Another
interesting story by Laura del Castillo Matamoros. Some of the articles that appear here are just the same old anti US/imperialist/colonial rhetoric repeated again and again. But this one caught my attention, it seemed to offer more .........
But sadly after a good start it just disintergrated into more of the same. I found it to be another example of making some valid points but offering no real suggestions or information for finding alternatives or solutions. It is so easy to just be so negative, but without looking for real world, not fantasy born politically ideological answers, so regrettably I have trouble seeing this as more than another negative propaganda exercise......
Reading this story reminded me of the story of ‘Chicken Little’. Is there really any actual evidence to show that by running for re-election (STILL requiring a mandate from the people) will mean for Uribe that, to use the words of the article;
“undoubtedly, things will get better for Uribe, who by 2007 will believe himself to have become some kind of demigod, and will be thinking about his next strategy, to crate a law that will let him become president for life, and then his children, and his children’s children…”
This is hypothesis at best and scare mongering at worst. A bit bogeyman under the bedish!! Extending his term without election would be a real course for concern but this does seem to be what he has asked for!! I agree that Uribe has, in many ways, become yet another puppet of the United States but he has intentionally or unintentionally brought about some good change as well as bad and we should acknowledge both.
Let me make clear that I believe the following to be true;
The problems of Colombia are huge and need change from the ground up. Plan Colombia is a nightmare. The United States interference in Colombia is unconscionable. Fumigating coca is a disaster destroying the lives (economic and health) of many people. Support for the paramilitary should stop immediately. The intimidation of ‘genuine’ human rights and trade union workers is wrong and their work should be encouraged not hindered or suppressed. The people of Colombia should be able to live without fear and corruption eating into their very bones. The legalised production of coca should be allowed and the drug prohibition laws repealed internationally. In short, President Uribe is a long way from being the President Colombia needs.
However; certainly no one can deny that during his first term of office travel within Colombia has become safer for all, encouraging investment and local tourism, bringing jobs to rural areas. Is that a bad thing?? Yes, the wages are often terrible but that is because of insufficient work choice. Only one employer in an area allows for him or her to pay what she likes to get workers. Two employers mean they have to battle for the services of the workers. Three or more increases the battle and this battle has to be fought with increased wages and better conditions. If the rural areas are not safe the employers will not invest there and the wages will stay pitifully inadequate. Security is the reason employers to not want to invest in these areas. How can you provide security in an area where violence and kidnapping are common place from both sides of the political divide?
Uribe has started a limited (very) social security system, which although insufficient is better than nothing. He has introduced cheap education (approx $25 per month) which, although is not as good free education for all, means that some children can actually go to school. Let me personalise this. In the barrio of Aguablanca in Cali, live a family of 5. The father Fernando drives a garbage truck for Emcali, and the mother Victoria works when she can as a waitress for maybe $6 for a 12 hour night shift. The total wage for this family is maybe $200 or 500,000 pesos and that’s good compared to many. The two children of school age had no real opportunities for good education. Due to lack of money for some years they went to a local Christian school, where the education was very poor quality and the teachers were often older children teaching their younger siblings. After 4 years, they were both barely literate. Now, because of the limited education reforms both these children, Diana Vanessa & Nelson, go to a public school and are learning the skills we all take for granted. Sure it is still a problem for them, the bus fair of 1000 pesos every day can be more than they can afford, but they are getting education from real teachers in a real, if only in Colombian terms, school. Is this a bad thing?? Maybe one day Diana Vanessa may be able to work as a journalist like Laura, without education could this ever be a reality? And this story repeats itself again and again.
Free education for all is, in my opinion, one of the answers to Colombia’s problems. Give people education and you will encourage people to think. When they think, they will start to feel they have a value, this value will make them feel they have a voice and this voice will bring about change. Some argue, why spend the money received from the US on the military and not on this education? Is this not due to the conditions attached by the US that come with every dollar handed over. Does Uribe or any other president for that matter have another choice, save refusing the money altogether? This money frees up the use of the money now given over for example to education. Without this money do you think that the government will not fund the army and police? Of course they will and the first place they will look to will be the money that is now provided for education and health (pitiful that it is). You are right when you say that Uribe’s support primarily comes from the upper class and the middle class (if it really exists). Of course it does because they have been the first to benefit. But if you want to bring change to the poor you need these people to bring it about with investment in local industry, to build schools and hospitals and to staff them with qualified personnel. If these people are to be encouraged they have to feel optimistic. To conclude that all middle and upper class people are self serving is an utter insult to many thousands of decent people. Of course they are not all socially minded, but when they see the success those who are, maybe they will change. A revolution by evolution maybe and as a consequence the benefits are felt by ALL of the society.
What are you really suggesting? Where are your considered alternatives? Or even policy information to allow me to see an alternative. It is sadly missing.
International tourism and the tourist dollar is certainly one of the more obvious answers, but until the guerrillas and paramilitary disband there is very little chance of this outside Cartagena, Santa Marta and San Andres in the north. Colombia is a potential tourist heaven; it has everything, from the Amazon to the mountains to the idyllic coastlines of the Pacific, Atlantic and Caribbean. But this huge national resource is unused….. Why, because no-one wants to go there for fear of being killed or kidnapped. It’s not the drug dealers that frighten people off. It has never stopped Turkey from being one of the major tourist destinations. It is the supposedly violent nature of Colombia. However real this risk is, it is the perception of this fear that is the real problem. A fear largely promoted by Hollywood, where every other killer or mafioso is Colombian.
The two main guerrilla organisations, The FARC and the ELN are clearly no longer political in motive; their political agenda was lost a long time ago but reading between the lines this article, and others like it, seem to paint them almost like some kind of later day Robin Hood. Now, I don’t know if they should be described as terrorists or criminals (rebels…no. it implies a political agenda) but their very existence is now clearly and inextricably funded by crime and drug trafficking since the closure of the large cartels of the last three decades. I would be fascinated to see how legalisation of drugs would affect their existence. I have yet to meet an educated Colombian, from any social level that supports them or believes that there existence helps. On the contrary. There mere existence gives support to the ludicrous notion that the USA actually is helping Colombia. These groups recruit from people who have no options for employment, no options due to the lack of investment in social as well as commercial projects. At times they have even recruited by kidnapping…… Now that’s real democratic. They even kidnap those, who genuinely, I believe, want to bring about democratic social change. Ingrid Betancourt for example. (read her book ‘El Rabia en el Corazon’) Someone explain the logic in kidnapping her, please! But time and again I read articles that appear to see these organisations as some kind of armed department for reform, social work and human rights. Not all guerrillas are human rights workers and not all human rights workers are guerrillas.
In Cali’s main female prison I met a guerrilla (ELN) who told me she had been ordered to shoot children in a small village. She told me that she didn’t want to but was told that if she did not carry out her orders, she would be shot herself…… Their crime… Their parents were accused of giving food to the paramilitaries. She has nightmares every night now!!! Social work….. sure.
Many ‘campasinos’ are killed and maimed by IED’s or improvised explosive devices every year. These IEDs are used by guerrillas not only to protect their bases but to secure the cocaine factories hidden in the jungle. Again more innocent victims….. Sounds like their human rights were held in high esteem!!
Maybe you would like to see the graphic photo, taken by me whilst he was on the operating table at the University Hospital in Cali of the 9 year old boy with his hip blown away by a grenade left in his rural school by the guerrillas? He died without gaining consciousness!! He was just a kid….. a kid trying to go to school!!! How did this improve his or his family’s life.
However, the paramilitary is absolutely no different even if is politically opposed. They are equally violent, equally destructive, have carried out atrocities of equal magnitude and are equally bad for Colombia. All these groups are irrelevant politically and if they no longer existed the argument for throwing the dollar into ‘security’ measures would vanish overnight.
In short violence is wrong….. whoever perpetrates it, guerrilla, paramilitary or the army!!!
Unintentional benefits have also occurred as a result of Uribe’s presidency, In Bogotá, the election of the Mayor was a reaction to some of the right wing policies of Uribe and it is generally believed by ‘Los Cachacos’ that Bogotá is now improving in many ways. People seem to like political balance and is that a bad thing?
So does changing any president every four years help? Whether you are politically aligned with Uribe he is seen by many to be the least corrupt president in living memory. The article seems to claim that using incentives to get support is somehow unique to Uribe. Come on, find me just one country whose politicians don’t buy support in one way or another. It happens here in the UK, in the USA, everywhere. It is the nature of politics worldwide. From Cuba to Australia to Sweden to Venezuela. It’s politics, it’s the dark side, it’s the putrient soft under belly of political motivation and it will never change. So hit him on his issues, when he is wrong shout long and loud from the rooftops but don’t waste your time pretending that somewhere there is a politician who doesn’t work that way. Encourage his successes whilst shouting loudly against his failures.
In conclusion before you all write consumed with anger and vitriol for my apparent leniency towards Uribe and attacking me for my apparent right wing Bushito sympathies, step outside the box for just one second. I feel he is wrong so much more than he is right, but he is right sometimes and he has, however unpalatable you may find him personally with his choice of international friends, tried to introduce policies that his predecessors never even considered. Policies that have, even if you are too bigoted to admit it, made a much needed difference. These policies deserve to be given longer to come to fruition.
Has President Uribe done enough… hell no, he’s not even scratching the surface!! Colombia needs huge reform and national and international investment but maybe what we are seeing is the start of a very long road that may outstretch our lifetimes and it has to start somewhere and start slowly………
Do I have all the answers, I wish I did! But I have seen enough death first hand thank you. I have watched enough families suffer when a family member is kidnapped. I have held the hand of a crying five year old girl with an open colostomy leaking faeces onto her shirt as we spoke, because her family could not afford to buy the bags. Looked up in despair at the sight of a young boy dying of aids with a coca cola bottle fashioned as a makeshift infusion set … Enough, enough ….. quite enough to feel that when some improvements happen, however small, I should acknowledge them!!! And no-one, I repeat no-one has convinced me that there is a better alternative ready for office apart from maybe Ingrid who is languishing very democratically somewhere in the mountains.
So please, stop using the Colombian situation as another hammer to batter the painfully ridiculous and self serving policies of the United States. We all understand the US driven nightmare the world is fast becoming. You are preaching to the converted. Tell us the stuff the world doesn’t know about what is being achieved everyday in every community in the heartland of Colombia. In every town by ordinary people not politicians. Shine a light into the darkness. Instead of telling me what is wrong with Uribe enlighten the world as to the policies of his opponents and why we should give them our international support and promote them with our brothers and sisters in Colombia. Don’t just assume we will believe that they are right or better just because they oppose Uribe from the left or centre.
For everything about Colombia that makes your blood boil, find something positive and report it with all your heart and passion and give each the same percentage of coverage.
Positivity feeds minds and hey, negativity kills too!!!
Paul S.
Update: I sent Laura's article to three Colombian friends, a student, a doctor and a journalist.
I asked them to send me a one or two line response. These are 'exactly' as written:
Student: Does she think we are all stupid and that we beleive that we read in the papers? We look him on what we see and not what we are reading in papers. All papers lie. She is very much left wing I think. I dont really like Uribe very much but I am not a stupid person. I know what happens in my country.
Doctor: We dont get enough for our department from the government. But I think that things are slowly improving maybe. Before I did not beleive President from right was good for my country. Now I maybe think it's better I am not sure.
Journalist: The violence is still terrible here in the country but Uribe is write to be hard with the FARC. The people want this. But they want more than this. Maybe Antonio Navarro is popular man and he shows that is possible to be guerilla and come to be politician.
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Attacking the Messenger
Enviado 16 de febrero de 2005 - 0:27 por Ron SmithSilvester continues by claiming that del Castillo's concerns are comparable to "chicken little". The victims of Uribe's violence would certainly challenge this assumption. Uribe has not been a stickler for the rules in the past, his first step in dismantling the Colombian consitution is not something to be taken lightly, even is his policies have traditionally ignored said constitution.
Narconews has been reliably establishing the connections between the paramiltiaries and Uribe, the narcopresident, since his (first) presidential campaign. It is completely disingenuous to talk about the "positives" of a peace process that consists of the son of the founder of the paramilitaries shaking hands with the current paramilitaries, while abandoning negotiations with the guerrillas.
Silvester pre-qualifies his remarks by claiming his acknowledgement of the very real and very serious problems of the current situation in Colombia, even highlighting Plan Colombia as a "nightmare". After a short breath, he goes on to highlight the positives of the murderous Uribe administration.
What Silvester is missing is that the problems he highlights are exactly the goals of the Uribe administration. This is not made up for by a sense of security for the privileged classes. The positives of the Uribe administration are right out of the book of complicit Latin American dictatorships at the service of US Empire. A cursory consideration of recent history in Central America will show that the policy of "draining the sea to kill the fish", or wholesale murder of innocents in order to combat armed militias, is often accompanied by band-aid services to give apologists a feel-good example to discuss in congress while the horrors go on outside. I am at a loss to understand how we can believe that Uribe is combatting paramilitary violence by reenforcing a double standard of impunity for government-aligned paramilitaries and SUSPECTED guerrilla sympathizers are kidnapped for extradition.
The fact is that del Castillo has demonstrated her courage in exposing the current actions of President Uribe. That's called news. The fact that this issue is being ignored in the mainstream press is why we have authentic journalists. It is not del Castillo's responsibility to soften her critique with a discussion of the "positives" of the current anti-democratic administration.
Silvester then claims that tourism would pull Colombia out of the crisis if it weren't for the violence of the paramilitaries and guerrillas. This perspective would suggest that the armed groups in Colombia are in a squabble for money and drugs, certainly the perspective mainstream media and the Bush and Uribe administrations would have us believe.
In reality, a more accurate portrayal is that you have at least 2 "leftist" armed organizations, born of social struggle to address the structural violence of neoliberalism as expressed in Colombia engaged in armed conflict with the state, which perpetrates the neoliberal program, and the paramilitaries, which represent the most reactionary segments of Colombian society.
How well the guerrillas currently represent the armed aspect of social struggle is certainly open for debate, I for one am in no place to defend guerrilla actions. But by focusing on "security" issues, we ignore the basis and cause for the violence that has marred Colombian Society for 500 years. The true violence in Colombia is structural. It benefits a small elite, and the rest of Colombian society pays the price. One would have to read very far between the lines, perhaps to another article by another author to see a portrayal of the guerrillas as "Robin Hood" in del Castillo's article. Human rights will always suffer as long as state violence is considered a solution for armed conflict born of structural violence of the Colombian economic system.
I would also be careful about accusations of bigotry against narconews journalists when you are unable or unwilling to answer to your own bigotry, even when it is highlighted within these pages.
Silvester attempts a false balancing of the violence of Guerrillas and Paramilitaries, this analysis falls short when we consider that the paracos have the support of the state, and therefore the support of the United States. This is not to condone guerrilla violence, but rather to expose the purpose of equating violence of two sides diametrically opposed in the Colombian conflict. Through this equation, we can center attention on the symptoms of structural violence, and leave the structure itself unexamined.
Mr. Silvester, I would urge you, since you express disbelief at the extent and responsibility of the violence in Colombia, to look outside yourself. Colombia, like most of the planet, is deeply divided on class lines. I would suggest spending some time in any number of barrios in Colombia and really getting to know the people who live within, perhaps it would enlighten you as to why Uribe is far from "scratching the surface", he is the current incarnation of the problem. del Castillo has no responsibility to ease your conscience by discussing positives of the Colombian experience. If you are so concerned with highlighting these positives, perhaps you should involve yourself in those positives, and certainly you would be welcome when you have something to report.
As a last word, I'm quite certain that were I concerned with such a competition, I could easily plaster these pages with anecdotal opinions of Colombians who would be more than happy to point out the truth of the Uribe administration. I'm more interested in protecting the people suffering from Uribe's policies, many are the same that suffered from the policies of Pastrana, largely because these policies, regardless of the current president, are orchestrated through the US embassy.
Changing the constitution for the extension of a murderous administration is the basis of fascism. Let's remember, Mussolini made the trains run on time.