Colombia in crisis

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COLOMBIA IN POLITICAL CRISIS AS
MASS OPPOSITION GROWS

By Andy McInerney

After years of bloody repression at the hands of the U.S.-
backed government, the people's movement in Colombia has
taken the offensive.

In recent weeks, workers and farmers have taken to the
streets by the hundreds of thousands at the same time as the
armed revolutionary groups have unleashed the most sustained
military campaign in decades.

NBC News reported Sept. 20 that 300,000 people had
demonstrated in the working-class town of Facatativa, near
the capital city of Bogota. Workers clashed with soldiers
and riot police, fighting back against police repression
with firebombs and stones.

That demonstration capped a week of protests in the area.
Workers had erected a barricade across the highway
connecting Bogota and the second-biggest city, Medellin. The
workers were demanding a cut in electricity rates, which had
risen by as much as 300 percent. The government has been
aggressively slashing subsidies to public services.

Peasants in southern Colombia have also been demonstrating
against the government. Tens of thousands have clashed with
the government over attempts to wipe out coca and poppy
fields. These are the only crops farmers can sell that bring
in enough money on the open market to earn a living.

On Sept. 9, soldiers attacked protesting peasants trying
to cross a bridge to the city of Florencia, the capital of
the state of Caqueta. The farmers pelted the troops with
stones and cut the power lines to an electric fence set up
by the army.

The next day, intermittent negotiations resumed. On Sept.
12 peasant leaders signed an agreement with the government.
The settlement commits the government to spend $14 million
on education, health and public works in Caqueta.

The demonstrators' main demand--an end to the aerial
fumigation campaign--was not fully addressed, according to
the Sept. 15 Nicaragua Solidarity Network's Weekly News
Update on the Americas.

CRISIS IN COLOMBIAN RULING CLASS

The mass movement has escalated at a time of severe
political crisis for the Colombian government. President
Ernesto Samper has been under pressure to resign by
opponents in the bourgeois political arena. Originally this
was based on alleged contributions by the drug cartels to
Samper's 1994 presidential campaign.

Now, with the heightened mass struggle, charges of cartel
influence have given way to charges of weakness in the face
of the people's movement. Humberto de la Calle, who resigned
as vice president in mid-September, charged that the Samper
government is unable to halt threats to "democratic
stability," according to a Sept. 8 Reuter report.

The Sept. 7 issue of El Espectador, one of Colombia's main
daily newspapers, editorialized, "The country is
disintegrating in the shaky and inept hands of our leaders."

Samper has so far maintained his position against his
bourgeois political rivals. He named Colombia's ambassador
to Britain, Carlos Lemos, as the new vice president--a
choice meant to win over support from the opposition
Conservative Party. Lemos will preside over the vice
presidency from London, keeping his diplomatic post.

These maneuvers have yet to pay off. As Samper flew to New
York to address the United Nations, an "anonymous tip" led
to the discovery of a shipment of eight pounds of heroin on
the Colombian president's jet. Eleven members of the plane's
crew, including a colonel and a major, were arrested pending
an investigation of the shipment, clearly designed to
embarrass Samper on his trip to the United States.

Some commentators--including the newspaper El Diario/La
Prensa's Hector Rodriguez Villa in New York--have wondered
out loud if the U.S. government was behind the plot to
discredit Samper with the heroin shipment.

Unable to unite the Colombian capitalist class behind him,
Samper has also been pushed into a confrontational posture
toward U.S. imperialism. In August, the U.S. State
Department revoked Samper's visa to enter the United States,
accusing him of complicity with the drug cartels.

In his Sept. 23 speech at the UN, Samper denounced U.S.
"neointerventionism." He charged that "developing countries
are subjected to all kinds of conditionalities" by
Washington.

Samper has been a loyal agent of the International
Monetary Fund in Colombia. His government has carried out
IMF-dictated neoliberal economic policies, including plans
to privatize the state-owned Ecopetrol oil industry.

Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo announced in mid-
September that the government would cut its 1997 budget by
$2.92 billion, slashing spending on health and education and
laying off 12,000 government workers.

But in a Sept. 20 meeting with Colombian industrialists,
U.S. Ambassador Myles Frechette complained that the terms of
the privatization were not sufficient for U.S. businesses.
"U.S. oil companies do not think the current contracts are
sufficient to generate their industry," he said. "But
changes could make Colombia more attractive and would be
beneficial to its economy."

Colombia is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in
the Western hemisphere. In fact, human-rights advocates
charge that the United States gives as much military aid to
Colombia as it does to all the other countries in the
Western hemisphere combined.

INTENSIFIED ARMED STRUGGLE

There is an important distinction between Colombia and the
many other Latin American countries where mass
demonstrations have challenged neoliberal governments. The
difference is the presence of several armed revolutionary
movements.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the
National Liberation Army (ELN) stepped up armed actions
against the government in September.

The FARC launched a series of successful attacks against
army bases across Colombia--including an Aug. 30 attack that
wiped out a military base in southern Putumayo province.
Sixty government troops were captured in that operation.

The ELN has stepped up a campaign of bombings against oil
pipelines in Colombia. The Ecopetrol pipeline has been
dynamited over 400 times since 1986.

The FARC and the ELN have also paralyzed transportation
across the country with a series of roadblocks and armed
strikes.

The Colombian army has responded with a brutal counter-
insurgency campaign, strafing villages and jungle areas with
U.S.-built A-37 fighter bombers and Blackhawk helicopters.
The Colombian government requested an additional 12
Blackhawks from the United States--and the Associated Press
reported Sept. 19 that U.S. Congressional approval is
"imminent."

The popular movement--unions, peasant organizations, and
progressive political organizations along with the armed
revolutionary groups--have suffered intense repression over
the last decades. Human-rights groups in Colombia document
political murders of as many as 10 people a day at the hands
of the army or right-wing death squads.

Over 3,000 members of the Patriotic Union, the
Colombian Communist Party, and other political opponents of
the government have been assassinated.

Using the "war on drugs" as a cover, Samper has turned
over control of five states directly to the military. In
addition, his government has created over 100 "Community
Associations for Rural Vigilance"--paramilitary adjuncts to
the armed forces designed to combat the popular movement.

The Colombian bourgeoisie makes no mistake about its stake
in the developing conflict. On Sept. 19 Reuter quoted
Finance Minister Ocasio as having received the approval of
"several of Colombia's most powerful economic groups" to
require rich Colombians to buy "war bonds" to finance the
war against the revolutionary movement.

In a May 1996 statement, the FARC identified its objective
in the current phase of struggle as "the conquest of power
to change the political regime and with the armed people ...
to continue advancing in the conquest of the New State, of
the State whose hegemonic direction is in the hands of the
proletariat."

The most serious obstacle to that goal has always been
U.S. imperialism. Will the cracks in the Colombian ruling
class--and between the Colombian ruling class and U.S.
imperialism--provide the opportunity for the revolutionary
forces to break through?

That's the question that is being decided in factories and
fields across Colombia today.






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