James McEnteer : On the Lean Streets of Quito

Lean streets of Quito. Image from Lonely Planet.
Sell on wheels:
Pitching and rolling on 
the lean streets of Quito

A man dressed as a circus clown boards a bus selling packs of magic candy, two for a dollar.

By James McEnteer / The Rag Blog / June 13, 2012

QUITO, Ecuador -- In Quito you’re either on the bus or off the bus and many are on it. Ecuador’s long, narrow capital city lies between rows of volcanic Andean peaks. Though the urban area stretches nearly 50 kilometers from north to south, it’s possible to traverse most of that distance for 25 cents (12 cents for children and seniors), transferring from one city bus to another. Of course this cheap, reliable public transportation is very popular.

Quito bus riders are also captive audiences for all sorts of sales pitches. Hawkers may come on peddling medicines, for instance. They will make a brief introduction, apologizing for the intrusion, as they move swiftly down the aisle handing out samples of their wares to anyone who will accept them. They launch directly into the long list of benefits their miracle pill or powder can bestow, the many ailments it can cure or prevent.

Or someone might chant the praises of a cookbook full of many fabulous recipes. The salesperson may run through some or all of those recipes, a litany that sounds something like an auction, to entice customers to buy. This prodigious feat of memory may provoke hunger as the bus passengers listen to the long list of meat and fish dishes, or the many desserts one can learn to cook from the proffered volume.

More entertainingly, sales folk pitching CDs pass out their samples and then play excerpts on a small computer or a portable CD player they wear around their necks to keep their hands free to pass out their products or collect their payments.

Whether the products on offer are medicines, cookbooks or music, most passengers accept the chance to hold them in their hands while they listen to the pitch. Inevitably, no matter how much the salesperson claims their product is worth, they end up asking one dollar for it, just to keep things simple. The U.S. dollar is the largest common coin in circulation here.

A man dressed as a circus clown boards a bus selling packs of magic candy, two for a dollar. He says if you eat one, you’ll be able to speak English. Eat two, and you can speak French. Three, and you’ll be fluent in Quichua (a local indigenous language). But if you eat four you’ll turn mute.

As in any profession, some bus vendors excel at what they do, while others are hopeless, rattling on in a rote, unconvincing singsong. Or mumbling their inaudible spiel beneath the drone of the bus engine and the cacophony of city traffic. Some vendors are too shy for their chosen profession. They should probably stand passively with their wares on a street corner, as many do in this lemonade stand economy.

In some cases, a bus sales pitch has little to do with the product. One man who hawks packets of plastic garbage bags spends most of his time describing the community of orphans that stands to benefit from his sales. Of course, what can you say about a garbage bag? That it can hold all the stuff you could buy on a bus?

Blind and crippled vendors board the busses too, sometimes with children or other helpers, to throw themselves on the mercy of the passengers, urging them to buy candy or simply to give them donations. Handicapped vendors wear official government name tags which certify their afflictions as genuine. Considering the meager gleanings of the disabled bus vendors, it is a wonder that their helpers make enough to get by.

Two or three strapping young men may start rapping along with their recorded music and breaking out dance moves down the center aisle. I tend to donate to these guys, whether or not they’re any good, to encourage their show business aspirations, so they don’t have to fall back on crime, mugging pedestrians on the street if their bus performance gigs don’t pan out.

Performers especially, but all vendors, must time their bus sales to avoid the crush of standing riders during peak commuting hours. That makes for a short, intense work day, hopping on and off one bus after another, every 15 minutes or so after the early morning crowds ease off and before the late afternoon commute begins. Is there a training school for bus vendors? Maybe there should be.

Annoying, amusing, always on the go, Quito bus vendors offer random interactive diversion for passengers shuttling from here to there at bargain rates, whether or not you buy what they’re selling. They make online pop-up ads look slick and remote by comparison, and way two-dimensional.

[James McEnteer is the author of Shooting the Truth: the Rise of American Political Documentaries (Praeger). He lives in Quito, Ecuador. Read more of James McEnteer's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Chellis Glendinning : 'Decepción' in Bolivia

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Militant ambivalence? A demonstrator holds portraits of President Evo Morales during a protest in La Paz, Bolivia. Photo from Reuters.
Evo on the rocks:
Decepción in Bolivia

By Chellis Glendinning / The Rag Blog / June 16, 2011

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia -- A poster of “Guernica” was bursting from the wall, and the umpteenth Latin American rendition of “My Way” was booming from the record player. I was sharing a hand-carved table in a Cochabamba cantina with a cowboy from the Chapare, an anti-capitalist immigration officer, an anarchist surgeon, and a barbacoa-restaurateur. All had been supporters of President Evo Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS).

The conversation was fiery and, as is normal here in the Andes, its topic was politics.

Despite this particular crowd’s claim to the middle class, the agreement among them echoed a truth of Bolivian culture: a tendency to view things from the perspective of the collective, rather than solely from one’s perceived interests.

And indeed, this conversation echoed other charlas I’d had with campesinos, taxi-trufi drivers, and union members -- and I need to be straight with you: things are not going well for the government of Bolivia’s first indigenous leader in 500 years. It was only a matter of filling in the details -- and, in between gulps of Auténtico beer and Cuban mixed drinks, said details were pouring forth at the cantina.

Then the question was put to me. What did citizens of the United States think? I had to admit two answers: 1) if my daily dip into The New York Times provides any indication, people in the U.S. are basically uninformed about goings-on in Bolivia; and 2) for U.S. leftists, environmentalists, and climate-change activists, the aura of hope unleashed by the 2005 election of Evo Morales lingers like perfume from a Cochabamba jasmine bush.

I offer, then, a sweep of an overview of what’s happening and what some cowboys and campesinos, taxi drivers, and rank-and-file, are thinking.

Bolivian President Evo Morales reacts during a nationwide message at the presidential palace in La Paz while vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera looks on. Photo by Reuters.
Forked Tongue I: Madre Tierra

Out of one tine of what has become the Morales administration’s two-sided tongue come blood-stirring proclamations like the president’s empassioned grito “¡Planeta o Muerte!” at the 2010 Cancun climate change talks. Brilliant. Then there is the stark refusal, that not even Cuba or Venezuela would match, to sign on to the watered-down agreement at said talks.

And now comes the nation’s new law proclaiming the rights of Madre Tierra -- to some minds, a legal-philosophic leap forward that, a few decades ago, only bioregionalists, primitive-anarchists, and traditional Native peoples could imagine.

But, sorry to say, the other spine of the eco-fork must be noted:

• the launch of genetically-modified agriculture into a countryside presently free of GMOs;
• two under-construction hydro-electric dams 300% bigger than the U.S.’s Hoover Dam at a cost of $13 billion, slated to channel water to Brazil in exchange for monies to boost Bolivia’s petro and plastic industries -- this, in a country where many communities have no potable water and water-borne illnesses are rampant;
• in a nation uncontaminated by nuclear radiation: uranium mining, with future plans for nuclear power plants -- aided by Iran;
• blankets of electromagnetic radiation in the form of WiMAX over urban landscapes – with the state telecommunications corporation bragging of 1350 radiobases in an area the size of Texas and California combined, with many more to come;
• commodity-transporting highways bulldozing through protected nature reserves whose treasures, in the case of the Villa Tunari-San Ignacio de Moxos road, include 11 endangered species and three Native groups in 60 communities living their traditional hunter-gatherer-fishing lifeways;
• new oil excavations;
• new gas excavations;
• in partnership with Mitubishi, Sumitomo, South Korea, and Iran: massive lithium development -- threatening leeching, leaks, emissions, and spills in the world-treasure salt flats;
• Bolivia’s own Made-in-China satellite;
• with the help of India, the construction of humankind’s largest iron mine;
• 900 miles of pipeline slated to transport natural gas to Argentina; and
• an explosion of airport and high-rise construction.

In other words: full-tilt, high-tech, colossal-scale, high-capital modernization -- on a Madre Tierra in which such expansion has already been shown to be The Problem.

A Dec. 30, 2010 protest against gas prices turns violent. Top image from FM Center es Noticia. Below, from Reuters.
Forked Tongue II: Democracy

Regarding governance, from one side of Bolivia’s forked tongue is spoken the legal language of plurinationalismo. After centuries of dictatorships, neoliberal governments, and military juntas, the 2009 Morales-initiated Constitution legitimizes a form of decentralized federalism: a reinstatement of decision-making to local communities, whether defined by place, indigenous heritage, or worker identity.

But, from the other tine of the fork, we encounter unabashed state centralism -- and the stringency of an If-You’re-Not-With-Us-You’re-Against-Us mentality to reinforce its dominion. A blazing example of such top-down musculature is the 2010 Christmas Time Gasolinazo: Decreto Supremo #748 in which Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera abruptly announced that gasoline and diesel prices had been jacked up -- by as much as 83%. (“Joy to the World” notwithstanding, the violent uprisings that followed rerouted the government’s hurry to a slower pace of inflation.)

But the truth remains: ever since the immediate threat from the right wing subsided following Morales’ 2009 re-election by 62%, a chronic refusal to listen to the very social movements the president promised to follow has posed a disturbing blow to adherents of participatory democracy.

Indigenous woman in La Paz protests against high prices and low wages on Feb. 25, 2011. Photo by Juan Karita / AP / La Prensa.
When indigenous groups protest the bulldozing of their lands for the construction of freeways; when state workers call for increases in salaries against the reality of galloping food prices; when media workers fight for freedom of the press against regulations threatening fines and license suspensions, state control of 20% of the media, and state ownership of all of it -- the administration’s reaction is knee-jerk.

Whether by the vice president or the president himself, citizens questioning the government’s dictates are received with neither concern for their suffering nor gratitude for their participation; they are bold-facedly dismissed as instruments of U.S. imperialism, middle-class whiners, out of touch, and/or dupes of the right wing.

The Who’s famed rock ‘n roll declaration, “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss,” comes to mind, and the long-standing trade union congress Centro Obrera Boliviana (COB) is now seeking to unseat the vice president for just such a pronouncement aimed at workers.

A demonstrator sprays graffiti protesting fuel price hikes in Bolivia. Photo from Reuters.
Meet the new problems, same as the old problems

At the same time, Bolivia is rife with chronic problems that, according to some street-level opinion, the government has failed to address.

Corruption within government is an age-old theme. During the Morales administration, the most spectacular example occurred in February 2011: the U.S.-Chile-aided arrest of the national jefe of police, former head of the Fuerza Especial de Lucha Contra el Narcotráfico, and founder of the Centro de Inteligencia y Generación de Información, General René Sarabria Oropeza -- caught in the act of opening up cocaine routes to Miami. His accomplices included a mayor, a military colonel, and a captain.

Another revelation of corruption, more so perhaps for spiritual interest, was the June 2010 arrest of Valentín Mejillones, the amauta-priest who had led the purification ritual of Evo Morales’ inauguration at Tiawanaku in 2006 -- for hosting a cocaine purification factory in his El Alto home.

According to Diego Rada Cuadros, a lawyer whose family was forced to flee the country during the 1980s dictatorships, in the nation-state boasting the severest poverty in South America and -- save Haiti -- all of Latin America, a position in government that may last but six years (or, most probably, less) is a one-shot chance to amass some longer-lasting plata.

Too, while Bolivian coca has been sold for cocaine manufacture since Vietnam War days, the country is fast becoming a global fount of cocaine -- and this development also feeds popular discontent. In the tropical Chapare, where the leaf used for cocaine is grown, every family has a tale of relinquishing food crops to grow the more valuable produce, giving up agriculture all together to work in a lab, or loaning out a youth to play lookout at a staggeringly high salary of $200 a month.

According to satellite surveillance reported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), since Morales launched his presidency, the number of hectares commandeered has expanded by fútbol fields: by 2008 as many as 28,000 hectares were ponying up some 130 tons of cocaine, and in 2010 the vice president divulged that el narcotráfico now contributes $700 million a year to the national economy. To boot, one out of every 20 workers in the country is engaged in the biz.

In truth, the location of drug production is most often determined by international events like droughts, floods, inroads made by drug-war efforts, and inter-cartel politics -- yet many Bolivians contend that Morales is to blame. In 2008 he threw out the DEA; all the while, they contend, he was ignoring the expansion of cocaine production as he blithely touted the sacredness of the coca leaf and pushed for the right of cocaleros to plant it.

La Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) represents approximately 2 million workers and indigenous activists. Photo from AP /La Prensa.
Decepción and protest

Curiously, in Spanish, the word for “disappointment” is decepción -- a term that, to the English-speaking ear, does not merely name a feeling; it proposes a dynamic between inner and outer by citing the presence of an impacting source.

In Bolivia popular decepción was measured in a Radio Fides poll in February 2011. The sample was conducted in the barrios of La Paz that are normally a MAS stronghold, and yet a whopping 84% of respondents reported loss of confidence in the government of Evo Morales, with 80% saying they’d go for a change.

In other words, the red-blue-white chompa-sweaters emulating the one Morales wore on his 2005 foreign-policy tour -- that every Tomás, Ricardo, and Hari was sporting in 2006 -- are now totally and completely... out.

Also reflecting growing disappointment is the fact that today’s Bolivia exists in a near-constant state of disruption due to non-stop huelga-strikes, paro-stoppages, bloqueo-road blocks, and manifestacion-demonstrations. Such extreme tactics were honed during the military dictatorships of the 1960-‘90s to force demands by taking the economy hostage -- but they fell off during the early, hope-for-the-best years of the Morales administration.

As I pen this essay, the post office is closed down and a road block has halted overland travel between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. Before that, in April, COB threw nationwide marches and paros seeking increases in state medical worker, teacher, and retired incomes to keep up with inflation.

During a (read: peaceful) demonstration by doctors, nurses, and educators in La Paz, a university professor nearly lost his eye when a tear-gas canister shattered his glasses. After multiple surgeries -- performed by the on-strike eye doctor in an act of solidarity -- he is now waiting to find out if his sight will return. His comment about the event: “This is my personal tragedy, yes. But it’s not isolated. It shows how really bad things are in Bolivia -- for all of us.”

From December 2010 through March of 2010, during the worst global-warming-induced storms -- when for months rain gushed as if being thrown from a bucket and floods washed over communities like raging rivers -- the taxi, trufi, and bus choferes and transportistas shut down what was left of the water-logged economy with paros, bloqueos, and manifestaciones in all the major cities of the country.

Earlier, in October 2010, when the government began to whittle away at guarantees for freedom of the press via La Ley Anti-Racismo y Toda Forma de Discriminación -- ostensibly geared to fight racism and sexism, but also containing two articles initiating government control over content -- the nation’s periodistas hit the streets with coffins bearing microphones and reporter tablets, wrote protest placards with their own blood, hung like Christ figures from the balconies of buildings, collected thousands of signatures, and appealed to international press associations.

And in July and August of 2010, the city of Potosí – normally a MAS bastion -- presented Morales with demands to be included in the promised proceso de cambio-process of change, mounting hunger strikes, bloqueos, and mobilizations of up to 100,000 protestors.

A Bolivian mine worker with a stick of dynamite on his helmet joins thousands of Bolivian miners in a protest rally in La Paz on April 6, 2011. Photo from Reuters.
The clutches of 'Guernica'

I understand that the information I am laying out may be difficult to take in -- and please know that activists in Bolivia have asked me to tell their compañeros in the U.S. what is happening here.

In a world laden with fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, and technological disasters; unending wars over land, oil, and water; the unfolding of Peak Oil and, frankly, of what scholar Richard Heinberg calls Peak Everything; a refurbishing of nuclear technologies and fears of nuclear war; swathes of electromagnetic radiation from consumer and military installations; increasing corporate power; decreasing social liberties; out-of-hand control by drug cartels; cancer epidemics; mass addictions; and growing social chaos -- in this world, hope is a precious thing.

When my essay “The Techno-Fantasies of Evo Morales” came out in CounterPunch (December 24-26, 2010), the messenger was held guilty by a few -- to me, revealing the distress at losing, or at least calling into question, the pure promise that Evo Morales’ Bolivia had once offered.

Such distress is not unknown to me. I left an established life in the U.S. to be part of history in Bolivia, and when I arrived in April 2010, my heart clawed at my throat upon encountering the cynicism and despair that had replaced 2006’s enthusiasm.

But now, if I may muster an iota of the courageous perspective my friend, the injured professor, has managed: the predicament isn’t isolated. It shows how bad things are -- for all of us.

Indeed, the politics of the socio-techno-psycho-economic aggregate known as empire have had their way. As American scholar Arab Edward Said has noted, no one in this world has escaped the impacts of imperialist conquest. And yet, if we acknowledge that a better -- and perhaps evolutionally built-in way of being human -- is possible, we might also grasp that the conflicts, contradictions, and conundrum created through centuries of ripping people from roots in land and community, whether by force or seduction, have us by toe, throat, and tail.

Yes, ours is a world writhing in the clutches of “Guernica,” in which too many are dancing to the individualism of “My Way.” In such a world, how does the beautiful, spirited human being blossom out of the militaristic politics, oversize scale, sterile alienation, and brash egoism that have, in one way or another, infected every one of us and every institution in our midst -- including in a mountain land called Bolivia?

I don’t ask my question seeking The Answer -- for, after a lifetime of participation in the political, cultural, and psychological movements of our times, I am aware of the multitude of intelligent projects afoot. I ask my question rather that -- if only for a moment -- we may bring awareness and compassion to the sad reality of our world.

[Chellis Glendinning is the author of five books, including the award-winning Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy and Chiva: A Village Takes on the Global Heroin Trade. She is Writer-in-Residence at Asociación Jakaña in Cochabamba and may be contacted via www.chellisglendinning.org. This article was also published in the June 1-12, 2011 issue of CounterPunch. Read more of Chellis Glendinning's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Jay D. Jurie : Behind the Chilean Mine Disaster

Drills are seen outside the San Jose Mine in Copiapo, Chile, where 33 miners were trapped 2,000 feet under the ground for more than two months. Photo by Roberto Candia / AP.
What's caused it and what's next?
After the Chilean mine rescue

By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / October 18, 2010

Besides focusing on one miner with a wife and a mistress, much has been made by major media outlets about the lucrative opportunities awaiting the 33 miners recently rescued from the San Jose copper and gold mine in Copiapo, Chile.

Little attention has been devoted to what led to the disaster, or what the future may hold for Chile's thousands of other miners. Chile has a mining fatality rate of over 30 per year, and the Chilean government has not yet signed the International Labor Organization's Convention 176 that establishes safety and health protocols for mining.

The owner of the San Jose Mine is the San Esteban Mining Co., a privately-owned firm that, like Massey Energy or BP in the U.S., has a poor safety track record. Like much "penny wise and pound foolish" management philosophy these days, it has been claimed the company did not want to fund inexpensive measures that would have prevented the disaster.

Early in the disaster San Esteban stated they didn't have the funds to launch a rescue. They stopped paying the 33 trapped miners and laid off 200 others. San Esteban's assets were frozen by the Chilean government in order to pay for the rescue operation.

Chilean miners, including those who worked at San Jose, are represented by a union, CONFEMIN (Confederacion Minera de Chile), that claims safety complaints they filed with San Esteban were consistently ignored. Labor representation. coupled with the promise of Chilean President Sebastian Pinera to improve workplace safety across the country, offers at least a small measure of hope.

[Jay D. Jurie is a proud Rag Blogger who teaches public administration and urban planning and lives near Orlando, Florida.]

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Teenage 'Sicarios' : Colombia's Child Assassins

Image from Colombia Passport.
Colombia's child 'sicarios':
Playing with guns in real time

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / May 2, 2010

These are not baby killers, they are babies who kill.

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia -- Sicarii (Latin plural of Sicarius ['dagger']; later used for a contract-killer) is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE (probably), to an extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots, who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea.

The Sicarii used stealth tactics to gain their objective. Under their cloaks they concealed sicae, small daggers, from which they took their name. At popular assemblies, particularly during the pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, they stabbed their enemies (Romans, Roman sympathizers, Herodians, and wealthy Jews comfortable with Roman rule), lamenting loudly afterwards, along with the crowd, to escape detection. Literally, Sicarii meant "dagger-men."

In the past few months I have reported on life and death in Colombia. You have caught a glimpse of the violent forces at play that ordinary Colombians experience every day.

We've looked at the leftist guerrillas, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia -- Ejército del Pueblo (FARC or FARC-EP; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- Peoples Army) and the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional, (ELN; the National Liberation Army). We examined the right-wing paramilitars; the secret police, Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS; Administrative Security Department); the Colombian Army (COLAR), with its massacres and “false positives”; as well as kidnappings, extortion, blackmail, and rigged elections.

We've seen the failed peace processes and the complicity of our U.S. ally, the Government of Colombia, at the highest levels in the violence, and in one of its root causes, the multi-billion dollar trade in cocaine. We've looked also at what we, U.S. taxpayers, are currently funding in Colombia in the way of more bases, more arms, and more potential combatants, our own troops.

I have chronicled hundreds of thousands of deaths, two million displaced citizens, torture, rapes, wars between and among the various violent factions, and chainsaw massacres. In 20 postings, you might think that I've covered it all. Sadly, I have not. There is one more horrifying phenomenon which requires our attention to round out our picture of one of the most violent societies on earth. These are not baby killers, they are babies who kill.

Our killing machines

Child assassins, hired by paramilitaries, drug gangs, or just anybody with a grudge, killed 6,999 people in Colombia last year, El Tiempo, published in Bogotá, reported recently. Their age makes it easier for them to approach and kill their targets. Besides, they work cheap.

In June 2009 an eight-months-pregnant lawyer from Medellin was shot through the head. One of the two assassins involved was 15 years old. The recent murder of an unknown man in a BMW in Bogotá is suspected to have been committed by a 16-year old.

As El Tiempo reports, almost every single day someone in Colombia is assassinated by a minor. Generally speaking, these children are part of criminal gangs involved in robberies and are recruited for murder because they are less likely to be bothered by security forces and because they are inexpensive.

The less experience a sicario has and the lower profile the victim, the more attractive their use becomes, while remaining as efficient as the work of more experienced killers.

According to El Tiempo, many sicarios in Medellín are sons and nephews of the hitmen used by Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The city is famous for producing assassins, feared throughout Colombia.

One of the sicarios the newspaper talked to received 200,000 pesos (U.S. $97) for his first murder. “I was 13 the first time I did one in. A guy from the neighborhood who was on bad terms with the husband of his daughter contracted me. I approached him from behind and put the gun close to his ear,” the kid told El Tiempo.

Pablito’s legacy

Colombia's second city of Medellín has been the most dangerous in the Americas ever since it became synonymous with drugs and the "kingpin" trafficker Pablo Escobar.

Last year the city of two million saw almost 4,000 violent deaths, according to a report just released by the Department of Criminal Investigations and Judicial Support.

Escobar, legendary head of the Medellín cartel, killed in a shoot-out with police in 1993, left a violent legacy which haunts the city today.

He created an army of sicarios drawn from poor neighborhoods in the outer reaches of the city.

The sicario philosophy was that it was better to live fast and die young, and Escobar lavished money on these desperate children and sent them out to do his dirty work, killing rival drug dealers, politicians, judges, policemen, or anyone who crossed his path.

He promised a bounty of $2,000 for every policeman killed, and his sicarios executed more than 300.

Secarios. Posed photo by Albeiror24 / Wikimedia Commons.

Guns for hire

Today's sicarios are guns for hire. One of the most notorious sicario gangs, called La Terraza, or The Terrace, after the part of Medellín in which it was born, is in a fight to the death with its former paymaster, the feared right-wing paramilitaries.

Their "enemies," once known as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC; United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia) blocs Cacique Nutibarra and Bloque Metro, have been reorganized and replaced by the resurgent paramilitary groups The Urabá Bloc or Urabeños, previously led by Daniel Rendon (also known as "Don Mario"), and the Paisas, heirs of paramilitary leader "Don Berna"; they also have links with the "Office of Envigado," a criminal organization in Medellín.

According to authorities, the child assassins are the lowest in the criminal food chain and receive only a small part of what is paid for an assassination. Criminal organizations charge up to 50 million pesos (U.S. $24,000) for a murder, but the juvenile killer only receives 1-6 % of this.

I’m ‘Sicariato’ because 'I love you'

Sicarios do not exist by themselves. They are the product of a more complex system of criminality ready to hire assassins as young as 12 to guarantee its power through terrorism. Of course, young people ready to do so come from realities of marginalization, where opportunities of education and a good living are distant mirages. Poverty and marginalization are always the cause of violence. Mafias offer hopeless young people an opportunity in life.

Many of these youths believe that they must do something to support their families, for the same reasons that many become involved in prostitution. A society that denies entrance into the systems of education, social protection, and employment plays a great part in whether a likely boy accepts the invitation of the mafias. "El Patrón” (the boss) is the one who contracts the boy to do the job (el trabajito), and then there is a relationship of loyalty. A sicario will have the same fanatical commitment as the most professional royal bodyguard of Europe.

Asked why he kills persons for money, he will answer in almost the same way as such a retainer: to help his family, because he loves his mother and wants to give her a better life.

Underage actors in Colombia are into numerous crimes, and this is not new. Drug trafficking and insurgent organizations have recruited many young people, with dramatic impact.

However, when a 15-year old is involved in a murder, as happened with the hit on the pregnant lawyer in Medellín, surprise and indignation return. Only a month earlier, in the same city, a 17-year old entered the General Hospital to finish off a patient.

Authorities reported that in Monteria, capital of Cordoba Department, seven minors were arrested for acting as henchmen in a series of murders in 2009.

This abominable phenomenon occurs all over the country. One study found that in Cali, in 2008, one in every five homicides involved a minor. Bogotá is part of the same trend, according to police: in 2007, 11 teenagers were arrested for homicide there; in 2008 the figure rose to 18. So far in 2010, there have been 19 teenage killers, most between 15 and 17.

Since the beginning of 2009, alarm bells about the growth of the murder for hire in Colombia's cities have sounded. The case of Medellín, the capital of Antioquia Department, and its metropolitan area is the most worrying. Over one long weekend there were about 22 violent deaths in the Aburrá Valley, while 11 murders were committed in 11 hours in Envigado and Bello. In the last seven months in Medellín 1,081 homicides were reported.

Authorities also warn of the consolidation of "collection agencies" in Cali, where gang feuding has increased homicide rates. In Cartagena, 77 of 105 violent deaths during the first half of 2009 involved hired killers.

In mid-May last year, the mayors of nine state capitals, Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Cucuta, Pasto, Ibague, Pereira, Manizales, and Tunja, asked the central government for more tools to deal with revenge killings.

Trained killers from Colombia are in the Mexican drug wars

Since Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared war on drug cartels in 2006, the death toll there has climbed to 18,000.

Colombia exports many world class products; recently it has been discovered that itexports trained and experienced sicarios to Mexico. The movement through Mexico of 90% of the cocaine consumed in the U.S. has increased violence in the war of cartels there. Now we learn that sicarios who made their bones in Colombia as youths have been exported to Mexico and elsewhere. The hallmarks of Colombian violence are apparent in thousands of executions that occurred in 2009, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

According to La Reforma, published in el D.F. (Mexico City), "A recent poll of 4,600 students in the state of Chihuahua revealed 40 percent of them aspire to be hit men... They would rather live a week like a king than have 70 years of misery."

Borders do not stop the Colombian gunmen. Internecine struggle between organized crime gangs and drug trafficking has even led to attacks in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and in Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Guatemala, and Spain by Colombian sicarios.

Murder on a motorbike

Small motorcycles are a primary means of transportation in Colombian cities for many. Cartagena has 19,000 registered and an unknown number of unregistered, or falsely registered, "moto-taxis" that will take anyone on a wild ride through traffic for 2,000 pesos (about a dollar). There must be 10 times that many motorbikes. They are everywhere.

"Motos" are the favorite mode of transportation for the sicarios also. One guy drives and the shooter rides behind, they pull up behind the victim, dispatch him or her, and quickly escape into the flood of other motos that fill the streets.

Typical is this short paragraph from yesterday’s local paper:

A 42-year old man was killed last night with four shots in the parquedero [parking lot] of a well known fast food restaurant on Street 116. The prompt reaction of the police led to the arrest of one of the gunmen, one of two men on a motorcycle.

Or this , from a few days ago:

Candidate murdered in Viotá.

On Sunday at 10:30 pm Jose Amador Mora was killed, one of four candidates for mayor of Viotá [Cundinamarca], a suburb of Bogotá...

This crime happened 72 hours after the elected mayor of the municipality, Rutba Jose Navarro, was killed Friday by two hitmen.

According to authorities, Amador Mora, affiliated liberal, was caught as he walked through the town market place by two hired killers on a motorcycle, who gave him six shots in different parts of the body.

One more story of thousands:

On his birthday, the 31st of December, Juan, better known as 'Infierno' did not receive the customary hug and Happy Birthday greetings, instead, 'I felt the tingling of three bullets, two in my back and one at my waist.'

Half an hour before the attack, in the populous neighborhood of Dosquebradas San Judas, Infierno left a man called 'Diablo' with a knife through his neck, which shattered his vocal cords.

But Diablo and his friends are not the only problem for Juan.

His life was threatened four years ago when he began smoking marihuana and bazuco (crack made from cocaine paste), and snorting heroin because, he says, he was tormented by the murder of his brother. With his gang, Te Melenos, and the same drug that feeds the industry, he encountered the underworld, the power of guns, and the sight of death.

The... 'Grim Reaper' has pursued him since 2004, when for the first time with his comrades, he landed (strong-armed) a man and, not content with stealing, cut his throat.

The scene was repeated four times that week, the prize for Juan after the distribution: 20,000 pesos, [about $10 U.S.] ...[He] confessed [the killings] in front of his grandmother, an obese woman with a toothless smile.

The tenderness of the old woman vanished with the chilling confession of her grandson, 17 years old. She only managed to cover her face with her hands.

Colombia has hundreds or thousands like Juan who are ready to kill. Cheap.

The Rag Blog

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Marion Delgado in Colombia : Don Mario's War

Don Mario: Colombian police escort Daniel Rendon Herrera at a Bogota airport after his April 2009 arrest. Photo by William Fernando Martinez / AP.
Colombia: Don Mario's war

By his own account, [his] victims number somewhere around 9,000, but hey, who’s counting? He murdered so many Colombians that he can only guess in round numbers.

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / April 20

AT LARGE IN COLOMBIA -- “Don Mario” was on TV during the week of March 21-26. He was making another appearance before Colombia’s Peace and Justice Commission. After Carlos Castaño, Don Mario (nee Daniel Rendon Herrera), is as big a “Mister Big” in the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC; United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia) as they come. At one time he controlled most of the cocaine transportation out of Colombia.

The Don swaggered across the TV's flat screen and into the Commission’s hearing room. At 44 years, he looked good in his Armani suit and of course, his right sleeve was pulled up a little to display his Rolex watch. It is rumored that he wears a new one every day. He stacked 200 million Colombian pesos on the table, paused, turned to smile at the TV cameras, and sat down. La Plata was his down payment on restitution he is required to make to the families of his victims.

By his own account, those victims number somewhere around 9,000, but hey, who’s counting? He murdered so many Colombians that he can only guess in round numbers.

I have mentioned him several times in my dispatches over the last few months, but he was always a bit of a mythical figure. A leader of one of the most powerful AUC blocs, the Urabá or Urabeños, his name came up again and again in my research. The televised hearings, or more appropriately, “The Don Mario Show," made me want to find out more about who he is and what he had done. I had a good source, Don Mario himself.

The Colombian government put a price on his head, five billion pesos (two and a half million U.S. dollars). Don Mario in turn offered a $1,000 reward for every killed policeman. While his AUC companeros were demobilized, or at least pretended to be, the Don stayed on the run. He was captured in April 2009. But Don Mario, legendary paramilitar, wasn’t finished.

He applied for the amnesty offered under the Peace and Justice Act. If he would make a full “confession” of his crimes, and make restitution to his victims, he would avoid prison in Colombia and be protected from extradition to the U.S. The U.S. Departments of Justice and State have twice requested his extradition, and have been twice refused by the Supreme Court of Colombia.

Don Mario began to tell his story in early November 2009 and, over five- and six-day-long weeks, has continued to confess through mid-March 2010. There are hundreds of pages of testimony, with no English translation yet. It’s a book, bigger than a book. It's way too big to blog, so I have extracted his account of one time, in one place, with all the players, that tells the story of one part of Don Mario’s war. It’s his story, but some of it I got from Human Rights Watch, NACLA, and other NGO’s, from the UN Commission on Human Rights, and some from the stories filed with the Commission by the unwilling participants, the Colombian people. It was their war more than it was Don Mario’s

The time and place

In little more than a few months between late 2003 and early 2004, about 3,000 people, including civilians and combatants, were killed in Casanare, a Department, or state, in eastern Colombia rich with oilfields across rolling, fertile plains.

Two paramilitary factions, supposedly created to combat rebel guerrillas, fought each other for control of drug trafficking, oil royalties, and thousands of hectares of land in Casanare in a paranoiac, hellish war that left thousands of victims, a war still very much a secret even in Colombia.

In this chilling war of deceit, paranoia, and greed, even children paid the ultimate price.

Martin Llanos’ war in los llanos (plains) of Casanare

Very little is known of the war in Casanare. Several different factions of paramilitaries clashed not only with Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia -- Ejército del Pueblo (FARC or FARC-EP; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- Peoples Army) rebels, but among themselves.

Many paramilitaries who committed crimes in this Department never participated in the process of demobilization of the AUC. Many of the protagonists have died, or are fugitives.

Drug boss and paramilitary chief Hector Buitrago, alias “Martin Llanos," refused to demobilize and is still wanted in connection with crimes committed by his group. Miguel Arroyave, alias "Archangel," was later killed by his own men. Pedro Oliverio Guerrero Castillo, alias “Cuchillo," went into hiding but was captured in March 2010.

The plains inhabitants, the Casanareños, witnessed a massacre in which even children were killed, as hundreds of civilians and paramilitaries clashed with each other.

In his testimony, as part of the Peace and Justice Law, Don Mario said the man responsible for the war was emerald trader Victor Carranza; however, Carranza's motives for such scheming remain obscure.

“Carranza spoke with Miguel (Arroyave) about Martin (Llanos), and from there I realized that he was using Miguel to alienate Martin. I think he did the same with Martin,” said Don Mario. He said Carranza sowed discord between the two paramilitary leaders, telling each one that the other wanted to kill him.

The war was costly, not only for the population it ravaged, but on the pocketbooks of the combatants. According to Don Mario, within a month the Centaurs Bloc of the AUC spent about U.S. $7 million for the war. On one day of fighting, his men used 100,000 rounds of ammunition at a cost of U.S. $200,000, said the former paramilitary, chief financial officer of the Centaurs until mid-2004.

One combatant said the war with Llanos made Archangel distrust everyone, even his own men. Many were killed on “suspicion” alone.

Few in this region dare speak about the months-long massacre even now. What is agreed is that for decades illegal armed groups had fought for a slice of the pie in Casanare: oil, timber, agriculture, and illicit coca crops.

Emerald trader Victor Carranza. Photo from El Espectador.

The back story

The war in Casanare began about mid-1986, when Buitrago/Llanos organized a paramilitary group, the "Buitragueños," to fight guerrillas. The group operated in Casanare, Meta, and part of the Ariari subregion, which irked Pirabán Manuel de Jesus, aka “Pirata," and Guerrero/“Cuchillo” of the Centaurs.

One villager knowledgeable of the Buitragueños expansion said that Buitrago/Llanos joined with the Ramirez and Feliciano families, both large landowners, and began setting up cocaine processing labs in Monterrey and Tauramena Aguazul. They also began murdering people by the hundreds. Local cattle ranchers, big supporters of the AUC for protecting their grazing lands, gave the paramilitaries ranches from which to mount their operations.

Besides engaging in counterinsurgency against the guerrillas, Buitrago's forces intimidated and forced entire villages to become complicit in covering up drug trafficking activities.

“They collected people in the parks, locked down students in their classes, and told people not to leave their houses because of alleged danger of subversive guerrilla activity, but the fact is they wanted people 'locked away' so they wouldn’t see the trucks loaded with paramilitaries or with chemicals to process the cocaine. It was all a big lie because the guerrilla presence wasn’t seen in Monterrey,” said a former Casanare municipal official.

The Buitragueños did not limit themselves to fabricating guerrilla threats. After 1995, they began a systematic campaign to seize land with oil fields and to evict farmers from exploration areas.

“From Monterrey to Tauramena Aguazul, they came to farms and cattle ranches. ‘Sign or die,' they said to landowners regarding deeds and titles. Threats, or worse, were also offered to girls who did not succumb to advances. They were raped or banished if they did not sleep with them,” says a person who lived in the area.

The prosecutor and judges of Villavicencio finally launched a conspiracy investigation against Buitrago/Llanos, resulting in his incarceration. He later escaped.

While Buitrago/Llanos consolidated power south and north of Casanare, the Autodefensas Campesinas del Casanare (ACC), paramilitaries aligned with Carlos Castaño, began to move into parts of Guaviare and Meta Departments.

Castaño, a founder and one-time leader of the AUC who was later killed by his own men, came to Casanare with members of the Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá (ACCU) and killed over 50 people near Meta in 1997.

The slaughter was supported by the ACC. But soon a feud developed between the Martin Llanos group and the Castaño paramilitaries. This deepened with the slaughter of 11 members of a judicial commission investigating a land dispute in October, 1997. That massacre, ordered by Llanos, offended Castaño.

By this time, Castaño forces had pushed into Casanare and Arauca Departments, clashing with FARC and Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN; the National Liberation Army) guerrillas.

With Castaño’s entrance into his turf, Llanos began to feel threatened.

Departamento de Casanare, Colombia. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

The war gets crazier

Ex-fighters said Llanos began to step up extortion, killing farmers to seize land, and exerting political pressure to remain in control of Casanare.

“Llanos was going crazy. He did not allow anyone within 30 feet of him, and if he suspected someone would turn him in, they would be tortured and later assassinated. Several youths were killed and returned to their families in black plastic bags. Dozens of his men were executed like this in Puerto Lopez, on mere suspicion,” said residents who saw the corpses.

Llanos’ paranoia drove him to kill people close to him, such as Victor Feliciano Alfonso; his wife, Martha Nelly Chavez; Juan Manuel Feliciano Chavez; and four other family members in February 2000. Only Victor Francisco Feliciano was left alive; he denied any family ties to drug trafficking.

Llanos began to lose control of the northern department, especially Yopal, where the population was caught in the crossfire.

In April 2001 about 15,000 people protested the violence. Traders, farmers, civilians, and politicians shook off their fear and called for an end to warfare under banners saying, “Our silence fills the graves of the plains with Casanareños.”

However, fighting intensified until an average of 10 people per week were being killed, although police recorded that in the first quarter of 2001 there were "only" 85 murders. Police statistics differ deeply from reports of the Ombudsman, according to whom, between 1997 and the first three months of 2001, there were 31 massacres, of which 12 were in Yopal in the first months of 2001.

During April 2001, 2,404 farmers were also displaced. Still, authorities described Casanare as “a haven of peace.”

In April, 2001, Martin Llanos called forced meetings of ordinary citizens, from taxi drivers to teachers, to try to influence electoral campaigns. In one meeting, 200 teachers came to Monterey, where the paramilitary leader declared, “Those who vote for the Democratic candidates or for Horacio Serpa should assume [there will be] consequences,” said one teacher who attended the meeting, now a refugee in Villavicencio.

“He came in a small helicopter they called 'the wasp,' greeted former classmates from the Joint Normal School in Monterrey, recalled their days as students, and even became remorseful. He spoke for about 15 minutes, turned, and left,” said the teacher.

The paramilitaries' infighting in Casanare also produced divisions within the ACC's southern and northern factions, the latter commanded by Luis Eduardo Ramirez Vargas, alias "HK", killed by Bogotá police in December 2005.

The beginning of the end

Miguel Arroyave/“Archangel” shared power in the Centaurs Bloc with Carlos Castaño and his brother Vicente in early 2002. At that same time, Miguel Angel and Victor Manuel Mejia Munera shared power in the Arauca Vencedores Bloc. These groups eventually formed an alliance against Martin Llanos in Meta, Casanare, and Arauca.

Castaño’s forces did not know the terrain and at first took a beating from Llanos’ men.

Videos circulating in Monterrey, recorded by members of the ACC in the area, showed fighting between the two sides in rural areas of Mapiripan. The images revealed rotting bodies, abandoned military equipment, and machine gun crossfire between ragtag groups of terrified youths of African descent, in panicked, leaderless flight.

After these initial defeats, Castaño sent reinforcements from the Centaurs, Central Bolívar (BCB), and St. Martin Blocs, and quickly gained numerical superiority.

Llanos’ forces were reduced to 300. Castaño’s men pushed them north of Casanare.

According to some Monterrey survivors, the Colombian Air Force helped out with bombing raids. A former Centaurs commander said Miguel Arroyave had asked a senior air force officer to help stop Llanos.

Surrounded and demoralized, Llanos dug in near El Tropezón, a few miles from Puerto Lopez. There his forces took a stand until the air force bombings.

Decimated then, Llanos began "recruiting" in the capital districts of Ciudad Bolivar, Soacha, Kennedy, Bosa, and Suba, and in the Morichal district of Villavicencio. His remaining forces took 30 children by force there.

“People had to leave the sidewalks of Caribayona and El Pinal, because they tricked or forced children as young as 12 years old into their ranks,” said the mother of one of those children, who later rescued him from the mountains and fled to another city.

A fourteen-year-old member of the AUC in Medellín.Photo © 2002 Marcelo Salinas / Human Rights Watch.

The horror of teenagers inside the ACC

“Those caught crying were killed in front of others. And if someone fell asleep on watch, a worse fate fell upon them,” said the family of another minor arrested in a military action and sent to a reform institution.

Skirmishes between the competing paramilitaries lasted until early 2004. One battle in February that year lasted for five days at Caribayona, near Villanueva. In that confrontation, more than 140 paramilitaries from both sides were killed, and about 20 farmer-soldiers were killed near Villanueva during Archangel’s eventual retreat.

“In the combat zone, superiors asked their troops, some of them children, if they were tired. If they responded affirmatively, they were shot. So were the wounded that arrived in Puerto Lopez and Monterrey. They asked the nurses which paramilitaries had serious wounds. They were rounded up in a single place and then a fighter would toss in a grenade, or they were simply shot,” eyewitnesses testified.

Fighting continued between Villanueva, Monterrey, and Tauramena.

“Finally, Castaño's men overtook the fighters loyal to Llanos, whom many said had made a pact with the devil. Prisoners were shoved into a corral, given only one meal a day, and every week one was beheaded. There were guys who painted their nails black and lined up to drink the blood of the victims,” said another woman whose daughter lived for a time with one of Llanos’ men.

In July 2004, the Colombian army secured El Tropezón and captured ACC fighters on the outskirts of Monterrey. The crows were fattened on those who fell in this battle.

In a single day in Puerto Lopez, 30 child soldiers died, and in Tauramena 20 others were killed near La Candelaria. Their bodies, pulled by tractors, were cast into the river Metada with their stomachs cut open so they would sink.

Fighting led to displacement of civilians in Las Delicias, El Yari, El Retorno, El Tranquero, and everywhere the forces of Llanos and Castaño met. About 30,000 people were forced to leave La Tronca de la Selva. Many protested because the Army did nothing to stop the violence.

When the end was near, Martin Llanos fled with a guard of 10 men and 70 children from Bogotá, Villavicencio, and around the region. The children were used as human shields to cover the paramilitary leader’s flight.

Days later, on September 26, the Colombian government said in a statement that 79 men of the ACC had been killed. Many fighters surrendered and others were captured, but Llanos, wounded, fled to Ecuador. He then moved on to Brazil, and later to the border between Colombia and Venezuela, from where he still sends threats and warnings of revenge to enemies in Monterrey.

Although hundreds of paramilitary units of the Casanare Centaurs demobilized, they have been replaced by resurgent groups and remnants of the Urabeños, Carlos Castaño’s original bloc that only pretended to demobilize. They now operate side by side, still protecting the cocaine trade, old wars forgotten…but not old war stories.

Don Mario is cleansed

Don Mario, who was paymaster of the Centaur Bloc and “inherited” the leadership when Castaño was murdered, checked his Rolex. He'd had enough storytelling for the day.

Despite his participation in the Casanare wars and the murder of 9,000 Colombians there and elsewhere, he has finished telling all of his stories, paid a paltry sum in restitution, and will now go free.

The Rag Blog

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Bolivia's Evo Morales : Putting the Coca Back in Cola

Bolivian President Evo Morales and Coca Colla. Above, photo from 1buenaidea.com. Below, photo by Red Erbol / Abiding in Bolivia.
Supports new coca-based drink:
Evo Morales tells Coke to take a hike

By Nikolas Kozloff / April 2, 2010

Move over Coca-Cola: here comes Bolivia.

The Andean nation’s indigenous people have long resented the U.S. beverage company for usurping the name of their sacred coca leaf. Now, they are aiming to take back their heritage. Recently, the government of Evo Morales announced that it would support a plan to produce a coca-based soft drink which would rival its fizzy American counterpart.

It’s still unclear whether the new drink will be promoted by a private company, a state enterprise, or some type of joint venture between the two. The new beverage will be called Coca Colla, in reference to age old history: in Bolivia, Quechua, Aymara, and other indigenous peoples descended from the Incas are known as collas.

In a move that will undoubtedly exasperate Coke, Bolivian officials say Coca Colla will feature a black swoosh and red label similar to the classic Coca-Cola insignia. Coca Colla reportedly has a black color, just like normal Coke, and could be sold on the market as early as April.

“Coca Cola robbed from us the name of our coca leaf and moreover has cornered the market all over the world,” says Julio Salazar, Secretary General of the Bolivian Coca Growers’ Federation and Senator from Evo Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism Party (known by its Spanish acronym MAS). “It is high time that the true owners of this natural resource benefit by industrializing our coca,” he added.

Bolivians would like to overturn the negative stigma attached to the coca leaf. Morales, an Aymara Indian, says that coca in its natural state does not harm human health, and that scientific research has demonstrated the plant to be "healthy." When drug smugglers change coca into cocaine, Morales adds, they change the plant's chemical composition.

While the Bolivian president condemns such practices, he also touts the commercial uses of coca leaf. Bolivia's new constitution, drafted by the ruling MAS party, recognizes coca as Bolivia’s "cultural heritage, a natural and renewable resource of biodiversity in Bolivia and a factor of social cohesion" and adds that coca leaf is not a narcotic in its natural state.

Coca leaf, which was domesticated over 4,000 years ago, is usually chewed with a bitter wood-ash paste to bring out the stimulant properties which are mild and similar to caffeine or nicotine. In its pure form, coca serves to ward off hunger and counteracts the effects of high altitude. Many poor peasants earn their livelihoods from cultivation of the leaf, and coca has been used for millennia in cooking, folk remedies, and religious ceremonies.

Indeed, for Andean Indians coca leaf is closely tied to the spiritual world. Offerings to Pachamama, the Mother Earth, begin in August to scare away malevolent spirits of the dry season and to encourage a good harvest. Offerings consist of llama foetuses, sweets of various colors, coca leaf, and other herbs. The yatiri, or indigenous priest, burns the offerings in a bonfire while muttering prayers to the achachilas, Gods that inhabit the mountains.

Vintage print ad for Vin Mariani. Image from cocaine.org.

The restorative powers of coca wine

Though Coca Colla’s launch may have taken Coke’s CEO’s by surprise, it’s certainly not the first time that coca leaf has been incorporated in commercial drinks. When I was in La Paz researching my recent book Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan), I stopped by the city’s coca museum where I learned about Mariani, a coca wine. Launched in Europe in 1863, the wine was launched by Corsican chemist and entrepreneur Angelo Mariani. The businessman spawned imitators such as John Styth Pemberton, an Atlanta entrepreneur who launched his own coca wine. Later, the American created a syrup which served as the prototype for Coke.

After gathering information about the Inca and its love of coca, Mariani took up horticulture and began to grow the sacred Andean leaf in his backyard. Ingeniously, he sent samples of his new wine to famous people world wide in search of endorsements.

Mariani’s outreach paid off: the businessman received glowing testimonials from the likes of Emile Zola, Thomas Edison, Buffalo Bill Cody, and even U.S. President William McKinley, Queen Victoria and three Popes. In 1885, when Ulysses Grant was in his final death throes and suffering from throat cancer, he drank coca wine. Reportedly, the treatment helped soothe his pain.

“Vin Mariani is the restorer par excellence,” crowed Le Figaro newspaper in 1877. “It is the king of remedies against anemia... It is a tonic which increases the secretion of gastric juices, produces appetite... Vin Mariani has the rare advantage of stimulating both the muscular and cerebral activities.”

“Just how much of a kick did Mariani deliver?” asks Mark Prendergast, author of For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It. “Fortunately,” he says “we can hazard a good guess, since a chemist studying various wine cocas reported in 1886 that Vin Mariani contained 0.12 grain cocaine per fluid ounce. The dosage on the wine’s label called for a ‘claret-glass full’ before or after every meal (half a glass for children). Assuming the wineglass to hold six fluid ounces, three daily glasses would amount to a full bottle of 18 ounces, or 2.16 grains of cocaine per day, enough to make someone feel very good indeed.”

From coca liquors to pasta

Taking up Mariani’s lead, Andean nations have apparently carried out their market research and are now doing their utmost to commercialize other types of alcoholic coca beverages. Take for example the Peruvian brewery Cervecería Peruana, which plans to export a coca beer to countries such as China and South Africa. The beer is called Apu, a magic word signifying God, power and richness in the Quechua indigenous language.

Another Bolivian beverage company recently launched a coca whisky. The drink is called Ajayu, which translates as soul or spirit in the indigenous Aymara language. The whisky packs a punch, with 32% alcoholic content. According to Ajayu’s producer, the whisky conserves all the essential qualities of coca, “including more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach and as much phosphorus as fish.”

Boosters hope that Ajayu winds up being the emblematic brand of Bolivia, much as tequila became identified with Mexico. Each separate bottle of Ajayu contains 25 grams of coca, and the brand’s producers hope to export the drink to Cuba or Venezuela.

Historically, Mariani pioneered the use of coca leaf not only in beverages but also in other products such as cordials and tea. Lozenges meanwhile were marketed toward singers, teachers, and others who sought to ease the throat. Today, Bolivian companies have taken up Mariani’s lead and are using coca to make teas, syrups, toothpaste, liqueurs, candy, and pastry. In one Italian restaurant in La Paz, diners can even order coca spaghetti made from a mixture of wheat flour and coca leaf.

Coca Colla and ethnic pride

Though Bolivia’s promotion of Coca Colla may cause some to chuckle, the move could contribute to a further deterioration in U.S.-Bolivian relations. For years, Bolivia’s indigenous peoples have bristled under the U.S.-fueled drug war which demonized coca leaf. In a snub back at Washington, coca growers from the Chapare region proposed Coca Colla and it is now Evo Morales, himself a former coca farmer from Chapare, who has taken up coca nationalism as a cultural and political rallying cry [for those interested in pursuing this matter further, see my chapter on coca nationalism in my book].

When speaking before adoring crowds, Morales drapes a garland of coca leaves around his neck and wears a straw hat layered with more coca. What’s more, Morales claims that the United States seeks to intervene in Latin American countries by playing up the drug war. Washington's policy, Morales has charged, is merely "a great imperialist instrument for geopolitical control." The Bolivian President argues that the only way to do away with drug trafficking is to cut off demand.

Raising eyebrows in Washington, Morales recently requested the removal of coca leaf from a list of banned substances under the 1961 U.N. anti-narcotics convention. Specifically, Bolivia wants to modify two subsections of Article 49 of the 1961 U.N. convention on drugs that prohibit chewing of coca leaf. In a theatrical move, Morales held up coca leaf and actually chewed it in front of a U.N. panel in Vienna to demonstrate that it had no ill effects. Hardly amused, the Obama administration announced its opposition to Morales’ proposal the very next day.

Bolivian President Morales chews coca leaves in the United Nations. Photo from MercoPress / treehugger.

Coca tit-for-tat

The Bolivian president’s U.N. diplomacy is not too surprising given that Morales originally came to power in January, 2006 promising to end forced eradication of coca. In fact, the recent scuffle at the U.N. caps a number of other diplomatic fall outs: in September 2008 Bolivia expelled U.S. ambassador Phil Goldberg, accusing the diplomat of “conspiracy.” Shortly thereafter, Morales suspended official collaboration with the DEA.

Striking back, the Bush administration suspended Bolivia’s participation in a tariff-exemption program for Andean nations, asserting that Morales was not cooperating sufficiently in the war on drugs. Categorically rejecting that assertion, the Bolivian leader cited U.N. statistics demonstrating that his government had done better than Washington allies Colombia and Peru in seizing shipments of cocaine. Indeed, local authorities claim they have confiscated tons of cocaine and destroyed many drug laboratories.

It’s difficult to see a way out of the morass, given that the Obama White House does not seem very interested in reversing the foreign policy course of the earlier Bush years. In fact, Washington says Morales is not doing enough to clamp down on drug smuggling and has continued to exclude Bolivia from the U.S. tariff exemption program.

“An excluded black man can exclude an Indian man,” Morales declared. “The so-called Indians and blacks have historically been the most excluded, the most marginalized,” Morales added. “If he wants to exclude us let him continue to exclude us; that doesn’t matter to us.” In another round of the endless tit-for-tat, Morales recently expelled U.S. diplomat Francisco Martínez, also on charges of conspiracy.

Increased cultivation for Coca-Colla?

Joking aside, the Coca-Colla imbroglio may add yet another twist on the recent diplomatic fall out. Like neighboring Peru, Bolivia permits certain limited cultivation of coca for use in cooking, folk medicine and religious rites. If plans for Coca Colla move forward, however, Bolivia will have to grow more coca, thus putting a further strain on U.S. relations.

Under Bolivia law, up to 30,000 acres of land may be cultivated with coca, but Morales wants to increase that to nearly 50,000 hectares in an effort to further commercialize the leaf. With the new excess cultivation, Bolivia will be well placed to launch its new Coca Colla. While promoting the beverage is sure to irritate Washington, the move is politically smart for Morales as he may drum up support against an unpopular corporation while helping to bring welcome resources to coca growers.

“Whether or not the initiative is a success,” notes a recent column on the environmental website treehugger, “Bolivia may find international support for standing up to a company that many see as an unfeeling capitalist juggernaut with a product that better serves the environment and livelihoods of the people producing it. No word on how Coca-Colla will taste, but there's already something refreshing about it.”

[Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan), and No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Affects the Entire Planet, to be released by Palgrave-Macmillan in a matter of weeks. Visit his blog here.]

Source / BuzzFlash

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Colombia and the TLC : Just Who Benefits from 'Free Trade'?

And we're not talking "Tender Loving Care" here. Graffiti image from Parades Que Hablan (Talking Walls).
Colombia and the TLC:
Jobs, deficits, and keeping 'free trade' alive

The organizations that stand to benefit the most from this trade agreement -- U.S. multinational corporations -- have been involved in aiding and abetting [the] bloodshed [against trade unionists].

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / March 27, 2010

AT LARGE IN COLOMBIA -- On Thursday, February 18, U.S. Senator George LeMieux (R-FL), visited Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe at his ranch. His pilgrimage promoted a proposed Colombian/U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA), known locally as the Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLC).

Sen. George

After their rural meeting, LeMieux released a statement in which he said, among other things,

Colombia is a strong ally and partner of the United States. In my meeting with President Uribe, I raised the issue of trade and committed to continue encouraging ratification of the [FTA/TLC]. I again call upon President Obama to send the free trade agreement with Colombia to the United States Congress. Bilateral trade produces clear benefits including jobs in Florida and throughout the United States.

For example, more than 95% of the flowers commercially grown in Colombia come through Miami for distribution throughout the nation. That creates thousands of jobs and opportunities in the United States. Free trade produces prosperity and strengthens democracies in Latin America as well.

He didn’t mention that those “thousands” of jobs and opportunities in the U.S. already exist without the TLC. It’s almost funny; he said that Free Trade produces prosperity; the facts, which Congresspeople never seem to work into their pro-free trade statements, show that just the opposite is true.

Take the original TLC: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

Prez George

Before leaving office, President George W. Bush of the Bush Crime Family claimed that, "From 1993 to 2007, trade among the NAFTA nations more than tripled, from $297 billion to $930 billion."

Facts

Never one to rely on facts, Bush skipped over the reality that increased trade flow only benefits an economy as long as it doesn't lead to unsustainable deficits. Much of the increased volume of trade under NAFTA was a massive surge in imports into the U.S.

A small pre-NAFTA U.S. trade surplus with Mexico in 1993 reversed into a $91 billion deficit in 2007, while a pre-NAFTA deficit with Canada grew exponentially. NAFTA foreign investor protections, which remove most of the risks otherwise associated with offshore production -- coupled with the high dollar policies of the Clinton administration -- acted as a subsidy for off-shoring U.S. jobs.

The result? A 691% increase in the U.S.' combined trade deficit with Canada and Mexico, from $24 billion in 1993 to $190 billion in 2007. This artificially induced, distorted composition of trade flows -- shaped by specific rules in NAFTA -- puts the entire region at economic risk.

Senator LeMieux was big on job creation. He obviously knows nothing of which he speaks, and as with any politician cares less, he just says what he thinks sounds good. The real facts about job creation under NAFTA tell a different story.

More facts

Trade affects the composition of jobs, not the total number. Three million net U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost under NAFTA.

The job creation claim is particularly sly, as economists know that total employment numbers and unemployment rates are not typically affected by trade policy, but by central bankers who set interest rates. In fact, they define labor force growth as simply income growth minus productivity growth.

Thus, if income growth were 2 percent and productivity growth were 1 percent, this would imply a labor force growth rate of 1 percent, or roughly 1.4 million jobs -- irrespective of trade flows.

What trade policy affects is the composition of jobs in the economy, in particular tradable sectors like manufacturing. The original claim by NAFTA boosters in 1993 that the pact would lead to 170,000 annual U.S. job gains was premised on the projection that the U.S. would have a growing trade surplus with Mexico. We were supposed to be exporting U.S.-made goods to them.

Ever since NAFTA critics' projection of increased trade deficits proved true, pro-NAFTA analysts have tried to move the discussion away from the pact's damage to U.S. workers and to focus on the combined import-export volume of trade flows' effect on overall U.S. employment rates.

Here are the relevant numbers: U.S. manufacturing employment declined from 16.8 million people in 1993 to 13.9 million people in 2007, a decrease of nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs, nearly 20% of the total. Moreover, today's $190 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA countries -- as a simple accounting matter -- equals manufacturing jobs that could have been here. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the U.S. could have had over 1 million additional manufacturing jobs had there been trade balance between NAFTA countries alone, or no NAFTA at all.

Sen. George LeMeiux, Republican of Florida. Photo from AP / Politico.

Other Congressional visits

President Uribe also met with a group of U.S. Congressmen on January 9, at a working breakfast at his ranch known as Fertile Farm in Monteria, Cordoba Department, 310km Northeast of Bogota.

Among them was Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York’s 17th district (Westchester County), chairman of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee of the House.

The meeting marked the start of an offensive by the president to achieve, as soon as possible, ratification of the FTA/TLC by the U.S. Congress.

Uribe's purpose became clear on December 31, 2009, when he asked the U.S. to "recognize the efforts" of Colombia in the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism. A week later, he reiterated to Democratic Reps. Engel; Lynn Woolsey from Marin County, CA; Shelley Berkley, Las Vegas, NV; and Republican Marsha Blackburn from Southwestern Tennessee, (a T-bagger favorite): "I said with all honesty and with all the solidarity that we need rapid adoption of this treaty.”

What the fight against drug trafficking and “terrorism” has to do with Free Trade is beyond me.

Pending congressional approval

The FTA/TLC was signed by Presidents Bush and Uribe on November 22, 2006. When it enters into force, Colombia will immediately eliminate most tariffs on U.S. exports, with all remaining tariffs phased out over defined time periods.

The FTA/TLC also includes important rules on customs administration and trade facilitation, technical barriers to trade, government procurement, investment, telecommunications, electronic commerce, intellectual property rights, and labor and environmental protection.

Labor Protection?

If labor needs protection anywhere, it is here in Colombia. Here is the situation:

Colombia today has some of the worst labor rights violations in the world. Trade unionists are routinely murdered, tortured, and threatened with death: since 1991, over 2200 have been assassinated. Many of these extrajudicial killings have been directly linked to the Colombian Military and the President's own secret police, the Administrative Department for Security or Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS). Out of so many murders, there have been only 37 convictions. The FTA/TLC will only embolden anti-union attacks here.

The organizations that stand to benefit the most from this trade agreement -- U.S. multinational corporations -- have been involved in aiding and abetting this bloodshed. Cases have been brought against Coca-Cola, Drummond Mining Company, and Occidental Petroleum accusing them of employing paramilitaries that terrorized and killed union organizers.

Forty-three U.S. corporations have been named as having hired paracos to “protect” them from guerrillas and unions. More cases are expected to be made, and fines will be levied. (Not as cheap as the $2000 a head reportedly paid for U.S. Army/mercenary baby killing in Afghanistan, but cheap enough for the Wall Street gang.)

It should be noted that most Colombian workers and their unions are against the proposed FTA/TLC; unlike American investors, workers in Colombia have little to gain by further U.S. investment without real accountability for violence against unions and for multiple other human rights abuses.

U.S. firms will have better access to Colombia's service sector than other World Trade Organization members under the pact's General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. All service sectors are covered by the FTA/TLC except where Colombia has made specific exceptions.

Colombia's Congress approved the FTA/TLC and a protocol of amendment in 2007. Colombia's Constitutional Court completed its review in July 2008, and concluded that the FTA/TLC conforms to Colombia's Constitution.

Obama’s duplicity

In his January 27 State of the Union Speech, President Barack H. Obama said, “We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are… And that is why we will continue to shape a… trade agreement that will open…markets…with key partners like Colombia.”

To flesh out what his boss meant, deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis expounded on trade policy in a morning-after speech before a gathering sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Key pillars of Obama’s trade policy, Marantis said, will include pursuing the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) -- while also pushing ratification of already-negotiated free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia. The trade agreements were each presented to Congress at least three years ago but have not been acted upon.

One big question is why Obama is pursuing free trade in the first place. As a candidate, Obama argued that the American public had been oversold on the benefits of free trade and specifically came out against the Colombia FTA. What happened?

Mitch

Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate Minority Clown-in-Chief, was quick to jump on the FTA/TLC band wagon the day after BHO’s speech. "Republicans agree with the need to increase trade and with the need to ratify trade agreements with Colombia and other important trading partners that so far have met resistance on the other side of the aisle," he declared.

Mitch was referring to the reluctance of some Democrats to address the FTA/TLC created by their awareness of the thousands of murders of trade unionists since 1991. Many other union members were threatened, tortured, and driven out of their country.

For proponents, the FTA/TLC is tied as much to hemispheric politics as it is to trade. The U.S. and Colombia are strategic partners, having signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement on October 30, 2009, which gives the U.S. access to Colombian bases from which to carry out “counter-drug” surveillance flights. Colombia has proved a bulwark against the two countries’ mutual antagonist, the Bolivarian Revolutionary country of Venezuela.

Some Congressional Democrats have spoken out stridently against the FTA/TLC, criticizing the Colombian government for not doing enough to curb violence against union organizers and members.

Harry

Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV), has argued that “it is a major mistake to set up the Colombia [FTA/TLC] legislation as the proxy for support for Colombia... An FTA is not a foreign-aid package. It is neither a favor for friendly governments, nor a substitute for sensible and sustained foreign-policy engagement in the hemisphere.”

Obama may well see the FTA/TLC in strategic terms, but some think Congress is unlikely to follow that lead. One reason is that opponents -- most notably, organized labor -- comprise part of the Democrats’ political base. In addition, polls show that most Americans have turned away from free trade. A 2009 Rasmussen poll found that 73% of Americans believe that free-trade agreements have had a negative effect on their families, while only 14% say they have benefited.

With those kinds of numbers and congressional elections approaching, it is doubtful members of Congress will want to stick their necks out for free trade, at least this year.

Cartoon from Witness for Peace.

Down but not out

Does that mean the FTA/TLC is dead? Hardly. It lingers ready to go to Congress, an Obama bargaining chip to appease Republicans or to trade for their votes on some other crazy Democratic scheme.

Ron

Colombia's Trade Minister, Luis Guillermo Plata, asked the U.S. on March 9 to "be sincere and tell us if the [FTA/TLC] is going to go ahead or not." A response from the White House came the next day when U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, said, “we are hopeful we can come to some resolution with members of Congress over the next several months, if not weeks… so that we can then go back to Colombia with a finite list of what we’d like to see get done.”

Kirk said that passing the agreement with Colombia is a priority of the Obama administration. The U.S. plans to give Colombia a “workable list” of legislative and judicial reforms that the administration would like to see the South American nation execute.

Chuck

Senator Charles “Chuck” Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, whined about the “apparent lack of urgency” in resolving issues surrounding the trade accord. “This delay in implementation hurts U.S. credibility around the world, not just economically but geopolitically as well.” He didn’t elaborate on how that is so, or what credibility he was referring to or what was so urgent about it.

Hillary

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who bypassed Colombia on her recent South American tour, met privately with Uribe in Montevideo, Uruguay, on Monday, Mar. 1, and confirmed Washington's plans to push the FTA/TLC.

Both were there for the inauguration of President Jose Mujica, a co-founder of the Tupamaro guerrillas who spent 15 years in prison, enduring torture at the hands of the brutal, U.S. backed, military dictatorship that ruled Uruguay from 1973-1985.

A midnight vote on an unrelated bill wherein the FTA/TLC is a silent partner may be more likely than open passage. Transparency, honesty, and giving a shit about the lives of the Colombian working class (or any other workers) are never on the Capitalist agenda. It’s always about the false value of Profit.

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