Tag Archives: colombia

October 12, 2003

Displacing Development in the Chocó

By Garry Leech

and Terry Gibbs

In the context of the ongoing territorial conflict in the Chocó, the mostly Afro-Colombian and indigenous residents of the region struggle on various fronts. The Chocó is Colombia’s poorest and most underdeveloped department with almost 80 percent of the population living in extreme poverty and an illiteracy rate three times the national average. Only four countries—Afghanistan, Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone—have a higher infant mortality rate than the Chocó, where 125 children out of every 1,000 die before reaching their first birthday. The region’s lack of infrastructure is evidenced by the significant percentage of the population without access to electricity and potable water and the fact that roads are virtually non-existent, leaving rural Chocó almost exclusively dependent on river transportation. In addition to struggling with ongoing problems of health, education, employment and the civil conflict, chocoanos also face one of the highest rates of displacement in the country.

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September 15, 2003

Ghosts of the Past

By Garry Leech

and Terry Gibbs

Looking out over the muddy banks of the Río Atrato, Macaria tells of nightmares of mangled bodies, spiraling flames and the cries of dying children. Trying desperately to grasp the hands that reach out to her through the darkness, she awakens to nothing but silence. Macaria has been working with a UN-sponsored psychologist for months struggling to come to terms with the tragedy that struck this small Afro-Colombian community over a year ago. From the departmental capital Quibdó, Bellavista is a four-hour motorboat ride down the Río Atrato through military and paramilitary checkpoints. As one approaches the riverbank near this remote town, it is difficult to believe that so much suffering has occurred here. Dugout canoes laden with bananas, pineapples, sugarcane and miscellaneous packages vie for space near the dirt embankment as lively exchanges take place between people calling instructions back and forth. A large poster, which was placed strategically on the riverbank by the army, reads: “On May 2, 2002, the FARC assassinated 119 people here. We will never forget.” A larger than life boy’s face peers out from beside the words. Almost one year after Bellavista’s residents returned to the homes they abandoned following the attack, community members are still trying to process what happened that fateful day.

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April 7, 2003

Informers for a Day

By Garry Leech

In war-torn Saravena, a town of 30,000 in Arauca department in eastern Colombia, soldiers dressed as clowns befriend local children by offering them candy, rides on armored personnel carriers, and the use of the army’s swimming pool in return for the opportunity to pummel them with pro-army and anti-rebel propaganda.

Children have become the focal point of Psychological Warfare Operations (PsyOps) being conducted by the Colombian army in this embattled town that is currently home to 40 U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers who arrived in January as part of the Bush administration’s global war on terror. Like the PsyOps used by the U.S. army as part of the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War, these programs are not only geared to winning over the “hearts and minds” of locals, they are also being used to elicit information from the civilian population, especially children, about rebel activities in Saravena.

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February 23, 2003

The Battle for Saravena

By Garry Leech

The culmination of two significant events during the past 18 months has dramatically transformed U.S. policy in Colombia. First, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States have allowed the Bush administration to escalate its military involvement in Colombia as part of the evolving global war on terror. And second, the election of Colombia’s hard-line presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe last May has provided the White House with an ally willing to intensify the war against Colombia’s two principal leftist guerrilla groups—the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN)—that are on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). These developments have led to the deployment of 70 U.S. army Special Forces troops to one of the most hotly contested parts of Colombia to help the Colombian army combat the guerrillas and protect U.S. economic interests in the region.

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November 11, 2002

Generating Power and Poverty in Colombia

By Garry Leech

Many of the communities in Colombia’s remote northeastern department of La Guajira exist on the periphery of the country’s violence. The semi-arid landscape is not conducive to guerrilla warfare and looks more like the southwestern United States than any other part of Colombia. While the region’s geography is responsible for keeping much of the country’s violence at arms length, it is the cause of another form of conflict currently being waged against numerous La Guajira communities: economic globalization. In the early1980s, ExxonMobil—through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Intercor—and Colombia’s state-owned coal mining company Carbocol began extracting coal from the El Cerrejón mine in southern La Guajira. El Cerrejón soon became the world’s largest open-pit mine as it grew to its current size of 30 miles long and five miles wide. This continuing expansion has wreaked havoc on local communities, some of which have already been gobbled up by the mine, and others that are targeted for destruction over the next couple of years.

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