ANOTHER COLOMBIAN SAYS NO THANK YOU

Like a Colombian farmer quoted in yesterday's Chronicle and like the
Colombian peace movement as portrayed in the New York Review of Books,
union representative Luis Alfonso Velasquez Rico is a true nonbeliever
in the $1.6 billion Andean drug aid package passed by the House. Most
of the money would go to the Colombian military, which Velasquez says
would use it against left-wing guerrillas, not narco traffickers.
Velasquez says that means protracted war, rather than the negotiated
peace Colombia needs - and he has a personal stake because unionists
keep getting knocked off in the cross-fire. They are perceived to be
allies of the guerrillas. They're not, he says, though they share some
goals, such as a better break for the poor.

Velasquez's group, the Central Organization of Colombian Workers,
represents 78 percent of the country's union members. It is offering
proposals for land redistribution and better living and working
conditions at the negotiations in San Vicente del Caguan between the
government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Many
people fear that the government will cede, or has already ceded, a
portion of Colombia to the FARC. Velasquez is not for that. But U.S.
money would enable the government to take the war to the FARC and
could lead to regional conflict. Under the House bill, U.S. advisers
are limited to 300, unless more are needed for a ``rescue.''
California Representative Tom Campbell says Colombia could turn into
another Vietnam.

The total package for this drug war is to include $2 billion from
European donors for ``social support.'' If the smoke ever clears, who
will be remembered with fondness: The Americans who paid mostly for
destruction or the Europeans who paid for development?

Yearly, the amount of coca being eradicated rises, as does the amount
not being eradicated. The offense stays ahead of the defense, unless
you're willing to napalm a whole country. The consumers are in America
and Europe; the technology to make coca into cocaine comes from
abroad; peasant farmers make a pittance. Help them make a living from
flowers and fruit and they won't need to grow coca, Velasquez says.
Aid an economy that shrank 5 percent in 1999, and maybe people won't
be so desperate. A moratorium on foreign debt payment or an amnesty on
debt would be helpful.

(This logic goes against the tenets of globalization: In cocaine,
Colombians have an export crop that doesn't need a subsidy.)

After a Bay Area visit last week, Velasquez went to Capitol Hill
looking at least for ``moral support,'' and that's probably what he
will get. For the Senate, it appears to be more a question of when
rather than whether the money goes south.

In a meeting with The Chronicle editorial board, the U.S. drug czar,
General Barry McCaffrey, totally rejected the arguments of Velasquez
and Campbell. He said President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia can
work the way similar strategy did in Bolivia and Peru. He despises the
FARC, but you don't have to like the rebels (or drugs) to think that
U.S. military aid is a blunt instrument in a complex situation.