endangered social programs. He reported on Sept. 22 that his plan had received "big support" from US president Bill Clinton. [Associated Press 9/24/99]

The IMF package represents the fund's first intervention in the Colombian economy. In an interview with Alberto Martinez M. of the Bogota daily La Republica at the end of the formal negotiations on Sept. 20, Restrepo had to face questions about the lending agency's history of imposing drastic austerity measures on loan recipients. "So now the IMF has really arrived here, minister?" Martinez asked. Restrepo answered that some Colombians had a "somewhat anachronistic vision of the IMF from the 1960s that almost identified the arrival of this agency with an invasion of the [US] Marines." The minister insisted that Colombia's IMF agreement was different from those accepted by many other countries; he pointed to agreements for $300 million a year for new social programs and for changing economic priorities if the government reaches a peace accord with leftist guerrillas. [El Colombiano (Medellin) 9/21/99]

The IMF accord came as the government was announcing more bad news for the Colombian economy, which declined by 7.6% in the second quarter in comparison to the year before. The first quarter had already shown a 5.6% decline. Industrial output shrank 16% in July against July 1998, while urban unemployment is close to 20%. The government now projects a total 3.5% decline in gross domestic product (GDP) for 1999; just one month earlier it expected a 1% increase for the year. "This is the worst recession they've had since the Great Depression," according to Michael Henry, ING Baring's Latin America economist. "They've had quite a fall from grace." [Wall Street Journal 9/23/99]

On Sept. 21, Standard & Poor's Ratings Group lowered Colombia's investment a full point, from "investment grade" to "speculation grade." [EC 9/22/99] Four days later, on Sept. 25, Restrepo announced that the government would no longer try to keep Colombia's currency, the peso, within a trading band, the system the country has used since 1994; instead, the peso will be allowed to float in accordance with market rates. Asked if he expected a sharp decline when markets reopened on Sept. 27, Restrepo said: "We'll see what happens... We don't predict what will happen." [Clarin (Buenos Aires) 9/26/99 from AP] [.....]

INTERNATIONAL PROTESTS HELP UNIONISTS:

A survey published by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) on June 10 indicates that international protests against labor abuses are helping improve labor standards. Joint work by unions and human rights groups is "definitely contributing to major breakthroughs," according to ICFTU general secretary Bill Jordan. "Union activists have escaped certain death, many have been freed from prison, and an increasing number of governments now think twice before choosing the path of confrontation."

But the survey reported continued abuses, with 125 people murdered in 1998 just for belonging to unions. Colombia accounted for 98 of the victims, and more than 270 Colombian unionists received death threats. Unionists were also murdered in Argentina, Bolivia, Togo and Morocco. Jordan criticized labor abuses in maquiladoras in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, but noted improvement in labor rights in a number of countries, including Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. [Financial Times 6/11/99] 
 

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