colonos

Current political crisis in Latin America: Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela.

Posted on Thursday, March 6, 2008 Updated on Monday, March 10, 2008

There has been many news reports – often tied to the terms “terrorism” and “weapons of mass destruction” (dirty bomb, for instance), does that ring any bells? The issue is basically that:
“Colombia’s commando raid into Ecuadorean territory Saturday killed rebel leader Raul Reyes and 22 other guerrilla fighters, who had crossed the border to hide from the Colombian military.”

Correa and Chavez are gesturing and posing, moving troops to the border with Colombia, and condemning the attack in which several laptops belonging to FARC were seized from rebels shot dead in their sleep, on Ecuadorian soil, that contained details of relations to Ecuador and Venezuela. That makes it possible for the war on terror coalition of the willing to lump Ecuador and Venezuela together with Iran and FARC with Al-Qaeda; and, then, all that is needed is a paragraph circulating with the words “weapons of mass destruction” before the whole world knows that we are talking about “the evil ones”.

“Ahmadinejad and Chavez have called themselves the “Axis of Unity.” Some security experts call them something else: a potential threat to American security.”

But who is who and what’s the history?

Consider first the credentials of the Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, who is accusing Ecuador and Venezuela of aiding terrorists and drug dealers:

“In 1997 and 1998, alert U.S. Customs agents in California seized three suspicious Colombia-bound ships that, the agents discovered, were laden with 50,000 kilos of potassium permanganate, a key “precursor chemical” necessary for the manufacture of cocaine.

According to a document signed by then-DEA chief Donnie R. Marshall on August 3, 2001, the ships were each destined for Medellín, Colombia, to a company called GMP Productos Quimicos, S. A. (GMP Chemical Products).
The 50,000 kilos of the precursor chemical destined for GMP were enough to make half-a-million kilos of cocaine hydrochloride, with a street value of $15 billion U.S. dollars.

The owner of GMP Chemical Products, according to the 2001 DEA chief’s report, is Pedro Juan Moreno Villa, the campaign manager, former chief of staff, and longtime right-hand-man for front-running Colombian presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe Vélez.

Mr. Moreno was Uribe’s political alter-ego before, during and after those nervous 1997 and 1998 months when he awaited those contraband shipments.

When Uribe was governor of the state of Antioquia from 1995 to 1997 – from its capitol of Medellín – Moreno was chief of staff in Governor Uribe’s office. During those years, according to then-DEA chief Marshall, “”Between 1994 and 1998, GMP was the largest importer of potassium permanganate into Colombia.”

This is the story of the Narco-Candidate, Alvaro Uribe, whose 1982 election as mayor of Medellín, whose 1995 election as governor of Antioquia and whose pending ascendance this year to the presidency of Colombia each mark new chapters in the evolution of the modern Narco-State.” – see also:

Presidential Candidate Alvaro Uribe’s Newsweek Interview

/and/

U.S. INTELLIGENCE LISTED COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT URIBE AMONG
“IMPORTANT COLOMBIAN NARCO-TRAFFICKERS” IN 1991: Then-Senator “Dedicated to Collaboration with the Medellín Cartel at High Government Levels”

So it is easy to see what kind of guy this is – cocaine made him rich and an alliance with Washington powerful.

Chavez and the revolution in Venezuela is a complex issue, as is Ecuador. Many good things are happening, but there is always the issue of, I dare say, despotic rule when too many powers are invested in one person. It is a perfect recipe for schizophrenia and madness in general when one person rules over millions of people.Wouldn’t it make you mad?

However, what does it take to keep the social-democratic revolution going when constantly faced with a right-wing contra-revolution that disregards the majority of the people, human rights and what not (i.e. an anti-democratic revolution, also supported, of course, by Washington) ??

“• LATIN American right-wing forces are not happy at the failure of their maneuvers against the popular nationalist and revolutionary processes unfolding in the region with the support of the vast majority of the electorate, and which have swept them off the political stage.

First it was Venezuela, where the Bolivarian Revolution has been, and is, the target of the most vicious campaigns to discredit its efforts, including sabotage of its oil industry, the kidnapping of Chávez and multiple plots to assassinate him, the fascist 47-hour coup and innumerable actions that for more than 10 years now simply corroborate the bankruptcy of the opposition within the country, despite the extensive support that it receives from the United States.

The opposition, which is none other than the displaced oligarchy, can feel the earth moving under its feet, with the loss of its privileges spreading irreversibly throughout the region

It is no accident that a number of oppositions are beginning to design a common strategy, something like an international terror blanco (white terror) organization, establishing alliances – always with White House money – to obstruct and subvert internal order with the goal of regaining power in countries whose governments are not in tune with the so-called Washington consensus.

Bolivia and Ecuador have not escaped these machinations. The new year has barely begun, with Evo Morales and Rafael Correa starting the second and third years of their terms, respectively, and confrontations with the most violent sectors of the national oligarchies, entrenched in separatist positions, have increased.”

Revolutions are complex things, politrix are messy even in the best case scenario, which this clearly isn’t. So where does that leave all the people in the middle? Some get richer and get to drive cars and shop in supermarkets, others just stay poor and wither in the sunset of progress.

The dark side of it all is that at the end of the day, the indigenous people, the campesinos and their ways of life are most often excluded from the benefits and displaced by the costs of progress (based on an industrial mode of production and a simplistic, economistic model of development). Increased development and extraction in key areas continue to threaten life in the Amazon – although some extraction resistance is successful – /and/ terror laws are used internally to keep crowds of illiterate bodies subdued painting a grim future for the Ecuadorian Amazon, which has been halved in the last ten years.

Is there just no place on the planet that shall not have its people displaced, its plants shaved and the ground paved? What is the end of progress? What is improvement?

Well, according to Correa, such questions are “romantic” and “infantile” (quote from forthcoming article in Red Pepper – see also “Sharks and other politicians” in the The Econofascist) and progress and improvement is set to override environmental concerns in Ecuador, business as usual the trees are falling for the man.

Better take some more picture before it is all gone……