U.S. DRUG POLICIES BACKFIRING IN COLOMBIA, ACTIVIST SAYS

Last summer, the United States pledged $1.3 billion in aid to the
South American country of Colombia to combat its narcotics industry
and also to promote peace, revive its economy and strengthen its
democracy.

On paper, "Plan Colombia" has admirable goals. In reality, it
perpetuates a violent war that began long before the country started
exporting drugs, says a Colombian economist who came here to tell
his story to churches and peace groups in the mid-Atlantic region.

"As long as the U.S. continues to give aid to Colombia, the terrible
situation will continue," says Hector Mondragon, 46. "It is only the
innocent people who are the victims of this policy."

Mondragon spoke recently to a group of about 50 clergy, professors
and friends gathered at the City View Diner in Whitehall Township for
a breakfast meeting sponsored by the Lehigh Pocono Committee of
Concern, one of the oldest peace groups in the United States.

Mondragon, who works as an economic adviser to Colombia's National
Peasant Council, says his life and family have been threatened
because he speaks out for the poor and disenfranchised.

"Part of my work is to visit rural communities and give workshops
about economics and constitutional law," he said, speaking with the
help of an interpreter from Witness for Peace, a group that describes
itself as a politically independent group committed to nonviolence.
Based in Washington, D.C., the group seeks to educate Americans
about the impact of U.S. economic and military policy in Latin America.

Mondragon says Colombia is a country devastated by poverty, political
violence and social upheaval. The programs made possible by U.S.
money do little to improve things. Instead, he says the money
indirectly allows the country's warring factions to buy more weapons
and escalate the violence.

Last year alone, there were 425 massacres, or more than one per day,
carried out by paramilitary groups against civilians, he reported.

He described the paramilitary groups as private armies supported by
wealthy landowners and industrialists conducting a social genocide of
campesinos (peasants) and ethnic Colombians. Union leaders also are
targets of the military and paramilitary.

Mondragon said he was tortured by the Colombian army because he was
a member of a community committee that supported a strike by oil
workers. The torture temporarily paralyzed his hands and arms.

"The officer in charge was a graduate of the School of the Americas,"
he said. SOA, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation, is a training facility for Latin American
soldiers at Fort Benning, a U.S. Army base in Georgia. Several
Lepoco members in his audience said they have gone there to
demonstrate against it.

The paramilitary groups also battle groups known as guerillas, which
are fighting against the Colombian upper class and the oil industry.

Last October, a paramilitary force mutilated and decapitated 75 people
with chain saws in a province that had elected its first indigenous
governor. "They've always killed the political opposition in
Colombia," says Mondragon. Five thousand people who lived in the area
abandoned their land and fled in terror.

Aerial spraying of coca cultivation with herbicide doesn't work, said
Mondragon, because when one area is sprayed, the small farmers
expand into the forest and cut down more trees to plant their coca.
Fumigation is just one more method of taking campesinos' land and
making them move farther into the forest, Mondragon added.

In 1998, he said, 16 thousand hectares (1 hectare equals 2.47 acres)
of coca were fumigated, to be replaced with 38 thousand hectares. In
2000, 30 thousand fumigated hectares were replaced with 89 thousand
hectares.

About 500,000 campesinos are cultivating coca, which is used to
produce cocaine, or poppies, which supply the raw material for heroin,
said Mondragon. Recently, 2 million campesinos, or peasant farmers,
were displaced from their homes.

The oil companies also are backing Plan Colombia, because land that
is fumigated is opened up to oil exploration when indigenous people
abandon it, says Mondragon.

Mondragon was introduced by Lauren Cliggitt, a recent Lehigh
University graduate who traveled to Colombia with a Witness for Peace
delegation of 100 people. She spent time in a squatter's community in
the southern region of the country. "We saw how they have to live,"
she says, "people have been displaced by violence and
fumigation."

Once a rich agricultural country, Colombia now imports food. Thanks
to the breakup of the cartel that helped small farmers get a fair
price for their coffee, the country that once was synonymous with
coffee now imports it from Peru.

"Our agriculture is in ruins," says Mondragon. The poor farmers have
no other opportunity than to grow coca or opium poppies, he adds.
"The free trade system has caused this abundance of illegal drugs."

If we really want to get rid of the drug trade, he said, we must
follow the lead of France and the plan proposed by its president,
Jacques Chirac. Americans should seek out programs that promote fair
trade and ethical consumer choices, and that work directly with
farmers and artisans, Mondragon said.

Examples are Equal Exchange, Level Ground and Ten Thousand Villages.
Working with groups such as these, campesinos can get a fair price
for their products. "Exchange free trade for fair trade," Mondragon
said.

In addition to causing homelessness, aerial sprayings cause human
health problems. The herbicide can cause skin rashes, especially on
children, he said. Spraying has also killed cattle, he said, and
contaminated water. Spraying also destroys food crops growing close
to the coca fields, as well as nearby natural flora and forests.

The herbicide's active ingredient is glyphosate, the same Monsanto
chemical found in the world's most widely used agricultural herbicide,
Roundup.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies glyphosate as
non-carcinogenic, but according to Extonet, a pesticide information
project of several cooperative extensions and the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, it can cause significant eye irritation.

Mondragon says that the herbicide formula used for spraying in
Colombia also contains ingredients that cause it to adhere to surfaces
to increase its effects.

According to the U.S. State Department, aerial spraying has escalated
since December, when helicopters and herbicide paid for with U.S. aid
sprayed almost half of the coca fields in southern Colombia or about
25 thousand hectares.

In addition, more than 106 coca processing sites have been
destroyed, says Wes Carrington,spokesperson for the State
Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. Although the
State Department stops short at declaring the drug way in Colombia a
success, "these measures have encouraged over 3,500 families to sign
up for alternative development assistance," he says.

Carrington admits that coca cultivation has been increasing in
Colombia because similar eradication efforts forced it out of Peru and
Bolivia. "We consider those countries a success," he says.

Carrington says the state department hasn't seen any evidence to
substantiate the claims that the spraying is harmful to human health.

According to the State Department, the violence level in Colombia is
very high and it involves illegal armed groups, including paramilitary
groups on the right, and groups originally founded as leftist guerilla
groups on the left.

Over the years, some groups, which battle each other, have gotten
involved in drug trafficking and mass kidnappings as ways to
supplement their income.

Carrington admits that Colombia is a very difficult issue to get a
handle on. "It is very complex. The violence and conflict have been
going on for so long, the narcotics aspect is an overlay."

Carrington also admits that the State Department was aware of human
rights abuses involving the Colombian army and paramilitary groups.
"That is an area Congress is very careful to put controls on," he
says. "Only those people who were uninvolved with human rights
abuses could be involved in units the U.S. was going to help train."

John Peeler, head of the political science department at Bucknell
University in Lewisburg, Union County, has been studying Colombia
since the 1970s. He also agrees that the situation in Colombia is
convoluted.

The U.S. monetary aid is not helping the Colombian people, says
Peeler. "The problems in Colombia are far too complicated to be
helped by such a program like this that focuses on stopping the
production of coca, the transportation of coca and production of
cocaine. You can stop it at any given location but you will push it
into some other location. You won't stop it finally, until you stop
the demand."

Cocaine penetrates all aspects of Colombian life, says Peeler. The
Colombian government puts cocaine control at a lower priority than the
United States, but because the U.S. will ante up money to fight drugs,
the Colombians will propose to fight drugs. "It is a way for the
Colombians to get some money and some arms, ostensibly for fighting
drugs, but they may be fighting guerillas," he says.

In Colombia, says Peeler, "Nothing is what it seems."