Did you know Colombia completely obliterated an entire party? You may have heard about this:

[Judi Lynn]

Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia
Steven Dudley, Routledge, 2004, 253 pp.

The mid-1980s birth of the Unión Patriótica (Patriotic Union, UP), a new political party in Colombia, brought a fresh wind of hope to the violence-battered country. In those days the largest guerrilla organization, the FARC, was in peace talks with the administration of President Belisario Betancur. It appeared that the insurgency might be persuaded to demobilize an the long stranglehold of the Conservative and Liberal parties might eventually be broken. In pueblos and in the cities, the yellow-and-green UP flag fluttered over exuberant rallies. “The UP caught on in a way that surprised everyone,” UP propaganda chief Álvaro Salazar later remembered, “including me.”

Then the killings began. UP militants were gunned down, slain in bombings. However, party members refused to give up. In 1986 congressional and local elections, UP candidates won 24 seats as provincial deputies and 275 as representatives to municipal councils—as well as three seats in the national senate and four as congressional representatives. In presidential elections that year, the UP’s candidate, Jaime Pardo Leal, received over 325,000 votes, more than any “progressive” had ever attained in Colombia.

But the killings continued. Right-wing paramilitaries, fueled by drug trafficking and in cooperation with Colombia’s security forces, assassinated some 500 UP members in the party’s first two years of existence. One of the newly elected UP senators, Pedro Nel Jiménez, was soon a victim. In October 1987 Jaime Pardo Leal was assassinated as he was taking his family on a vacation trip. The UP’s next presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo, was killed a few months before the 1990 elections.

By now some 4,000 UP leaders and members have been assassinated in what the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has appropriately called a political genocide.
(snip)

Right-wing forces still use the “guerrilla” label as a justification for their assassinations. A UP leader, Carlos Bernal, was murdered with his protective escort in Cúcuta as recently as April 1, 2004.
(snip)

It’s a sobering tale, one that needs to be told and puzzled over. The UP is actually only one of several alternative parties that have emerged in Colombia since the mid-twentieth century, and in each case their leaders have been slain or silenced. Why?

More:
http://www.chicagoans.net/node/39

[Peace Patriot]

1. Thanks for this post! "Plan Colombia" has all along been a pact made with the Devil.

Fatten war profiteers with $5.5 BILLION in military aid to the fascist murderers, torturers, thieves and drug traffickers running Colombia, and sell U.S. taxpayer suckers with the idea that the cocaine trade will be wiped out.

Yet worse, with the Bush Junta, Colombia has become a staging ground for Bushite plotting and aggression against the DEMOCRATIC, SOCIAL JUSTICE governments of Venezuela and Ecuador, who control the biggest oil reserves in the western hemisphere, and have leaders who believe that the country's oil profits should benefit the poor majority. "Plan Colombia," under Bush, is not merely a fake drug interdiction boondoggle. It is the prep for Oil War II: South America. Its purpose is to TOPPLE these democracies and install fascist regimes like the one in Colombia, for the benefit of Exxon Mobil and brethren. And their $4/gal for gasoline here is likely part of that war prep, along with the relentless demonization of these DEMOCRATIC leaders by the corporate news monopolies.

The mass murder of leftists by fascist Colombia did not stop at wiping out their political party. It continues to this day--with the recent murders of people who organized peaceful street protests against the rightwing paramilitaries (closely tied to the government), and of thousands of others, including union leaders, small peasant farmers, community organizers, human rights workers and journalists. Pro-fascist posters here at DU often ask, "Are you defending the murders and kidnappings of the FARC (leftist guerrilla fightings in Colombia)?" And, of course, they never admit that, according all human rights groups, 80% to 90% of the carnage in Colombia's 40+ year civil war has been the responsibility of the Colombian military and rightwing paramilitaries. Do I condemn people for taking up arms and fighting back? I cannot. In the face of the massive atrocities committed by the Colombian government--AIDED AND ABETTED AND FUNDED BY the Bush Junta--it is not my place to judge the people who have suffered these things. The chainsawing of union leaders, while alive, and throwing their body parts into mass graves; the slitting of children's throats on suspicion of their parents being leftists; the execution of entire villages of people.

The lesson of the Colombian fascists' extermination of 4,000 leftist political leaders, after the demobilization, is that leftists (majorityists) in Colombia do not have the option of democracy. And, as Ho Chi Minh learned--when the U.S. cancelled UN-sponsored elections in Vietnam in 1954--and as the Iranian people learned, when the U.S. toppled their democracy in the same period, and inflicted them with 25 years of torture and oppression under the horrible Shah of Iran--and as we ourselves learned, in 1776--when bully powers forbid democracy and self-determination, people often feel that they have no choice: submit to heinous oppression, or take up arms--seem to be the only choices.

That's how the civil war began in Colombia, and why it has persisted for so long. There is a third option today. Colombia is now surrounded by leftist democracies, who are willing to help Colombia reach a peace agreement to end their long civil war. Enter the Bush Junta, who want to prevent peace at any cost. They want the oil. And they are war profiteers--like their tool, Uribe, and the Colombian military.

The Clintons helped to prevent democratic institutions from gaining ground in Colombia, by arming the fascists. Meanwhile, democracy began to flourish all around Colombia, as the result of the long, hard, dedicated work of many people--local social movements and civic groups, indigenous tribes, the OAS, Carter Center and other election monitors--as well as the utter failure of neo-liberalism and U.S.-dominated "free trade," and a continent-wide reaction against these and related World Bank/IMF policies. Leftist (i.e., good) governments have thus been elected in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua, and, most recently, Paraguay and Guatemala. Their common goals are self-determination and social justice. These countries have proven that there IS another option in Latin America--beyond fascist brutality and armed leftist resistance. The South Americans are fully capable of solving the problem of Colombia on their own, but have been continually hampered by the fuckwads of the Bush Junta, feeding billions in arms to Colombia and constantly stirring up trouble.

I frankly think that Bush war on South America--as the "October Surprise"--is more likely than war on Iran--and may erupt in the form of Bush military support for rightwing secessionists (such as the white separatists in Bolivia, and the fascists in Zulia in Venezuela--both involving oil-rich provinces*). The current, bald-faced corporate media LIES in regard to this FARC laptop thing--simply outright lies, about what Interpol said about the laptops (re: Uribe/Colombia accusations that the presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador are "terrorist-lovers")--have me very worried. We haven't seen corporate media lying like this since the Iraq WMD lies. They don't do it for no reason.

---------

*"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

Among other things, he urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. I think there is good reason to believe he is orchestrating this war plan, including the laptop lies.

[Texano78704]

2. Actually I did

If you are interested in more on the recent political history of Colombia, here is a good start.

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

[Judi Lynn]

3. Thanks for the news on this book. It sounds important. Thinking about getting it, too.

One has to budget time when it's precious, but this book sounds too useful to ignore!

Thank you.