The reasons for Colombia;s incursion into Ecuadorian soil March 1 include something that U.S. peace activists often call a different kind of WMD: a weapon of mass distraction.
It so happens that indigenous and human rights activists from around the world were planning a series of marches for March 6 to commemorate the killing, displacement and imprisonment of millions of people by the military forces of the Colombian government and the paramilitary forces, often allied with Colombian politicians (including President Alvaro Uribe). It was called the March in Solidarity with the Victims of Paramilitarism, Parapolitics and Crimes of the State. Victims and families of victims of these forces decided on holding the march after the Uribe-supported Anti-FARC demonstrations were held in February.
It’s important to note the timing of the march. News that government forces are the No. 1 killer of indigenous and rural people in Colombia would not help its efforts to negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States; the trade deal has been promoted by President Bush but stuck in Congress, which will not act on it until Colombia deals with a number of human rights violations.
But before the marches against state violence even began, another event grabbed the world’s attention.
On March 1, a Colombian military operation crossed over into Ecuadorian territory, allegedly in hot pursuit of FARC rebels. When the dust settled, at least 20 people were dead from Colombian munitions, one of them being Raul Reyes, a FARC commander and one of the recent negotiators in the hostage-release project spearheaded by Venezuela president Hugo Chavez. Reyes was also reportedly aiding talks to release former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.
Early reports alleged that many of the corpses were in pajamas and had apparently been killed in their beds. Then came more news of information culled from FARC laptops at the scene that purportedly demonstrate links between the FARC and the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela. From that point there was much saber-rattling and removal of diplomats, and then a movie-of-the-week-worthy semi-resolution in Santo Domingo, where a peace accord was reached.
In the meantime, the marches did occur, but the mainstream media focused elsewhere – on the borders between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. They were not watching the many thousands of indigenous and other folks who crammed the streets of Bogota, Chicago, New York, Paris, Madrid and other cities in protest.
It is entirely feasible that officials in Colombia, and their patrons in the United States, were not happy about many thousands of people on four continents drawing attention to the grim statistics on indigenous victims of the ongoing conflicts.
During the third decade (1997 – 2007) of the GET war, according to the U.N.-sponsored International Verification Mission on the Humanitarian and Human Rights Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Colombia and other international and regional human rights agencies, there were 1,897 murders, 188 tortured, 242 kidnapped, 67,749 displaced, 117,463 forcibly confined, 1,660 arbitrarily detained, 135,224 threatened and 71 killed by anti-personnel mines and artifacts. In that same period, the Colombian official forces were found responsible for 61 percent of all the violations.
Another related fact that will not help advocates of Plan Colombia – which some indigenous activists are calling Plan Death – is that 45 percent of all of the indigenous deaths in the last 30 years occurred during the first Uribe term, which coincided with the beginning of Plan Colombia.
Natalia Cardona, an indigenous rights advocate for the American Friends Service Committee, has worked to save the lives and rights of Native peoples in Colombia. She points out that it’s interesting the assassination of a guerrilla leader ”is the reason why this rose to the limelight, given that this situation has been a daily experience for indigenous and African descendants on the Ecuadorian side of the border for at least the past few years, and these incidents increased when Plan Colombia … was implemented.”
Cardona is not the only one making these observations. Indigenous groups throughout the hemisphere were outraged by the Colombian incursion, but they, too, noted that this incident is only the latest episode of armed combatants from Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador waging war and causing ”collateral damage” – usually dead indigenous and poor people of all backgrounds. This same point was emphasized recently by the Andean Indigenous Organization CAOI (representing peoples from Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia and Argentina) in its call to action for protesting state violence. The CAOI also pointed out that the areas where the armed conflicts flare are also areas of interest for multinational corporations and drug cartels, making the removal of indigenous and other rural peoples a boon to development.
For all of these reasons, Colombian officials are not interested in discussing the role of their military in the deaths and displacement of so many indigenous and rural people. That they felt compelled to enter Ecuadorian territory to bomb and shoot at FARC rebels just five days before people from across the globe protested their killing of native Colombians is not a coincidence. It was and is a strategy; and another sad element to this tragic tale is that their particular ”WMD” was largely successful.
There are however, some people who want the world to know what is happening to our cousins in Colombia, and some of us who are registered voters are paying attention.
Rick Kearns is a freelance writer, poet and teacher of Boricua heritage who focuses on indigenous issues in Latin America.