cyu
6th February 2010, 00:43
Excerpts from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100208/grandin/single
Traditionally in most counterinsurgencies, the "clear" stage entails a plausibly deniable reliance on death-squad terror--think Operation Phoenix in Vietnam or the Mano Blanca in El Salvador. The Bush administration was in office by the time Plan Colombia became fully operational, and according to the Washington Post's Scott Wilson, it condoned the activities of right-wing paramilitaries, loosely organized as the United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC in Spanish. "The argument at the time, always made privately," Wilson writes, "was that the paramilitaries"--responsible for most of Colombia's political murders--"provided the force that the army did not yet have."
Technically, the United States considers the AUC to be a terrorist organization... But Plan Colombia did not so much entail an assault on the paras--aside from the most recalcitrant and expendable... Under the smokescreen of a government-brokered amnesty, condemned by national and international human rights groups for institutionalizing impunity, paras have taken control of hundreds of municipal governments, establishing what Colombian social scientist León Valencia calls "true local dictatorships" ...The country's sprawling intelligence apparatus is infiltrated by this death squad/narco combine, as is its judiciary and Congress
Colombian President Álvaro Uribe offers "democratic security," a social compact whereby those who submit to the new order are promised safe, even yuppified cities and secure highways, while oppositional civil society suffers intimidation and murder. Colombia remains the hands-down worst repressor in Latin America. More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC.
In the Salvadoran department of Cabañas, for instance, death squads have executed four leaders--three in December--who opposed the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Company's efforts to dig a gold mine in their community.
in Honduras, human rights organizations say palm planters have recruited forty members of Colombia's AUC as private security following the June overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya. That coup was at least partly driven by Zelaya's alliance with liberation-theologian priests and other environmental activists protesting mining and biofuel-induced deforestation. Just a month before his overthrow, Zelaya--in response to an investigation that charged Goldcorp, another Vancouver-based company, with contaminating Honduras's Siria Valley--introduced a law that would have required community approval before new mining concessions were granted; it also banned open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and mercury. That legislation died with his ouster... Since the controversial November 29 presidential elections, Honduras has largely fallen off the media's radar, even as the pace of repression has accelerated. Since the State Department's recognition of that vote, about ten opposition leaders have been executed
"Obama," said a top-level Argentine diplomat despairingly, "has decided that Latin America isn't worth it. He gave it to the right."
Hillary Clinton, following a visit to Brazil by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned Latin Americans to "think twice" about "the consequences" of engagement with Iran. Bolivia denounced the comments as a threat, Brazil canceled a scheduled meeting between its foreign minister and Valenzuela, and even Argentina, no friend of Iran, grew irritated. As the Argentine diplomat quoted above told me, "The Obama administration would never talk to European countries like that."
Insiders report that high-level State Department officials are furious at Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in recent months has been as steadfast ...in opposing Washington's ongoing militarism, particularly the White House's attempt to legitimize the Honduran coup.
Traditionally in most counterinsurgencies, the "clear" stage entails a plausibly deniable reliance on death-squad terror--think Operation Phoenix in Vietnam or the Mano Blanca in El Salvador. The Bush administration was in office by the time Plan Colombia became fully operational, and according to the Washington Post's Scott Wilson, it condoned the activities of right-wing paramilitaries, loosely organized as the United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC in Spanish. "The argument at the time, always made privately," Wilson writes, "was that the paramilitaries"--responsible for most of Colombia's political murders--"provided the force that the army did not yet have."
Technically, the United States considers the AUC to be a terrorist organization... But Plan Colombia did not so much entail an assault on the paras--aside from the most recalcitrant and expendable... Under the smokescreen of a government-brokered amnesty, condemned by national and international human rights groups for institutionalizing impunity, paras have taken control of hundreds of municipal governments, establishing what Colombian social scientist León Valencia calls "true local dictatorships" ...The country's sprawling intelligence apparatus is infiltrated by this death squad/narco combine, as is its judiciary and Congress
Colombian President Álvaro Uribe offers "democratic security," a social compact whereby those who submit to the new order are promised safe, even yuppified cities and secure highways, while oppositional civil society suffers intimidation and murder. Colombia remains the hands-down worst repressor in Latin America. More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC.
In the Salvadoran department of Cabañas, for instance, death squads have executed four leaders--three in December--who opposed the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Company's efforts to dig a gold mine in their community.
in Honduras, human rights organizations say palm planters have recruited forty members of Colombia's AUC as private security following the June overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya. That coup was at least partly driven by Zelaya's alliance with liberation-theologian priests and other environmental activists protesting mining and biofuel-induced deforestation. Just a month before his overthrow, Zelaya--in response to an investigation that charged Goldcorp, another Vancouver-based company, with contaminating Honduras's Siria Valley--introduced a law that would have required community approval before new mining concessions were granted; it also banned open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and mercury. That legislation died with his ouster... Since the controversial November 29 presidential elections, Honduras has largely fallen off the media's radar, even as the pace of repression has accelerated. Since the State Department's recognition of that vote, about ten opposition leaders have been executed
"Obama," said a top-level Argentine diplomat despairingly, "has decided that Latin America isn't worth it. He gave it to the right."
Hillary Clinton, following a visit to Brazil by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned Latin Americans to "think twice" about "the consequences" of engagement with Iran. Bolivia denounced the comments as a threat, Brazil canceled a scheduled meeting between its foreign minister and Valenzuela, and even Argentina, no friend of Iran, grew irritated. As the Argentine diplomat quoted above told me, "The Obama administration would never talk to European countries like that."
Insiders report that high-level State Department officials are furious at Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in recent months has been as steadfast ...in opposing Washington's ongoing militarism, particularly the White House's attempt to legitimize the Honduran coup.