June 30, 2008 Colombia Peace Presence Update

June 30, 2008
In this Update:

• Urgent Action: Black Eagles Threaten Medellin Youth Network
• McCain Backer Funded Terrorist Group in Colombia
• Letter from the Field: Re-Weaving Community Inside the Drug War
• Santa Cruz Resolution to End US Military Aid
• New US Military Bases in Colombia and Peru?
• Upcoming Events!

  Urgent Action: Black Eagles Threaten Medellin Youth Network

  FOR has worked with and accompanied the courageous anti-militarism youth group, Red Juvenil de Medellín (Medellin Youth Network) since 2003. Red leaders and supporters were recently subject to a death threat from the newly emerged “Black Eagles” paramilitary group. We urge readers to respond to the Red’s appeal in the face of this threat.

  “We wish to inform human rights organizations and other official entities that our organization has been the subject of a death threat from the paramilitaries known as the Black Eagles.

  Facts:
  1. Thursday and Friday May 29 and 30, the Red Juvenil (Youth Network) received an email from the address redesnegras@hotmail.com with the following message:
  “Death to anarchists disguised as pacifists, no more drug concerts or communists, this is the last warning.” Those threatened were eight people: members and close friends of the Red Juvenil. It was signed by the group Black Eagles.

  2. The people whose names appear in the list are and have been activists in our organization: Gloria Castaño, Martín Rodríguez, Paula Galeano, Eduardo Castrillon, Alexandra Castrillon, Patricia Llano, Diego Agredo and Claudia Montoya.

  3. On Thursday May 15, when we arrived at the organization’s office in the morning, we found that the cables connecting our building to electrical power had been stolen. We immediately associated this with a neighborhood fine that is demanded to provide “security” for the Network of Agro-ecology Roots shop, which is located in our building. We refuse to pay this fine.

  4. As is publicly known, on May 17, the Red Juvenil hosted the 14th Anti-Militarism Concert, commemorating ten years of its existence, in Parque Obrero in the neighborhood known as “Boston.”

  Our event was jeopardized because the previous agreement between the Democratic Corporation and the General Secretary of the City of Medellín, was not fulfilled. The Democratic Corporation promised to finish their event with displaced mothers at 11:30am, but by 2pm, they had still not concluded their activity.

  Despite the fact that they didn’t uphold their commitments on the agreed upon schedule; and that the stage was only made available to us after 7pm, which was an act of sabotage carried out by the Democratic Corporation, the concert was a success with over 5,000 young people in attendance. We were able to meet our objectives, mobilizing young people who share the vision of a society different from the status quo and who seek resistance to all forms of oppression and militarism. Therefore:

  1. If in Medellin, as the mayor has proclaimed, the paramilitary structures have been disbanded, excused by a demobilization process that has benefited only the perpetrators, then why do death threats continue against expressions of a just society, expressions which use artistic, cultural and nonviolent media, such as those developed by the Red Juvenil?

  2. The justification to eliminate people through expressions like “death to anarchists disguised as pacifists, no more drug concerts nor communists” is related to practices which intend to homogenize our society, where we are all supposed to be identical, without permitting us to think about how to construct a different kind of humanity. Based in our beliefs of nonviolence, the Red Juvenil reclaims the defense of life and does not justify the elimination of any human being because of his/her beliefs or ideals.

  3. We reiterate our commitment to continue a popular, nonviolent struggle by generating proposals for life, that include happiness, respect and dignity for the human condition and which uphold as valuable, exceptional and unique, elements of that condition such as: art, music, nonviolent direct action, physical expressions on the streets and the mobilization of other proposals similar to ours.

  For these reasons:

  1. We denounce and reject the threats that paramilitary groups still operating in this city have made against members and close friends of our organization.

  2. We hold the Colombian state responsible for any harm to the physical integrity of our partners from the Red Juvenil and its close friends.

  We make this difficult situation known to all of you so that you will be able to accompany us, support us and move forward with the actions that are at your disposal to preserve the well being of the organization and the lives of those who have been threatened.”

  Please write to the following addresses:
  Felipe Sánchez
  Medellín Coordinator
  Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights
  fsanchez@hchr.org.co

  Javier Aguilar
  Chief, Medellin Regional Office
  OAS Support Mission to Peace Process in Colombia (MAPP-OEA)
  Email: javier.aguilar@mapp-oea.org
  Fax: 011 (57-4) 311-1297

  McCain Backer's Firm Pleaded Guilty To Funding Terrorist Group In Colombia
  From Huffington Post

  The co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser for Sen. John McCain oversaw the payment of roughly $1.7 million to a Colombian paramilitary group that is today designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

  Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company's board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC.

  Following a Justice Department indictment last year, Chiquita admitted to illegally funding the paramilitaries and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. Chiquita's payments to the AUC began in 1997 and lasted seven years; roughly half of the funds came after the group was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department in 2001.

  According to the Justice Department, the payments "were reviewed and approved by senior executives" of Chiquita, who knew by no later than September 2000 "that the AUC was a violent, paramilitary organization."

  Late last week, Lindner co-hosted a $25,000-per-person fundraiser for McCain and the Republican Party in the wealthy Indian Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. The event raised about $2 million; Lindner also serves on McCain's Ohio Victory Team.

  While Lindner was CEO of Chiquita, the company began sending money to the AUC through its shipping subsidiary Banadex. A report by the Organization of American States states that Banadex also engaged in arms trafficking, helping to deliver 3,000 Nicaraguan AK-47 rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition to the AUC in 2001. According to federal prosecutors, when company officials realized the arrangement was illegal, they switched to making the payments in cash.

  "We believe they saved people's lives," a Chiquita spokesman told Time magazine last year, alleging that the company was simply trying to avoid violence against their employees.

  Chiquita's funding of violent paramilitaries does not end with the right-wing AUC. The fruit giant "had been making similar payments to the leftist FARC and ELN guerrillas" since 1989, also on Lindner's watch. Those payments ended in 1997 as "control of the company's banana-growing area shifted" to the AUC.

  McCain, who is currently visiting Colombia to promote free trade, has described FARC as "one of the worst" terrorist groups and accused his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, of being unwilling to support Colombian President Uribe's anti-terrorist efforts. That the Arizona Republican is raising funds from a man whose company once paid that very same terrorist group seems likely to sully his charge.

  Aides to the Senator did not return request for comment, though they have repeatedly argued that the campaign does not have direct connections to companies represented by such fundraisers or advisers and, as such, should not be held accountable for their actions or presumed to be persuaded by their interests.

  However, in the past, McCain has done favors on Lindner's behalf. Last May, the Washington Post reported that in the late 1990s, McCain "promoted a deal in Arizona's Tonto National Forest involving property part-owned by Great American Life Insurance, a company run by billionaire Carl H. Lindner Jr., a prolific contributor to national political parties and presidential candidates."

  Moreover, McCain's chief political adviser, Charlie Black, lobbied for Chiquita on two separate occasions in 2001. According to records, Black was paid $80,000 to work on foreign trade issues. Black, as the Huffington Post reported on Tuesday, has represented other controversial clients with operations in Colombia. From 2001 through 2007, his work brought his firm more than $1.6 million in lobbying fees from Occidental Petroleum, a company whose security arm was accused of bombing a Colombian village and killing 17 civilians in 1998.

  Letter from the Field:
  Re-Weaving Community Inside the Drug War
  By Kevin Coulombe
  On the horizon, smoke from burning coca laboratories rises from the Eastern Antioquia mountains. In a caravan we try to get closer to the community of La Esperanza, part of San Francisco county.

  In spite of the tense situation, rumor of the arrival of some curious outsiders runs through the settlement. Little by little, after a hard day of work in the fields, the peasants come to the rural school to participate in activities organized by the Antioquia Peasant Association (ACA) to strengthen the organization of this returned community and celebrate the memory of Jairo Alberto Cano, killed last October in circumstances that are still unclear. Two artists and two psychologists from the group AVRE accompany us to support the community and ACA in their work of reconstructing memory and strengthening the organizing process of communities who have been displaced from their homes.

  The peasants of La Esperanza receive us with intense anxiety mixed with joy. They explain that it has been some time since people gathered in the little school’s basketball court, which was a site for military operations in the past. When they fled, the peasants told us, the army had taken over the school as an operations center for their battles in the region, several times putting the few children who continued studying during the period of displacement at high risk of combat.
  While a kid plays with a balloon, suddenly we join him and start a game of basketball. Gradually the peasants join us. In the school kitchen, the women prepare a great meal and offer us sweet drinks to help us withstand the afternoon heat.

  Sweating and with an enormous plate of beans, we take the school desks and form a circle to share stories from daily life. Suddenly, the artists stand up to tell stories accompanied by guitar. The eyes of the children and adults closely follow the lips and gestures of the clowns. For several hours, through stories, songs and jokes, the peasants re-live the steps they had to take to recover their lands and celebrate those who were killed who could not come to tell their stories to the community’s children in person. It has been some time, maybe from the killing of Jairo Alberto, since the shouts, songs and laughter of La Esperanza’s peasants had mingled on a hot night in the school gym.

  Despite the celebration together that Thursday, the peasants returned to their homes worried. A young man hurriedly came to announce to the community that during the operation police had arrested two youths near the laboratories.

  Drug War’s Diminishing Returns
  Although the Uribe government has fought drugs with the arrests of high-level traffickers, the fumigation of hundreds of thousands of acres and manual eradication, the anti-drug policy has not succeeded. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in its 2008 report published June 18, said that coca leaf cultivation in Colombia increased by 27% in 2007, despite the Colombian government’s efforts. The social costs of this drug war are extremely high, and the communities of eastern Antioquia pay the price daily. Instead of questioning the current drug policy, however, Uribe responded to the UN report by doubting the UN’s statistics and threatening to take away its authority to continue monitoring coca leaf cultivation in Colombia.

  In the communities’ daily life, often this war on drugs translates into the arrests of minors who, for lack of land or work options, collaborate with armed groups in illegal activities. Guillermo, who is nine years old, explained to us how his younger brother works on a distant farm crushing the coca leaves as part of their transformation into cocaine, and sends money to his mother to help care for his brothers and sisters.

  The Antioquia Peasant Association supports several communities in the area with the aim of re-weaving the social fabric of these campesinos displaced by violence and victims of the war. Together, they seek alternatives to continue development of their lives in the countryside, advising them on livestock projects, crops, community gardens with older people, awareness programs with youth, etc.

  At dawn, we leave the peasants of La Esperanza to return to our homes. From a distance they shout to come back soon. On the road we pass a group of heavily armed police. They are working in the countryside with the aim of destroying coca laboratories.

  Unanimous Santa Cruz City Council Resolution to End US Military Aid to Colombia
  By Liza Smith
  After hours of waiting in the hot Santa Cruz, California city council room, listening to the impassioned arguments in favor and against off-leash dog use at a nearby beach; and seeing a lengthy power point presentation on the plans for a new building in downtown Santa Cruz, we were losing our steam.

  It seemed likely that our resolution, requesting that all US military aid to Colombia be re-directed to domestic drug prevention and rehabilitation programs, wouldn’t be considered until after 7pm when the council members returned from their evening recess. Fortunately Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty noticed that we had been patiently waiting all afternoon (thankfully we had all brought work with us: the UC Santa Cruz Colombia research cluster grad students were grading papers while others worked on their laptops) and pushed our agenda item to the top of the list before the break. At 6pm, life-long activist Bert Muhly from 3 Americas took the floor.

  Reminded after two minutes that his time was almost up, Bert was not distracted and continued speaking about US policy towards Latin America over the years and that he himself had “been in Colombia with FOR.” Then Sandra Alvarez, a long-time Colombia activist, Ph.D candidate at UCSC and member of FOR’s Colombia Committee, spoke to the power of passing local resolutions on international issues, saying “it is here where we can have an impact.” A Vietnam veteran, clearly a regular at Santa Cruz City Council meetings, also spoke in favor of the resolution and went on to profess about the evils of electing John McCain (only to be reminded by the mayor that we were talking about Colombia!).

  Audience members included long-time FOR activist and Latin America Program Officer at the Appleton Foundation, Phil McManus, who said, “U.S. military aid is simply pouring gas on the fire. Sooner or later, Colombians will have to work out Colombian problems and resolve their conflicts. Cutting off military aid will contribute positively to the conditions necessary to build a future in Colombia rooted in peace and justice for its long-suffering people.”

  When the time for the vote came, it passed unanimously! Although some council members usually don’t support resolutions that touch on international policy and prefer to focus on local issues, this resolution was an exception. After it was approved, council member Mike Rotkin referred to the resolution’s specific language, which urged the mayor to notify other cities across California and ask them to also take a stand on the failed drug war and its impacts on people at home and abroad.

  The Santa Cruz Sentinel briefly noted the resolution, saying, “the council approved a resolution calling for a shift in U.S. drug policy away from fighting illegal drug production in foreign countries, especially Colombia, to curtailing the demand for illegal drugs in the United States.”

  The resolution encourages the Santa Cruz mayor to publicize the City Council’s action and to send copies of this Resolution to Representative Farr and to Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. It also urged Congressman Sam Farr to “step up his leadership to terminate all military assistance to the Colombian Army, and to re-direct these funds” to “substance abuse prevention, harm reduction, and treatment programs.”

  The Berkeley and Fairfax city councils have passed similar resolutions, making this the third of its kind, and FOR hopes to repeat the effort in many more cities. To download FOR’s organizing kit on how to pass a resolution in your city or county, please see: www.forcolombia.org/resolution

  New US Military Bases in Colombia and Peru?
  By John Lindsay-Poland

  The governments of both Colombia and Peru have announced recently that they are prepared to host the US military operations currently carried out in Ecuador at the Manta air base, but no agreement has yet been made, according to local press reports. Nevertheless, the United States already carries out its own air operations from sites in Colombia.

  “There are possibilities in Colombia [for the operations], without a doubt,” US Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield said in May. Brownfield was responding to a question from the daily El Espectador about moving the Manta base to Colombia’s northeastern Guajira state, which borders Venezuela. Many, especially on leftist blogs, interpreted Brownfield as saying that the base would move to Guajira, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez riposted by saying, “If they are going to set up a gringo military base there, we will talking about La Guajira as a whole.”

  Chavez referred to historical tensions over the border in that area. But his response came in the context of tensions between Venezuela, Colombia and the United States since the Colombian attack in Ecuador on March 1, when Chavez moved army troops to the Colombia border region.

  However, President Uribe acknowledged that his government is prepared to host the US operations. “All we can do to strengthen the US aid with the aim of being able to overcome drug trafficking, we will continue doing,” Uribe said in response to a question about establishing a US base. But he said that there has not been discussion yet of a military base.

  The US military doesn’t call its facility in Manta, Ecuador a “military base.” Instead, in a semantic sleight of hand, it’s called a “Forward Operating Location.” But that’s also the name the US Air Force already uses for the US military facility in Apiay, Colombia, in southern Meta state. On the web site of the 12th Air Force, headquartered at Davis-Monthan Air Base in Arizona, Apiay is listed as a Forward Operating Location together with other US air bases in the hemisphere, in Manta, Ecuador; Honduras; Aruba; and Curacao. (The Air Force does not control the US bases in El Salvador, Puerto Rico or Cuba.) US Southern Command chief Admiral James Stavridis testified last year that “We are currently operating out of Apiay in Colombia and are working with the Government of Colombia to increase access for counter-narcotics and other missions.”

  In Peru, the army itself confirmed in mid-June that it is negotiating the installation of a US military base in Ayacucho, a region heavily contested in Peru’s civil war, and the site of intense human rights violations by the army. More than 100 US soldiers began conducting exercises in May in Ayacucho, still a region of extensive coca cultivation and hundreds of combatants from the armed group Shining Path. The US soldiers operated from the Cabitos barracks, used by Peru’s army in the 1980s and 1990s for illegal detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings.

  “The selection of Ayacucho has to do with the US interest in being in the heart of the country’s most problematic area in terms of security, and because it is equi-distant from the armed conflict in Colombia and the political conflicts in Bolivia,” said analyst Ricardo Soberón. “With the base’s installation in Peru, [the US] would be dangerously involved in a regional conflict.” Ayacucho groups announced a protest strike on July 8 to reject the US military presence.

  Discussion of new US military facilities in both countries raises a question: will the United States attempt to use being kicked out of Ecuador to set up more bases with broader mandates, and actually increase its military presence in the region?

  Upcoming Events!

  Westchester County, NY
  The Drug War Road Show
  Puppets and Interactive Theater
  Addresses effects of drug war militarism on communities in the US and Colombia
  Thursday, July 24, 7-9 pm
  WESPAC Foundation
  17 Marble Avenue, Pleasantville, NY
  For directions, call (914) 449-6514

  New York City
  Plan Colombia and Plan Mexico
  Presentations by Liza Smith and Robert Jereski
  Monday, July 28, 7 pm
  Blue Stockings Café
  172 Allen Street, Lower East Side (between Stanton and Rivington)
  For directions, go to http://www.bluestockings.com/directions.html