On March 1, the Colombian military crossed its border with Ecuador and bombed a FARC campsite with full U.S. support. The attack violated Ecuadorian sovereignty, and came at a time when Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez has been pushing for a humanitarian exchange of prisoners and a road to peace in Colombia.
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Raúl Reyes, chief negotiator of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), was killed in the attack along with 16 of his comrades.
Why would the Colombian military and the U.S. governments want to kill the chief negotiator of the humanitarian exchange? They not only seek to destroy the armed left in Colombia but also undermine the growing popularity of President Chávez and the leftward shift in Latin American politics.
In response to the attack, Ecuador and Venezuela immediately severed diplomatic ties with Colombia and sent troops to their respective borders with that country. Nicaragua, which is involved in a maritime border dispute with Colombia, also suspended diplomatic relations.
The Organization of American States held an emergency meeting on March 5 and supported Ecuador’s contention that its sovereignty had been violated. However, the OAS stopped short of condemning Colombia for its aggression.
Two days after the OAS meeting, representatives of Latin American nations met in the Dominican Republic for the 20th Rio Group meeting. Unlike the U.S.-dominated OAS, the Rio Group is an organization of Latin American and Caribbean states that does not include the United States. The Rio Group unanimously condemned Colombia’s act of aggression and asked that the Colombian head of state apologize to Ecuador. The Rio Group’s action was endorsed by the OAS at a subsequent meeting of that body on March 18.
The overwhelming international support for Ecuador put the United States and Colombia between a rock and a hard place. The French government, too, had been backing a political solution to the war in Colombia. The highest profile prisoner held by the FARC, former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, holds both French and Colombian citizenship. Securing her release would amount to an important political victory for the Sarkozy government.
In view of this increasing political isolation, Bogotá and Washington were forced to seek a resolution. With none of the involved parties interested in further escalation, a compromise was reached.
Uribe government takes the offensive
Before this resolution was reached, Uribe had sought to implicate both the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela in the FARC’s operations. According to Colombian officials, a laptop with incriminating evidence miraculously survived the bombardment that killed nearly everyone in the camp.
Colombian authorities claimed that the laptop contained photos linking the Ecuadorian security minister Gustavo Larrea to the FARC. Files in the laptop allegedly indicated that Chávez had donated $300 million to the FARC—money used to buy uranium for a dirty bomb.
By March 17, the photos and the computer files were all proven to be an elaborate fabrication of the Colombian government. The photos were not of Gustavo Larrea but of a meeting between Reyes and the secretary general of the Communist Party of Argentina, Patricio Etchegaray. The photos had circulated throughout the Argentinean press for over a year. The contents of the file were given to the international press, and nowhere mentioned Chávez, uranium or $300 million payment to the FARC.
Colombia had also stated it had entered Ecuadorian territory only because it was in a “fierce battle” with the FARC, but testimony from the survivors exposed that lie as well. Five Mexican students from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México were present at the FARC encampment; only Lucia Morett survived in the attack.
Morett gave her first interview while recovering in a hospital in Ecuador. “After the bombardment, soldiers arrived shooting,” she said. “I saw a lot of fire, and I could hear soldiers counting the dead, but I could also hear those begging for help, and other voices screaming shoot them dead.”
Morett went on to describe how the Colombian soldiers threatened her with kidnapping and sexual assault, and even threatened her life, so that she would cooperate with them. These conditions do not point to a “fierce battle,” but rather a premeditated butchery. Both the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador have denied that they ever funded the FARC and have rejected all the bogus evidence presented by the Colombian state.
Colombia, United States uninterested in peace
The U.S. government and its client state Colombia are engaged in an extermination campaign against the left in Colombia and throughout the region. In recent months, much progress was made toward a political settlement to the conflict in Colombia. The governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, France, Italy, Argentina, Brazil and countless others have all helped mediate the prisoners exchange proposed by the FARC.
On Jan. 8, the FARC released Consuelo González and Clara Rojas following Chávez’s mediation efforts toward a humanitarian prisoner exchange. Only a week earlier, Uribe’s government had terminated Chávez’s role as mediator in an effort to halt the political track toward a conflict settlement. On Feb. 27, just three days before the attacks in Ecuador, the FARC released former legislators Gloria Polanco, Luis Perez, Orlando Beltran, and Jorge Gechem. Interestingly, all four joined calls demanding that Uribe seek a political solution to the 50-year-old civil war.
On March 6, mass marches held in Colombia condemned state violence and paramilitary groups, and expressed support for a humanitarian prisoner exchange and a political settlement. The demonstration was a response to a February protest against the leftist guerrillas that had been sponsored by the government.
Reyes’ assassination shows that the U.S. and Colombian governments have no interests in a political settlement to the conflict, which might reasonably entail compromises on both sides. Instead of acknowledging the FARC as a political entity, they keep it on their terror lists and pursue the military track instead—which, by virtue of U.S. power, may entail no compromises at all from U.S. imperialists or their Colombian allies.
Latin America draws the line
The U.S.-Colombian offensive in Ecuador’s territory served as a measuring stick for what U.S. imperialism can get away with in the region. The reaction was not what they expected; instead of isolating the Bolivarian Revolution and other left forces, they isolated the ultra-right-wing Uribe government.
Even Latin American countries with ties to Washington condemned the attacks. Remaining silent in the wake of such a barefaced violation of territorial sovereignty would set a dangerous precedent for the region.
Members of the OAS and Rio Group demonstrated that there are limits to U.S. power in the continent. The diplomatic victory of Ecuador over Colombia shows the leftward shift of the entire continent. Once dominated by U.S.-friendly military dictatorships, Latin America has set limits to what it will tolerate from Washington and its allies.
These meetings also displayed a high level of regional cooperation and widespread support for a peaceful end to the conflict in Colombia. The region is well aware of the $7.5 billion the United States has spent to train and equip the 200,000-strong Colombian army over the past nine years. It is a force that also counts with more than 1,100 U.S. trainers and more than 30,000 CIA-trained paramilitary forces—forces that have carried out massacres within Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador and Brazil.
The countries of the region, especially Colombia’s immediate neighbors, are well aware that the imperialists in Washington will continue to seek to destabilize the independent governments in the region and crush all armed resistance. Despite the temporary retreat, the threat of a Colombia-led proxy war remains. Latin American progressive and revolutionary forces must not let their guard down.
