Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace?

Alice Coulter

Inhalt:

• Contemporary violence
• US Aid to Colombia
• Plan Colombia
• "Plan colombia" reborn
• Drugs: An issue of supply or demand?
• Militarisation of US foreign policy
• Human rights
• Regional opposition - the spill-over effect
• Capital
• The peace process
• A necessary alternative?
• Bibliography

"The violence has historical roots in the concentration of resources in the hands of Colombia’s powerful political and economic elite, desperate conditions among the poor, and a political culture that has no tolerance for dissent".[1]

The history of Colombia can perhaps explain several contemporary characteristics. For example, the development of a stable and unified national identity was hampered by geographical constraints, and a colonial history of slavery and repression. Rather than redress these early barriers to national stability, subsequent events have merely compounded social, political and economic inequality.

After independence, the exclusivity of the political system benefited the land-owning elites and marginalized peasants and urban workers. The two political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, were able to mobilise peasants to create firm family loyalties through bloodshed. In the post-violencia period, the National Front pact removed the last vestiges of political competition and voter apathy mounted. Challenges to the state were met with brutal repression and the only recourse for opposition became the resort to violence.

Colombia has been hailed by many as one of the longest running democracies in the region. With only two short-lived periods of military rule, the country can rightly claim to a distinct civilian-based history compared to that of the majority of Latin American countries. However, the formal framework of democracy masks a reality of a closed political system working for the benefit of an elite minority, and promoting the repression of social organisation. The effects of this reality can be seen in the militarisation of social space. On to this background of inequality and political repression has emerged the highly profitable illicit drugs trade, which has managed to revitalise a civil war on-going for nearly forty years. This increased fighting has alerted neighbouring countries to the potential instability of the whole region. In particular Colombia’s distant neighbours in the USA have decided that something needs to be done. Their proposed solution is Plan Colombia, but is this the solution that Colombians really deserve?

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