Archive for 2002

The Spy Game

Simultaneous proposals by U.S. President George W. Bush and Colombian President-elect Alvaro Uribe to deploy civilian spies as a component of their domestic counterterrorism strategies clearly illustrates the authoritarian tendencies of both leaders. Bush’s soon-to-be-implemented Terrorism Information and Prevention System (Operation TIPS) and Uribe’s scheme to establish a civilian militia both call for at least one million civilians to inform on their fellow citizens. There are striking similarities between both plans and Cuba’s Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), which are neighborhood watch groups used by Fidel Castro’s government to gather intelligence on the activities of the Cuban people. The fact that the CDRs have been repeatedly criticized in the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights reports has not diminished the enthusiasm of the Bush and Uribe administrations to implement their own versions of Cuba’s domestic spy program. Read more»

Brazil’s Escalating Role in the Drug War

Brazil began bolstering its border security almost as soon as Plan Colombia surfaced in 1999. After three years of military expansion, the Brazil-Colombia border is bristling with new installations. Among them is a new air force base, a naval base, and a set of border platoons stretching from Tabatinga through an area known as the Dog´s Head, where Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil meet. A new jungle brigade based in the Amazon city of Tefe provides support for the 2,500 troops stationed along the 1,000-mile border. These ground forces are supplemented with naval and marine units as well as aircraft at the new Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira airbase. Read more»

Another Contra Scandal?

During the 1980s, the Reagan administration became mired in the Iran-Contra scandal following revelations that it illegally sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to covertly arm and fund Nicaraguan Contra forces attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government. Last year, Israeli arms dealers bought 3,000 assault rifles and ammunition from the Nicaraguan security forces and covertly sold them to Colombia’s counter-revolutionaries (Contras), the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The fact that President George W. Bush’s Latin American policymaking team includes former Reagan administration Contra war warriors Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte, raises questions regarding the possibility of a Washington connection to the purchasing, selling and shipping of these weapons to Colombian paramilitaries who are on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. Read more»

Colombia’s Deadly Profession

When Ramón Vásquez Ruiz left the coastal city of Santa Marta to cover a crime story in a neighboring town, he expected to return to his wife and children that evening. Instead, Colombian rebels abducted the 52-year-old newspaper reporter and took him to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. For the next 12 days, fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) marched their hostage through the forest while demanding thousands of dollars from the newspaper where Vásquez works, in return for his freedom. Read more»

FARC Targets Local Officials

In the past few weeks, more than 150 local government officials have resigned due to death threats from the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The guerrillas are instituting a new phase of political violence in an attempt to rid many rural regions of all government presence. The response of right-wing paramilitary groups, the incoming administration’s recently appointed interior minister, and military analysts to this rebel-induced power vacuum suggests that this latest crisis will lead to a greater militarization of rural regions and increased levels of violence. Read more»

Journeys Far from Home

It took weeks to figure out what had happened to Juanita. She couldn’t tell it all at once. The story came out in pieces. Her mind kept wandering. Sometimes she cried so much we had to stop. I met her at a Return to Happiness workshop, held in La Chinita, a barrio of Apartadó in northwest Colombia, that I was running with a handful of volunteers. The volunteers were all thirteen or fourteen years old. The kids were mostly under ten, and had been forced out of their homes in the surrounding villages by the violence. It was ironic that their families looked for safety in La Chinita, where some of the biggest massacres of the war had occurred. Read more»

The Colombian Contras

Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, wasted little time before traveling to Bogotá to congratulate president-elect Alvaro Uribe. Reich followed the example set by the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Anne Patterson, who violated protocol by visiting Uribe’s campaign headquarters on election night to congratulate him on his triumph before he had even been officially declared the winner. With Uribe’s victory, the Bush White House has been presented with a perfect opportunity to increase U.S. involvement in Colombia’s civil conflict, but in order to do so, former Reagan administration propagandist Otto Reich will most likely have to cleanse the image of the Colombian military and its paramilitary allies. Consequently, these right-wing death squads may soon be presented to the U.S. public as “freedom fighters,” Colombia’s version of the Nicaraguan Contras. Read more»