SEARCHING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN COLOMBIA'S HERBICIDE MIST

There was no chance for error. The Colombian national police were
going to do an aerial spray of coca bushes right in front of a U.S.
senator and the delegation accompanying him. It was to be an exercise
in smart fumigation.

Pam Costain, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Resource
Center of the Americas, heard all the assurances from Colombian
authorities just before she felt the mist envelop her.

"We're looking at each other and we're thinking, 'What just happened
here?'" recalled Costain.

Costain, 50, had been asked by Sen. Paul Wellstone to join him on his
trip last week to Colombia.

This was a senatorial junket. Wellstone's expenses to a nation of
roadside explosives and herbicide mists were covered by the Senate's
Foreign Relations Committee, of which he is a member. Wellstone is
just one of three senators who voted against a $1.3 billion U.S. aid
plan that is supposed to help Colombia fight its drug war.

According to Wellstone, there was simplistic pressure to support the
huge aid package.

"It was presented that if you weren't supporting this package, you
were in favor of drugs in U.S. schools," he said.

Wellstone held firm on his vote opposing the aid, then set up last
week's trip so he could see a little of the so-called war. Mostly,
though, he wanted to talk to human-rights workers in Colombia about
the toll the "war" is taking on the poorest Colombians and those who
are trying to protect them.

Costain came up with funding of her own for the trip. She's a longtime
activist in peace and justice causes and, with others, had met with
Wellstone in mid-November to express concerns about U.S. policy in
Colombia. The fear is that U.S. aid, most of which is for military
supplies, brings only more violence to a brutality-filled land.

At the conclusion of that meeting, Wellstone asked Costain whether
she'd like to accompany him to Colombia. She said she'd love to go,
which is how she found herself on the side of a Colombian mountain six
days ago.

Costain has traveled to trouble spots throughout the world. Usually
she travels in the company of grass-roots activists, meaning people of
noble intentions but little power.

On this trip to the coca-growing regions of Colombia, though, she was
not only with a U.S. senator, she was with the U.S. ambassador to
Colombia, Anne Patterson, and high-ranking officials in Colombia's
police. She received military briefings and arrived at the can't-miss
spray site on a Blackhawk helicopter.

Then came the foul-smelling mist.

"What was surprising to me is none of them [Colombian officials]
seemed to think anything of it," Costain said. "None of them tried to
wipe off the senator with a handkerchief or anything like that. ...
The official line from them was that this wasn't a problem. This was
just your basic herbicide, like you'd use in your garden. ... Well, I
don't use herbicides in my garden."

At the time, there wasn't a chance to ponder the herbicide shower.
Within minutes, most in the delegation were hiking down the mountain
to see Colombian police blow up a cocaine lab.

The event turned out to be nearly as surreal as being sprayed.

When Costain arrived near the site of the lab, police were arresting
35 raspachines, coca workers.

"The police were joking with the workers," Costain said. "Two people
came up and introduced themselves as people who protect the rights of
the workers."

Kindly police in a drug war in the middle of Colombia? Human-rights
workers at the scene of a lab bust to protect the rights of
raspachines? Hmmmm. Does this happen when U.S. senators aren't in the
neighborhood?

"I'm asking myself, 'Did I see a bust or a theater event?'" Costain
said. "I felt like I was a character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel."

Since returning to her office in south Minneapolis, she's thought a
lot about the heroic human-rights workers she and Wellstone did meet.
Those people, who risk their lives daily, haven't received a dime of
the $1.3 billion.

She also keeps thinking about what must be happening daily to the
poorest Colombians and to the environment. After all, she was with a
senator, an ambassador and high-ranking Colombian police officials,
and she got an herbicide shower.

"It does seem to give lie to the notion that anybody knows what
they're doing," she said.