Against Plan
* Colombia
. WITH the approval by the US
Congress of the so-called Plan
Colombia, the political, social and military conflict in Colombia could become one of the main scenarios of anti-imperialist confrontation in the Third World. The US decision to finance and directly lead Plan Colombia is presented as
THIS resolution was adopted by the International Executive an operation of struggle against drugs and
Committee of the Fourth International, the worldwide organizathe narcotics trade; yet 80% of the $7,500 tion of revolutionary socialists, at its October 2000 meeting. million of Plan Colombia has a counterinsurgent political objective and this will be implemented through the destruction of the cultivations on which 400,000 peasant families depend for their survival. Destruction of cultivation and ecologicalethnic-cultural depredation, similar to the experience of "Operation Dignity" in Bolivia — an operation led by US "advisers" and soldiers and the USAID agency.
Plan Colombia means the most serious foreign aggression of recent times against a Latin American country and confirms the desire of the imperialists to assure their hegemony over Latin America and the Caribbean. It fits into the US vision according to which the "Colombian disorder is becoming a regional danger", increasing the insecurity of the hemisphere" and endangering the "national security" of the US. The empire has resolved to turn Colombia - and the Andean region - into a new theatre of waI.
2. The decree issued by the Clinton administration on August 23 which approved military "aid" of $1,319 million to the government of President Pastrana can only be read in one way: it is a declaration of war against the armed insurgency (FARC, ELN, EPL), and also against the trade union, peasant, popular and human rights movements, against the political parties of the left and, in the end, against all the democratic actors in Colombian society. In the framework of a political, social and armed conflict that in recent years has led to 35,000 deaths, 1,000,000 "internally displaced" (a figure only exceeded by the Rwandan-Congolese drama and 800,000 exiled, Plan Colombia, far from being an option for peace, is an instrument to strengthen the repressive capacity of the state, as well as the criminal paramilitary organizations.
3. This escalation of US interventionist strategy takes place in a Latin American landscape characterized by economic cri16 International Viewpoint #326 December 2000 sis, the growth of social resistance, and the loss of legitimacy of the "neoliberal model". In some countries, moreover, the governing elites face situations of ungovernability and crises of domination (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia).
The successive indigenous uprisings in Ecuador, popular and peasant uprisings in Bolivia, as well as the decomposition of the Fujimori regime on the one hand and the nationalist discourse of Chavez on the other, have whipped up the tempests in the Andean region. Simultaneously, we witness a growth of anti-neoliberal discontent and resistance in other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. US imperialism is then playing all its cards to achieve a "stabilization". Plan Colombia is intended to change decisively the relationship of forces in the Colombian internal conflict, if not to establish control over the Amazon region and the oil wealth of the Orinoco, or reaffirm a military presence in the zone of the Panama Canal and the Caribbean.
4. The argument based on the "national security" of the United States is a manifestation of tutelage and the most complete and arrogant ignorance of any notion of national sovereignty which conflicts with US interests. This policy submits the Latin American peoples and countries to the economic control and neocolonial pillage of the international financial organizations and the multinational companies payment of the foreign debt, unequal exchange, privatization) and accelerates the path towards the creation of the American Free Trade Area (AFTA) which seeks an "integration" subordinated to US interests and which in many aspects puts into question the currently existing regional blocs, in particular Mercosur.
It also seeks to discipline more the Latin American governments and block any alternative project of democratic and sovereign development proposed by the left and the popular camp.
At the same time, Plan Colombia pursues a delimitation of areas of influence with the imperialisms of the European Union, competing for Latin American markets and the bioenergetic and strategic wealth of the Amazon, assigning to the EU governments the EU the role of "humanitarian" donors, above all to balance macroeconomic disequilibria, the payment of the public and private debt and the "collateral" social effects of the scorched earth policy.
5. Unlike other US interventionist operations, Plan Colombia uses military pressure to ensure the application of the anti-popular denationalizing adjustment plan that the Pastrana government and the IMF agreed in 1999. This accord established the conditions to pursue counter-reforms which undermine free education and public health and solidarity-based systems of social security; which deepen the flexibility of labour; the privatization of state companies, roads and rivers; the sale of biodiversity: the private exploitation of energy resources; and the negation of the rights of the indigenous peoples.
This adjustment plan aggravates unemployment and poverty in a country where 50% of the population survive on less than $2 a day and where a small oligarchic minority (3%) owns 70% of the land. These counter-reforms, which have an antidemocratic character — and can only be applied to the exclusion of. basic social rights and by violating elementary human rights — have been contested by the social movements through strikes and various mass demonstrations.
6. Before the gravity of the moment, and taking into account that "Operacion Sur" has already been implemented in the Putumayo region (as a pilot for Plan Colombia), the trade union, peasant, indigenous, neighbourhood, women's, religious, organizations and movements,
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Colombia
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