Remember Colombia?
by Dennis Grammenos
10 March 2010
The jackbooted minotaur that lurks in the shadows behind Colombia's paper-thin democratic façade did not hesitate to once again make its presence known last week. As the strike by the transport trade union Apetrans (Association of Small Transporters) paralyzed Bogotá during the first days of March, the city's ostensibly left-leaning, Colombian-American mayor, Samuel Gustavo Moreno Rojas, invoked the military's help to manage the untenable situation. While deploying hundreds of armed troops to secure the city's streets, the mindefensa -the country's ministry of defense-cleared its throat and announced that the striking bus operators had been infiltrated by "narcoterrorists."
Just like clockwork. This insidious slander is the well-worn calling card of the Andean country's right-wing "para-state" in its war on labor. In effect, it meant that the crosshairs of balaclava-hooded violence were freshly aimed at Apetrans, complementing whatever direct actions the military brass were prepared to take in the name of "social order." The malignant term narcoterroristas, of course, is that focus-group tested, Washington approved epithet that conveniently sutures together the Colombian elite's guerrilla problem and the United States' drugs conniption. The genius marketing ploy goes a long way to justify more than five billion U.S. tax dollars spent since 2000, mostly to fight the guerrillas in the name of the dubious and never-ending "war on drugs" under the auspices of Plan Colombia, the vehicle for Washington's geopolitical involvement in the Andes.
It is also the perfect stamp by which to indelibly stigmatize any opposition to the iniquitous social and economic order that grips Colombia. It could have been happenstance, but no sooner had the deadly proscription been uttered by the military's spokesman, than the trade union settled with the capital district's negotiators, took the consolation prize offered, dutifully apologized for the inconvenience, and promised not to engage in any further strike actions. After all, in just over two decades, nearly three thousand unionists have been executed or tortured to death in Colombia by the shadowy death squads. The paras have been able to operate in near-total impunity and are inextricably linked to the security forces of what still resembles a garrison-managerial state.
There is no letting up either. According to the International Trade Union Confederation's annual survey of violations of trade union rights, in 2009 Colombia accounted for sixty percent of all unionists assassinated in the world. In a country where union participation has dipped to a mere four percent of the workforce, the threat of assassination and tortured death is as good a bargaining chip for the bosses and their political hacks as any.
While in the past few years there has been a widely promoted demobilization of paramilitaries by the conservative government of President Álvaro UribeVélez, this has done little to safeguard the lives and rights of unionists. Decree 128, the Colombian law that governs armed group desmovilización, has been used as a de facto amnesty for the 25,000 paras that have come out of the shadows. As Amnesty International has argued, the demobilization has amounted to little more than a "reengineering" of paramilitarism in Colombia.
"Reengineering" is all the rage, especially since the Uribe administration has been very keen on finalizing free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union. Almost universally, Colombia's unions have come out against these neoliberal trojan horses, pleading that the developed countries must take responsibility over what sort of regimes they decide to partner with. Without respect for human rights and guarantees that strict labor rights standards will be adhered to, the Colombian unionists argue that their plight will be exacerbated under the free trade agreements. Indeed, Colombia's dismal record --on human rights in general and labor rights in particular-had stood in the way of selling the agreements to skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic.
Cue K Street. A sophisticated disinformation campaign that bears the foul stench of soulless "consultants," has gone a long way to perform an extreme makeover of the country's human rights image and to deflect criticism especially when it comes to labor rights. A well-orchestrated chorus of sycophants has been arguing that Uribe deserves credit for reducing the number of unionists assassinated, by his decisive policies to curtail paramilitarism. Anyway, they go on to argue, many unionists are too close for comfort to the guerrillas.
Same old, same old. Why should one expect anything else? After all, President Uribe is justifiably regarded as the veritable "godfather" of Colombian paramilitarism ever since his days as governor of the state of Antioquia. While he has managed to leverage his powers as president to keep a tighter leash on the rambunctious part-security-forces-part-paramilitary creature, his eight years in office have, nevertheless, been as bloody as anyone would expect for human rights defenders and labor union activists.
Behind the assiduously cultivated image of respectability and democratic formality, the president's closest associates have continued to collude with the paras in their bloody campaign to cleanse the country of subversivos. Just last month, the president's cousin was arrested again for his dalliances with right-wing paramilitaries. Former senator Mario de Jesús Uribe Escobar is just one of dozens of "parapoliticians" ensnared by intrepid (or foolhardy?) civil servants. Such is the degree of connection of most of these corrupt politicians to the president himself that an alternative term suggested for the scandal has been parauribismo.
At this point, the disinformation campaign seems to have borne fruit abroad. On March 1st it was announced, in Brussels, that the European Union had sealed a partial free trade deal with Colombia, one that pays lip service to sustainable development based on "the protection and the promotion of labor and environmental rights." Sure, Uribe must have thought, whatever you say.
In the United States, the Obama administration is under pressure to finally implement the free trade agreement signed under the previous president. The delay reflects some indecision based on serious concerns about Colombia's record. Nevertheless, Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Max Baucus are leading the charge to get the deal up and running; better catch up to the Europeans, they argue. And it does seem like just a matter of time before the deal is finally implemented.
Another sweetheart deal seems to be moving forward without much outrage in the United States. President Uribe has authorized U.S. forces to officially operate from seven military bases in Colombia, making formal a long-standing, ostensibly secret, accommodation. This could very well mean that more U.S. forces will be deployed in Colombia's counter-insurgency campaigns even though their tasking will still be termed "counter-narcotics." After all, the common enemies are the narcoterroristas.
The added bonus, of course, is that the various transnational corporations that operate in Colombia like it's their little fiefdom, will have a place to hold their meet ups. That's what Colombia's Coca-Cola bottler did on February 8th, when it held its convention in the Tolemaida military base in Tolima, one of the seven bases ceded for the use of the U.S. military. Under a Coke banner that proclaimed the theme of the convention -"Guided by Pride"-- Colombian armed forces chief General Freddy Padilla de León addressed fatigue-clad Coca-Cola execs and his own soldiers on the topic of "The pride of being a soldier." Some picture. This is none other than the scandal-tainted general that played footsie with the paramilitaries in the Magdalena Medio region when he was army commander there a few years ago, addressing the convention of a transnational notoriously implicated in collaborating with the paras to crack down on its own workers. Just scratch the surface and the para-state pops up.
On the other hand, when it comes to U.S. military presence in Colombia perhaps Hugo Chávez figures into the calculations as well, especially since the elites and the media in both Colombia and the United States seem to frame the Venezuelan president as some sort of rogue dictator that is bent on dominating the region. Colombia is a great operations platform in the event an intervention is portrayed as inevitable. In any case, other Colombian neighbors seem to have acquired a dangerous taste for leftist adventurism in the eyes of Washington, making the presence of U.S. troops in the region a constant reminder of the price that could be exacted.
It is election season in Colombia these days and the voters will go to the polls in two installments: one on March 14th for the legislature and one on May 30th for the presidency. For the most part, no intelligent observer can expect anything less than fraudulent and corrupted results. In fact, among those who are concerned with human rights in that country it is feared that parapolitics and, by extension, the para-state might come out ahead in this showdown.
Nor will the status quo change much with Uribe's departure. Even though the Supreme Court has barred him from running for a third four-year term, his legacy is not likely to be easily undone. No less an oracle than Moody's prophesied that the post-Uribe era will be "credit neutral," meaning that it will be business-as-usual for global capital and its local compradors. In other words, the pressure will still be on to implement the pending free trade agreements and that, just as likely, any threat to the social and economic policies that go hand-in-hand with such neoliberal fare will be swiftly dealt with by the new president and the lurking para-state.
If anything, with its godfather out of office the jackbooted minotaur might feel more frisky and slip its leash. One thing is for sure: Colombian unionists will continue to be executed and tortured to death at a rate higher than for all their compañeros in the rest of the world combined. You can take that to Moody's.
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Dennis Grammenos is a professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies and in Latino & Latin American Studies at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. He can be reached at D-Grammenos at neiu.edu
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