Colombia will hold presidential elections this upcoming May 30, and although many believe in a predictable victory of the Alvaro Uribe political party, but the opposition groups continue their struggle to change the history of a country so rich in natural and human resources, but sadly mired in a bitter internal war, for too long already. The 2010 presidential elections in Colombia, will not only be decided by the Colombian people. Many interest groups will be watching anxiously and influencing the vote from the United States.
Thanks to a tremendous support from the U.S., the current Uribe administration –with its Conservative allies- has secured a majority control of the State powers, and it’s running a weak and manipulated democracy, gaining control of almost all the media and poll survey companies, as well as strong ties to industrial and business groups, the police and armed forces, and the illegal but influential paramilitary groups.
The Colombian right-wing political force, is one of the strongest, most violent, corrupt and racist in the world, and they are determined to hold their power in the Executive and Legislative (recent elections were held) at any cost. Since 1998, Colombia is ruled by Conservative presidents Andres Pastrana and Alvaro Uribe, with the strong support of the U.S. military, financial and political powers, through a multimillion-dollar aid and logistics.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe greets the public during a visit to Quito in 2009, making a gesture that many consider compatible with the horrendous human rights abuses committed by his government. AP Photo
Given the legal impossibility of a controversial re-election of Uribe, thanks to the intervention of the Colombian Constitutional Court, its closest allies are disputing the ruling party leadership. It is likely that former Defense minister Juan Manuel Santos, will be chosen to replace Uribe.
Santos is a favorite of the mighty Pentagon and the Obama administration, as the best candidate for the interests of Washington, DC. The U.S. foreign policy towards South America hasn’t changed much since the Democrats took power with Barack Obama in 2008, and now there is a more aggressive emphasis on achieving a military presence in the region and especially in Colombia, intimidating the ‘annoying’ neighbor Venezuela.
Colombia is now one of the strongest U.S. allies in the world, and in exchange it receives the largest U.S. military aid, after Israel. Recently, both countries have signed an agreement allowing the permanent presence of U.S. military personnel and armament in seven Colombian bases. This agreement will last ten years and is renewable, and it has caused protests from Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama and other countries in the region.
Juan Manuel Santos is a right-wing politician, an economist educated in U.S. and U.K., a journalist with a military career. Santos belongs to a rich family that owns the newspaper El Tiempo, the only of national circulation, and other media outlets that were responsible to create the "popularity" of Uribe in his seven years in power.
Santos is an avowed enemy of Hugo Chavez, he supported the right-wing Venezuelan coup in 2002, and he is one of the masterminds of the March 2008 attacks of the Colombian military on the FARC guerrilla in Ecuador's territory. In the attack 24 people were killed including the guerrilla leader Raul Reyes, plus innocent civilians and four Mexican students. It’s said that the U.S. was involved with intelligence and logistics during this attack.
The presumed popularity of Alvaro Uribe -which is relative-, is promoted by most media corporations as the ones owned by the Santos family, in a country where journalists and opposition activists are easy targets for violence. Most Colombians do not trust the current politics of their country, nor its fictional democracy.
For example, voting is optional in Colombia, and in the 2006 presidential election only 12 million voters voted from a total of 26.7 million registered voters. That is, only 45% of Colombians voted and Uribe won with just 27% of the national votes.
To ensure a bigger political presence, Uribe created a false majority by promoting the infiltration of illegal paramilitary groups in politics (far right), thus dozens of new parties have appeared. Most of them are “uribistas”. This has changed the traditional political landscape in Colombia, of bipartisanism with the Conservatives (rightists and allies of Uribe), and the Liberals (center, Uribe's former party and now opposition). A third alternative arises with the Polo Democratico Alternativo, of the progressive left.
A child runs in a makeshift camp in a park in central Bogota, on July 29, 2009. More than 800 people displaced by the internal conflict in Colombia, took over the park building houses with plastic, fabric, and pieces of wood. Photo AP
The U.S. and the violence in Colombia The internal violence in Colombia is a direct consequence of the U.S. interventionism in that country, with the intention of preventing a leftist government in that country. The continuing struggle of the Colombian people for a nation of justice and equality, has been answered with genocide, disappearances, torture and dirty war.
Since 1948, Colombia's civil wars have caused millions of deaths, with clashes between government forces along conservative landowners against leftist peasant militias, often supported from Cuba, ideologically.
But the U.S. has sent direct military and financial aid, including the use of the now illegal Napalm, first in 1955 and then in 1964 as part of the Alliance for Progress, of President Kennedy. It was one of the largest displacements of farmers in Colombian history.
Precisely those cruel military attacks against Colombian peasants, caused the creation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 1964, which is one of the last surviving guerrilla groups in the country. The FARC is classified by the U.S. and other countries as a terrorist organization, but most international organizations and countries refuse to follow that classification. It’s said that the FARC now occupies about 2/3 parts of Colombia’s land.
The U.S. intervention in Colombian politics has become more aggressive since the second Clinton administration, who attacked liberal president Ernesto Samper (1994-98), directly accusing him of receiving money from drug trafficking. But current president Alvaro Uribe has direct links with drug mafias and rightist paramilitary groups, and the governments of Clinton, Bush father and son, and Obama have remained mostly silent about such proven links.
The Plan Colombia, which was created by conservative president Andres Pastrana in 1999, was used by the governments of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to extend the U.S. military presence in Colombia, worsening violence in that country, while calling for a strategic victories over the guerrillas.
Since Hugo Chavez won the elections in Venezuela in 1999 the Plan Colombia has been increased, and it has become a plan of imperialist intervention, giving the Colombian right-wing governments about $ 5 billion dollars accumulated, with 80% for military spending.
As a matter of fact, the first victory of Alvaro Uribe in 2002 has been partly a result of the financial and political influence of the U.S. in Colombia, added to the campaign of fear that Colombians were subject against a potential Chavez-alike leftist government. Due to its proximity to Venezuela, the leader of the leftist current in the Americas, Washington, DC, put its trust and support in the ultra rightist former Mayor of Medellin.
In his two terms, Uribe has managed to achieved domestic political reforms in his behalf, the manipulation of the media and news, the murder of community and union leaders, he has worsened the displacement of more than 4 million people, mainly farmers, Indigenous and Afro-descendants in benefit of agribusiness firms, including several from the U.S.
Uribe has allowed the control of the Colombian drug market by the U.S., he authorized the Colombian military attack on Ecuador territory, has worsened the forced migration of Colombians abroad -only in Ecuador there are more than 400,000 refugees- and the threat of an international conflict in South America.
The horrendous situation of Colombia is a direct consequence of the U.S. interventionism, and the dirty internal war among Colombians. But the U.S. influence comes in many trends.
In the 2008 U.S. elections, a senior adviser to then candidate Hillary Clinton was Mark Penn, a corporate neoliberal lobbyist who also was a lobbyist for the –failed so far- Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the U.S. and Colombia. Once exposed, Penn had to apologize and keep a low profile during the electoral process.
In the 2010 elections in Colombia, the senior adviser of Juan Manuel Santos is James Carville, a U.S. political strategist that has been part of the campaigns of Bill Clinton in the U.S. right, and of Tony Blair in Britain -- who also was advised by Mark Penn .
Also, Carville has advised the former president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, now a fugitive from the Bolivian justice and protected by U.S.
The Colombian minister of Interior, Fabio Valencia Cossio and of Defense, Gabriel Silva, signed a military agreement with the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, and the Colombian Foreign minister Jaime Bermudez, at the San Carlos Palace in Bogota on October 30, 2009. Colombia and the United States signed a pact to allow the U.S. access to seven military bases in Colombia. Photo Reuters
Lies that control and kill in Colombia Today, the controlled media in Colombia, the U.S. and the Americas, point to Colombia as a model of democracy and progress. But none mentions that this country is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, after Congo, Sudan and Palestine. Millions of people have been displaced, murdered, disappeared and escaped as refugees to neighboring countries, including Venezuela.
The corporate media also avoids mentioning the proliferation of paramilitary-politics and the influence of drug trafficking mafias in all spheres of the Colombian society. There is silence about the non-viability of a country dominated by racism and economic and social discrimination, controlled by powerful landowners and businessmen elites, heirs of European invaders allied to a corrupt and conservative Catholic church.
Uribe's legacy speaks of a supposed peace, achieved by the cease-fire from the same paramilitary groups that allied to Uribe, and the killing of guerrilla militias and civilians. But this violence has only sown the seeds of an uncertain future for the country.
The right-wing power groups and elites of Colombia, are selfishly clinging to a model that could eventually be defeated if the Colombians were in control of their country. In this year’s elections, it is obvious that the manipulation of democracy, the media, the international law and the true history of this country, have created the perfect conditions to assure favorable results for the right-wing elites of Colombia and the U.S.
Meanwhile, the U.S. imperialism is seizing the strategically most important country in South America, after Brazil. The neighboring countries have already showed nervousness about the U.S. presence, except Peru whose rightist government has also signed a security and intelligence agreement with the Colombians.
Colombia The country of the cumbia, of so much diversity and such a creative and enterprising population, represents the very history of all the Americas. The fortune of this country so rich in resources and cultures, has also been the curse of its population of more than 45 million people.
The violence of this great country is almost the continuation of the colonial struggle that began with the Hispanic invasion of the sixteenth century. Today the "land of dorado" is bathed in the blood of many innocents, caused by an internal struggle of political ideologies, fighting for a territory yet to be colonized.
The barbarity and destruction is caused by the war, the multibillion-dollar illegal drugs, the destructive mining, the polluting agro industry, the lust for power from the armed groups, and the insensitivity of a traumatized population that has grown up surrounded by guns and machetes. All of this must end .
The Colombian people, with a majority of urban mixed Indigenous or mestizos, a third of African descendants, and a considerable number of European, Arab and rural Indigenous, they all remain hopeful that one day, finally, peace will come to their streets and fields, beaches and mountains, valleys and ports.
For that to happen, the United States must withdraw from the country in every way, so that Colombians can take control of their nation. The Colombian oligarchy must end its bloody legacy of hatred and racism, and must accept the true popular will of the majority.
Is for Colombians to promote process of peace, and of disarmament in the long run, beginning with understanding its own history, promoting a historical reconciliation and of tolerance for different political ideas, of respect to the right of its habitants to their lands.
The National Congress building in Colombia is covered with 'ants' as part of an art work by Colombian artist Rafael Gomez Barros, who says the ants represent people displaced by the ongoing armed conflict in Colombia. Bogotá, February 16, 2010. Photo Reuters
It will take generations to change this privileged and complicated country, but as long as cruel and fanatic people Alvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos are presidents of Colombia, unfortunately this process will not begin.
Meanwhile, independent and leftist organizations in Colombia, are still trying to stop the continuation of the policies of Alvaro Uribe. This will not be possible unless there is a coalition of the major opposition candidates: Gustavo Petro of the Polo Democratico Alternativo, Sergio Fajardo of Citizens Engagement and Antanas Mockus of the Green Party. These are three extraordinary political leaders.
An electoral victory of the Colombian opposition, would be very good for Colombia and the world. It would help the internal peace process, restore hope to the Colombians that a united country is possible, where all the armed groups could become a civilian part of the government that Colombians will decide. Also it will improve the relations between the countries of South America, creating a political balance in the region, and ensuring peace and progress among our peoples. Something that perhaps the U.S. might not want to see.
We hope that Colombians will decide courageously and with truth. To the rest of the world, we can only wait with an an endured rage and an insisting hope.
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