Colombia

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The Secret Aspects of NAFTA

Colombia deserves a cold handshake rather than a warm abrazo from the Bush Administration

President Bush has set the proposed, FTA to Congress for legislative action. He stressed the fact that Colombia is a good friend and that on economic and security grounds it deserves to be rewarded by the Democratic-controlled congress with an affirmative vote.

In order to justify a free trade pact with Bogotá, President Bush repeatedly presents Colombia as a thriving democracy and President Uribe as a committed constitutionalist. In fact, Uribe for years has had a sinister history of sanctioning human rights violations, compromising the work of human rights agencies and jeopardizing their personal security by publicly accusing them as scarcely being distinguishable from leftist guerillas. At the present moment, Colombia’s Attorney General is investigating corruption charges which he had lodged against a large number of legislators coming from Uribe’s own party, that involve claims that these political allies of Uribe were directly linked to the extreme rightwing death squads known as the AUC, of which Uribe was said to be part of this relationship. Uribe also undermined the core of Washington’s anti-drug strategy in Colombia by allowing AUC members to plead guilty and thus obtain immunity against being extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for their drug-trafficking activities. This initiative in effect torpedoes the heart of Washington’s anti-drug strategy in Colombia.

The Bush administration is grateful that Uribe has been a strong backer of a distorted U.S. policy in the region. But what may be good for the White House and the Nariño Palace is not necessarily good for America or Latin America. The fact that Colombia is one of the few friendly faces that Washington can count on in the hemisphere is an indication of how isolated this administration is in the region, and which probably has done irreversible damage to any prospects for a relationship of constructive engagement with the rest of the hemisphere.

Today, Colombia is probably the worse human rights violation in Latin America and is a nation where labor leaders and democratic political activists are murdered with impunity to the indifference of the Colombian authority. Colombia is without any bona fide claims to be granted a free trade relationship with the U.S. and Congress would be wise to reject any further trade concessions to Bogotá at a time that U.S. workers are suffering from Bush’s neglect, if not indifference.

Larry Birns
Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

NAFTA
This is another in a series of essays on the problems and prospects of NAFTA.

Specifically related to NAFTA and such associated issues as free trade, immigration, drug trafficking and economic security, are the security concerns of the trade pact’s members. Also important to note in an increasingly globalized world, security threats are not just posed by military personnel and weapons, but include economic security issues as well. To uncover the relationship between NAFTA and security, it is important to know how the trade pact was first intended to deal with such matters. NAFTA was heralded by politicians, economists and, to the American public, as a grand equalizer. It was the first area agreement between developed and developing nations designed to provide economic growth opportunities for both.

There have existed many expectations concerning NAFTA’s ability to meet its lofty objectives. It is important to note the economic expectations surrounding NAFTA, and the arguments currently being used to discuss the trade pact, as it centers on its actual performance. First, due to its trade liberalization trend, NAFTA was intended to enhance the export markets of both the United States and Mexico. Prior to its implementation in 1994, centrist economists Hufbauer and Schott, based at the Institute for International Economics, wrote, “over time, the NAFTA should impel industrial reorganization along regional lines, with firms taking best advantage of each country’s ability to produce components and assembled products and thus enhancing competitiveness in the global marketplace” (Hufbauer and Schott 4). Greater market efficiency would occur, allowing for a more prudent allocation of resources.

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Anniversary of a Political Murder in Colombia

Pan-Macedonian Association USA responds to Zlatko Kovach’s Allegations on Macedonia: Reaching Out To Win L. American Hearts

Zlatko Kovach, in his Macedonia: Reaching Out To Win L. American Hearts, proves one more time that he is the product of the continuous brainwashing condition and lies, provided by an education system which emerged from a Balkan nation, under Tito’s and Stalin’s tutelage.

Mr. Kovach begins his elaborations, stating: “Macedonia historically and culturally did transcend the country’s current borders. In 1912-13, through two brutal regional wars, Macedonia was forcefully partitioned among Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The Macedonians were subject to qualified genocide and many were driven from their land. It is this reality that Greece tirelessly tries to cover up.” Mr. Kovach fails to bring up that during the Ottoman era which lasted for five hundred years and ended in 1912 in that area, there was no use of the term Macedonia (meaning the boundaries of the geographic or ancient Macedonia). Ancient Macedonia was divided in two vilaets, the vilaet of Thessaloniki and the vilaet of Monastiri (Bitola). Skopje was the capital of the Kosovo vilaet and was never included in the so-called geographic Macedonia.

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COLOMBIA

• Gaitán and the 9 de abril movement

• Colombian democracy sputters rather than soars

The one thing that those living outside of Latin America are likely to know about Colombia, besides its association with the illegal drug trade, is its unremitting violence. The country evokes images of ruthless drug lords, merciless paramilitary killers, and militant guerrilla armies, piles of bloody corpses and despairing kidnapped hostages.

The Colombia of today is directly linked to these antecedents. Colombia is a “managed” democracy,—free, but not necessarily fair—with the far right government of Álvaro Uribe largely trusting its political future to the aid and goodwill of the Bush Administration, as well as acting as a bulwark against the Latin American left-leaning movement led by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

Historians, however, can point out that this Andean template did not always exist. In the 1930s and early 1940s, during the so-called “Liberal Republic,” Colombia stood out as a relatively stable and democratic nation—one of the most respectable in the hemisphere. In fact, Colombia’s political culture spawned a massive populist movement led by prominent labor lawyer and politician on the Liberal left, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

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Colombia-Ecuador-Venezuela: A Close Call

• Santander and Bolivar Called to the Colors to Butress Uribe and Chávez
• Uribe tries out for The Dick Cheney Role
• A Narrow Escape from Brinkmanship
• No victors, but Uribe clearly is a loser

As last week’s diplomatic crisis between Venezuela and Colombia demonstrates, Chávez has once again sought to appropriate historical symbols in an effort to score political points. Employing explosive language, Chávez remarked “Some day Colombia will be freed from the hand of the (U.S.) empire. We have to liberate Colombia.”

At its peak, the political battle lines of the triangular confrontation embracing Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador had been drawn. On the one side was Colombia, a key U.S. ally headed by rightist Álvaro Uribe. On the other side was Chávez, who seeks to turn Venezuela into a powerful regional player that may serve as a counterweight to Washington’s desire to project its authority. Ultimately, Chávez seeks to plant his socialist economic agenda fused with a parliamentary democratic political system throughout the region and to this end he has been able to recruit key allies such as Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and, or course, Cuba.

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Obama on Latin American Trade: Muddled and Confused

Uribe—Latin America’s Most Disgraced President

• Legacy of Colombia’s violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty will be a heavy cross for Uribe to bear.

• Honored in Washington, Uribe is scorned throughout Latin America for being Bush’s favored hemispheric figure.

However muffled the language may be, President Uribe is destined to be Latin America’s most scorned president in modern times. Condemned by voice and written denunciations throughout the hemisphere, Uribe did manage to solely win enthusiastic, if almost meaningless praise, from lame-duck President George Bush, who saw nothing wrong with Colombia applying Iraqi-style tactics on Ecuadorian territory. Even the most accommodating analyst would have to inform Uribe that he has just finished the most catastrophic week of an already catastrophic presidency and effectively the demise of his presidency and influenced on the hemisphere. There is no question that, ironically enough, Farcista Raúl Reyes has posthumously inflicted the most devastating and lasting defeat on Uribe. Metaphorically speaking, Reyes has scalped Uribe and then hung the Colombian leader’s tattered presidential sash upon a pike and walked the macabre sight through the streets of Latin America.

A Heavy Burden to Bear

At the end of the day, the price of gunning down Reyes will prove to be excessively high for Uribe. On going negotiations for the release of scores of FARC-held hostages, which has eagerly sought after by Uribe, have been unquestionably terminated, at least for the foreseeable future. Reyes was the FARC figure most identified with the hostage-release dialogue with Colombia and European intermediates. In the past, Reyes was the FARC official most engaged in talks that had taken place with high level figures abroad, working for the release of a number of FARC detainees, particularly Ingrid Betancourt, whose freedom was especially sought after by the French, due to her holding both Colombian and French citizenship. Additionally, Reyes was said to have maintained liaison with Venezuela’s efforts, which had been abruptly guillotined last November, when Hugo Chávez was sacked by Uribe as Colombia’s unofficial negotiator. By ordering the killing of Reyes, Uribe guaranteed that former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt will remain in guerrilla custody indefinitely.


A Man for Few Seasons
Uribe cultivates a hard-line image that brooks no flexibility when it comes to visiting affliction upon the Farcistas, which has won him considerable popularity within Colombia. But it is a popularity that is more broad than deep. As for FARC, it is not a soft and fuzzy organization at all, but it must be understood that all of their actions have an end in mind. Behind the drug trafficking and kidnappings lies a resolve to obtain the freedom of their imprisoned comrades and to guarantee their own securities. Yet here again, Uribe’s instincts were antipathetic to a rational assessment of how to peacefully resolve on internecine strife that had been going on for decades, with honor and with homage to the Colombian nations.

Now prepared to retire from office, the Bush administration already has reached the nadir of its popularity on the Hill and when it comes to its Latin American policy, no one can suggest that it was even faintly credible. In fact, Bush’s policy was a parody of a policy; in effect, with no exaggeration, it could be called an anti-policy. Uribe is unlikely to witness the U.S. Congress passing a beneficial trade measure on his behalf. In terms of the high price that Uribe is being forced to pay, the toll is there to clearly be seen.

The Colombian president does not have a compelling reputation which can make him proud. Uribe is anything but an apostle of democracy. He is armed with a grim personality that is more Dick Cheneyesque in impact than Helen Keller, he had no problem with packing the country’s Supreme Court when he was encountering problems in convincing it to make a decision that the Constitution would allow him to be re-elected.

Nor did the U.S. make much of a fuss when, for a token guilty plea and a minimum prison sentence, AUC vigilantes are guaranteed against being extradited to the U.S., even though the extradition policy had been at the heart of Washington’s anti-drug strategy. Another sore point is Uribe’s reputation for playing fast and loose when it comes to personal matters of corruption, and his years of very murky connections to some of the country’s worst rightist extremists. He has worked tirelessly to provide these AUC extremist vigilantes (classified as “terrorists” even by the State Department) to see to it that their future isn’t bleak even now, many of the people who Uribe protected from doing jail time have gone back to a life of major drug trafficking. In a recurring scandal involving Uribe, some 35% of the legislative representatives of his conservative party have direct ideological and/or financial arrangements with these death-squads. Nor should it be forgotten that even the State Department acknowledges that the AUC was tolerated and afforded sweetheart deals by Uribe while it still was carrying out massacres of trade union leaders and hundreds of other civilians.

Larry Birns
Director of COHA

Obama on Latin American Trade: Muddled and Confused

As the U.S. presidential campaign heats up, Barack Obama, a contender for the Democratic Party nomination, has been reluctant to discuss U.S. policy towards Latin America. In recent years, the region has undergone a major tectonic shift towards the left, prompting many to wonder how the young Illinois Senator might deal with progressive economic change if elected President.

In South America, there has been considerable resistance to the Bush Administration’s free trade initiatives. Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has even set up his own trade and barter scheme, the Bolivarian Alternative to The Americas (or ALBA), as a foil to Washington’s private sector model. Realizing that it cannot push through a hemispheric-wide free trade initiative, the Bush administration has sought individual free trade agreements on a country-by-country basis. However, recent deals have been questioned by many due to their lack of regard for adequate labor and environmental mandates.

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