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Colombia and Venezuela: Who’s behind the rising tensions
Deirdre Griswold / Monday 18 February 2008
 

In early January, in a unilateral move, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released two women it had been holding. Its aim was to demonstrate it was serious about wanting to negotiate a humanitarian exchange of prisoners with the Colombian government.

An estimated 500 captured FARC fighters are held in Colombian government jails under horrendous conditions. The guerrilla group is believed to have detained about one-tenth that number of people.

On Feb. 2, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who had facilitated the release of the two women and provided helicopters to pick them up, announced that the FARC would soon be releasing three more people—Gloria Polanco de Losada, Luis Eladio Pérez and Orlando Beltrán Cuéllar, all former members of Colombia’s Congress—to the Venezuelan government. FARC said it was in “recognition for the persistent efforts to achieve a humanitarian accord” by Colombian Sen. Piedad Córdoba and Chávez. Córdoba, whose electoral constituency is largely Afro-Colombian, is in opposition to the current government of President Álvaro Uribe.

Since Uribe had last summer authorized the humanitarian exchange efforts, and even asked Chávez and Córdoba to make the arrangements, one might think the success of their efforts would be applauded by Uribe’s right-wing political base as easing the strife of a long civil war in their country and perhaps even leading to broader negotiations.

One might think that, but one would be wrong.

On Feb. 4, large right-wing demonstrations were held in many Colombian cities and abroad denouncing the FARC. They had been widely publicized in advance by all the major pro-government media. The Colombian stock exchange closed down for it, bosses pressured their workers to attend, and the government shut down schools and public services for the rally, according to a well-informed online report by Kiraz Janicke of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network.

What had caused Uribe and the privileged oligarchy he represents to so change their minds?

Perhaps it was the very favorable response to the FARC’s gesture from the Colombian people, including even the families of soldiers and others detained by the guerrilla group. Perhaps it was the right wing’s fear that revelations about the close link between the Uribe ruling group and the murderous Colombian paramilitaries were becoming a huge scandal.

Whatever caused the ruling circles to change their minds on the humanitarian exchanges, the demonstrations had the same flavor as the ones that preceded the coup against the pro-socialist reformer, President Salvador Allende, in Chile in 1973. In those demonstrations, it was made to appear that ordinary housewives were angry at Allende and blamed him for food shortages. In the ones in Colombia, the media emphasis was on the youth, who were said to have organized the marches using the Internet facility Facebook.

But in both cases, the role of U.S. imperialism in encouraging, facilitating and putting a media spin on the marches cannot be denied. In Chile, the demonstrations were followed by a fascist coup d’état that put Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power. The military murdered Allende and thousands of trade unionists, socialists and communists in the first few days.

There is, of course, no progressive government to overthrow in Colombia. But U.S. imperialism and the corporations it represents, particularly the oil companies, are in an increasingly dangerous struggle with neighboring Venezuela, where Chávez has been trying to raise the educational and material level of the masses of people, using oil revenues to pay for it.

Amazingly, this is openly attacked in the U.S. business media as a “cynical maneuver” by Chávez to get mass support. How come no “cynical” U.S. politicians—and there are many of them—ever follow his example? Are they afraid they’d be taken down by the so-called “intelligence” community, which works hand in glove with the corporations?

Colombia out of synch

Colombia has been out of synch with most of the rest of South America, especially since Chávez was elected president of Venezuela. In country after country, militant, mass protests followed by elections have ushered in governments that at the very least espouse some independence from Washington and put an emphasis on closing the huge social gap between the oligarchy and the oppressed popular masses, many of whom are Indigenous or of African ancestry.

By contrast, Uribe and his privileged political base depend on massive U.S. military aid to stay in power. This ruling group wants to tie Colombia’s economy to a “free market” agreement modeled on NAFTA. In Mexico, NAFTA has brought huge profits to U.S. agribusiness and misery to the workers and farmers, driving them to emigrate in huge numbers.

In his State of the Union address this year, President George W. Bush put a big emphasis on urging Congress to pass a trade agreement with Colombia. Three high-level U.S. officials—Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy John Walters and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—recently visited Colombia, where they attacked Venezuela in speeches.

President Chávez has said that the U.S. is planning to use Colombia in a military aggression against his country. There is plenty of compelling evidence to support this charge.

Progressives everywhere should be prepared to answer the flood of propaganda that would accompany such an event and mobilize in solidarity with the working people of Venezuela and Colombia, who are trying to free themselves from the clutches of the profiteering U.S. transnationals and their thugs.