Colombian Paramilitaries and the United States:

Sam Salmon says on Apr 5, 2008, 21:57:

So something 'might' have happened.

BFD.

' a la orden!'

Wastelandlive says on Apr 5, 2008, 22:26:

This is breaking news? WTF?

Wasteland

Lcacique says on Apr 5, 2008, 23:30:

Sam Salmon: pretty arrogant and ignorant comment. I think the thousands of people whose families suffered great losses at the hands of paramilitaries would feel a little differently about such a relationship.

We encouraged paramilitarism in Colombia...not to mention mass forced displacement.

General William Yarborough stated in the sixties: ...a “concerted country team effort should be made now to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations…This structure should be used to pressure toward reforms known to be needed, perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents.�

Of course communist proponents is anyone that disagrees with US interests, professors, union leaders, campesinos, human rights workers, etc.

Hoy se nota en la floresta un ambiente de alegría. ¡Y el rumor de ranchería es mas dulce y sabe a fiesta!

juancegomez says on Apr 6, 2008, 06:27:

I suspect this was posted before or at least linked to, around the time of its original publication earlier this year.

Lcacique: I would say that the U.S. helped plant some of the seeds for paramilitarism and that does imply some co-responsibility for those and other crimes, including those you've mentioned or referenced, but in all fairness, many related events were hardly the direct result of that factor alone...when such things as internal intolerance, the emergence of the drug trade, political incapacity, and other elements have also participated.

deathnova says on Apr 6, 2008, 09:30:

It's well documented that Los Pepes had U.S. military backing and that we clearly would have designated certain intel for foreign use and handed it over as deemed necessary.

Lcacique says on Apr 6, 2008, 10:47:

juance: you are right. And right-wing death squads were used by wealthy landowners long before Yarborough's statement. The US obviously helped in terms of making such groups more organized (instead of just representing a few landowners...into an entity with a broader purpose) and more dangerous since they received training from the US. In terms of more recent history, as usual, we will have to wait some twenty years or more until the US government releases documents that it feels are no longer damaging in order to find out just how involved the US was involved with such groups. Even if they did not utilize them directly, the State Department knew that there was a relationship b/w the Colombian military and the military. They knew that the military shared information w/ the paramilitary. They knew that the military, on several occasions, surrounded areas as the paramilitaries would go in and carryout killings. Despite the fact that in their mind there was an established link b/w the paramilitary and the Colombian military, money kept flowing from Washington to the Colombian military. At the very least, it indicates that US interests were more important than the many Colombian lives that were devastated by the paras (collateral damage). I would argue that it probably indicates a lot more.

Internal intolerance, though it ABSOLUTELY existed without US involvement, certainly was utilized (arguably increased) and manipulated by the US government for its own profit.

The emergence of the drug trade is obviously on the shoulders of the US for several reasons. Citizens, for their demand of the substances, and the government's idiotic policies that pushed cocaine out of Peru and Bolivia into Colombia, then out of the hands of the cartels and into the hands of the illegal armed groups (paras and FARC).

Certainly Colombia shoulders blame as well, but the US is more responsible than most people like to admit. Juance, you are easily one of the brightest and most honest people here on PBH lets exchange addresses and talk about this over coffee in a few more decades, lol.

Hoy se nota en la floresta un ambiente de alegría. ¡Y el rumor de ranchería es mas dulce y sabe a fiesta!

Wastelandlive says on Apr 7, 2008, 16:12:

Geeze, where do these people come from?

No, DeathNova, that's not "we'll documented." It's not even poorly documented. It's suspected. It's implied.

It is, of course, an article of faith to conspiracy theorists and self-loathing anti-American Americans. And then there is the school or realists who don't believe it or disbelieve it... but feel that the Search Block had to do what it did, and they don't much care if we worked with them.

But no, it hasn't been proven.

Wasteland