Here is a transcript from the remarks of Rep. George Miller (D-California), the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, at the end of a February 12 hearing on labor rights in Colombia.
It was referred to a number of times here about the beauty of the country of Colombia. And, for those who have visited Colombia, it would not take more than a few seconds to realize why people say that, because of the spectacular nature of the country and its natural assets. And of course, when you meet its people. But that is not a substitute for a serious inquiry into human rights.
I can remember standing at the American embassy, with the American ambassador, at the height of the violence in Chile, and him telling me that this is a beautiful country, and that I should really go to Valparaiso and enjoy the beaches, and see the people who use the beaches, and I should go shopping and enjoy the people who are shopping, and that my concerns were misplaced, because it’s such a beautiful country. My concerns weren’t misplaced. It took almost 30 years, but we brought Mr. Pinochet to justice.
And the world now knows the history of what was taking place while people were suggesting it’s a beautiful country. I had the same treatment from then-President D’Aubuisson, that I should go walk and enjoy the rivers of Salvador, because it’s such a beautiful place. And we all know the history of violence by that government against its people.
[Note: Roberto D'Aubuisson, a far-right sponsor of death squads and founder of El Salvador's ARENA party, was never actually president.]
Rep. Miller’s words inspired the following response yesterday from Colombia’s vice-president, Francisco Santos, in an interview on Colombia’s RCN radio network. [mp3 version here]
RCN Questioner: What do you think about what we just heard? A U.S. Congressman, the president for these issues in the House, George Miller, comparing Colombia’s situation to El Salvador during the time of that criminal, Roberto D’Aubuisson, or with Pinochet’s Chile?
…
Santos: It seems to me that this statement indicates Mr. Miller’s lack of objectivity, of his ideologization of his entire perception of Colombia, ideologization and radical politicization of Colombia’s reality, which makes him, well, an enemy of Colombia, someone who doesn’t have Colombia’s interests in mind, only his personal and ideological interests.
…
It seems to me that it [Mr. Miller's statement] is part of a smear campaign against Colombia, in which the political debate going on here has moved overseas.
…
RCN Questioners: Of course, yes. Vicepresident, yes sir, of course yes. Sir, it’s worrisome that this person, Mr. George Miller, is quite close to Nancy Pelosi. So one might feel that bills like the Free Trade Agreement still have many enemies, at least in the ideological sense in the United States, and that the issue, instead of becoming clearer, is more tangled.
Santos: This is a congressman who only has a personal vendetta, an ideological vendetta, that has nothing to do with, with…
RCN Questioner, interrupting: Reality.
Leave aside for a moment the vice-president’s questioners’ extreme deference and lack of objectivity. (One understands why Colombians refer to RCN as “Radio Casa de Nariño,” using the name of Colombia’s presidential palace.)
Rep. Miller’s point was that he was tired of discussing a country’s natural beauty or good shopping when he wanted to have a conversation about human rights. He was not comparing Colombia to Pinochet’s Chile or 1980s El Salvador – though given the hundreds of unpunished extrajudicial executions the Army has committed in the past few years alone, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
In no way should his words make George Miller an “enemy of Colombia.” But the Vice President’s use of this terribly unfortunate term is a chilling example of how today’s Colombian government regards any expression of dissent.
This is not an accidental gaffe on the Vice President’s part, either. He had similar words for a delegation of human rights leaders who visited Washington this week. He told Colombia’s “La W” radio network the following, about an hour before the delegates spoke at an event on Capitol Hill hosted by U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-California).
Today in the United States … there is a Sam Farr hearing … where the sad thing about all this is that Colombian politics have moved to international scenarios, and the hatred of the President, the ill will toward the President on the part of some sectors, has now taken on the strategy of going everywhere to trash the country. It makes one feel pain for the fatherland, it hurts one that this strategy is used to try to attack Colombia, to attack the President.
Last week, the Colombian government sent three ministers and other high officials to Washington to ask for a continuation of aid, and to present their version of the country’s current security and human rights situations. However, when Colombian experts and activists with different information travel here – whether to testify at hearings or as guests of non-governmental colleagues – the Colombian government’s highest officials trash them viciously in the national media, while severely mischaracterizing what they have to say. And now, this trashing even extends to members of the U.S. Congress.
We note as well that one of those who testified in Rep. Miller’s February 12 hearing has received serious threats from the Black Eagles paramilitary group. Here in Washington, these threats and Vice President Santos’ careless words send a message loud enough to drown out all official public-relations campaigns’ images of natural beauty and improved security.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
And the others don’t mischaracterize and trash as well?
Or maybe respect is only demanded from some sectors and not others.
I actually kind wish that Colombia was Pinochet’s Chile or El Salvador, because then at least the situation would have evolved differently, but no….it’s not much of a stretch, if I you say so, thus it must be true.
Regards,
Marcos
March 6th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
And the world now knows the history of what was taking place while people were suggesting it’s … a human rights violation…
March 7th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I think Pacho Santos speaks a lot of sense. The man has access to intelligence, he knows the deal.
Miller, unfortunately, is Big Labor’s slavish acolyte in Congress and does whatever they tell him. He has no views of his own. Big Labor is in bed with the two biggest Marxist Colombian labor unions, and now two of their leaders have been shown to have been leaders of FARC itself. Miller’s pals Mendoza and Obando aren’t sweet little angels standing there, all persecuted senselessly by the Colombian army. They are FARC itself and Miller supports them.
Pacho knows the deal.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Actually, regarding the headline, I think the vice president has a right to respond. The headline makes it sound like the VP is ‘attacking’ the poor innocent little House Democrats who have no political aims whatever, despite being in politics you see.
There is a small coterie of Democrats connected to Nancy Pelosi and her close ally Piedad Cordoba who would like President Uribe’s government, freely elected by the people, overthrown. They don’t want him in there, they don’t want Pacho in there, they want that Petro guy, a former killer who got off scotfree and now lectures Colombia on human rights instead of apologizes for his brutal crimes, there, or better still, the Chavista-money-taking, and Miraflores-staying Piedad Cordoba running Colombia. Miller and his coterie would gladly choke Colombia’s economy of free trade to do this, kind of like Nixon’s ‘Make the Economy Scream’ of the Allende days – making Miller & Pals no different from Nixon, to ensure that FARC or some FARC appeasers can take power by hook or by crook and never mind Colombia’s democracy. They will pressure Uribe in an attempt to empower his political enemies like Petro and Piedad. It’s no different from the meddling of the Nixon days. Or Kennedy and Eisenhower days.
Since Miller thinks he has a special right to run Colombia without being elected there, he can’t be surprised if the people who really do run Colombia with the express permission of the Colombian people, stand up for themselves.
Miller is a bigtime yanqui imperialist in a Che tshirt.
March 8th, 2009 at 11:50 am
When you have nothing else, bring in the strawmen. That’s exactly what Santos is doing and the interviewer is giving him the journalistic equivalent of a puñeta.
March 8th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
That’s it! I guess I can just sit back for a while and get me a front row sit for the show. That’s why you should never miss Cipcol. It’s all laid out here for you. The FARC has already the Congress of the friggin’ U S of A in its pocket. Who knows, maybe they also infiltered AIG. The Lehmann Bros? Pinko-FARCs, I’m telling you! This whole “collapse of capitalism” thing has been thought out by the FARC. They waited until they had Congress eating in its hand, then the pull all the stops. Now the world’s capitalist establishment will come crashing down, the FARC-dominated Congress will declare rural Communism in the entire world, we’ll have communal eating even in Manhattan. Uribe and Santos will be left leading the resistance with their friends in Fairfax and Quantico, but probably to no avail. And poor me, I thought that the FARC could not infilter a communal council in Putumayo. Thanks to Cipcol’s comment thread, I now get the facts straight.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:27 am
LFM: Don’t laugh. FARC, precisely because it is losing bigtime on the battlefield and in the quest for public opinion, has turned to political methods. That’s why it was so interested in the ‘humanitarian’ accord with Hugo Chavez, for one. It wanted Hugo to get the Europeans to take it off the terror list so it could resume fundraising there. The whole thing blew up in their faces when the FARC computer was retrieved but the political intent was there. Also, recall that Piedad Cordoba told FARC terrorists to keep holding Ingrid Betancourt hostage and not let her go, because she was their most valuable bargaining chip. How’s that not politics? The more FARC loses its credibility on the battlefield, and the more it gets discredited abroad, the harder it goes for victory through politicking with the gullible. It’s what any loser would do.
It’s kind of like the unstudious kid who got a C on his report card, based on the final exam, who’s trying to sweet-talk his professor into giving him an A anyway, even though he didn’t earn it. Politics is the last refuge of the loser.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:47 am
The FARC has always been a politico-military organization. The relative weight of each ingredient keeps changing over time, but they have never done away entirely with any of them. In other words, they are a guerrilla. Just like any other guerrilla in the world. No surprise there. Recently they´ve increased the political component, for sure. Guess what? I LIKE IT. I think that´s exactly what they should be doing. They should be doing more and more politics and less and less fighting until they finally give up armed struggle. That´s not “a last refuge of the loser.” It´s the smart thing to do and we will all be better off if they succeed. If that means developing ties with labor in Colombia and the US, good for them! If that means developing political ties with unarmed, legal organizations in Venezuela, good for them! If that means hanging around with the political factions of ETA in Spain, good for them! The more this stuff happens, the more they´ll realize that the real future is in politics.
Some say that this is terrible because, if the FARC acquires more political strength it will go redouble its fighting. Dubious. First, they are already fighting. Big time, with big money. Second, it´s the armed struggle the one that is the true “last refuge.” The more the FARC see a future in legal politics, the less their kids will be interested in wasting away in the jungle.
Camilla: as a regular reader of this blog, I think I know what disturbs you of this. You don´t have a problem with the fighting. It´s the left that ticks you off. You´ve made very clear your scale of values which goes roughly like this:
1. If you´ve slaughetered civilians, probably in front of their children, if you´ve raped, pillaged and razed towns to the ground, you deserve to rot in jail for a long time.
2. But if, for some reason, that cannot happen, then we can set you up a Truth Commission that gets you to serve some time and then keep some of your money and regain respectability. (That is, Peace and Justice, good!!)
3. All this goes unless you are a Marxist. If you are a Marxist, then no Truth Commission for you. The only solution is to boil you alive, no matter how much you want to negotiate.
I have the feeling that, even among uribistas, this is a pretty extreme scale of values. By the way, thanks God it´s not what most Colombians want. I, for one, am not a Marxist, but the reasons I have for not being one are pretty long and tedious to explain in a secret cell of the DAS.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Completely different topic: check out the letter that the indigenous movements are addressing to the FARC. Very forceful stuff from people who know the beat. In essence they tell the FARC that they also want to be part of the “exchange of open letters,” that they also want peace, that they also are a force of contestation against many government´s policies but, and you knew that there would be a “but,” that the FARC are screwing everything up with their delusional tactics. It comes with a detailed list of particulars as you would expect given how badly the FARC have treated the indigenous groups. I think this is all to the good. It will bring to the open important things we all need to know and discuss and it will add a good dosis of credibility to the whole effort of Colombian@s por la Paz: it shows that the “public dialogue” is not just an idea of some deranged leftists (like yours truly), but that it´s an instrument where sticky points get addressed, by people who know what they´re saying and why.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
“They should be doing more and more politics and less and less fighting until they finally give up armed struggle.”
The little problem is they want to do both. This is no secret or no conspiracy theory, just look at their own documents and ramblings. Both from their very founding to the 70’s to the 80’s to the 90’s to now.
It’s just transparent that I don’t get how people try to say that they just want a legal option and they’ll lay down their arms.
Politics for them is only an accesory to the final insurrection of the masses..
I wonder why when Gaviria offered them to participate in the Constituent Assembly they demanded to be given HALF the seats without even demobilizing (unlike the M-19, which did very well in those elections but only after giving up the war). And then people just complain about the bombing of Casa Verde (ignoring that, even after that, the talks in Caracas and Mexico didn’t go anywhere) and claim that the government “prevented” FARC from being int he Assembly. The world is so upside down.
Regards,
Marcos
March 9th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Look, I don’t question at all that the FARC have been duplicitous in the past when it comes to peace talks. But:
1. The government has also been duplicitous in many instances.
2. Such duplicity (both from the FARC and the government) is not the result of some special perfidy. It’s pretty much business as usual in these matters. The typical thing in a peace process is that both sides enter it with hesitation, keeping their cards close to their chest, without ruling out the option of double-crossing the other part. But, if things go right, then each side can gradually give assurances to the other side until peace arrives. In fact, a lot of the time, if you want peace, you have to keep an eye on people on YOUR side because they may spoil the whole thing. Again, happens all the time. Peace processes are risky.
3. Supposedly, after all the great, thundering success of “democratic security”, one would expect that the FARC has realized that it will never seize power militarily. (I’ve known this since the early 90s, but the FARC are slow learners.) So, if six years of all out war have not been enough to make possible a deal, what have they been good for? Oh, yeah, I know, Uribe’s “final offensive” was not aimed at making possible a deal, but at exterminating the FARC (and whoever is hapless enough to stand in the way). But, hey, if it’s been so successful, then rather than waiting until the “final act,” we should be able to negotiate.
4. A little-noticed point: irregular wars have irregular ends. There will not be a formal surrender ceremony for the FARC. The whole “end of the end” will be a drawn out process that may take years. Probably tomorrow they bomb “Jojoy”, then next year “Cano”, the year after whoever it is that has taken over, and so on. The number of combatants will gradually go down, first to 8000 (as if that was a small number), then 5000, then 2000, then 500, you get the picture. There’s a small problem with that: it gives Uribe and Santos personal veto power over the entire political process. As long as they decide that the FARC are still active, at whatever level they damn please, they will have the right to keep labeling everybody an “enemy of the republic,” an “intellectual fifth-column,” an “accomplice of terrorism” and so on. The war is over whenever they say it is, not before. You want war to the bitter end? Fine. But the package includes personal rule by these guys. Probably you like it. But don’t say you didn’t know.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I’m all for sitting down to talk, but FARC is not going to sit down at any table unless it’s under their conditions, which they will then proceed to use to their military advantage on a strategic level.
Since you like to speak of a “final offensive”, which is something Uribe has never talked about, here’s something interesting from Fidel Castro’s recent “LA PAZ EN COLOMBIA” book:
â€En el Plan Estratégico Militar trabajarán por continuar la
guerra y los combates lejos de los municipios despejados
e ir acercando los frentes guerrilleros a las grandes
ciudades, activando el accionar de la propaganda armada
en las ciudades, a la vez que preparan una fuerte ofensiva
militar en el curso de estos meses para continuar
golpeando a las fuerzas armadas e ir creando las condiciones
para una ofensiva final. Eso explicaba la ausencia
de otros miembros del Secretariado en la reunión con
nosotros.
â€Para esta ofensiva final tendrán que existir factores en
el plano nacional, como que el gobierno se vaya desgastando
por la crisis económica y financiera, lo que hace
más impopular el proyecto neoliberal de Pastrana y favorece
la polÃtica de alianza de las FARC con otros sectores
sociales.”
â€Antes de esa ofensiva final, tienen previsto como alternativa
dividir el paÃs en dos, tomando el poder en dos o
tres departamentos del Sur (Caquetá, Putumayo, Meta),
mientras que en el Norte mantendrán cercadas y bloqueadas
a las grandes ciudades. En ese caso buscarÃan una
solución negociada sobre la base de los 10 puntos
programáticos de las FARC y estarÃan en mayor ventaja
de negociar; en caso esto no sea posible, continuarán la
guerra hasta la toma del poder, que se ejercerá convirtiendo
a los 80 frentes guerrilleros en la columna medular
de un poder popular y que los mejores comandantes asuman
la conducción de las fuerzas armadas.”
FARC’s not like the government in their structure nor in their intentions. You have the same five to ten guys at the top, with only very gradual changes (the classic Communist Party structure) and nothing like the kind of internal criticism and regular elections the government goes through. FARC has no accountability but to themselves. They don’t learn “lessons” except to fulfill their strategic objectives.
Regards,
Marcos
March 15th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
LFM: Sorry for my late reply, I have been traveling. Just read your items. Thank you for your interesting and thoughtful take, it’s quite worth thinking about.
I disagree with you on one small item – I would be ok if FARC got the same 8 year sentences as the paramilitary thugs. But the rest is interesting to mull over, I may share some thoughts later.