South America

ColombiaPress Releases
COHA

BREAKING NEWS: COLOMBIA

In recent weeks, COHA has issued a number of communiqués to the press that have explored various aspects of Colombia’s domestic and regional policies. This material, in addition to that which is available on its website, can be obtained by contacting COHA’s office at [email protected] or calling 202-223-4975. To contact COHA director Larry Birns, please call 202-215-3473.

FARC’s Fatal Blow
In yet another blow to Colombia’s leftist guerrilla group Las Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia (FARC), former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and fourteen other hostages were freed in a brilliant military operation on 2 July 2008. Betancourt was taken captive six years ago and was, for the duration of that time, the FARC’s highest profile hostage. Among the other detainees rescued are three American defense contractors and members of the Colombian security forces.

According to Colombia’s hardline Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, whose star is very much in ascendancy in a movie-script fashion, Colombian intelligence forces managed to infiltrate the FARC’s Secretariat and intercept the transfer of key hostages from one area of the country to another. The operation, termed jaque, after the Spanish word “check,” as in “check mate,” was the culmination of a year’s worth of preparation. The rescue of the hostages represents a huge victory for the Uribe government and yet another in a series of crucial defeats for FARC forces. It may also signal the successful impact of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been pumped annually into the Colombian military by the U.S. under Plan Colombia. Such funds already have been used to persuade hundreds, if not thousands, of FARC fighters to demobilize and certainly provided a strong motivation for the murder of Ivan Ríos (for which his renegade personal bodyguard was rewarded $2.5 million).

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COHA

Selective Idealism/Selective Indignation: Double-Standards and Inconsistencies Persist in U.S. Foreign Policy

• The case against CISPES
• The case against the Department of Justice
• The ad hoc war on terror

A few days ago, Washington purged North Korea from its ‘terrorist’ list after Pyongyang demolished a cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear plant, symbolizing an end to the country’s nuclear program and its being out in the cold for a half century. Still, over seven years of President Bush’s “War on Terror” have passed, but the American public has yet to see much consistency in this country’s anti-terrorist practices. Some would contend that the term “war on terror” has proven to be an overused misnomer – often employed to bolster arbitrary U.S. foreign policy initiatives. Recent events have exposed the continuing disparity between the Bush administration’s high-flying ideological rhetoric and the practical results of its day-to-day policies.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Elizabeth Reavey.

Protecting Peru and Brazil’s Uncontacted Amazon Tribes

What is it about the recent photographs of the “uncontacted” indigenous tribe of the Peruvian-Brazilian Amazon region that has caused such a stir around the world? The provocative photos of painted natives in loincloths, including several holding bows ready to loose their arrows at the aircraft filming them from overhead, are eliciting worldwide concern over how the authorities will treat these people. The image of brandished bows and arrows seems pretty clear: these natives want to be left alone. The government recently released the photographs taken by FUNAI, Brazil’s National Foundation for Indians, in order to provide substance to the debate over isolated and uncontacted groups who exist in the Amazon.

Survival International, an organization that monitors the status of indigenous tribes worldwide, estimates that there are at least 100 isolated tribes remaining in the world, with half of them in Peru and Brazil. These native peoples and their ways of life are in constant peril due to new roads, dams, logging, mineral mining and especially disease brought from outside, and there are growing concerns that these threats endanger the many indigenous tribes’ ways of life. Contact with outsiders brings only violence, exploitation and death. The recent photos have intensified a long-standing disagreement about whether Peru and Brazil are doing enough to protect isolated indigenous tribes and the prospective ethnological fate of the entire Amazon region. Despite recent re-affirmations of their commitment to protection policies by both the Peruvian and Brazilian governments, experts insist that not enough is being done to safeguard these aboriginal groups. More proactive policies must be put into place in order to preserve the Amazonian cultures.

For Full Article Click Here

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Emily Dunn.

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