When I went down there in 1976 for Lloyds of London to try and rescue the President of Beatrice Foods, I had been briefed by several ex SAS officers and an ex CIA man that the culprits, the clandestine group called M-19, was a 'leftist guerilla' organization subverting the country towards Allende-styled Marxist revolution. After two weeks operating there I had learnt that M-19 was in reality controlled by high-level men in the Colombian Military, Police and Intelligence services who were making fortunes by extortion, murder and kidnapping of Gringo business executives. This education came about through protecting myself and my investigation in three different hotels under three identities: a Beatrice lawyer, an author looking for a writing retreat and real estate developer seeking a finca upon which to build a mall. Why such elaborate devices? Because Beatrice’s Harvard educated Colombian lawyer had warned me, when he upgraded my Beatrice-provided stub-nosed S&W .38 to a Walther 9mm, that if caught I would simply disappear, after torture, into small pieces dumped in the jungle.
Interestingly, M-19 while posing as leftist guerillas was concurrently treated as influential ‘agents of influence’ (meaning: friendly sources) by the aggressive local CIA station chief and the timid US military attaché - - who were both ignoring M-19’s criminal activities while financing and supporting their creation of paramilitary militias in the countryside. Said militias were, and still are today, using intimidation, torture, assassination and group murder in any feudal village where the peasants seek help from the social-minded ‘leftists' organizing them against their overwhelming poverty. A poverty directly resulting from the rich and powerful elite exploiting the natural resources and feudal labor on behalf of their 1% friends at the top of the apple barrel.
The causes of this human degradation and economic exploitation of the vast majority of Colombians are long-term problems traceable back to the highly profitable English and Spanish Christianisation of their New World ‘inferiors’ from 1492 onwards. Yet, there is another contemporary American irony worth noting.
Although that 1% elite were invariably backed by the Catholic Church - from physically intimidated parish priests all the way up to the morally vacuous Chair of St. Peter - and invariably backed by the USA - from intimidating CIA paramilitary trainers and Pentagon hardware suppliers all the way up to crimes committed in the White House Lincoln Chair - one extraordinary good did result. A few clergy became angry enough at all the murder and injustice (an economic version of the Inquisition) that they awoke to their nurtured subservience and acquired moral timidity to then act heroically in helping the people. That shocking physical and moral courage eventually spread to other priests and nuns in the Americas, from a female social worker in Brazil up to a Bishop in Nicaragua. The results soon encouraged a larger number of activist religious, until some were raped and/or murdered - including Bishop Romero, several Jesuits and nuns in Central America - and even more were only excommunicated after Rome ex officio decided that helping the poor was a ‘political’ act.
What occurred perhaps may be well exemplified by Father Astride over in Haiti (another CIA coup d’etat victim), and the courageous Berrigan brothers here in the US. At first these extraordinarily honest and fearless clergy were also labeled as leftist. Until a smart Jesuit upgraded that old propaganda cliché to “Liberation Theologists”. Some of whom evidenced even greater courage by breaking with Rome in order to continue their Christ-like support for the oppressed of Latin America.
Irony may be tough to see, sometimes, but not so the mercenary hypocrisy of our country’s Christian actions against the ‘other’. In the inhumane exploitation, oppression and murder of ‘inferiors’, the history of Western civilization clearly sees no limit.
The above short story I lived through (found the finca estate house where the Beatrice president was held for over 5 months and got him out) is a micro history of what we have been doing in Colombia, and other Latin countries for years; big time since the 1954 coup d’etat replacing Guatemala’s first freely elected President with a rightist military junta - as organized and paid for by CIA.
And is what are still, in reality, going on there today with kidnapping entrepreneurs, murderous paramilitaries, countryside leftist revolutionary groups, drug rings extrapolating America’s bad habits, etc. - - plus, as usual, the CIA and the Pentagon careerist conspirators, now with their 1.5 billion $$$$ budget trying to stop coke smuggling enterprises which come out of transnational mountain and jungle regions. And mostly reach our communities by way of sundry agents of influence and our close friends in Offshore petroleum fraud and drug smuggling, the super rich elite out of Mexico.
In all my travels in Latin America the only people I have ever met who liked Gringos were the rich. Have you ever wondered why the worst-off peasants try to escape this poverty by coming to work as undocumented dish cleaners, waiters, clerks, indentured servants, etc. in America? Of why they are able to work so in this Great Democracy of ours for illegal and feudal wages of $50-$100, without any benefits, in return for 60-100 hours per week. Work we educated, civilized and developed whites refuse to bend to.
Of course, our government lies, plus asset-strips the resources of peoples and countries we have long racially degraded as our "inferiors"; plus inoculates us, its own citizens: with cheap consumer toys and bangles and beads sedating them away from reality of where wealth comes from and goes. Plus constantly propagandizes them into the wonderful "Free Market"; plus believing the myth of our ever so virtuous free Foreign Aid; plus exporting expert American hubris about those supposedly Christian principles behind everything we do, In God We Trust, etc., etc.,....
This is what America has been all about since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. We robbed, murdered and fully disenfranchised the Native American inhabitants; then enslaved, murdered, disenfranchised, and Christian-hypnotized Africans, offering heaven as they reward for patience; then invaded numerous countries over 210 times since 1776; including, most recently, our invasion of Indochina to the final count of over 6,000,000 dead, in covert and overt war aggressions, between 1945 and 1985. And this form of mercenary Christian work continues today, not only in Colombia but also Indonesia, Brazil, the Middle East and elsewhere.
Of course, that’s the reality of our leaders acting in our name - - as we middle class almost totally ignore what our elite shareholders do under our holy and Arcadian democratic principles, in OUR behalf - almost everywhere our corporations go to make a profitable killing. If you don’t believe me, try reading the vivid examples to be found in the words of just one awakened American hero, General Smedley D. Butler, USMC, as found in several sites on the web, including mine (as quoted from his book “Three Generals on War” and a NY Times interview from 1932).
Where does the Christian conscious exist?, if not right in the middle of our own living rooms loaded with TVs and tabloids : annually enthroning the American righteousness in Washington and State capitols, enthroning leaders pre-chosen for us in fixed primaries and controlled elections, leaders we "elect" from that monopoly Corporate synthesis we euphemistically call Democrats and Republicans.
Can you think, my friends, about those gross injustices being done, and not just right this minute in Colombia, and the Middle East, in YOUR name? Maybe then, if we face reality, one's personal daily security, feeling good supporting roof and bread and self-replicating children imaging all this cliché mythology over and over and over again, maybe then our country’s actions will not seem so glorious and sufficiently ethical or moral to win an imagined polished seat reserved in heaven.
My apologies to any who, as Anthony de Mello SJ wisely noted, become uncomfortable, or insecure, with these truths. Yet they are the truths from all the wise prophets, including that first and last Christian, Jesus, truths passed along meaning to awaken us from the old mythologies justifying the ignorant fear of nature, myths to relieve us from the resulting insecurities instilled in our young minds through false nurturing.
richard
FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Media analysis, critiques and news reports
February 9, 2001
New York Times Covering for Colombian Death Squads
The human rights situation in Colombia is in a state of "alarming degradation," according to United Nations human rights observers (Associated Press, 1/20/01), but you won't learn about it in the New York Times.
According to a joint report from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watchand the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), "political violence hasmarkedly increased" since the first installment of the U.S.'s $1.3 billionPlan Colombia aid package was dispersed in August, with the average numberof deaths from combat and political violence rising to 14 per day ("ColombiaHuman Rights Certification II", 1/01).
There were at least 27 massacres in the month of January alone, claiming thelives of as many as 200 civilians. The killings are overwhelmingly the workof right-wing paramilitaries with close ties to the Colombian military, suchas the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
Despite the dramatic nature of the attacks and the U.S.'s heavy financialinvolvement in the war, the New York Times did not report on a singlemassacre during the month of January. The findings of the human rightsgroups' "Certification" report, including its recommendation that the U.S.cease military funding to Colombia, also went unmentioned.
Far from documenting the recent wave of paramilitary terror, the Times hastold precisely the opposite story. Juan Forero's January 22 dispatch fromthe city of Barrancabermeja, headlined "Paramilitaries Adjust AttackStrategies," gave a highly distorted version of events.
Forero claims that "the militia members are killing fewer people than therebels, who have responded to the threat in neighborhoods they longcontrolled with a furious assault on those they accuse of supporting theparamilitaries," and that the New Granada battalion of the Colombianmilitary "is sending specially trained urban commandos into theneighborhoods to restore order."
The notion that the rebels in Barrancabermeja have been responsible for morekillings than the paramilitaries contradicts all available evidence. Arecent dispatch from Inter Press Service (1/15/01) reported that "one of thetop complaints of human rights groups in the [Barrancabermeja] area is thata leading cause of violence is the attitude of the armed forces, which havefacilitated-- by inaction or omission-- the advance of the paramilitaries,who are responsible for 80 percent of the massacres perpetrated in andaround the city, according to several reports."
In fact, less than a month before Forero's dispatch, an article (12/26/00)on the New York Times' own op-ed page by Senator Paul Wellstone, who hadjust returned from a visit to the town, reported that "this year so far,violence in Barranca has killed at least 410 people. According to localhuman rights groups, most of those killed were the victims of right-wingparamilitary death squads."
Nationwide, Human Rights Watch reported that "paramilitary groups areconsidered responsible for at least 78 percent of the human rightsviolations recorded in the six months from October 1999" (annual report,2001).
Some historical perspective is needed, too: Members of the New Granadabattalion were implicated in a grisly massacre in Barrancabermeja on May 16,1998. It is alleged that nine soldiers waved paramilitary vehicles throughan army checkpoint in advance of and after the attack on civilians (seeWashington Post, 8/13/98; Amnesty International, 5/99). That sort ofrelationship between the military and paramilitaries is at the center of theobjections raised by countless human rights groups to the U.S. aid toColombia.
"Instead of mass killings," Forero's January 22 article reported, "theparamilitaries have, for the most part, been selectively killing rebels.Instead of terrorizing residents, the paramilitaries are paying handsomelyto rent houses in battleground neighborhoods, as well as for supplies andinformation that can be used against the rebels."
The assertion that the paramilitaries are "selectively" killing rebels fliesin the face of all credible evidence from journalists and human rightsobservers in Colombia. About two weeks before Forero's article was printed,paramilitaries were suspected of killing 20 civilians in northern Colombiain a matter of days, including eight in Barrancabermeja (Agence FrancePresse, 1/10/01).
Forero's claim that the death squads are renting houses instead ofterrorizing residents is also dubious. In a January 26 action alert, AmnestyInternational reported a January 20 paramilitary raid in Barrancabermeja.The death squads "reportedly held the local population at gunpoint and toldthem: 'We have come to stay. We are creating employment... and anyone whodoesn't want to work for us, simply won't be forced to, but will bekilled.'" The reported raid took place one day before Forero wrote hisarticle. Other human rights monitors have reported similar threats againsttrade unionists and other civilians.
The Times' distortions come in the midst of an almost surreal silence aboutColombia from much of the mainstream press. None of the network newsbroadcasts did a single story on the war in the month of January, thoughABC's Peter Jennings did find time for a light-hearted piece about the"crazy" hijinks of a British man who was kidnapped by guerrillas whilevisiting Colombia in search of rare orchids (ABC World News Tonight,2/8/01).
Not all media outlets have done such a poor job of informing the public. TheWashington Post, for instance, ran an excellent account (1/28/01) of theAUC's January 17 massacre of two dozen civillians at Chengue, interviewingsurvivors who had fled the village. The Post raised important questions theNew York Times has chosen to ignore, such as why the Colombian securityforces took no action to prevent a massacre they had been warned about, andwhy their intelligence apparatus was apparently unable to either interceptradio traffic in the area (a tactic they have used against the guerrillas)or respond to the massacre in a timely fashion.
Readers of the New York Times, however, would be hard-pressed to know thatanything had happened at all.