Colombia is the highest recipient of US military aid in Latin America. This "aid" has inflamed Colombia's 50-year-old civil conflict, contributing to more deaths, more kidnappings, and an increase in human suffering. The Bush Administration and hawks in Congress have repealed Clinton-era rules that prohibit US arms from being used to battle guerrilla groups and now US military aid to Colombia can be used in Colombia's counterinsurgency war. These deadly policies must be reversed. US involvement in Colombia is expensive, ineffective, inhumane, and will not lead to peace in the troubled nation.
Meanwhile, US foreign policy is doing nothing to support the voices for lasting peace and justice in the country. Drug war policies have failed as cultivations of illicit crops remain steady. Civil society across Colombia has manifested against the Andean Free Trade Agreement, an extension of NAFTA and CAFTA-type economic measures that would cause increased job loss, poverty, and immigration. Intentional peace communities comprised of farmworkers, women, afro-colombians, and indigenous communities have proclaimed their opposition to any armed resolution of the conflict. And multinational corporations continue unaccountable for violent human rights violations.
US foreign policy in Colombia actually helps to prevent real political participation of the most threatened sectors of the population. Now is the time to tell the US government to stop supporting a failed military aid policy, a failed drug war, and a failed economic model imposed upon Latin America.
