Leftist candidate surges in Colombia

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Leftist candidate surges in Colombia

By JOSHUA GOODMAN, Associated Press Writer
Thu May 25, 9:11 AM ET

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia stands out as an oasis of conservatism amid Latin America's growing legion of leftist leaders and Sunday's elections are unlikely to change that with President Alvaro Uribe expected to win by a landslide.

But a last-minute surge by a leftist candidate nicknamed "Santa Claus" has provided the lone surprise in a campaign dominated by Uribe, Washington's staunchest ally in the region.

Colombia's democratic left, long blemished by its association with the four-decade-old guerrilla insurgency, has been invigorated by the surprise performance of Sen. Carlos Gaviria, the candidate for the Alternative Democratic Pole party, or PDA.

Unknown to half of Colombians just a few months ago, the academic and former head of Colombia's highest court has leapfrogged past Liberal Party candidate Horacio Serpa to move into second place. Since March, polls show that support for Gaviria has tripled to 24 percent.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060525/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_leftist_surge_2

[arcos]

1. Sadly too little, too late...

Uribe is cruising to reelection... the only chance for Gaviria would be if Uribe wins less than 50% because they would have to go to a runoff election. But at this point, it is highly unlikely.

Of course, polls could be wrong... it would be great if it happened the same that in Costa Rica, where the left wing challenger was able to cut a 20% gap to 1% in just a week. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Did they say "Latin America's growing legion of leftist leaders?"

A-P?

Not "growing threat to American interests"? Or "increasing dictatorships of the majority"? Or "leftist insurgencies in Latin America's traditionally troubled governments"? Or "growing legion of leftist leaders led by that loud-mouth, and increasingly authoritarian, according to critics, former military officer Hugo Chavez"? Or "HOW can they do this to us? HOW? We're the good guys! The terrorist-hunters! The Masters of the Universe! The bringers of Bechtel and Chevron! These little brown peasants in sandals--just like the Vietnamese--taken in by promises of housing, schools, medical care and self-government..."

They actually said "Latin America's growing legion of leftist leaders" surrounding an "oasis of conservatism" and they didn't choke on the word "oasis"?

I think what we have here--maybe, MAYBE--is a war profiteering corporate news monopoly in transition on an issue. They couldn't resist "oasis"--an island of good fortune for fascist thieves and US-trained death squads--but they can no longer deny that the hard work on local civic groups, the OAS, EU election monitoring groups and the Carter Center, on fair and honest and TRANSPARENT elections in Latin America, is finally paying off in spectacular way, in majority rule all over Latin America--in Brazil, in Argentina, in Uruguay, in Chile, in Venezuela, in Bolivia--and the majority is always leftist, because the center and the right, rich in largess from US corporate global predators, don't give a crap for the millions and millions of poor people in their countries, the workers and peasants and disenfranchised and de-landed indigenous.

The Growing Legion of Leftist Leaders. I like that.

And get this...

"Colombia's democratic left, long blemished by its association with the four-decade-old guerrilla insurgency..."

Now there's a sentence. Blemished, huh? I don't know that much about Columbia, but, when Hugo Chavez tried a coup against the oppressive fascist government in Venezuela when he was younger, and did jail time for it, THAT's when he became the hero of the nation--in jail for the "blemish" of insurgency.

People suffering extremely oppressive regimes--whose relatives have been 'disappeared,' whose friends and family have been tortured, and who are chronically poor amidst a fabulous wealth of resources--tend to view "guerrilla insurgencies" a bit differently than A-P might think. It's no surprise to me that they would come "out of nowhere" and vote for the "blemished" left. The left has always been the only activist group that cared about the majority of the people--whether as guerrillas or as politicians. And the left is what's happening, everywhere south of the US border. Peru, Nicaragua, Mexico--all have leftist candidates coming "out of nowhere" to sudden (to the corporate news monopolies) surges in polls and primaries. It's in the air. As Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, has said...

"The time of the people has come."

[regnaD kciN]

3. Obviously...

I don't know that much about Columbia

...at least, you don't know enough to spell the name right -- it's Colombia. That must be a problem for you people from Callyfornya.

[Judi Lynn]

4. It takes real determination to run for office as a leftist in Colombia,

considering the fact the right-wing paramilitaries have intimidated voters for ages.

Did a quick google grab, found this article instantly. There are many, many more which can serve to illustrate just what kind of choke-hold the right-wing in its most extreme form has on Colombia:

Alvaro Uribe Velez and 'Democratic Security'
Interviewing Javier Giraldo on Colombia

A long-time peace activist, Father Javier Giraldo helped found Justicia y Paz in 1988 and has long been a tireless worker for human rights in Colombia. He is the author of 'Colombia: the Genocidal Democracy', one of the most useful primers on Colombia's human rights situation available in the 1990s. He was interviewed in Bogota on February 22, 2004.
(snip)

The first question is, how did Uribe win in 2002. I was re-reading Erich Fromm's 'Fear of Liberty' the other day. That is about how Hitler came to power in Germany. It is an explanation in terms of social psychology. And perhaps some of that is at work here, too. But if you look at the period March-May 2002, before the elections: I was in Meta, with the displaced, people of the Puerto Alvira, Mapiripan. I asked, how was it possible that people who had lost so much because of the paramiltiaries would vote for a president who promised more of the same? They gave testimony of a great deal of fraud. There were paramilitaries in the voting booths. These destroyed ballots. The mayor came to the voting booth with a list of social services recipients at the end of the day. They compared their list with the voters list, to see who had abstained. Then they voted for them. This was actually denounced to the Ombudsman. Nothing happened. In Barrancabermeja, the paramilitaries promised a massacre if Uribe didn't win. I know of other cases, people who didn't denounce publicly, out of fear. Those who voted, voted under tremendous pressure.

After the parliamentary elections in March 2002, Mancuso declared victory publicly. He said that paramilitaries controlled 33% of the seats in the legislature. When journalists asked the Minister of the Interior if this were really the case, he confirmed it. So we have a paramilitary legislature to go with our paramilitary president.
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5156

[gorbal]

5. Reminds me of an article I read about a journalist that was kidnapped.

It was from a "National Geographic Adventure" magazine. A journalist had been kidnapped by what he thought were FARC rebels, but it it turned out it was the AUC. (Who they later found out had murdered members of a Kuni tribe they were staying with in a raid.) It makes me wonder how many other times the AUC have kidnapped people saying they were Farc. (the latter known for kidnapping americans; the former supposedly friendly to americans).

I cannot find the full article, but here is an article on the article-

http://www.cpj.org/cases03/americas_cases03/panama.html

And here is Pelton on CNN-

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0301/24/bn.01.html

His article is a facinating read if you ever find it.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Thanks for the alert about this story I want to locate eventually.

No doubt there are many others. After all the only official source for the stories is the Colombian government which is allied with the paramilitaries. They can tell the world anything they want, with little concern about being found out, in most cases.

It appears support for the Colombian government as it is is mostly a very right-wing thing. Here's an article from 2000, which discusses a U.S. Republican Congressman's disinformation campaign:

June 12, 2000

The Propaganda of Benjamin Gilman

by Garry Leech

An article written by the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Republican representative Benjamin A. Gilman of New York, and published June 2 in the Washington Times, is a master work of propaganda that radically distorts reality in its portrayal of the conflict in Colombia. Gilman´s article, titled "Colombia Aid Impetus," urges the United States Senate to immediately approve the $1.1 billion Colombia aid package previously passed by the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee in order to avoid more deaths in both Colombia and the United States. However, in stating his case, Gilman tries to deceive the American people by omitting certain essential facts and attempts to instill fear through a campaign of misinformation.

Gilman, as have many other aid supporters, uses the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia´s (FARC) attack on the town of Vigia del Fuerte and the resulting deaths of a mother, her two children and 21 police officers as an example of why increased aid must be sent to Colombia immediately. Even though the FARC attack resulted in the unjustifiable killing of civilians, it is clear that the principal target was a military target: The Colombian Police Force stationed in the town.

Not once during the article did Gilman mention the role of paramilitary organizations in Colombia, their relationship with the Colombian Armed Forces, or the fact that the huge majority of massacres and human rights abuses have been attributed to them by international human rights organizations, the United Nations and even the U.S. State Department. According to Human Rights Watch, paramilitaries were responsible for 78% of the human rights abuses committed in 1999.
(snip/...)

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia13.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I want to reiterate the value of the last posted paragraph. I have seen similar claims in many, many sources.



Benjamin Gillman, and a man who saw Colombia through much clearer eyes, Senator Paul Wellstone.

[Selatius]

6. I can't believe we've turned a blind eye to the death squads for so long

I guess business was booming on Wall Street for the politicians to care. Then there's that insane "War on Drugs" that kept us pumping more money and arms into that country. Billions in profits must've been gained by selling weapons to the paramilitaries to "fight drugs."

[Judi Lynn]

8. You may remember reading in the last 6 months about some U.S. soldiers

being caught in Colombia with a huge stash of weapons, down there to sell those things to paramilitaries. I didn't see that article, in a google search a moment ago, as I stopped looking when I found this very interesting article, instead, which points out the problem has been going on seriously during _Bush's rule:

July 8, 2002

Another Contra Scandal?

by Garry Leech

During the 1980s, the Reagan administration became mired in the Iran-Contra scandal following revelations that it illegally sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to covertly arm and fund Nicaraguan Contra forces attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government. Last year, Israeli arms dealers bought 3,000 assault rifles and ammunition from the Nicaraguan security forces and covertly sold them to Colombia's counter-revolutionaries (Contras), the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The fact that President George W. Bush's Latin American policymaking team includes former Reagan administration Contra war warriors Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte, raises questions regarding the possibility of a Washington connection to the purchasing, selling and shipping of these weapons to Colombian paramilitaries who are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

While the Reagan administration had the audacity to illegally sell arms to Iran, an archenemy of the United States, the Colombian arms deal involved a cast of far more likely characters. The principal brokers of the deal were Israelis working for a Guatemalan-based company, GERSA, which is a representative of the Israeli government's arms industry. The weapons, mostly Soviet-era AK-47 assault rifles, were purchased from the government of Nicaragua, which, like Israel, is a U.S. ally.

The arms entered Colombia on November 10, 2001, and were delivered to right-wing paramilitaries closely allied with the U.S.-supported Colombian military. According to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, Oliver P. Garza, was informed about the sale of the weapons beforehand, but denies knowing they were destined for Colombia.

Washington has provided more than $1.3 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia over the past two years--making Colombia the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid behind Israel and Egypt. The United States has provided weapons, helicopters and training to a Colombian military that is closely-allied to right-wing paramilitary death squads responsible for more than 70 percent of the country's human rights abuses, especially civilian massacres.
(snip/...)

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia121.htm

[Zynx]

9. Uribe is just a Colombian version of Fujimori.

Everything about them seems the same, except for the Japanese ancestory.