File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9804, message 154


Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 11:49:40 -0500 (CDT)
From: Dennis Grammenos <dgrammen-AT-prairienet.org>
Subject: M-I: AJC: From El Salvador to Colombia...


Greetings,

Please forgive my insistence on occassionally forwarding to 
Marxism-International stories about Colombia from the listserve of the 
Colombia Support Network.

I do so because I feel that subscribers to M-I should be interested in 
what is going on in Colombia.  Under the guise of the "War on Drugs" the 
US has increased its military involvement.  The situation is very much 
reminiscent of El Salvador in 1980.  Massacres take place nearly weekly.  
Death squads and paramilitaries are roaming Colombia for victims.  
Disappearances have become so common place that it is difficult to even 
keep track any more.  The media is totally disoriented by the constant 
spinning that is taking place by the national security state.

I will be leaving for Colombia in about five weeks on a fact-finding mission 
with the Colombia Support Network.  I'll try to convey some of the 
findings to M-I and other venues.

Meanwhile, allow me to occassionally forward some of the stories on 
Colombia.  As always, we are forced to read between the lines:-)

Solidarity,
Dennis Grammenos
co-moderator, Marxism-International

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

                                ========================================                                "The same kinds of atrocities committed
                                by death squads in El Salvador are being
                                committed by death squads in Colombia
                                today," said Eduardo Gamarra, an expert
                                on Latin America at Florida International
                                University.
________________________________========================================THE ATLANTA JOURNAL AND CONSTITUTION

Saturday, 11 April 1998


             Salvadoran killers say regime had role in 1980 crimes
                Activists note that the U.S. backed El Salvador,
                   and they see the same problem in Colombia.
             -----------------------------------------------------

        By Shelley Emling

MIAMI -- More than 17 years after the crime, four Salvadoran national
guardsmen accused of raping and killing four church women from the United
States in 1980 have publicly confessed that they were not acting alone but
carrying out orders from higher-ups in the military.

The revelation has reopened debate over the U.S. government's decade-long,
$ 7 billion role in backing an often brutal military in El Salvador's
civil war of the 1980s.

But it also has given new impetus to a bitter foreign policy dispute over
the government's expanding role in backing another military force in Latin
America, this one in Colombia.

"Like in El Salvador, the United States is now in bed with a military
known for its atrocities against civilians," said Carlos Salinas, Amnesty
International's director for Latin America. "And, like in El Salvador,
the public doesn't understand the extent to which we are getting involved
in Colombia."

The slayings of the women, Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel, 41, and lay worker
Jean Donovan, 27, both of Cleveland, and Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford, 40, and
Maura Clark, 49, both of New York, came at the forefront of a 12-year
civil war launched by leftist rebels.

Both the Salvadoran and U.S. governments have maintained that five
guardsmen convicted of the killings in 1984 and sentenced to 30 years in
prison acted on their own, despite a U.N. report of official Salvadoran
complicity in the acts.

For the last several years, the families of the church women have been
trying to interview the national guardsmen in prison. Last month, lawyers
finally spoke with four of the five men. The four said they had not acted
alone.

For years, opponents of U.S. policy in El Salvador accused President
Ronald Reagan's administration of ignoring evidence in the case, as well
as condoning widespread human rights abuses, in its zeal to fight
communism.

Now, opponents of U.S. policy in Colombia accuse the Clinton
administration of ignoring the same kinds of abuses in its zeal to fight
drug trafficking. An estimated 80 percent of the world's cocaine is
produced in Colombia.

"The nature and extent of U.S. security assistance to Colombia is
extremely troubling in light of Colombia's abysmal human rights record,"
said Coletta Youngers, an expert on Colombia at the Washington Office on
Latin America, a liberal think tank. She said violence in Colombia ---
where 3,000 to 4,000 political killings occur each year --- is comparable
to that in El Salvador during the 1980s.

Colombia's two largest guerrilla groups --the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia and the National Liberation Army-- are Latin America's largest
and oldest insurgencies. They have waged war for three decades.

"The same kinds of atrocities committed by death squads in El Salvador
are being committed by death squads in Colombia today," said Eduardo
Gamarra, an expert on Latin America at Florida International University.

State Department officials said this week that the U.S. government won't
make apologies for its role in Cold War-era wars fought under previous
administrations but that it is mindful of growing concerns over U.S.
support for the Colombian military.

For years, U.S. aid to Colombia's military was virtually nonexistent
because the Colombian army, as well as the growing number of right-wing
paramilitary groups that operate with its blessing, had been implicated in
human rights abuses such as the widespread torture and massacre of
civilians.

But the U.S. military has stepped up its involvement in Colombia in recent
months, alarmed by the strength of a growing leftist insurgency that has
clear links to drug traffickers.

The State Department admits that it expects to increase military aid to
Colombia this year for anti-narcotics operations, but it has denied that
the equipment or training would be used to pursue leftist rebel groups,
who have de facto political and military control over nearly 50 percent of
the nation.

''We don't give assistance indiscriminately,'' said Michael Hahn, a State
Department spokesman. ''We make sure the units we give aid to have not
been accused of human rights abuses.''

U.S. security assistance to Colombia is expected to top more than $100
million this year, or more than three times as much as it totaled two
years ago, while the number of U.S. military advisers in Colombia has
grown steadily to more than 200 today.

U.S. officials also are mulling over the Colombian army's request to buy
12 sophisticated and lethal Cobra attack helicopters that are, unlike the
troop transport helicopters now employed by the army, designed to mount
offensives.

Regarding the case of the church women, the U.N. Truth Commission for El
Salvador said in 1993 that high Salvadoran officers, including the defense
minister and the commander of the national guard at the time, were
involved in covering up the murders.

But State Department officials maintain that evidence never has been
conclusive.

''The commission never concluded anything but simply left open the
possibility that there may have been a coverup,'' Hahn said, adding that
the commission's evidence was based solely on hearsay.

He said the U.S. government is not investigating the case, nor is it
searching for former Defense Minister Gen. Jose Guillermo Garcia and the
former national guard commander, Col. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, both
of whom live in Florida.

                Copyright 1998 The Atlanta Constitution
_____________________________________________________________________
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