U.S. Practicing Bioterrorism in Colombia
In early November, Wendy Hazard spoke with Dr. Manuel Rozental about the U.S. War on Drugs in Colombia. Dr. Rozental is a surgeon who now lives and practices medicine in Canada. He was forced to flee his native Colombia after receiving numerous death threats linked to his advocacy work on behalf of children and families there. He is now a leading spokesperson for the Canada-Colombia Solidarity Campaign, a group that works on behalf of peasant farmers, human rights and environmental activists in Colombia. In October, Dr. Rozental spoke to a number of colleges, high schools, and community groups in southern Maine, sharing his concerns about the escalating violence in Colombia and the leading role that the US and multinational corporations are playing in displacing peasant families from their homes.
WH. In this country, we hear a fair amount about our nation's war on drugs in Colombia. How would you characterize "Plan Colombia" the name given to the multi-billion dollar war on drugs there?
MR. The peasants who grow coca and poppies have no other option. They have been ejected from their own lands historically. First, it was by the Spanish crown, then by Colombian landlords and wealthy classes supported by the government of Colombia, supported by the U.S. Now they are being displaced by multi-national corporate interests that massively remove them from areas where there are all kinds of resources such as oil and hydro- electric resources and great biodiversity. The peasants have been forced deeper and deeper into the jungles, and there, the only crop they can produce that has any market value is coca. If they try to produce food crops, they have no access to markets, and even if they did have access to markets, the competition from massive agribusiness in these times of neo-liberal policy would ruin them. So, they are forced to produce coca which is the only crop they can sell from where they are. Since the early 1980's, they have demanded other opportunities. They have said they would be more than willing to substitute other crops for these crops. And every time they have signed agreements with the Colombian government, the government has broken these agreements, knowing that the agreements would go against U.S. policy.WH. I am interested in the impact that the US military missions to destroy coca plantations is having on the land and people. A few days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government grounded crop duster planes in this country, fearful that terrorists might use them for chemical or biological warfare. My first thought was, what about those crop dusters we've been using in Colombia to eradicate drugs? They are spraying terrible poisons, aren't they?
MR. This is true. Many environmentalists throughout the world have labeled U.S. strategy in Colombia as "bio-terrorism." Today, they are spraying glyphosate, otherwise known as "Round-Up." It is produced by Monsanto. But it's not quite like the Round-Up you may use on your garden. It has an oily base, so that it doesn't dissolve. It stains everything it touches and it is causing tremendous damage, not only to coca, but, because it is spread from a plane, to other crops, foods and people. The application is far from precise.WH. Does it poison water supplies?
MR. Yes. And remember, it is being spread in the Amazon River Basin, the "lungs of this planet" in massive amounts. It is damaging to water and to all kinds of vegetation. And it is destroying the small food crops of those who are struggling to survive in this region. And beyond the ecological disaster, the strategy is not eradicating coca cultivation. It is just pushing it further and further into the jungle where poor peasants, who understand the risks and the likelihood of losing at least one crop now plant three times as much in hopes of harvesting something. If the authorities don't deal with the social and economic reasons underlying the problem, they will continue to create ecological disaster and at the same time promote the cultivation of more coca.WH. If the peasant farmers are growing coca just to survive, who is really profiting from the drug trade?
MR. There are the drug traffickers, the people who gather the crops and take them to laboratories, refine the product and bring it up North. There is a huge and growing market in the U.S. It is one of the most profitable markets in the world. The price of illegal drugs is fixed by risk. The more war there is against these illicit drugs, the higher the price. Who's profiting? Those who launder money. The drug dealers in the streets make money, no doubt., but they buy drugs from intermediaries controlled by very wealthy people who can fly, ship and distribute drugs into the U.S. These people must have great power and resources to do this. And a billion-dollar business that gathers money from the street and then lauders that money into the legal financial system is impossible to distinguish from the legal capital market. These are no doubt very very wealthy people involved in corporations, banks and trust accounts who have the capacity to control this traffic. The drug cartels in Colombia are wealthy and very bad people whose networks should be destroyed. But they are sub-servants of very hidden, hands-off, strong corporate interests in the U.S. that no one has made a real effort to discover. These are the people against whom the war on drugs should be targeted.WH. You say that the Colombia-Canada Solidarity Campaign works with human rights groups. Colombia has a terrible human rights record. Can you explain how human rights activists focus on issues connected with the war on drugs?
MR. Over two million people have been internally displaced in Colombia during the past ten years. Most of the displaced have been forced from their homes by paramilitary forces that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported over and over are working with Colombia's armed forces the same forces that are the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in the world. They have carried out massacres to displace people, and they are supported under the excuse of the war on drugs. There is something very wrong there.
Between 1994 and 1997, three million hectares of land were transferred from poor people to wealthy people in Colombia. Now, large haciendas are in the hands of wealthy people who do not use them to produce food. Most of this land is now being prepared for large multi-national corporate projects including oil and pharmaceutical enterprises. This is part of a huge geo-strategic project. The first stage involves clearing the territory of people who could claim rights to the land so that companies can extract resources at almost no price. The second stage is to reform the laws of the country so that most of the revenue taken out by the extraction and exploitation of the resources can remain in the hands of multinational corporations and not be used in the interests of Colombian people.
The best example of this dynamic is in Punto Mayo, the current target of Plan Colombia. The US calls it the "Push to the South." It is a military operation that started with spraying of chemicals. Then, three Colombian brigades moved in to the territory and cleared the people out. There are huge deposits of oil in this region, and the poor people who lived there did not know this. Now they are displaced, forced to live deeper in the forests on marginal land. Why, instead of displacing these people, don't they allow them to share the revenue from the oil so that they don't have to grow coca? Instead, all the profits will now flow out of the region and there will be no one to challenge the right of the oil companies to do this.
In addition, the Colombian legislature has passed legislation that decreed that profits that remain in Colombia from oil extraction will shrink from 20% to 6%. There is clearly every advantage for corporations to support the removal of people by force. The outcome of all this is the preamble to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). It is a strategy that began in Colombia, and the intention is to clear access to resources for easy extraction in a way that would create a comparative advantage for US corporate interests.
Some people in the U.S. truly believe that their country is supporting an effort to stop the illicit drug traffic. It is these people that I want to reach so that they can think about the equation of drug war in this larger context. If you really want to end drugs and the drug trade, wouldn't you be addressing the war on drugs here with money and resources where the addicts are, as well as there. But there, the project should be a social and economic one where people are enabled to remain on their land and to produce crops to feed themselves rather than being pushed into misery which forces them either to join armed insurgency to fight against a system that doesn't allow them to survive, or become involved in crime. The greatest promoter of illegal activities and crime and insurgency in Colombia is the policy that the US is supporting today.
We are here to ask Americans of good will, to examine the actions of the US in Colombia , systematically. Ask questions. What is Occidental Petroleum doing in Colombia? What is the nature of US business interests there?
I and other members of the Canada-Colombia Solidarity Campaign would love to come back to talk with more people in Maine and to raise support for people struggling to resist and survive in Colombia.
To get in touch with Manuel Rozental and to find out more about the Canada-Colombia Solidarity Campaign, send email to: mingacolombia@yahoo.com or e_mrozental@yahoo.com
Back to Peace Talk Index, Spring, 2002