Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, second right, holds the granddaughter of released hostage Consuelo Gonzalez, left, as Gonzalez' daughter Maria Fernanda Perdomo stands at center as they pose for the media at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2007. Helicopters sent by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez plucked two rebel-held hostages from the Colombian jungles and flew the women to Venezuela. (AP Photo/Gregorio Marrero) By Justin Delacour
Latin America News Review
January 12, 2008
It will be interesting to see how the U.S. press will distort Chavez's call for the removal of the Colombian FARC's classification as a "terrorist" group. The New York Daily News gives the following title to an Associated Press report: "Hugo Chavez defends Colombian rebels." But then, when you read the actual report, you find that what Chavez says is no different than what the European Union was saying as late as 2002. Reuters more accurately describes Chavez's statements in its title, "Chavez says no military solution to war in Colombia." Chavez says the FARC are insurgents and should not be classified as a terrorist group. The whole purpose of removing the terrorist classification is to open the road to peace negotiations. As Paul Wolf writes, "it's not a question of accepting the FARC-EP’s goals and methods as legitimate" but rather about "resolving a conflict through negotiation, rather than trying to demonize and exterminate an enemy."
I agree completely with Chavez's assertions, which are not a statement of solidarity with the FARC. Chavez offers a very reasonable assessment of what would need to be done to kickstart any serious negotiations. As AP reported almost five years ago (May 21, 2003), the U.N. special envoy James LeMoyne said much the same thing about the FARC but in more pointed fashion than the Venezuelan president:
LeMoyne, in unusually blunt comments to two Colombian newspapers over the weekend, suggested the upper classes are not making enough sacrifices in Colombia's war, now in its 39th year. Most of the government soldiers fighting in the jungles and mountains of this South American country are the children of the poor.
"I have two questions for the upper class of this country to respond to," LeMoyne told the newspaper El Tiempo. "First: Are your sons, nephews or grandsons in the army? ... Who makes the sacrifices in this country when there is combat?"
LeMoyne also asked if the rich pay enough taxes, to better distribute the wealth in a country where 64 percent of its 44 million people live in poverty. He asserted that it is "a mistake to think that the FARC members are only drug traffickers and terrorists."
So Chavez isn't saying anything that other less controversial figures haven't already said.
Unfortunately, U.S. correspondents in Colombia sometimes take the Venezuelan government's statements out of context.
Take a look at the following from AP, for example.
"Officials in Bogota were already upset that Venezuelan Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin appeared to express support for the rebels as he led the Chavez-brokered release of two long-held FARC hostages Thursday."
AP then follows up with a quote from Rodriguez Chacin:
"'We are very aware of your struggle. You are the ones that have to maintain this effort,' Rodriguez told the rebels in a video made of the handover in a Colombian jungle clearing."
AP frames the quote in just such a way that the reader is likely to interpret Rodriguez Chacin's reference to "this effort" as a statement of solidarity with the FARC's armed struggle. I think that, in reality, "this effort" refers to the attempts to negotiate a much larger hostage swap. Notice the likely distortion.
In Colombia, unfortunately, the correspondents are even more tied in with the U.S. foreign policy establishment than in other parts of the region, so they tend to play dirty.
