[Peace-discuss] The South American Israel

[C. G. Estabrook]

The South American Israel

by Hector Mondragon

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-03/26mondragon.cfm

Here is a state used by an imperial power to impose its order in a region.
In every sphere, with every dollar of military aid it receives from the
US, the Colombian state is heading down this route. And it's in this sense
that researchers from Venezuela and the Colombian member of Congress
Gustavo Petro have warned of the arrival of an Israel in South America.

Colombia's interior minister inveighs against Chavez and Lula. Chavez
responds. Next, Uribe demands that Chavez expel the guerrillas that the
Colombian army claims are in Venezuela, and that Chavez stop alleged
'cross-border terrorism' from Venezuela. Within hours of this statement, a
bomb explodes in front of the Colombian consulate in Caracas, conveniently
timed to provide veracity to Uribe's claim. We have the South American
Israel, taking shape.

The analogy can go further. Colombia looks much more like today's Israel,
complete with possession of Occupied Palestine, now that the Colombian
state has been able to create an interminable conflict with a growing
displaced population.

Two million were displaced between 1946 and 1958 in the civil conflict
called La Violencia, in which 200,000 were killed. In the past 20 years
2.5 million have been displaced. A population the size of Occupied
Palestine's is internally displaced in Colombia. It is a minority of the
population, but it is a big minority.

>From a great mass of people who has suffered violence for decades, and
continues to suffer, come armed groups with a psychology and practice that
perpetuates conflict: A conflict with its roots, its very existence, in a
state that refuses to recognize and and refuses to solve problems. The
state instead chooses to take advantage of the ferocity of the guerrilla
enemy, ferocity generated by the very behaviour of the state, to maintain
the ferocity of state and parastate violence.

It is a vicious circle that is carefully incubated, grown, nurtured, and
reproduced. The massacres conducted against the Liberals in the 1950s
created the guerrilla groups that frequently committed their own massacres
against conservative, and sometimes indigenous campesinos (like the
massacre of tiniguas in Guayabero). The state was then able to prosecute
its war against the 'bandoleros' and besides, have at its disposition many
conservatives who were seeking revenge because they were victims of the
victims of the conservatives.

History repeats itself generously in today's violence. Once again there
are victims and victims of the victims and of the mourners of the victims
in a growing spiral. The guerrillas recruit hundreds of youths with each
paramilitary massacre. A zone is reported 'cleared' by the paras, but in
reality the guerrilla army is growing.

The actions of the guerrillas generate new vigilantes of the state and the
parastate whose chiefs are children of parents killed by guerrillas. The
two groups are set: the 'Palestinians' and the 'Israelis'. Like in
Israel/Palestine the majority of the Palestinians and Israelis do not
exercise terror, but those who do use it find enough support to keep going
year after year.

The state terrorism of Colombia, like that of Israel, is legitimized in
terms of a fight against terrorism, and one terror feeds the other. Today
there are not only rural massacres, but also aerial bombardments that
don't just target guerrillas but kill civilians (as in Gaza or the West
Bank), as they did in the well known case of Santo Domingo (Arauca) and in
the less well known cases in the old demilitarized zone or in Planadas
(Tolima), Cacarica, and right now in El Carmen (Norte de Santander). On
the other side there aren't just kidnappings and attacks, but atrocious
bombings that, like in Israel, also kill civilians.

The authors of the house and car bombings in Colombia are not Muslims like
the young suicide bombers of Palestine. They do not, therefore, go to
heaven with the bombs that kill them, but their psychology and their
motivation are similar. Just as similar as the psychology and motivation
of an Uribe and a Sharon.

The continuing displacement of the Palestinians in the news today have
their parallel in the 200-300,000 campesinos, indigenous, and
afro-Colombians who are displaced each year in Colombia, to whom the
endless nature of the armed conflict has torn them from their land.

The same perverse international dynamics sustain the conflict, making
Colombia the Israel of the region, a country the US uses to control
Venezuela and its oil (as senator Coverdell announced 3 years ago), a
country used to control Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, to impose the FTAA
and/or the bilateral trade agreements all over the continent.

Uribe dreams of treating Chavez like a Saddam and Lula like a Sadat. But
here the analogy fails completely and the strategy of Coverdell and Uribe
is shown to be very fragile.

Because the fragile South American Israel has 68% of its population in
poverty, is stuck in an economic crisis that it is only very slowly
recovering from at the price of multiplying its growing public debt and
risking a fiscal crisis. It has heavy, growing war taxes.

Its neoliberal economic team could compete with Argentina's Cavallo for
both past disgrace and present glories. Its future depends on the
willingness of Washington to assume the economic costs of this Israel
before it crashes like any old Argentina or Indonesia. Uribe is betting
that Washington will sustain him whatever the cost-him and the corrupt
caste of leaders of the traditional parties and speculative latifundistas.
By doing so, Uribe has made Colombia a danger to the whole world.

[translated by Justin Podur]

Hector Mondragon is a Colombian activist and economist, and regular ZNet
commentator based in Colombia.