[Marxism] School of the Americas" Generals Face Criminal Charges In Colombia

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

School of the Americas" Generals Face Criminal Charges In Colombia

by Sherwood Ross

        .
Global Research, June 8, 2009



Two Colombian generals, both of whom received training at the U.S.  
Army's "School of The Americas"(SOA) at Ft. Benning, Ga., have been  
accused by Colombian authorities of crimes involving narcotics and  
collaborating with criminal paramilitary groups, according to a  
report in the June 15th issue of The Nation magazine.
Brig. Gen. Pauxelino Latorre has been charged "with laundering  
millions of dollars for a paramilitary drug ring, and prosecutors say  
they are looking into his activities as head of the Seventeenth  
Brigade," investigative journalist Teo Ballve reports. He notes that  
criminal probes repeatedly linked his unit "to illegal paramilitary  
groups that had brutally killed thousands" of Colombian farmers in an  
effort to seize their land for palm oil production.

Another general, Rito Alejo Del Rio, former Seventeenth Brigade  
leader, is in jail on charges of collaborating with paramilitaries,  
gangs that have been responsible for widespread atrocities. He also  
received training at SOA.

Various firms currently engaged in palm oil development since 2002  
apparently have received $75 million in U.S. Agency for International  
Development money under "Plan Comombia," Ballve writes. And some of  
the firms appear to be tied to narco-traffickers, "in possible  
violation of federal law." The writer notes Colombia's paramilitaries  
are on the State Department's list of foreign "terrorist" organizations.

"Plan Colombia is fighting against drugs militarily at the same time  
it gives money to support palm, which is used by paramilitary mafias  
to launder money," The Nation quotes Colombian Senator Gustavo Petro,  
as saying. "The United States is implicitly subsidizing drug  
traffickers."

President Alvaro Uribe has urged Colombians to increase palm  
production from 750,000 to 15 million acres to cash in on the  
expected boom in biofuels. "Oil palm, or African palm, is one of the  
few aid-funded crops whose profits can match coca profits," Ballve  
notes. But human rights groups have long accused palm companies,  
notably Urapalma, of cultivating stolen lands, he adds.

Senator Patrick Leahy has attached an amendment to this year's Plan  
Colombia funding (for 2010) to ban palm projects that "cause the  
forced displacement of local people" but in the bill's current draft,  
Ballve says, Leahy's amendment is marked for deletion.

Urapalma submitted a grant application to the Bogota, Colombia,  
offices of ARD Inc., a rural development contractor based in  
Burlington, Vt., which The Nation reports does business in 43  
countries and has received $330 million in revenue from USAID. In  
January, 2003, ARD began administering $41.5 million for USAID's  
Colombia Agribusiness Partnership Program and Urapalma was one of its  
beneficiaries. Urapalma has been accused of taking land illegally  
from Colombian peasants.

In July, 2003, just before Urapalma's USAID application, Colombia's  
national daily El Tiempo reported that "the African palm projects in  
the southern banana region of Uraba are dripping with blood, misery,  
and corruption." The region is where Urapalma is active.

The Nation article goes on to report that in 2003, the Inter-American  
Court of Human Rights singled out Urapalma for collusion with  
paramilitaries in these words: "Since 2001, the company Urapalma SA  
has initiated cultivation of the oil palm on approximately 1,500  
hectares of the collective land of these communities, with the help  
of 'the perimetric and concentric armed protection of the Army's  
Seventeenth Brigade and armed civilians'", i.e., paras. One might  
ask, what is SOA going to do next with U.S. taxpayers' dollars?

Sherwood Ross formerly reported for major dailies and wire services  
and currently runs a public relations firm in Florida. Reach him at  
sherwoodr1@xxxxxxxxx


  

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