"Eyewitness Colombia": Speeches by Ramsey Clark and Teresa Gutierrez at New York Report-Back Meeting 12/12/00

By Teresa Gutierrez

12/12/00

Sisters and brothers,

Last night I made the time to go to a movie because I was told that it had to do with Colombia.

The movie was “Proof of Life”, starring Meg Ryan and Russell Crow.  

It should have been called “Proof of Lies.”

Because it was yet another example of how the U.S. government and the media is working 24-7 to deceive the public on the question of Colombia.

I was outraged by the movie.  

First, because it portrayed all the Latin Americans in the most sinister and racist manner -except the servants of course.   

It depicted us as only drug using and corrupt people with no ideals whatsoever, as no more than animals.

This movie should be boycotted and protested by every single Latino and anti-racist person -for this reason alone.

But for other reasons as well.  Because the movie is an example of how the government is preparing the people of this country to go to war.   

They are preparing us for another Vietnam- but this time in Latin America.    

The movie was about these idealistic white North Americans, who just wanted to do “good” in the Third World.  

They worked for an oil company, conveniently called Octonal. The husband was yearning to build a damn to help the poor natives of Tecala, a fictional country that conveniently has the same boundaries and the same flag as Colombia.

The husband gets kidnapped - of course.  

The group who kidnaps him is called the ELT-also conveniently similar to the ELN of Colombia.

The wife tells the mercenary come to the rescue, “oh they are a peasant agrarian reform movement, they’re revolutionaries.  

The mercenary patiently explains to this poor naïve girl, that “oh no, maybe years ago, but now they are drug-using, drug-selling narco traffickers.  

Sound familiar?  Now the Pentagon might not have necessarily gone and told Hollywood to do this movie.   

But it shows how much this lie has become part of the culture.

Not a single day goes by that the movement in Colombia is not portrayed exactly in this manner.  

Narco-guerrillas is the word in vogue, coined directly by the Pentagon exactly to confuse the issue.  

Or the media says things like this: “the drug traffickers and the rebels who protect them.”

That phrase is from yesterday’s Miami Herald.  

It’s important to read it in its entirety because it underscores that this is a critical moment in U.S.- Colombian relations.  In fact it is urgent and is becoming more urgent every day.

The Miami Herald wrote: “The FARC’s expansion, together with increases by the armed forces and paramilitary squads, comes as further evidence that Colombia’s conflict is heading for a major upsurge as the military finalizes plans for a U.S. backed assault on drug traffickers and the rebels who protect them.”

We have heard it tonight.  We have said it over and over.  Plan Colombia has nothing to do with fighting drugs.   

If U.S. soldiers die in Colombia -most who will be African American and Latino- it will not be to eradicate the plague of drugs that wrecks the very communities they come from.

They will be dying for the IMF and the World Bank.  They will be dying so that the Pentagon and Wall Street can retain its domination over Colombia.  

Plan Colombia is aimed against the movement in Colombia. Nothing else.

We all here know this to be true.  But for the vast majority of the people in this country, this is not the case.

Why?  Because both government statements and news accounts are part of a well-orchestrated and concerted disinformation campaign.  It is an effort to characterize Colombia as a lawless, violent, chaotic country, where the Colombian government is innocently caught between the right and the left.

Such a campaign can only benefit the Pentagon.

At any moment we will hear of some sort of atrocity in Colombia that will be used exactly as the Gulf of Tonkin was used in Vietnam.

We will be told that the guerrillas carried out this or that atrocity.   

It will be a lie.  It will be fabricated so that the people of this country will go along with an escalated and overt US intervention.

Are we going to allow that to happen sisters and brothers?

This is exactly why the IAC sent a delegation to Colombia last month.   

I want to take this opportunity to thank Ramsey for his effort.  This is a very busy person with a law practice that many lives depend on.  It is a great effort for him to leave and spend a few days abroad.

But he made the time to go to Colombia because the issue is critical.

This is important to us. It should be important to you.

Can you imagine if 20 years from now if for some reason Attorney General Janet Reno decided to speak out against the death penalty?  Or she decided to talk about the struggle to send Elián home?  Or what really went down in the elections in Florida?

People would listen right?  Well I don’t think she will do that, I don’t think she will see the light and start speaking the truth.

But Ramsey Clark did.  He was there exactly in that position in Washington and now he is here, speaking the truth.  And people listen.  And more people must listen.

I urge you to arrange meetings on your campuses, in your unions, with your elected representatives, in your communities where he and other members of the delegation can speak.

We hope we get the chance to tell more and more people about our trip. Ramsey took the time to meet with everyone who would listen to us.

  We met with Raul Reyes, from the International Commission of the FARC-EP, with scientists, peace activists and trade unionists.  

We did not get a chance to talk to enough people-that’s for sure.  But we aim to go back, to get more interviews, more footage, spend more time.   

Not that we think that’s what this struggle is all about – sending folks to Colombia.  But it’s important.  The avalanche of negative information is so much that it’s important to get direct first account stories.   

And we aim to bring Colombians here too, like many have already done.    

And whatever we do, whatever all of us do, it has to be done immediately.  

Colombian President, Andres Pastrana recently extended the deadline of the zonas de despeje - the demilitarized zones –to only January 31.  Making sure this area remains free of military and paramilitary interference is key to the peace talks.   

Isn’t it a good idea therefore for all of us to be in the streets or calling Congress, or doing whatever we can on January 30, the day before the zone is supposed to be extended to make sure that there is not escalation of war the next day?

Isn’t it a good idea to come out against Plan Colombia on January 30 and everyday, as often as we can to build the movement to stop U.S. intervention?   

Isn’t it a good idea to take that message to the next president on January 20 in Washington DC?

That’s right if we have to march every ten days we should.

 It was clear when we were in Bogotá, that it is a tense situation.   

There is a definite climate of fear, in fact of terror.  People are afraid.  They are afraid to speak out against the government and the US.

But they do anyway.  A trade union leader told us that just the week before we got there that 20,000 members of his union marched against privatization and against Plan Colombia.  Not a word about it in the press – in Colombia or here.

We stayed kind of at a fancy hotel, the travel agent there, we were told to be cautious of what we said, when we talked to her about arrangements to San Vicente del Caguan, the demilitarized area.

She was feeling me out too.  Finally figured I was ok, I was safe and she smiled, a big smile, yeah there’s a group of tenacious people out there she told me.

On the campus we went to in Bogotá, there was graffiti against Plan Colombia.   One slogan said “we need poetry not U.S. bombs.”

Clearly there was resistance.

Then in San Vicente, that was the best.  You felt safe when you walked the streets.  You felt you could leave your hotel room unlocked, youth were playing basketball in the park, it felt like Saturday night during a celebration on Tuesday, motor scooters everywhere, lots of activity and laughter.  

It felt in fact just like Cuba.

People were open and ready to talk to us.  They all spoke against Plan Colombia.   

When we finally went to the guerrilla encampment, it was quite an experience and an honor.  We were told that we were four of only eight North Americans who had been asked to spend the night.

What moved me the strongest was the commitment of the youth.

In the video you will get to hear from Pablo.  I got a chance to hang out with him a bit.  He, like all the other youth we spoke to, the women and the others made it clear why they joined.   

The root of the conflict in Colombia today has nothing to do with what we are being told by the U.S. government.

The root of the conflict is hundreds of years of exploitation, of years of domination by the multinational corporations. It’s an overburdening foreign debt.   It is unemployment of 20 percent.    

This is the root of the conflict in Colombia today.  The U.S. government does not aim to do away with these problems.   It helped create the problems. It will only aggravate them today.   

If it wanted to send real aid than it would use the money allocated for helicopters to pave roads or train doctors.

But the U.S. government has never done that.  Only one country in this hemisphere has done that and of course that is Cuba.

Pablo, like the other guerrillas we spoke to, was very proud of San Vicente.   They felt that they had helped the town.   The main complaint one youth in the town told me he had of the guerrillas was that they made them stop riding the scooters after 10pm.   

They feel good about their town because it has little to no crime.  It is so much safer now.  Why?  Because they got rid of the drugs and the paramilitaries.

Part of the misinformation coming out of Colombia is that youth and minors are being recruited into war.

No one of course can be for that.  No one is for war.  An old friend of mine said you would have to take leave of your senses to be for war.

It is so much better for youth to be enjoying life, going to school, having fun. But that’s not the reality for Colombian youth or most Latin American youth in fact. There are very little options for them or for working people in Colombia.  

For a very long time, the movement in Colombia has tried many ways to put an end to the dire social conditions the people face.  So many groups and so many leaders have tried different tactics to win social justice and peace.

From participating in elections during the 1980s to sitting down with the government, many have tried many things only to have the government or the military derail the peace efforts.  

The movement has made it clear that it would lay down its arms if these conditions would be resolved.  If the repression would end.   No one we spoke to in Colombia is for war.  Not the guerrillas, not the youth, not the civilians.  But there are irreconcilable interests at play.  We want those who represent the interests of the people, who represent an end to IMF domination to win.  

No one in Colombia says they want war. Except the paramilitaries.  Outside the Colombian government, the AUC, United Self Defense are the only ones who have spoken so vociferously for Plan Colombia.  They want those helicopters and night vision goggles and all the rest.

A current issue is the role of the paramilitaries in the peace process.  

It is well documented the bloody role they play.  Human Rights Watch in its 2001 Report this week documented extensively the many violations they commit all the time.

They carry out assassinations and murders and kidnappings with impunity. According to this report, the paramilitaries are responsible for 78% of the human rights violations in the country.

The report states that “There continues to be abundant, detailed and continuing evidence of direct collaboration between the military and paramilitary groups.”  

It described a horrible incident in El Salado on February 18. Thirty-six people were killed in this terrible attack by paramilitaries, women were gang raped, children were suffocated to death.

While the atrocity was being carried out, the Colombian navy held a roadblock around the town preventing the International Red Cross from entering until thirty minutes after the paras had safely left.

The Colombian government cannot be left off the hook because they have yet to seriously punish either the military or the death squads for any of their crimes.

Nonetheless, the U.S. and Colombian governments are saying that the paramilitaries are supported by many Colombians.  They are saying that the military and government is powerless, who else can save the situation?  

That they should be allowed into the peace process.

Inviting the AUC to the negotiating table is like inviting the Ku Klux Klan to a meeting with the black community on civil rights.  

The paramilitaries have absolutely no right to be part of the peace process.

 There is so much more to say.  How plan Colombia is not just about domination of Colombia but all of Latin America.  The U.S. is thinking, first stop Colombia, next stop Venezuela.   Strengthening the blockade against Cuba is part of that strategy.

This is a critical moment for the solidarity and anti-war movement in this country. This is the time to deepen our understanding of Colombia, to step up our work, to demand an end to U.S. intervention.

That’s why the IAC will be taking this message to Washington DC on January 20.   We plan to tell whoever is President that we say no to Plan Colombia!   
We urge the anti-war and solidarity movement to join us in Washington on January 20!  We are confident that if we are united, if we stand together and come together in one voice as often as we can, than we can stop Plan Colombia before it becomes the next Vietnam.

We owe it to Pablo to do all we can to create the kind of political space that will allow the people of Colombia to resolve their own conflict without US weapons!   

US out of Colombia now!

---

Speech by Ramsey Clark at IAC Event on Plan Colombia

December 12, 2000

FIRST DRAFT

Good evening.

In the past, because it’s all the opportunity we had to do, we’ve re-acted to tragedy. 

How many years and how many deaths before the American people rose up on their feet and protested the war in Vietnam?

When I just think of my own activities, I go after a calamity.  There’s a “golpe” in Chile and you fly down as quick as you can. You hear about Sabra and Shattila and Lebanon and you go as quick as you can.

In Iraq, at least we had the chance to get there before the bombing started but too late to stop it.  And then we had to go back during the bombing.  In Grenada, we had already invaded. In Panama, we had already killed several thousand Panamanians, and shot up every police establishment in the whole country.  On and on.

But prevention is always the best.  And now we have that chance.

Teresa Gutierrez, it was her initiative that, and it took her a while, to get us down to Colombia to try to study the situation and see what ought to be done.  And it’s amazing how quickly and clearly what has to be done became. 

Plan Colombia is the most dangerous piece of Congressional legislation and the most deceptive since the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

It states a false premise for its purpose.  But it promises the greatest U.S. military intervention in the western hemisphere in a long, long history of more interventions than we could ever count. 

I read today that Supreme Court justices in 93 minutes asked lawyers arguing a certain situation on the recent unpleasantness, 193 questions.  And I don’t know why but it popped into my mind –there’s been a lot more interventions, military interventions in the Western Hemisphere by the U.S., by the marines and others than that.

But this one is by far the biggest.  By far the most dangerous.  And intends by far the most far-reaching and long lasting consequences. Why can’t we just leave Colombia alone?  It’s a fabulous country.

It’s big; it’s bigger than eight New York states.  It’s got hundreds of miles of gorgeous coastline on the Pacific, on the Caribbean, far longer than New York’s on the Atlantic.  Its highest mountains are more than three times higher than Mount Marcy, our highest, going above 19,000 feet while Marcy’s 6,400, maybe 6,700.  It’s got an Amazonian rain forest bigger than two New York’s.  Its got a people who have struggled since Simon Bolivar’s last voyage down the Magallean, for a chance for a decent life, for a little liberty where you don’t get beat up or killed. 

And if you read the year book, for Encyclopedia Britannica on Colombia as I did this evening, its got 2000 on the spine, its talking about 1999, the highest cause of death is described in this phrase: “homicide by gun fire.”

Higher than infant mortality, higher than cancer which is the highest cause of death according to the Encyclopedia from physical causes, other than homicide by gun fire; higher than heart attacks; higher than everything else.  Three thousand kidnappings we’re told in 1999.  In Bogotá for various reasons, many people try to tell you don’t go out on the streets, don’t leave the hotel, don’t leave the airport, be sure you get into a taxi that’s authorized. And watch your back every minute.

And while it’s largely overstated obviously, there’s 6 million people living there, so statistically your chances are not that bad, the fear in the city is palpable.  It’s palpable at an outdoor eating place, it’s palpable on a campus of the university, palpable in the center of town, in your hotel lobby. 

We’re systematically financing paramilitary organizations, training them how to kill, arming them, paying them.  We did the same thing in Afghanistan. We spent billions there.

The Taliban came out of our efforts.  So did Ossam bin Ladan.  I’ve been asking people, why is the US so angry at Ossam bin Ladan, he did more to bring the Soviet Union down then Ronald Reagan.  Because it was his paramilitary operations that caused Afghanistan to become the Soviet Union’s Vietnam.  And they couldn’t afford, and it went on too long, they lost too many young men.  And now they’re confronted with tens of millions of former citizens who are Muslims, who are at them, everyday. 

And we catch a random bomb once in a while in Dar es Salaam or Nairobi or the World Trade Center, and go berserk.  But it was our mischief.

Plan Colombia is the preeminent effort to establish the New World Order over the rest of the western hemisphere, which is US domination and exploitation. And it’s no place to be and it’s no condition to live under. 

We have watched what happened to the FMLN, its long struggle in El Salvador del Mundo, gone, traded out, negotiated under, marginally corrupted, conditions worse than they were when it began in El Salvador.  We’ve watched the U.S. steal Nicaragua from the Sandinistas, claiming that it was by the democratic process when we financed one side far beyond the means of the other; created a coalition that put a martyred widow in a position to run that she never would have been in, and told the whole country the contras will continue to destroy your villages if the Sandinistas win this election. 

But all of that was small time compared to Plan Colombia, small time in terms of its dimension, not small time for the beautiful people of El Salvador or Nicaragua, both of whose conditions are worse now than they were under the familias or our SOB, Somoza.

Plan Colombia intends to consolidate U.S. dominion over more than 100million people.  It involves Peru.  Fujimori served our purposes very well for ten years, just like the Shah did in Iran for 25, proclaimed by the CIA to be its grandest achievement.  All it did was bring absolute misery for 25 years to the people there and absolute chaos ever since and little hope for the future.

But here in Colombia and in Peru, we see a determination to establish our surrogate governments.  We supported Fujimori to the last minute.  Our Ambassador was saying he will return from Tokyo to Lima, while his faxed resignation was in route because our ambassador knew what it meant to his career if he did not come back.  He was our man in Peru and he was a liquidator. 

I have seen very few individual human beings who in my opinion so much enjoy killing other people.  You can feel him enjoy it.  And we supported him all the way and we want another Fujimori in Peru and we are concerned about what may happen if we don’t get it. 

Ecuador has to fall in line, you take those two countries together and you’ve got roughly 25 and 15, 40million people. Venezuela we are absolutely determined to destroy the present government.  Everyday that we were in Colombia there were front-page stories about tensions between Colombia and Venezuela.  You and them fight, you know, kill each other.  That’s like Kissinger’s statement in the beginning of the Iran/Iraq car, “I hope they kill each other.”  What he really meant was, it’s our plan that they kill each other.  What could be better?  And we’ll pick up the spoils. 

The efforts by the U.S. to set Colombia against Venezuela and to change the government in Venezuela are the highest priority.  And they are spinning ahead full speed.  And let me tell you it won’t make one whit of difference what the U.S. Supreme Court decides or the Supreme Court of Florida decides, or what all those little chads decide.  You ought to remember that half the chads in the country didn’t even vote and the other half were persuaded by $3billion in TV commercials that had as much substance and truth to them as your average Terry Toon, Three Little Pigs or whatever.

We have 250 military observers, we benignly call them, and they just stand around and look.  Our admission its 250, be sure its not less than that.  That’s a multiple of the highest number we ever had in El Salvador.  And we throw it in the face of the people. 

If you read your Times this week, you saw nearly a full page story on the graduation in Putomayo of the southern tier province of Colombia, of the 2^nd brigade of the three initial brigades, organized and being trained under Plan Colombia.  About 800 soldiers.  You saw a picture there of Special Forces, Fort Bragg, trained killer patting an 11 year army veteran on the back, and the Colombia army veteran is quoted as saying “I never knew I could be so much better a soldier; I’ve learned more in 4 months from U.S. Special Forces than I learned in 11 years from the Colombian government.”  After all we are ignorant people, if Uncle doesn’t teach us what do we know?  Whether it’s killing or living, or anything else. 

In the same story-all you have to do is read it, you read about the helicopters, the super Huey.  About the Black Hawks. There’s been a demonstration, a major demonstration, and a lot of arrests in Stratford, Ct. at the Sikorsky helicopter plant, which has the contract for Black Hawks for Colombia. 

While we were down there sadly, our last day, in El Tiempo, the major newspaper in Colombia, there was a picture of probably the best Senator we have in the United States. But what was he doing? He was riding in a Black Hawk with our Ambassador who was our Ambassador in Guatemala who consistently denied that we ever had anything to do with triage against the Mayan Indians that we had been killing at the rate of several thousand a year.

There is an important thing to remember about Eisenhower’s farewell speech where he talked about the Military Industrial Complex. All the original drafts, and his original draft said the military industrial congressional complex, and congressional was stricken.  And congressional was stricken because some sense of military discipline or something said “one branch of the government doesn’t attack another.”  And apparently I don’t know this but historians tell us that Eisenhower struck congressional.  But it’s true.  There is not a Congressional district in the United States that doesn’t have as perhaps the most important political achievement of the Congress, a military or military industrial establishment.  It’s either a contractor with lots of jobs; it’s a military base with lots of people and lots of jobs.  But it’s there everywhere. 

So even if we were like Gulliver in the Congress, full of good intentions they have thrown so many strings over us that we can’t get up off our backs.

We have to warn the Congress, we have to persuade the Congress to tear itself loose from its chains and defeat Plan Colombia immediately.  It can be done.  The time is opportune.  There is less confidence in the political process than at any other time.  Political leadership in the Congress has less control over rank and file membership than at any other time.  It’s not even clear how the Congress is going to be organized.  There are fights over chairs, there are four people trying to be chair of foreign affairs in the House, including Henry Hyde who is giving up Judiciary because he has to. 

It’s an opportune time if the people can organize to defeat Plan Colombia. 

And if we are able to do that it will be the best favor that we have ever done for the American people.  And by the American people I mean the American people, the people of the Americas, south and central and even north.  In fact we’ll be the primary beneficiaries because with always carry the cost economically,  and the cost of the loss of loved ones, and the cost of conscious for knowing what we have done again. 

But we may be too late for the whole show. 

Brazil opposes Plan Colombia, it’s the giant of south America, it’s half the population, it’s the second largest African country in the world, literally. Its African population is exceeded only by Nigeria, it’s dynamic.  It does not want Plan Colombia there because it knows what it means. It’s moving up soldiers to its border now.  Because if you start clamping down anywhere whether its Plan Colombia in Colombia or elsewhere people are going to move into Ecuador. People are going to come up spontaneous, they will move into Venezuela, in the Rain Forest to Brazil, anywhere.  The idea that we can successfully contain the conflict to Colombia is false.  And the real reason we are in Putomayo is to keep conflict north of there if we possibly can, to patrol the borders, which are with Peru and Ecuador.

We have time, we have a clear capacity, we have an urgent responsibility to repeal Plan Colombia.  Major media oppose it for various reasons.  Newsday ran a major editorial against it last week.  Important Senators and Members of the House of Representatives have opposed it, for various reasons.  If we can get sufficient information out, we can save a long struggle for freedom from being crushed by American technology, by military advisors and military troops on the ground and money.

I hope that all of our friends from Colombia here will help us.  When the American people want to know what the people of a foreign people really think they often look at the community here from that country.

It’s been one of the big problems with Cuba, we looked at the exile community, in particular the hostile exile community, which has wealth, because they are the only ones we can see or hear or care about, and we sense their extreme hostility towards Cuba and it seems to validate what the huge propaganda machine of the U.S. tells us.

But let me ask you this if Plan Colombia succeeds, how does the Cuban Revolution all alone in the hemisphere, then survive? 

We won’t have a more important struggle, a more critical time in the foreseeable future in this hemisphere than perhaps elsewhere than defeating Plan Colombia.  So lets pledge ourselves to do it.

For background information on this important struggle, go to: U.S. Out of Colombia Committee of the International Action Center

 

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