Colombia: Without Saying “Yes”

Iván Duque is possibly the Colombian president who has best got along with the Yankee-Empire, which, with just a roll of its eyes, and perhaps a twitch of its ears is obeyed by the servile president.

The United States did not have to request authorization from anyone to send more military personnel to the Colombian soil, where it already has nine military bases, with an unknown number of soldiers, theoretically moved to fight drug trafficking, in the continuation of a shameful Plan Colombia that has had as outcome, the death of innocents, the fight against the guerrillas, the protection of drug lords and the distribution of large amounts of money among the chiefs of the occupants and high-ranking Colombian officers who would not know how to explain where that much money came from, but this, of course, does not matter to them.

I always quote as an example of the thieving concocted between North American soldiers and drug producers those photos that show Marines watching over the beautiful poppy plantations in Afghanistan, so that heroin production would not decrease.

Now the same could be done, because many of the North American bases are in territory where coca fields are abundant and thus ensure high production for their arrival in the United States, the largest consumer of drugs in the world.

If COVID-19 were cured with drugs, perhaps the death toll from the pandemic would not have risen as high, or put Trump in a pinch in his presidential reelection.

Now the arrival of more North American soldiers and their location near Venezuelan borders can induce Duque to the error of trying to launch a large-scale aggression against his neighbor, where the recent unsuccessful coastal aggression is an advance of what to expect: loss, financial wear, and total disaster.

STORY

Since Chavism took power in Venezuela, relations with Colombia have not been easy, as the country is one of the most meek allies to U.S. policy on this continent.

It has also traditionally been the enemy of any left-wing government in the region, from Cuba to Nicaragua, Brazil with Lula da Silva in office, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, including the Argentina of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner.

Colombian diplomacy, which is indeed very skillful, full of technocrats, experts and advisers who go hand in hand with North American organizations in a neoliberal fashion rather than a regional one has had a decisive task in the politics with the United States.

The Colombian governments have been pro-North American, and at the same time they have managed to keep a neutral formal line, for two main reasons: first, an intestine war that still continues partly, with the killing of demobilized guerrilla social leaders, with a death toll so far of more than eight million victims; second, a staging of another war with drug trafficking filled of historical failures, shared with the United States, because on both sides there is extensive corruption.

This tries to be hidden under the huge propaganda about the large-scale U.S. operations, for example, the killing of Pablo Escobar or the capture of Chapo Guzmán, but reality in figures of decrease or control of drug trafficking is never affected, because in the end this sort of war is lost, as long as these corrupt characters exist.

Everything that is happening in Colombia turns the South American nation into a neo-colony, dependent on policies foreign to national interests.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff