Free Trade in Colombia: Genocide for Profit
The only way to describe free trade in Colombia is as genocide for profit.
Genocide in terms of destroying cultures, destroying societies, destroying
nature and murdering human beings, and in all cases for profit. Forty four
indigenous people were murdered by paramilitary forces, the worst massacre
in Colombia. They lived in a very remote area on a river. We have some
accounts coming out of how they were tortured and murdered with chainsaws.
They committed no crime, just tried to live their lives with dignity.
In northern Cauca there's a region recently designated by presidential
decree as an area for people who were victims of the landslide. This
legislation was meant to protect these people, but it allowed multinational
corporations into that region in order to generate employment and education.
No tariffs were levied to attract multinationals, and then no environmental
protections were included. With the corporations came the paramilitaries,
and the indigenous people in that area are under threat. They are being
murdered. This is not a problem for the future. This is happening right now.
The problem with Colombia is not a problem with Colombia alone. Colombia is
actually further along the road to what is coming to everybody else. It is
actually in the front line, and it is common people --- workers, trade union
leaders, indigenous people, black people, women and the majority of the
poor in that country --- who are facing the greed of corporations and the
military interests that come with it.
Three billionaires have accumulated as their own personal assets more than
60% of the total wealth of the poor countries of the world. In a world like
that, poverty is the exercise of violence by the wealthy against the poor.
The latest piece of multinational legislation to exercise the rights of
corporations for profit is known as Plan Colombia, a plan that is actually
against Colombia and against Colombians. It is a regional U S.
multinational, integral, comprehensive strategy to take over the resources
of Latin America, beginning with Colombia.
The people of my country are standing in the way of tapping those resources.
Plan Colombia was approved last July by the U.S. Congress without any
discussion by any of the Colombian democratic institutions. The elected
governor of the province of Putumayo in southern Colombia had not seen the
document when it was approved in the U.S.
Eighty three percent of the entire $1.3 billion budget of Plan Colombia is
for military operations. It has been demonstrated time and again that the
worst, most mistaken, inhuman and wrong strategy against drugs is a war on
the poor people who are forced to grow coca. When you know all these things
you know that Plan Colombia is not at all a war on drugs. Plan Colombia is a
military and corporate intervention in Latin America that has used Colombia
as a starting ground, and that will engulf the whole region.
Colombia is now the site of the greatest gap between wealthy and poor in
the entire continent, greater than that of Brazil, which has traditionally
been the greatest of them all.
The U.S., the media and the Colombian government have been successful in
convincing us that Colombia is a country that is about drug trafficking, a
country about coffee and a country where violence is rampant everywhere
because there's something wrong with those people. If you believe that lie,
start working on it, because it's not true. If they succeed in their plans
for genocide, the entire region will fall under their successful machinery
of combined legislation and the dirty war for profit.
The paramilitary operations throughout the country are committing the most
horrendous human rights abuses and the dirty war is leading to massive
displacements of people. The paramilitary are supported by the armed forces,
a fact which has been demonstrated for many years. Paramilitary forces have
forced close to two million people into displacement from wealthy lands and
territories in the country. More than 370,000 people were displaced last
year alone. This is at least three times as many people as in Kosovo, but
most people don't hear about it.
The simplistic explanation is that there is displacement in Colombia because
there is violence. The truth is, if you superimpose the places on the map
where displacements are happening over the places where multinational
corporate interests and mega-projects are centered, every time these maps
match. Displacement in Colombia is not caused by violence; there is violence
so that there can be displacement.
Violence is an exercise by capital to displace people so that it can access
resources. Capital needs two things to accumulate profit: space and
resources to produce cheaply so that it can compete and make more profit. In
order to produce cheaply you do two things: you generate capital-intensive
processes, which are technologies that replace people, or you ensure a race
to the bottom by making labor cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. You pay less
and less for more so that you can generate more profit.
Colombia is wealthy in resources --- oil, gold, all kinds of biodiversity, the
energy sector in general with hydro dams for electric energy. How can these
resources be taken from the people? By committing massacres. This is
systematic genocide supported by the Colombian government, promoted by the
U.S. government, funded by the U.S. and the corporations in order to take
over our nation's future and the future of the entire continent.
The strongest structural adjustment project in the entire region of the
Americas is taking place now. The government is reducing the income that
Colombians get from oil from 20 percent to six percent, so it can attract
foreign investment. So, not only is the corrupt government stealing the
money that should go to the people, but they're also reducing the amount
that goes into our country.
The Colombian government is supposed to consult communities that live on
territory where there's large wealth before those resources can be taken
out. If you cannot express yourself politically at the risk of being
murdered, as has been the case with many groups and individuals in the past,
then you are forced to resort to an armed struggle. Most Colombians do not
want that, but they have been forced into it again and again. If you sign
peace agreements and join the democratic process you are murdered, like the
Union Patriotica leaders, like more than 3,000 guerrillas who were
assassinated once they agreed to become involved in the democratic process.
So, either join the insurgency and the war goes on or, in order to survive,
you enter the drug stream. Poor peasants have been forced into the jungle to
grow coca --- not cocaine --- which is the only product that will be bought on
site by people who sell this product elsewhere. In the streets of your
countries in the north there is a problem when people become dependent on
drugs in order to go on with life. But that problem is not solved by killing
Colombians in the jungle in the south.
Excerpted from a speech delivered at theforum "Peace in the Americas - Stop
Plan Colombia" that was held on April 18th 2001 in Quebec City as part of
the People's Summit of the Americas. Manuel Rozental is a Colombian
physician who lives in Toronto.
Back to Peace Talk Index, Summer, 2001