Plan Colombia Bleeds into Neighboring Countries

On February 1, 2004, an assassination attempt against the president of the largest indigenous organization in Ecuador, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), was thwarted by his family. Leonidas Iza had just returned from Cuba after participating in an international congress against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or ALCA, as it is known in Spanish. Together with his wife, son, and a nephew, he barely escaped the 13 shots directed at them in front of CONAIE’s headquarters. His 19-year-old son was gravely wounded. Gutierrez’s government, however, claimed these were self-inflicted wounds. The indigenous community has accused Gutierrez of blatantly refusing to investigate. They see it as clear evidence of political repression. 

Events like these are common to Colombia where drug traffickers, paramilitaries, guerrilla members, and countless innocents blend together, becoming frequent targets from all sides in the 50-year-old armed conflict. According to findings in a recent Amnesty International report, during 2002 more than 4,000 civilians were killed for political motives; 1,000 people “disappeared”; more than 400,000 were displaced; and at least 2,700 people were abducted—1,500 by armed opposition groups and paramilitaries. Such bloodshed had long been absent in Ecuador. 

However, ever since a partnership on “collaborative efforts against drug trafficking” was signed between Ecuador and Colombia, there has been an atmosphere of fear and paranoia everywhere. Denoted as the second stage of Plan Colombia, some of its procedures entail military action and “campesino training” by the Ecuadorian government on its border with Colombia, the continuation of coca crop fumigation regardless of increasing health complaints in the area, the strengthening of migration laws dealing with Colombian refugees, and “an increase in the exchange and coordination of information about people who act above the law and attempt to cross the frontier common to both countries.” 

A direct result of this partnership was evidenced on August 24, 2003, when collaboration between Colombian and Ecuadorian security forces led to the arrest of Simon Freire, a prominent Colombian guerilla member, in Quito, Ecuador. According to Tintají, Freire is said to have been in Ecuador to arrange a meeting between the French government and guerrilla leaders about its possible involvement in peace talks and the release of a guerrilla hostage, a French citizen. President Gutierrez denies any collaboration exists between Ecuadorian and Colombian security forces. Yet, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe publicly congratulated the Ecuadorian national police for its efforts. Moreover, director of public relations at the U.S. Embassy Marti Stell was quoted in Tintají as acknowledging that Freire’s detention was “an exemplary act of cooperation between the Colombian and Ecuadorian police, a conjoined operation that was carried to perfection. It is a success in the campaign against regional terrorism.” 

At the Tribunal of Dignity, Nora Cortiña reminded the public that Molina’s newfound friend, General Mason, was officially charged with abducting over 500 children and relocating them among military families—only one of many tactics used to repress political opposition. Most importantly, Argentina was not acting alone. The military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Paraguay were engaged in a concerted campaign with the United States, between the 1970s and 1980s, to obliterate any leftist, socialist, or communist “tendencies” in the southern cone of the continent under a strategy infamously called Plan Condor. This military strategy would spur masterminds of cruelty, like Pinochet in Chile, and create a powerful network of oppression where Argentinean political refugees could be arrested in Uruguay and Uruguayan members of the resistance could be tortured in Brazil. The exact extent of this network is not yet known, but its tactics now seem to be applied in Ecuador and Colombia. 

“To forget the past and remain quiet,” Cortiña argued, whose 24- year-old son was disappeared in 1977 by Argentinean armed forces, “is to become an accomplice of these terrible crimes.” 

The latest assassination attempts, and Molina’s night cruise with Mason in Argentina, are indicators that Plan Colombia and irregular methods of repression common to that conflict are bleeding into neighboring countries. As Joselinda Iza affirms during her testimony at the tribunal, quoted by the Independent Media Center, “There is a declared persecution against social movements, the media, and democratic sectors of this country that oppose its current regime.”