Latin America

Colombia monthly e-newsletter

• Action Alert: Colombia Military Bases, or South American Peace?
  
• Religious and Grassroots Leaders Urge Suspension of Base Talks
  
• Obama's Choice: Documents Show U.S Seeks Colombian Bases for Training & Operations
  
• Letter from the Field: "Yanquis Fuera!"
  
• British MPs Urge End to U.K. Military Aid
  
• Protests in Colombia Increase Despite Oppression of Dissent
• News Briefs: Anti-Mili; Witness Paid to Testify Against Peace Community
• World Summit for Peace: Bogotá, Colombia -- October 1-4, 2009
  

Religious and Grassroots Leaders Urge Clinton to Suspend Military Base Talks with Colombia

Bases deal “presents enormous dangers for entire hemisphere”

Last Tuesday I saw a powerful documentary film, Made in L.A., at a private screening in New York City hosted by the United Methodist Committee on Relief. The film was produced a few years ago, so perhaps you've seen it -- on PBS television, or in a film festival. If not, this is a great time to check it out, as it is being re-released due to the debate about comprehensive immigration reform in the United States. The film addresses issues of low wage work, sweatshops, immigrants' rights, organizing, and women's empowerment, as well as international workers solidarity.

I was delighted to learn today that Made in L.A. is going to be broadcast tomorrow night, August 11th, on some 70 PBS stations nationwide. Here's the announcement I received:

President Obama was forced to address the growing clamor in South America opposing plans for U.S. military use of bases in Colombia to carry out regional operations with a wide and ambiguous mandate. “We have no intent in establishing a U.S. military base in Colombia,” Obama said on Friday.

But whether the bases are "U.S." in name is of no import. The proposal has always been for U.S. military use of national bases in Colombia, which is how the U.S. works at military bases in Honduras, Ecuador, El Salvador, and many other countries in the world. The Pentagon does not acknowledge “U.S. bases” in Iraq, for example. Obama’s announcement doesn’t change anything of what has bothered so many Latin Americans and U.S. citizens who hoped for better from Obama’s government.

Earlier today, the Fellowship of Reconciliation reported on negotiations between the Obama administration and Colombia President Alvaro Uribe's administration toward as many as five U.S. military bases in Colombia. This stunning proposal was confirmed later today in an Associated Press story authored by journalist Frank Bajak (The map at left locates Colombian military bases that may soon share space with U.S. military forces):

• U.S. Military Sites Set to Replace Plan Colombia
• Letter from the Field: The View from San José
• "Restrict or Neutralize": Offensive Intelligence Unveiled
• Uribe Left Washington Chastened
• U.S.-Funded Death Squad-Tied Unit
• News Briefs: Afghan Lesson; New Colombia Resource

U.S. Military Sites Set to Replace Plan Colombia

By John Lindsay-Poland

The United States is negotiating for the use of five military
facilities in Colombia, in an agreement whose objectives include
"filling the gaps left by the eventual cutting of [military] aid in
Plan Colombia," according to sources in Washington and Bogotá cited by an explosive article published July 1 in the weekly Cambio magazine.

Today is Veterans Day in the United States, and tributes are being made across the nation to those women and men who have risked their lives on behalf of the principles they feel are represented by our country's armed forces. While I am opposed to our nation's military efforts, I hold great respect for the selfless service of these courageous individuals.

The U.S. military has many faces across our globe. Today's international news reports that the deal being sought between the U.S. and Iraqi governments on security cooperation and transition is in danger because Iraqi officials want more concessions from the U.S. -- especially regarding the immunity that U.S. soldiers have had to crimes committed on Iraqi soil. According to the AP, "The latest U.S. draft also strengthens language regarding Iraqi
sovereignty but does not appear to make significant changes in the
limited legal authority granted to Iraq to prosecute U.S. soldiers."

Hello and Happy late spring,

I wanted to inform you about this special program - info below - being initiated at RCC this fall, for your own interest or if you have friends or colleagues who might be interested in hosting. I met with Laurie Pina, the coordinator at Rockland Community College, recently. The program sounds well structured and intense, with an intention to prepare the women participants to make a significant contribution to their home country. A requirement is that they must return home after the two year program.

I have agreed to host a student in my home. This fits quite well with Whole Women Healing's mission to facilitate women's healing and empowerment, and our commitment to join FOR's delegation to Colombia in August, from which I will return to greet my student.

Sunday morning is appropriately more sober and reverential. An estimated 20,00 – 25,000 individuals carry small white crosses in a procession that spreads from the gate into Ft. Benning back to the public access road and forward again, five persons wide to accommodate hundreds of banners representing various groups here in large numbers.

As I enter from the public road, the police are confiscating crosses which don't strictly meet the 18" maximum for the vertical strut. These are later collected and displayed at the head of the road, just as thousands and thousands are inserted in the chain link fence at the gate to the Fort.

Each cross bears the name of a victim of violence in Latin America, derivative or directly related to training presented at the School of Americas (or 35 other U.S. bases where Latin American military leaders are trained). As the procession circulates in front of the main program platform, the names of the dead are intoned and the entire procession responds "Presente". Particularly powerful is the recitation, "unknown child, Choco" repeated perhaps a hundred times to represent a massacre of more than 130 persons.