Eco-catastrophe in Colombia 

By Earth First! Journal

• Information needed on the plight of refugees and poor children in Colombia.
• Information needed on CIA, oil company and Colombian government involvement with cocaine, death squads and each other.
• Information needed on Colombian ecological crises and toxic industries.

"At the end of the day, the US does not care if we all kill each other. What matters to them is that we get rid of the drug crops." -Vice Rector of the National University of Colombia

Forty million people along with the most biologically diverse, endangered ecosystems in the world are under attack by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and mercenaries paid by oil companies. This war is fought with bombs and bullets, as well as with herbicides and media misinformation. The cause of this war is as diverse as the region's terrain and its ethnic variety. The rapacious greed of multinationals like Occidental Petroleum, Shell, BP, Texaco and their counterparts in the Colombian elite is the main problem, but cocaine use in the US is the fuel that fires this inferno. Drug exports pay for the weapons of the right wing government backed death squads and the revolutionary guerrillas.

For years Colombia was banned from receiving US military or drug fighting money due to its poor human rights record and its failure to cooperate in the drug war. In 1998 they received $89 million, and this year the total reached $289 million despite continued human rights abuses Colombia is now the third largest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt. Direct US military intervention looms on the horizon for this region which exports more oil to the US than the entire Middle East. President Clinton is giving the nod to a death-squad offensive. These squads work closely with Colombian military and together they are responsible for the deaths of 25,000 people this decade - 300,000 since 1945. Violence has displaced 1.2 million people in the last three years (mostly women and children).

Death squads guard petroleum facilities and shipments of cocaine. The head of these squads, Carlos Castano, is a key player in the Call Drug Cartel, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Castano took over the direction of the death squads from another CIA asset, Colombian Army General Van Martinez. CIA involvement in Colombia began in the 1950s and grew along with the drug trade. In 1991 the CIA established a Colombian naval intelligence group that became a key part of the death squad's continuing terror campaign against guerrillas and anyone who speaks out for change or peace (Z Magazine, March 1999). Many death squad leaders graduated from the School of the Americas in Fort Benign, Georgia, where thousands of Latin American soldiers have been trained in counter-insurgency and torture. Castano proudly takes responsibility for his massacres. He has kidnapped Colombian senators and he speaks in radio interviews about the need for more killing. Arrest warrants for Castano, army officers and other death squad leaders gather dust on the Attorney General's desk. Evidence mounts of collaboration between the military and the death squads (Progressive, September 1999). In July, the largest Colombian guerrilla group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) launched an attack against the mountain headquarters of Castano, but were driven back by the Colombian army with US intelligence assistance (Stratfor GI Update).

Hundreds of US military personnel are on the ground, training elite units of the Colombian Army. Sophisticated US spy planes, like the US RC-7B, inform and direct combat operations. DynaCorp and East Inc. operate a private airforce used to eradicate poppies and coca plants, dousing hundreds of square miles of the countryside with herbicides. Monsanto's Roundup is the toxin of choice, but the US has pressured Colombia to use Dow Chemical's more lethal tebuthiuron. Trade named Spike, it comes in a granular form making it easier to apply. Colombia is the only country in the hemisphere where drug crops are sprayed from the air. Genetically-engineered viruses are also being developed for the drug war arsenal. Despite this toxic rain, coca production has risen dramatically. In July, two DynaCorp employees were killed along with five US military personnel when an intelligence-gathering aircraft hit a mountain or a FARC missile in southern Colombia.

The news media have confused the issues and kept secret the US' culpability in this dirty war. They create an impression that the FARC and the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), Colombia's other major guerrilla group, have long controlled most of the drug trade, but the January 17 New York Times, , reports, "ELN until now has been a minor player." The FARC didn't create the cocaine trade, they took it away from the government and the death squads. Moreover the guerrillas are presented as unwilling to lay down their arms as part of a peace plan. In the late 1980s, guerrillas put down the gun for the ballot box. They were met with the votes of many people and a hail of bullets from the death squads. Almost 5,000 members of the opposition political party, Patriotic Union, have been killed by the right wing since 1989.

Where is the outcry or the media each time the death squads kill one of the 400 teachers who have fallen victim to their terror in the last five years... or the 2,300 union activists killed since 1986? Where was the international condemnation of the Colombian government when Embera tribal leader Alonso Dominico Jarupia was executed for his opposition to the Urra I hydroelectric dam? The killers had lists of victims and said the killing would continue until the Embera agreed to the dam's construction. Eight months later, another leader fell and 2,500 Embera sought asylum in Spain. The Urra I Dam continues to flood tribal lands which disappear under the waters of the Sinu River. Many destructive hydroelectric projects are underway in Colombia. Near the Ecuadoran border two dams on the Guamez River would change the course of the river, displace 4,000 people and endanger endemic species of plant as well as other flora and fauna of the paramo (typical Colombian highland cloud forest above 8000 feet).

The oil companies and the government must be held responsible for the violence and the pollution that is the byproduct of their oil operations. Oil is Colombia's most important legal export (27 percent of total exports). Coffee is second (15 percent). The US imports 260,000 barrels of Colombian oil every day. In the U'wa region alone, 1.7 million barrels of oil have spilled onto the soil and rivers in the last 12 years. Colombia has the worst human rights record in the Americas, and the area around the U'wa has the worst record in Colombia. Robin Kirk, author of "War with Colombia and International Law," supports the contention that the death squads make their massacres as brutal and gruesome as possible to make sure the message is understood. They often carry lists of trade unionists, Catholic priests, human rights observers and guerrilla supporters.

A biological paradise, Colombia has the greatest number of bird species (1,780) of any country in the world. It is second in plants and amphibians and third in reptiles. Only Brazil surpasses it in total number of species. Brazil is seven times larger. The Macarena region contains Colombia's first biological preserve, established in 1942. Half of the world's orchids bloom here, and a dazzling variety of jaguars, dolphin, primates, giant otters, spectacled bears, agoutis, kinkajous and the FARC live here too. The Macarena has been its headquarters for decades, and it has earned respect from biologists for establishing some order over the squatters who are a constant threat to the region's biological integrity.

Besides the war, the oil spills, dams and herbicides, there is the usual devastation from cattle, road construction, logging and mining-the social and environmental externalities that come with the US model of economic development. Manatees, tapirs and macaws are but a tiny fraction of the species that are on the edge of extinction in Colombia. Most species have not even been classified here.

In this threatened ecosystem, the guerrillas are fighting for their lives and the tens of thousands of relatives they have lost to US and narco-death squads. Thousands of young people have joined the guerrilla's bid to end the right wing's forty years of collusion with oil company exploitation and death squad violence. Their goal is to stop this neo-liberal madness that devastates people and the environment in a chase for profits. Join their voices, say no! to the billion dollars the US has thrown into Colombia this decade. No more to the billion dollars that Clinton is desperately offering to the most brutal military in the America's. No to US military advisors and the CIA's cocaine death squad. No to neo-liberal, free trade-follow the US-development policies that are the ultimate death squad. Only an alternative model of economic development can hope to avoid the social and ecological catastrophe that US policies have fostered in Colombia. Major emphasis must be placed on ecologically sustainable rural development and expensive crop-substitution programs that are acceptable to the guerrillas.

Presidential candidate George W. Bush and the wife of the US military's head of counter-drug efforts in Colombia, Colonel James Hiett, can't say no to personal cocaine use. Eight US embassy employees in Bogota are under investigation for drug smuggling. The US embassy in Colombia's capital appears to be just another link in the drug trade. The US is spending $20 billion a year fighting the war on drugs, while American citizens shove an equal amount of drugs up their noses. Drug treatment programs in the US are ridiculously underfunded when only 50 percent of hard-core users can find help and treatment budgets are declining (Washington Post, August, 21). If fighting drugs was the priority of the Clinton Administration then the cocaine death squads would disappear overnight. If Clinton wanted peace in Colombia he would halt US arms shipments to the Colombian Army and end covert activity there.

It is time for human rights and indigenous support groups, environmentalists and everyone who cares about the death and devastation that our drug addictions are causing, to unite in condemnation of US support for the wrong side in Colombia. We have to solve our drug problem and make amends to the evils we have spawned in the Andean nations. A peace treaty is possible if the death squads are disarmed and autonomous regions are established-including safe regions for indigenous peoples. In recent peace talks FARC was essentially ceded one third of the country-an area as big as Switzerland. Let's invest in abuse prevention, treatment centers, and development aid to Colombia in exchange for international purchase of critical biological preserves. A similar program is needed for the rest of Latin America which is on the verge of social, environmental and economic collapse.

So, I'll have one more cup of coffee, Colombian... and maybe a banana for desert Colombian, of course. I'll pass on the coke and maybe practice my Spanish while I consider whether it's a good idea to change my address or my hairstyle. The CIA and their friends have a long reach and that's no joke.

Eco-Solidarity seeks an end to the phony drug war that the US wages against the land and the poor people of Colombia. The most biologically diverse ecosystems in the world are at risk here. Almost two million people have been displaced by a brutal civil war that is financed and directed by the US and its covert operations. Refugees, mostly women and children, are crowded into slums or driven further into the rainforests.

Join us in advocating for Peace with Social Justice. Disarm the right-wing deathsquads that are really a branch of the Colombian Army. End US arms shipments to Colombia. Take the 20 billion dollars the US wastes in its current drug war and spend it on ecologically sustainable development aid for the Andean nations.

For more information, contact:
Jason Martin, Eco-Solidarity Colombia Phone: (520) 388-5514 E-mail: ecosolidarity@ hotmail.com Website: www.geocities.com/rainforest/andes/2185

Earth First! Journal POB 1415, Eugene, OR 97440-1415 USA

Earth First! Journal, POB 1415, Eugene, OR 97440-1415 USA (541) 344-8004, fax 344-7688; earthfirst@igc.org - http://www.enviroweb.org/ef

Subscriptions are $25/year(USA), $35 1st class (US, Canada, Mexico), $35 Surface Mail International, $45 Air Mail International

An international EF! web address is: http://www.k2net.co.uk/ef
"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view." -- Edward Abbey