Colombia in Negative

Another interesting ‘think piece’ from Laura de Castillo Matamoros. And I agree with a large part of her sentiment.

However, to list some achievements and to dismiss them sarcastically out of hand, implying that they are an irrelevance is an interesting technique, which frankly is a little insulting. The implication being that some of us are so ‘blinded by the magnificence’ of these reforms that we will overlook all the oppression that goes on day to day.  

I ask myself are they actually irrelevant? To the students’ now receiving education or for the hundreds of  thousands who signed up for subsidised health care it is certainly not an irrelevance or do you want to crucify them on some kind of ideological cross. I challenge you to tell these people to give up these benefits in order to achieve some hypothetical truly democratic utopia that you appear to believe is, in the short term, a potential reality.

Do you have any idea how many years it would take to completely reform Colombian society (25 50 100?)and how many people will have to suffer whilst waiting for total democracy and freedom to permeate every corner of the society?

I certainly know what you DON’T want Laura but that is the easy part. After all your rhetoric I still don’t know what you really want! Freedom, democracy, human rights, a decent health and education system….....  Of course you do, so would anyone and you have a fundamental human right to these things. But are you saying that you want to stop international investment? Are you saying that when companies like Marks & Spencer buy products in Colombia for exportation that you would discourage them? How are you going to fund all the reforms you want?  Do you feel that the roads should be dangerous so we remain politically sensitive?  Do you want children to suffer merely to ensure that the voices of dissent stay loud and clear? Do you really believe that any thinking person can be bought off entirely with a few social initiatives? You seem to think so and that is, in my opinion, naive and insulting to their inteligence.

So the reforms thus far are not enough.....agreed. But it is a start....and that should be acknowledged.

What is a shame is that you spoil an otherwise excellent article with continued innuendo.

Charles, I like you and I'm glad you're on the NarcoSphere, but you couldn't recognize satire if it hit you with a two-ton truck.

Ben, a refreshing change...... as it is usually the English accusing everybody else of not understanding satire..... and maybe we are right!!! ;)

But there you go.... nobodys perfect.

Paul writes:

However, to list some achievements and to dismiss them sarcastically out of hand, implying that they are an irrelevance is an interesting technique, which frankly is a little insulting. The implication being that some of us are so ‘blinded by the magnificence’ of these reforms that we will overlook all the oppression that goes on day to day.  

I ask myself are they actually irrelevant? To the students’ now receiving education or for the hundreds of  thousands who signed up for subsidised health care it is certainly not an irrelevance or do you want to crucify them on some kind of ideological cross. I challenge you to tell these people to give up these benefits in order to achieve some hypothetical truly democratic utopia that you appear to believe is, in the short term, a potential reality.

Let me say, first, that to read just one column by Laura del Castillo (the column being commented on, for example) is to gain a better understanding of the Colombian reality than one would get from reading every single Commercial Media report published in English about Colombia over the past 30 days. (Don't believe me? Try it!).

What English-language news readers typically get in the name of Colombia news are formulaic articles about another drug bust, another battle between guerrillas and the Armed Forces, another extradition of some trafficker (who will immediately be replaced by another trafficker, who may get extradited later, only to be replaced, and so on and so forth), another verbal spat between Uribe and Chavez, another attempt to kiss and make up, another paramilitary massacre (although the majority go unreported in the English-speaking world), another U.S. official praising the success of Plan Colombia... after five years of reading all of it, I feel I am in a whirlpool that goes around and around and around the same stories (only the names and slight details are changed) and, if one had to base one's understanding of what happens in Colombia on the English-speaking Commercial Media, one would fine one self in a kind of mediatic House of Mirrors, without any depth to the view.

But reading one, just one, Del Castillo column (and perhaps clicking some of the 35 informative links to background info, if one reads Spanish, that appear in this most recent column), all kinds of hard news comes shouting through the screen... All the news that was not "fit to print" in the New York Times or anywhere else in English.

The Colombian Commercial Media is not much better. El Tiempo, the wounded El Espectador, Radio Caracol, El Pais over in Cartagena... the fare is only slightly better (at least they capture the political gossip)... Even reading Cambio magazine, where Garcia Marquez drooled out the last of his coherent years, is like visiting a fast-food restaurant: one feels malnourished and hungry again after only a half hour.

The do-gooder lobby ain't much better. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the various religious organizations and "peace tourist" packages, a few email lists of "monitoring groups" and networks... and they, too, basically tell the same story just updating it with the names... All timidly concluding that the side that commits 85 percent of the murders (the official side and its paramilitaries) and the guerrilla opposition are somehow "moral equivalents" and posturing themselves - because their funders like it that way - as neutral in a time of moral crisis. Even well-read activists are poorly informed on the Colombian reality.

A major part of the problem is that most English-language reports on Colombia are penned by people who don't live there! They march in and out of national territory, some hold press conferences, some don't even speak good Spanish but have appointed themselves as "experts" on Plan Colombia, and yet with all the sound and fury coming from Commercial news organizations (foreign and domestic) and activist do-gooder groups that too often impose their own "kinder and gentler" lens of condescending imperialism upon this country of 40 million people, we get a very thin gruel, informationally, indeed.

That's why what we've often done at Narco News over the past five years is translate the work of Colombian authors who can cut through the pre-existing script and provide a more authentic immediate history.

Now, we've got a weekly column from the laser-sharp Del Castillo, rapidly translated, and published for the anglo-parlantes to read while the news is still fresh. Anyone who has read Laura's last four columns has a better grasp of Colombian reality than those who have used Commercial or activist media sources attentively for years.

As for the mocking of the crumbs that are thrown to the crowd in the form of social and educational programs, there's an important piece of context that many Colombians are aware of, but that most outside of the country are not:

When the Clinton administration went shopping the original Plan Colombia to other countries, particularly in Europe, seeking financial support, the European nations were understandably reluctant to fund a bloodbath. So they endorsed Plan Colombia but salved their guilty consciences and washed their blood-stained hands in a kind of budgetary shell-game: the gringos would pay for the helicopters, the weapons, the School of the Americas torture trainings, the herbicide, the mercenaries... and the "good" European countries would toss in some money for "social programs" - that spoonful of sugar to make the glyphosate go down - both to ease opposition in Colombia and to soften the bellicose image of the US-sponsored Civil War abroad.

But make no mistake about it: the price Colombia pays for the pittance of those social programs, which serve a small minority of the populace, but also serve as material for photo ops and press releases for Uribe and his bureaucrats, is the "international support" for the entire package, including the herbicide raining down from the skies, the impunity for the paramilitaries, the stomping upon liberties called the "war on drugs," the destruction of large tracts of the Amazon jungle and of food crops on the plains.

It's akin to praising a State for executing a man because they let him have a tasty last meal.

To mock these programs for what they are - bait, to lead public opinion in the slaughterhouse door - is not, as Paul seems to imply, akin to calling on poor folks not to accept the scraps doled out. However, I will observe that in another conflict zone of our América - Chiapas, Mexico - the indigenous communities (538 of them according to the Chiapas government, 1,111 of them according to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation) do refuse to accept government money, to allow government teachers and doctors to work in their towns, and they reject, totally, such "social program" scraps. They do this, in part, because the State has long used the teachers and doctors as spies or provocatuers, or has introduced forced sterilizations in the name of "family planning," or powdered milk dumped from the radioactive ranches downwind from Chernobyl, and in general have constituted a do-gooder form of cultural imperialism.

I'm not saying that everyone everywhere should do the same. I just notice that those who have rejected such crumbs from the table - the indigenous of Chiapas - are leading better lives today under the flag of autonomy and self-governance than they had ten years ago, when they accepted such double-edged largesse from the government.

I'm looking forward to Laura's next column.

Laura's columns from Colombia serve another vital purpose for those who believe in a free press. They help to counter with truth the ongoing misinformation campaign that cloaks the realities of the so-called war on drugs. This spin doctoring is being waged by big-money interests, and they don't come any bigger than Uncle Sam. This week the White House, through its Office of National Drug Control Policy, officially crept into the blogosphere. It's good to see our tax dollars are going to fund real 1st Amendment initiatives like this. I guess one way to get around the wording of that 1st Amendment (that Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press) is for the government to become the press.

WHITE HOUSE DRUG CZAR LAUNCHES BLOG

ONDCP Becomes First Cabinet-Level Agency to Launch Online Web Log; New Web Site Will Showcase Nationwide, Local, and International Efforts That "Push Back" Against Drug Use

(Washington, D.C.)—John Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and President Bush's "Drug Czar," today launched an innovative effort aimed at giving Americans a new way of understanding and keeping up with the latest national efforts to reduce drug use and the harms caused by drugs.

Director Walters said, "I look forward to providing regular online updates on ONDCP's work to bring together Federal, state, and local efforts to combat drug use. As many parents and young people already know, the Internet has often been the domain of choice for those who would like to undermine the efforts of national and community leaders who are working to reduce drug use and keep drugs out of the hands of young people. By providing frequent updates on ONDCP missions and activities, and those of others engaged in the vital effort, we hope to help provide Americans with direct access to updates and links about the latest efforts to 'push back' against drug use in America and abroad. I encourage anyone with a sustained interest in reducing the harms of drugs to log on and learn more about what we are doing."

Over the past several years, weblogs or "blogs," have become an increasingly popular way for citizens and political candidates to convey their personal thoughts, accomplishments and ideas to the American public. The ONDCP blog's content will vary greatly—from commentary about recent anti-drug initiatives and events, to photos and links about community organizations working hard everyday to reduce drug use. The weblog may be accessed at http://www.PushingBack.com

Now, what just do they mean -- or more specifically who are they targeting -- with the following reference?

"As many parents and young people already know, the Internet has often been the domain of choice for those who would like to undermine the efforts of national and community leaders who are working to reduce drug use and keep drugs out of the hands of young people."

Does that mean U.S. tax dollars are being used to support a propaganda war -- now expanded to include government-run Web blogs -- that targets authentic journalism, such as that practiced by Narco News, or even specifically, targets the words of  Laura del Castillo Matamoros? Afterall, questioning the veracity of the war on drugs, questioning the effectiveness of prohibition, questioning the legitimacy of Plan Colombia all could be construed by a powerful Drug Czar as an effort to "undermine" official drug war policy.

I guess this propaganda war, this new government cyber-blog initiative, is also targeting folks who don't like to see poor farmers exterminated by toxic chemicals.

On spraying fields in Colombia, from the Drug Czars new blog:

And, although final production estimates for last year are not yet available, 2004 was the third consecutive record year for eradication, with 120,713 hectares sprayed by the eradication forces of the Colombian National Police (see Figure 13) against coca plantations, which had totaled 113,850 hectares at the end of 2003. In other words, Colombian forces sprayed enough herbicide to cover more than the entire coca crop as it stood at the beginning of 2004, leaving many growers in the unenviable position of replanting at a furious pace to maintain production, relocating to other areas, or getting out of the business altogether.

Can you believe that? The above entry from President Bush's National Drug Control Strategy, released this month and available through the new Drug Czar blog, actually brags about having "sprayed enough herbicide to cover more than the entire coca crop." So I wonder which farmers in Colombia got hit with the extra toxins, apparently just for the hell of it?

And again, the entry below, also from the National Drug Control Strategy, demonstrates why Laura's columns are of vital importance in assuring the truth is not displaced by misinformation.  

Eradication has dramatically reduced cocaine production capacity. It is also denying the narcoterrorists crucial revenues—reducing the amount of money flowing into the coffers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) at a time when the guerrilla movement is under sustained attack by the Colombian military.

So, based on the White House's drug policy, it is the FARC that is the real enemy here. Now it might be clearer to some the real motive for trying to put on equal footing the FARC and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) -- the right-wing death squad responsible for the bulk of the attrocities in Colombia. Plan Colombia appears to be more of a war on the FARC than a "war on drugs," at least from a read of the Bush Administration's national drug policy.

But it goes far beyond the FARC, I suspect. And that is why the executive branch, the "First Estate," appears now in a blatant manner prepared to take over the "Fourth Estate." I wonder which other executive branch-stamped Cabinet-level minions will soon have their own blogs in place?

I guess, as the article excerpt below explains, an article linked to the Drug Czar's new blog, it is all part of a justifiable strategy, in the eyes of the current administration, of perpetuating and expanding the nexus of the endless war on terror.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States should employ some of the techniques it is using to fight international terrorism in its war on drugs, U.S. drug czar John Walters said on Tuesday.

Interviewed a day before President Bush was due to release his national drug control strategy for 2005, Walters said international drug traffickers shared many characteristics with terrorist networks ....

"Maybe the brutal experience we've had with terror helps to make this more concrete and understandable," he said.

... In his annual drug strategy document, Bush proposed spending a total of $12.4 billion this year, an increase of 2.2 percent over fiscal 2005.

Laura, Narco News, we need you more than ever.