Colombia the Catalyst

 
Central American armed insurgencies and US intervention were catalysts for the birth of many of the 1980s and '90s human rights organizations and support networks that carried on the anti-Vietnam traditions of the previous decades. It now appears that opposition to Plan Colombia will become the new catalyst for bringing together a diverse group of civil society organizations throughout the hemisphere.

Anti-corporate activists see Plan Colombia as another arm of corporate domination. They consider Plan Colombia to be an example of US military domination of the Americas, just as they view the FTAA as a form of economic domination. This movement has many similarities to the resistance to US involvement in Central America in earlier decades. An example is the announcement of an International Conference for Peace and Solidarity in Colombia and Latin America on July 20-22 in El Salvador. A number of major groups are organizing this event, including the FMLN. Others endorsing it include Nobel Prize winners Adolfo P�rez Esquivel, Eduardo Galeano and Rigoberta Mench� from Latin America, and Jos� Saramago from Portugal. US supporters include Ramsey Clark, Mumia Abu Jamal, Noam Chomsky and Prof. James Petras. Anti-war organizations from Europe, the Martin Luther King Center of Cuba, Ahmed BenBella of Algeria, and a number of groups from Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico are also endorsing the conference and sending representatives. More information can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/eventopaz/.

Those observers who consider this effort to be somewhat extreme should consider it in light of other activities, such as the anti-globalization demonstrations in Washington, D.C., planned for late September. The protests are ostensibly aimed at the World Bank and the IMF. Mobilization for Global Justice, which coordinated the April 16, 1999 Washington protests, is organizing the major demonstration for Sunday, September 30. More and more organizations involved are incorporating a stance against US militarism in Latin America into their agendas. Many mainstream organizations, such as the AFL-CIO, have already gone on record stating their concern over the military, counter-insurgency focus of Plan Colombia.

One of the networks involved in planning the Washington protests, the Latin American Solidarity Conference (LASC), is promoting an "International Day of Action Against US Military and Economic Intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean." It is asking people to "join tens of thousands in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, September 29 to say: No to Plan Colombia/ No to the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas)/ U.S. bases out of Vieques and all of Latin America & the Caribbean/ Close the School of the Americas / WHISC stop the direct assault against people of color and the poor in the Americas through the phony war on drugs."

In its draft Call to Action, LASC argues that "The U.S. government is using its armed forces to push through economic policies that only serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. This war system works hand in hand with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The U.S. government is using the production of narcotics in the southern part of the American continent as an excuse to militarize the Americas. There are currently military bases in Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, and Puerto Rico and a strong military presence in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru." (For further information see: www.americas.org/LASC).

It is easy to make light of this activity. However, indications are that diverse groups are coming together in opposition to the Bush administration's policy agenda for the hemisphere. What seem to be fringe groups are growing into the mainstream faster than many would assume.