U.S.-Colombia relations at a tipping point

working woman's hands
Working woman's hands.
Photo courtesy of David Bacon.

As Colombian President Uribe engages in intense lobbying in Washington, D.C., for Plan Colombia II funding and the trade pact, he has been battered by a mushrooming scandal back home. The scandal links two dozen current and former congressmen, some of whom are considered the president's allies, with paramilitary groups.[2] More recently, Salvatore Mancuso, a top paramilitary commander, testified in court that, "Para-militarism was a state policy," and he was proof of it.[3]

The militias, organized a generation ago to fight leftist rebels, have morphed into mafias dedicated to drug trafficking and extortion and have committed unspeakable human rights atrocities. For decades, large landowners, politicians, and corporations bankrolled the militias to expand their holdings, while police and military officers turned a blind eye.[4]

This scandal recently gave the U.S. Congress reason to put a hold on $55.2 million in aid to the Colombian military. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has requested $3.9 billion in additional aid for Colombia.[5] Even though past military aid has failed to change Colombia's status as the world's largest supplier of cocaine. The director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy recently acknowledged that the street price of cocaine in the U.S. had dropped more than 10 percent from 2005 to 2006 while that the drug's purity level had increased.[6]

[2] Forero, Juan. "Unionists' Murdered Cloud Prospects for Colombia Trade Pact," Washington Post, 4/10/07.
[3] Forero, Juan. "Paramilitary Ties to Elite In Colombia Are Detailed," The Washington Post, 5/22/07.
[4] Muse, Toby. "Colombian prosecutor probes U.S. firms," Associated Press, 4/30/07.
[5] Romero, Simon. "Colombia Seeks to Persuade Congress to Continue Aid," New York Times, 4/30/07.
[6] Ibid.