[A-List] COLOMBIA: Massacre in pacifist peasant community

["tony black" <tal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> COLOMBIA:
> MASSACRE IN PACIFIST PEASANT COMMUNITY EXPOSES
> NATURE OF THE FAR-RIGHT URIBE ADMINISTRATION
>
> <http://www.marxist.com/Latinam/colombia_massacre.htm>
>
> by Ramon Sanchez
>
>
> A vicious attack on the Peace Community in San Jose de
> Apartado left 8 people dead, including women and children.
> The massacre, committed on February 21, targeted Luis
> Eduardo Guerra, leader of the Peace Community, his family,
> and other members of the pacifist group. Witnesses reported
> that armed men who identified themselves as part of the 11th
> Brigade of the Colombian army arrested the community leader
> along with seven other members of the community. Those
> arrested were then taken to a farm where their mutilated
> corpses were later found.
>
> The dramatic events have pushed the UN to intervene in the
> affair and demand that the Uribe government investigate the
> crimes (AP March 3, 2005). Meanwhile the Army, through
> senior officers and the Minister of Defence himself, deny
> any kind of involvement on the part of the military in this
> massacre.
>
> The existence of the Peace Community in San Jose de Apartado
> clearly shows that a layer of peasants are fed up with the
> guerrilla groups in Colombia but also that they are not
> willing to side with the vicious Colombian army. This
> community has renounced the violence of both sides of the
> armed conflict in the Latin American country. The victims
> tried to isolate themselves from Colombia's 40-year-old
> conflict by barring armed groups from entering their
> territory. However, even in the remotest areas of the
> Colombian jungle it is not possible to escape reality.
>
> The slaughter in San Jose de Apartado is a new episode in
> the scary increase of violence that has taken place over the
> last year. At the end of 2004 Marxist.com reported on the
> rising levels of violence and threats issued against the
> student, labour and peasant movements in Colombia (you can
> see the article here). During President Alvaro Uribe's first
> year in office, officials in Washington and Bogotá, along
> with the bourgeois media, repeatedly trumpeted the
> "successes" of the administration's security strategies.
> They rushed to point out the decrease in killings,
> kidnappings and forced displacement, claiming that the
> military had seized the initiative and had the guerrillas
> against the wall. Recently, government officials and the
> media have been far less keen to show the most recent
> statistics pertaining to Colombia's conflict, which show
> that the situation has deteriorated dramatically over the
> past year.
>
> This massacre exposes once again the brutal agenda of the
> United States for Latin America, using Colombia as their
> base of operations. US imperialism's plans to shape Colombia
> as the Latin American version of Israel are not a secret. In
> other words, US imperialism needs a local state with a
> puppet government in order to police a continent that is
> becoming as problematic as the Middle East. Over the last 3
> years, this need has become vital to the geo-strategic
> interests of the US administration and US companies with a
> heavy presence in the area. On top of the forty-year
> guerrilla struggle, the US now faces another serious threat
> just next to Colombia -- the masses entering the class
> struggle in the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
>
> The endless assassinations and slaughtering of peasant and
> labour movement activists in the last fifteen years show
> that US imperialism and the Colombian oligarchy will stop at
> nothing to smash the seriously wounded social and labour
> movement. They are the obstacle in the path of their
> ruthless plans of widespread privatisation and
> militarisation of the area.
>
> The slaughter in San Jose de Apartado shows once again that
> the Colombian workers, peasants and students cannot trust a
> vicious and far right government to protect them. It is
> nonsense to ask the wolf to protect the sheep. The Uribe
> Velez administration, like the Pastrana administration
> before it (former Colombian president who had a slightly
> softer approach than Uribe Velez), have never been
> interested in the protection of trade unionists or community
> leaders. The US is not funding one of the most powerful
> military machines on the continent to protect "the victims
> of violence". The FARC has recently been widely discredited
> by their drug peddling activities and thuggish methods.
> After 40 years of guerrilla warfare and a dismissive
> attitude towards the political activity in the cities, the
> guerrillas have proven to be incapable of assuming the task
> of defending the communities and the organisations of the
> labour movement. While we welcome any kind of enquiry and
> investigation into the massacre, we must say that only
> popular and workers' militias with democratically elected
> officers controlled by the trade unions and the community
> can provide self-defence to the workers, peasants and
> students. This is the only way that crimes like the massacre
> in San Jose de Apartado cam be avoided.
>
> March 4, 2005
>
>
>
> See also:
>
>
> Colombian army and paramilitaries intensify offensive
> against trade unionists and left-wing activists By Ramon
> Sanchez (November 25, 2004)
>
> "The fundamental thing is that Capitalism must be smashed in
> each revolutionary process" (Interview with Diego Escobar,
> June 2004)
>
> Interview with Javier Correa, President of the National
> Union of Food Industry Workers of Colombia (Interview by the
> Asturian supporters of El Militante in Spain, September 26,
> 2002)
>
> Peace Dialogue Breaking Down in Colombia: President
> Pastrana, his regime and the ruling classes continue to play
> hide-and-seek (February 25, 2002)
>
>
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