Colombia, The Israel of Latin America

The Israel of Latin America (Part 1)

Earlier this week, after the Colombian military launched an airstrike within Ecuador to kill a high ranking figure within the FARC insurgency, Chavez described Colombia as the Israel of Latin America. Predictably, he was subjected to ridicule within the US, but, as this post by lenin over at Lenin's Tomb reveals, there is a solid historical foundation for it. lenin's post is a good summary of the historic relationship between Israel and the repressive right wing regimes of Central and South America.

Anyone subject to the US elite obsession with Venezuela in recent years would probably tend to believe that Venezuela is the violent, dangerous, politically and economically unstable country, primarily because of the Chavistas, of course, while Colombia represents a mature, American style democracy. What a shock to discover that the Colombian right wing and US corporations destroyed the electoral left in the mid-1980s by relying upon paramilitary death squads to kill and intimidate anyone who attempted to participate in the political system.
Throughout the 1990s to the present, they continue to kill and threaten to kill students and labor leaders. According to Gary Leech in the Colombia Journal:

In the past 20 years, more than 3,000 Colombian unionists have been assassinated. And of the 144 unionists killed worldwide last year, 78 were Colombian—eight more than the previous year. According to the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU), there were 1,165 documented murders of Colombian trade union members between 1994 and 2006. However, the state has convicted the perpetrators in only 14 of these cases—an impunity rate of over 95 percent.

Venezuela is certainly not perfect. It is confronting the economic challenges associated with being a lesser developed nation, challenges that it may or may not overcome. It also has an alarmingly high crime rate, including murder. But it remains an open society, one in which people can participate in the political system without the risk of being targeted by death squads, with the exception of campesinos agitating for land reform.

Who's killing them? Yes, you guessed the prime suspect: Blame has focused on right-wing Colombian paramilitaries hired by Venezuelan latifundistas to intimidate campesinos who move to take control of under-utilised land. I was personally told the same thing by people that I spoke with when I traveled to Venezuela in 2005. Of course, neither the opposition nor their allies in the US media ever express any concern for them, as they would not assist in the project of reinstating neoliberal economic policies there.

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The Israel of Latin America (Part 2)

To read the original post, go here. Colombian President Uribe has a provocative resume. According to the Pentagon in 1991: Alvaro Uribe Velez--a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the U.S.... Uribe has worked for the Medellin cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria.

And here is a summary of his political allies:
>>> Fourteen of Uribe's closest congressional allies remain behind bars for their terrorist links, and are slowly revealing where bodies have been dumped, leading to discovery of mass graves last spring.

>>> His foreign minister was forced to resign a year ago when her brother (a senator) was arrested for overseeing the killing of thousands of peasants. (Yeah that’s “thousands” with a “thu”)

>>> His campaign manager/secret police chief was jailed that same month for “giving a hit list of trade unionists and activists to paramilitaries, who then killed them.”

>>> His Army chief “collaborated extensively” with illegal death squads and, back in 2002, colluded in the massacre of 14 people for their supposed leftist politics.

>>> His police intelligence unit illegally wiretapped the phones of journalists and opposition figures for two years

>>> His Defense Minister “tried to plot with the outlawed private militias to upset the rule of a former president," and

>>> In last fall’s elections, a whopping 30 major candidates turned up murdered.

Of course, the obsession of the US elite and its media allies will remain Chavez and Venezuela. I'm beginning to think that he was incorrect in his description of Uribe's Colombia. Given media disinterest in Colombia in marked contrast to its hysteria in regard to Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, rather than Israel, may be a more apt comparison.

Admittedly, Colombia lacks oil (although it does have natural gas), but the media seems willing, as it is with Saudi Arabia, to ignore the flagrant human rights abuses there. One wonders whether Chavez would be more acceptable to the US if he was connected to narco traffickers and killed his political opponents. If US policy prevailed and resulted in the removal of Chavez, Venezuelans would probably find themselves facing the institutionalized state violence inflicted upon the people of Colombia.

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