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U.S. Fuels the Fires in Colombia

Hector Mondragon

The United States Congress has recently allocated $1.3 billion to the Colombian government to fight the war on drugs. Officially, Plan Colombia will provide the Colombian military with U.S.-manufactured technology (in the form of herbicides), equipment (in the form of Huey and Black Hawk helicopters), and training (in the form of counternarcotics intelligence) to destroy illegal crops, namely coca.

Both Democrats and Republicans support the plan, and their corporate backers will reap the profits from the helicopter and herbicide sales. However, Plan Colombia goes beyond simply selling U.S.-manufactured goods. It is carefully designed to secure U.S. oil interests in Colombia through military force.

During Congress' discussion of Plan Colombia, Senators Dewine (R-Ohio), Grasseley (R-Indiana), and Coverdell (R-Georgia) urged Congress to give priority to protecting oil investments. And on October 8, 2000, U.S. Special Forces Sergeant Stan Goff told a Colombian newspaper, El Espectador, that the U.S. military's "principal interest in Colombia is oil . . . . to defend the operations of Oxy, of British Petroleum (now merged with the American firm Amoco), and of Texas and to secure control of the future Colombian oil fields."

Since 1999, Colombia has greatly increased its contracts with U.S., Canadian, and British oil companies such as Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), BP-Amoco, Chevron-Texaco, Shell, Exxon, Canadian Oxy, Talisman, and Alberta Energy. For example, in October 1999, Colombian President Andres Pastana met with oil and electric company executives and then governor George W. Bush in Houston. Pastrana promised major concessions for oil and gas exploration and the privatization of electrical companies, some of which already belong to the Bush campaign contributor Reliant Energy.

It is logical then that the main region targeted for a military offensive under Plan Colombia is the Putumayo, which over the past few years has been handed over, millimeter by millimeter, to oil companies for exploration.

On August 23 - the day after human rights conditions were waived by President Clinton, thereby approving Plan Colombia - Colombian riot police cordoned off the towns of Santa Rita and Bella Vista. They announced they were going to remove the U'wa - an indigenous group protesting the expropriation of their land for oil exploration - who were occupying Oxy's drill-site. Then on August 26, soldiers invaded U'wa farms where the U'wa had been preparing a house for Traditional Authorities. That same week, the Sumapaz region near Bogot‡ - where Canadian Oxy is a co-signer to the largest oil contract in Colombian history - was declared a war zone. Canadian Oxy also has a contract in Putumayo.

Oxy, a corporation in which former Vice President Al Gore's family is a major shareholder, led business-sector support of Plan Colombia in Congress. Oxy Vice President Lawrence Meriage, who was one of few non-governmental witnesses to give testimony during the House hearings, demanded that Plan Colombia be executed on the Colombia-Venezuela border (U'wa territory), where Oxy has a contract, and in Catatumbo, where BP-Amoco has a contract.

It has also been argued that Plan Colombia serves to protect oil interests beyond the Colombian border. In an April 2000 Washington Post article, Senator Coverdell wrote that the necessity of protecting oil interests in Venezuela justified U.S. intervention in Colombia!

The Venezuelan government, under Hugo Chavez, has recently agitated both Washington and U.S. oil companies by building alliances with Iraq and Cuba and directing OPEC to regulate the petroleum market in favor of the exporters. Furthermore, Venezuela's new administration, with a huge electoral majority, has put forward important social and political reforms that the U.S. government directly opposes.

On October 17, 1999 the Colombian press began to report alleged border clashes with the Venezuelan military. This press offensive is could be preparing public opinion for a fabricated Colombian-Venezuelan conflict that has the potential to convert U.S. intervention in Colombia into a simultaneous intervention in Venezuela.

Ecuador, which is also a big oil producer, is threatened as well. The U.S. is constructing the Manta Military Base there, which, along with a NATO base established in the Netherlands Antilles, will assume the role previously filled by bases in Panama. The increased military presence in the region will conveniently protect oil interests while monitoring Ecuador's strong indigenous movement, which, aspiring to rule the country, poses a palpable threat to transnational corporations.

In fact, there is a great deal of popular activity in the region, and the powers that be are frightened of losing their grip. In Brazil, the Labor Party just won mayoral elections in one third of the municipalities, including Sao Paolo, the largest city in the country. In Peru, the Fujimori administration has collapsed and peasant and indigenous movements are mobilizing with unprecedented success. In Bolivia, peasants toppled the Banzer government's plans to privatize the national water supply and forced the government to renegotiate plans to spray illegal coca crops.

While both the U.S. government and the Colombian government ostensibly support Plan Colombia as a solution to curtailing drug trafficking in the region, their motivations are indeed more complex. The U.S. is prioritizing investment (oil in particular) and regional stability. And the Colombian government is looking to strengthen its military to match a well-funded and powerful insurgency movement, which controls important swathes of national territory. In effect, sincere peace negotiations have been thrown out the window. The Colombian government wants to win the war, and now that the U.S. has brought in the big guns, it is more poised to do so.