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Colombia: More Than Drugs & Outlaws

By Evan Douthit

On Sunday, April 3, Chicago VVAW held a reception for visiting Colombian Senator Pedro Alcantara, a noted painter and one of the leaders of the new Union Patriotica party of Colombia. Senator Alcantara has been visiting the U.S. to talk about the dramatic situation in Colombia where 500 members of his party, including 2 senators and 2 representatives, have bene murdered by death squads in 2 and a half years of the party's existence. The Senator himself has been the subject of 2 attempts on his life and is on a published death list.

The Senator noted in his talk to VVAW that the U.S. media presents Colombia as though it was only a country of drug dealers and terrorists, but in fact it is a county where people suffer and struggle to survive. In Colombia the most important human right, the right to life, is being undermined as the extreme right, unable to outlaw the new Union Patriotica legally has set up 170 paramilitary groups. Their targets have included UP members, trade unionists, peasant and community activists, students, cultural workers, and even politicians of the establishment Liberal and Conservative Parties who opposed the killings. The head of the UP was himself murdered in October 1987.

The Senator explained how the UP came into being in 1985 out of the truce agreements between the government of then-President Belisario Betancur and the main Colombian guerrilla groups. This opened up political space for Colombians who did not feel represented by the archaic Colombian two-party system to express themselves legally. But though Betancur was an honest and courageous man who sincerely wanted peace, according to Senator Alcantara, the extreme right and parts of the military have worked hard to sabotage the agreements.

In spite of the terror, the UP elected 14 congressmen in 1986, and in the March 13 elections this year, UP supported-candidates were elected mayor in 109 of 1009 municipalities. And thanks to a new law, the new mayors can set up municipal police forces, which will make it harder for death squads to kill the newly elected officials.

But Senator Alcantara also emphasized that the UP cannot save Colombia by itself and is seeking to form broad coalitions with all forces in Colombia who support democracy and the rule of law.

Senator Alcantara also talked about the drug trade, and showed how the key to solving the problem from the point of view of Colombia was a deep-rooted agrarian reform. The base of the drug trade, he noted, is the marginalized peasant without title to land, and who have access to roads and credit and other services—such as those peasants involved in coffee growing—will not touch coca. But even solving the problem in Colombia would only lead to the Peruvian, Bolivian and Ecuadorian peasants taking up the slack.

Meanwhile the U.S. has been blaming these countries for being unable to control the coca trade, when the U.S. has been unable to control its own borders, as hundreds of planes enter the U.S. illegally each month to deliver cocaine to U.S. drug dealers. The real problem for the U.S., Alcantara suggested, may be that the U.S. is angry at the thought of all this money being controlled by Colombians instead of the U.S. mafia.

Meanwhile the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has been putting forward monstrous proposal that large parts of Colombia be poisoned with chemical herbicides, as the U.S. poisoned large areas of Vietnam with Agent Orange. And Mayor Tom Bradly of Los Angeles has suggested a "friendly invasion"

Speaking about himself, Senator Alcantara talked about how his ancestors include a Colombian president and a general who fought at the side of Bolivar, how he spent much of his youth in the U.S. and even went to West Point for a year before going to Italy to study painting. The UP nominated him for the Senate in part to give artists and cultural workers in Colombia a voice in Congress. He also said he was extremely impressed by Rev. Jess Jackson and his campaign, which he saw as very similar to the campaign begin waged by the UP for peace with justice and democracy.

VVAW members who met the Senator at the reception and at other events during his visit to Chicago were very impressed and moved by his story.

—Evan Douthit
VVAW Chicago