AFRO-COLOMBIANS SUFFER THE MOST IN THE NEVER-ENDING DRUG WAR

Luis Gilberto Murillo was 31 when he was elected the youngest governor ever
in Colombia. Now 36, he lives in exile in Maryland and spends most of his
time speaking out against U.S. policies toward his South American country.

He argues that our emphasis on military aid fuels Colombia's civil war and
does little to stem the flow of illegal drugs--the purported purpose of
U.S. policy.

His arguments are important as Congress soon will consider whether to
lessen restrictions on our military aid to Colombia.

Murillo is an Afro-Colombian from the state of Choco and was governor of
his home region in 1998-1999. His aggressive policies on behalf of the
country's indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations and his declaration of
Choco as a neutral zone soon earned him the enmity of powerful right-wing
forces.

In 2000, he was kidnapped by a paramilitary group and threatened with
death. Later that year he fled to the U.S. with his family.

Murillo was in town last week speaking at Trinity United Church of Christ
on the South Side during the same time Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was
visiting President Bush seeking to increase the $1.3 billion in aid to his
country supplied under the anti-drug campaign called Plan Colombia.

Uribe reportedly wants to shift Plan Colombia from an anti-drug program to
a counter-terrorism campaign and is petitioning Bush for additional funds
to do that.

I asked Murillo if he had any advice for the two men.

"I would tell both Presidents Uribe and Bush that a military solution is
impossible," he said in lightly accented English. "The Colombian military
and its allied paramilitary groups can't easily defeat the guerrillas. The
fight will go on endlessly and, meanwhile, the people will suffer."

Murillo was somewhat of a prodigy in his native country; he scored the
highest mark on Colombia's national baccalaureate exam and had been on the
fast track ever since.

He was appointed to a number of prestigious government positions throughout
the 1990s and in 1997 was drafted by a coalition of Afro- Colombian
organizations to be the gubernatorial candidate for Choco.

While people of African descent comprise anywhere from 26 to 43 percent of
the Colombian population (census numbers conflict), they virtually are
invisible in national politics and media.

The majority of Afro-Colombians live on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and
are descendants of the enslaved Africans forced to work in mines, sugar
plantations, cattle ranches, textile mills and as domestics from the first
decade of the 16th Century to slavery's abolition in 1851.

"Many Africans fought for the freedom as soon as they arrived in Colombia
and escaped to free African towns called palenques," Murillo explained.

Most of these palenques were situated in remote areas of thick rainforests,
located primarily in the region now known as Choco. The Afro-Colombian
population remains concentrated in these areas. Large populations of
Afro-Colombians also live in the cities of Cartagena, Medellin, Cali,
Quibdo and Bogota.

Murillo said most Afro-Colombians feel no allegiance to any of the warring
parties in the nation's civil war. He strongly opposes the war policies of
the Uribe government. He has some sympathy for the egalitarian rhetoric of
the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the umbrella group of
left-wing guerrillas), but he is less tolerant of their ruthless behavior.

"One of my good friends was recently assassinated by a guerrilla group.
Unfortunately, the FARC has become just as terroristic as the right-wing
paramilitary."

Of the 2 million Colombians displaced by the war, about half are black, he
said. Afro-Colombians were not granted collective titles to their ancestral
lands until 1996 and these once-ignored regions now are coveted for their
mineral and petroleum resources.

"Afro-Colombians are treated as if we are invisible, although we are
between 36 and 43 percent of Colombia's population," Murillo explained.

Despite this, Afro-Colombians have had very little role in governing the
country. For example, Murillo noted, there has never been an Afro-
Colombian Cabinet minister.

That neglect has helped create the humanitarian crisis that now occupies
his time.

Among other things, the story of the Afro-Colombians is another example of
the war on drug's racist effects; just as African-Americans have suffered
the war's greatest collateral damage in the U.S., so have Afro-Colombians.