TO SAVE A VILLAGE ...

U.S. Aerial Spraying Continues In Colombia Despite Court-Ordered Suspensions.

The folks who worry about Colombian people and food crops being poisoned by
United States-sponsored spraying of coca and poppy fields should be happy.
Two Colombian court rulings in the past year have ordered that the aerial
spraying program known as Plan Colombia -- carried out by major Fort Worth
employer DynCorp and protected with Fort Worth-produced Bell helicopters --
be suspended. But the environmentalists and Colombian rural people are as
angry and frightened as ever. Why? Because, despite the rulings, Colombia
continues to spray Monsanto's Roundup-Ultra on fields, and U.S. officials
continue to maintain an eerie silence on the issue.

The most recent ruling came on June 13 in a lawsuit brought by a group of
citizens who argued that Plan Colombia spraying violates their right to a
healthy environment. The Administrative Tribunal of Cundinamarca, the
second-highest court in Colombia, agreed and ordered the immediate
suspension of all narco-crop fumigation nationwide, until environmental and
human impact studies can be carried out. The verdict supplemented two
earlier court decisions ordering that spraying on indigenous peoples' land
be suspended, and that Plan Colombia comply with the country's
environmental management plan.

An almost nationwide cheer went up after the verdict. Yamile Salinas, a
Colombian government lawyer who works on behalf of farmers and indigenous
people, said the court order "formally adopts many of the requirements for
environmental and human protection that the Colombian Ombudsman and
Comptroller General, along with both national and international
non-government organizations have been demanding for years."

"Unfortunately," said Astrid Puentes, a Colombian human rights attorney
with Earthjustice, the legal branch of the Sierra Club, "while that
decision should have been enough to protect the health and human rights of
the environment and people of Colombia, the U.S. and Colombian governments
insist that the spraying is not harmful, and so it continues. The
Administrative Court recognized the harm to health and biodiversity, soil,
and water that the aerial fumigation is doing, but those with vested
interests choose to ignore that."

Among those with vested interests are Fort Worth's Bell Helicopter, which
provides helicopters used to protect the spray planes, and DynCorp (now
Dyncorp/CSC, headquartered in Reston, Va., but with a large recruitment
center in Fort Worth), the company with the $600 million contract to
actually do the spraying and maintain the spray planes and helicopters.

At issue is the core of the U.S. assault on cocaine and heroin trafficking
in the Western hemisphere. When former President Bill Clinton initiated
Plan Colombia in 2000, its aim was to eliminate the coca and poppy plants
in Colombia used to make cocaine and heroin. If the plants went, not only
would much of drug traffic in this country disappear, but the funds
generated by that traffic in Colombia, which support both paramilitary and
rebel groups involved in that country's brutal civil war, would dry up as
well ("Scorched Earth Policy," Fort Worth Weekly, March 13, 2003). The plan
was expanded by President George W. Bush into the Andean Initiative.

But while the plan looks good on paper, it has caused widespread and severe
health and economic problems for farmers and others. Moreover, the program,
which the U.S. intended to improve human rights in Colombia, may be
actively worsening the human rights situation there.

The lawsuit that brought about the June ruling was filed by a group of
concerned Colombian citizens. It hinges on the fact that in 2001, a binding
environmental management plan was put into effect by Colombia's minister of
the environment. One of the stipulations of that plan was that a battery of
studies would be conducted to determine whether the fumigation is harmful
to the environment and humans. Because those studies have never been done,
the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. But Colombian President Alvaro
Uribe Velez -- who happened to be the mayor of Medellin during the Medellin
cocaine cartel's heyday -- interpreted the law as permitting the spraying
to continue while his administration's National Directorate of Narcotics
appeals the decision to his country's highest court.

In the U.S., funding for the spraying program can only be released if all
fumigation is done in compliance with Colombian law. U.S. officials claim
that requirement is being met, based on a March 2002 letter from the
Colombian minister of exterior relations, which certifies that the aerial
spraying program indeed comports with each and every applicable Colombian law.

That might have been close enough for government work a year ago. But
continuation of the spraying in light of the June court decision and other
recent events brings the legality of continued U.S. support for the
spraying into question.

In October, under pressure, according to Earthjustice's Puentes, the
Colombian environmental minister modified the environmental management
plan. "They eliminated and weakened environmental conditions of the plan,"
she said. One of the changes governed the height at which spray planes
could fly. Texas crop-dusters have said that the old legal spraying
altitude of 100 feet was already absurdly high, allowing poisons to drift
for miles. But the modifications raised that allowable altitude even
higher. Another change allowed spraying, for the first time, in national
parks -- something that Puentes said, "had been going on illegally but
which overnight became legal."

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who has long questioned the
Plan Colombian fumigation, bristled at the thought of in-park spraying and
attached an amendment to the 2004 Foreign Operations Bill that would
prohibit the use of U.S. funding to spray Colombia's national parks. At
press time, an agreed version of the bill was pending before both houses of
Congress.

Ironically, the Bush administration, according to Time magazine, has
declared that exempting the parks would be "an invitation to the growers to
destroy the forests and their natural resources."

In Colombia, Uribe has raised the stakes considerably, announcing on
several occasions that anyone objecting to fumigation in any part of
Colombia or "working to protect human rights and the environment" would be
viewed as a sympathizer with terrorists, according to Anna Cedarstav, a
staff scientist with Earthjustice.

Further stacking the deck, Uribe in early November appointed Sandra Suarez,
the former director of the Plan Colombia office, as the new minister of the
environment.

Perhaps the Uribe administration's worst assault on human rights
sensibilities in connection with Plan Colombia occurred on Nov. 2, when an
international environmental commission studying the effects of recent
fumigations in the Colombian department of Arauca was stopped by a
U.S.-trained Colombian anti-narcotics battalion and had their film,
cameras, and notes confiscated. The commission, which included Colombians
and representatives of France, the United States, England and Spain, had
previously met with Colombian Vice-President Carlos Frank about their work.

The State Department and other Bush Administration officials have not
responded to frequent requests, both by phone and in writing, to address
these issues. Considering the way Uribe has been flouting Colombian law,
continued U.S. funding of the fumigation program may not just be harmful --
it may be illegal.

That the coca produced in Colombia is making its way to the streets of the
U.S. is not in question. That the growing and processing of that coca into
cocaine is ravaging the environment of Colombia as well as fueling a civil
war there is also not in question.

What is in question is the way in which the fumigation is being carried
out. Every study but the two carried out officially by the United States
and Colombia has shown that the fumigation is having a major impact on both
human life and the environment. (The U.S. study not only evaluated the
wrong chemical -- regular Roundup, rather than the much more powerful Ultra
version being used in Colombia -- but it relied exclusively on data
provided by the State Department.) One recent study carried out by the
respected Dr. Adolfo Maldonado of Ecological Action showed the presence of
genetic damage among people exposed to the Plan Colombia fumigation.
American toxicologist Mark Cherniak recently presented a paper reporting
that "the exposure to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup)
represents a risk in expectant mothers."

And the problems don't end there. Food crops have been destroyed,
rainforest ravaged, and tens of thousands of peasants have been displaced
because their crops, livestock, and water sources have been poisoned.

What would be harmed by a temporary suspension of the fumigation until
environmental and human impact studies can be made, and safety guidelines
put into place? The U.S. government isn't saying. Some in Colombia and here
are willing to hazard a guess, however.

"We know that the U.S. trained Colombian forces to protect the Occidental
Oil pipeline in Cano Limon from rebel attacks," Puentes said. "And we know
that some of the land being explored for oil is indigenous land. Some
people think the fumigation will clear the land for oil exploration as well."

Peter Gorman is a local freelance writer.