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Plan Colombia, FTAA and Black Communities in the process of global struggle.
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The US Congress has allocated $1.3 billion to the government of Colombia
for a military intervention which was denominated Plan Colombia. The
official purpose of this ‘Plan‘ is to put an end to the illegal growing
of coca by destroying illicit crops, to put an end to the guerilla and
to stabilise Latin Americas ‘oldest democracy’. 84 % of the money will
flow straight back into US economy as it is destined for military aid,
primarily Huey and Black Hawk helicopters.
Anyone digging up just
a bit more information about the situation in Colombia will immediately
see that the drug war is nothing but a pretext and that the real
motivation is to secure access to natural resources (especially oil) and
to gain control over a geopolitical strategic region in order to
continue the implementation of a neoliberal development model in the
whole region and especially the planned FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of
the Amerias) to be discussed in Quebec / Canada in April this year.
A
closer look to the region shows us that Colombia is like a natural
trade platform, having access to both the Pacific and the Atlantic ocean
and being the natural connection between North and South America. The
strategic role of this area was already recognised centuries ago by
Spanish conquistadores who considered connecting both oceans through a
canal. In order to secure the control over this area, the US
orchestrated the separation of Panama from Colombia in 1903. The Panama
canal is becoming too small to deal with the increasing flow of goods in
times of economic globalisation between South East Asia , USA and
Europe, especially considering China as an upcoming market. The
infrastructure of the Canal is old and slow, so new interoceanic
connections are being planned. But Colombia is not only attractive in
terms of trade routes crossroad, it is also intended to become a major
production place full of sweat shops. Several megaprojects like road
infrastructure, dams, oil pipelines, monocultures and harbours in order
to efficiently sap the resources are on their way.
On top of
that, the oil resources in Colombia are enormous and they are even
bigger in Venezuela: BP, Exxon, Shell (via Oxy Petroleum a sister TNC)
have been granted generous concessions for oil drilling. In order to
implement this neoliberal vision of development, Colombia has not only
started reforming its constitution in order to make its laws FTAA
compatible, but here we are assisting to an organised mass displacement
and killing of the population, in particular the black communities, in
order to go ahead with these megaprojects. Colombia has seen 3,000
murdered people in the last year and nearly 2 mio people displaced by
now. This is a social genocide and one of the cruellest forms of
expression of capitalism.
Another important factor are the social
movements of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and Panama which are an
obstacle for these neoliberal plans. Bolivia and Ecuador have seen huge
indigenous uprisings. Peru’s government is collapsing and especially
Venezuela’s external policy (role in OPEC making oil prices raise;
contacts to Cuba and Iraq; and the building up of economic relations to
other Latin American countries) is causing serious concern in the
industrialised countries who’d like to see cheap oil prices, in
particular the USA that has a highly energy inefficient economy. The 4
big oil multinationals also see their hegemony disturbed by Venezuela’s
attitude. US Senator Coverdell said in an article in the Washington Post
on April 10th 2000, that protecting the oil interests in Venezuela
justified the US intervention in Colombia.
It isn’t wrong to
state that Plan Colombia is like a remake of the Vietnam war and a kind
of neocolonialism to get the region under control in order to implement
the vision of the FTAA.
About 25-30 % of the Colombian population
is black. Most live in cities but many communities are spread around
the Pacific and Caribbean coast. The black communities perceive
themselves as the outcome of centuries of struggle for freedom.
Struggles against slavery, against colonialism and now economic
globalisation. They have developed forms of living which have little or
nothing to do with capitalism and that are in harmony with their
environment, one of the places on Earth with the highest biodiversity.
They struggle to defend their right to live, their constitutional right
to autonomy, identity and space to live. Today they are approaching
European and North American grassroots groups that have massively
articulated around the anti- capitalist protests against the WTO, IMF,
WB and that would like to join their struggle and continue the process
of global convergence. Since the protests in Prague against the IMF/WB
summit, the contact between PCN (Black Communities Process) and European
grassroots groups has been developing rapidly. The first exchanges have
resulted in: 1) a call by PCN for support in building communication
structures and skill capacity to improve communication within the
communities and internationally 2) a proposal to consider the planning
of a large international presence in ‘security zones’ in the black
communities, which are precisely in the way of the planned megaprojects.
3) a call to European and North American grassroots realities to build
up autonomous collective alternatives as a response to the economical,
political and cultural power of capitalism. Alternatives which
articulate along horizontal and participatory forms, which practically
implement the right to be different, support self management capacity
and develop structures independently from State structures.
The
co-operation with the movements from this region that are directly
approaching us, represent a chance for a new qualitative development in
the global articulation of resistance, and a step to move from
resistance towards an offensive in the arena of dreams, creation and
conquer of the future.
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