Now that the damage is done, the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is signed, and up and running, the United States has been conspicuously absent from the conversation about Colombia’s agricultural strikes.  Although newsworthy in England, Spain, Germany, and other European countries, most mainstream U.S. media outlets failed to take note of the manifestations until President Santos deployed 50,000 troops in Bogotá last Friday after protests got out of hand.

While The Guardian and the BBC published detailed accounts of the strikes, coverage in The New York Times and other U.S. publications has been limited.  The New York Times reprinted a short Associated Press piece on the militarization of Bogotá eleven days after the strikes began, but failed to mention Colombia’s FTA with the U.S.  With the exception of Reuters and The Huffington Post, coverage in other mainstream media outlets has mainly focused on President Santos’ response to demonstrations in the capital.

Although you wouldn’t know it from U.S. newspapers, there have been many newsworthy aspects of the now 19 day agrarian strike in Colombia.  For one, farmers in several regions of the country have managed to block major highways for close to two weeks, defying soldiers and riot police.  Tens of thousands of people across the country have gathered to bang pots and pans in a show of solidarity with the campesinos that has been remarkably widespread.  Their demonstrations have been met with excessive force on the part of Colombia’s riot police, prompting Archbishop Luis Augusto Castro Quiroga and local government officials in the department of Boyacá to publicly denounce the abuses.

Even more noteworthy, in terms of U.S. government and business interests, is the relationship between the FTA implemented in May of 2012 and current protests.  Considering the fact that this agreement is partly to blame for the farmers’ worsening economic conditions in Colombia, you would have thought it worth at least a passing mention.  Among other petitions, the striking farmers are asking the government to stop the importation of various agricultural products and demanding the immediate suspension of free trade agreements with the U.S. and the European Union.

Since the FTA between the United States and Colombia has gone into effect, both governments have touted the deal as a harbinger of economic growth.  A message on the website of Colombia’s U.S. Embassy reads, “With the FTA in place, U.S.-Colombia trade partnership is stronger than ever and the highly complementary U.S. and Colombian economies are reaping the benefits.”

The attached report goes on to highlight the fact that in the sixteen months the FTA has been in effect, U.S. agricultural exports to Colombia have increased by an astounding 68 per cent.  Barley, corn, cotton, wheat, and soybean farmers in the U.S. are enjoying the immediate elimination of tariffs, and poultry and pork producers are sure to benefit over the next five to ten years as their products become tariff-free.

The Colombian Embassy website proudly points out that U.S. farmers “are active in [their] support of the FTA.”

And why wouldn’t they be?  In 2012 U.S. farmers received $15 billion in agricultural subsidies from the U.S government.  They are now enjoying the elimination of tariffs on more than 70 percent of their exports to Colombia.  The International Trade Commission predicts that the FTA will increase U.S. GDP by a total of $2.5 billion.

For farmers in Colombia, however, the Free Trade Agreement has brought nothing but misery.  With small plots of land and limited technology, most farmers can’t compete with the sudden influx of agricultural and dairy products from the U.S. and Europe.  Coupled with the rising costs of production, free trade agreements have created an untenable situation in which farmers can’t make ends meet.

Before the FTA, potato farmers from the departments of Boyacá and Cundinamarca were protected by a 5 to 20 per cent tariff leveled on U.S. tuber imports. Now there is nothing standing between them and financial ruin.

Farmers of other agricultural products have met the same fate.  Oxfam International estimates that the average income of 1.8 million small farmers in Colombia will drop 16 per cent as a result of the FTA.  According to a 2011 Oxfam report, 400,000 farmers who were living on less than minimum wage before the FTA was implemented will lose between 48 and 70 per cent of their earnings.  They will undoubtedly join Colombia’s massive internally displaced population—the largest of any country in the world.  In fact, these farmers are likely part of the reason the number of internally displaced people increased by 46 per cent in 2012 in comparison with the previous year, according to a report published by the Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento (CODHES).

In response to protester demands, the Colombian government announced the suspension Thursday morning of a controversial resolution regulating the seeds Colombian farmers are allowed to plant in their fields.  Resolution 970 of 2010, which applies intellectual property laws to seeds, prohibits farmers from reusing patented seeds for commercial purposes.  Instead of continuing their tradition of recycling seeds from year to year, farmers must buy new seeds after every harvest or risk paying fines and spending time in jail.

Although the Instituto Colombiano de Agricultura claims that similar regulations have been in place since 1976, renewing this type of agreement through Resolution 970 was a requirement for U.S. approbation of the FTA.

It remains to be seen whether or not the mainstream U.S. media and the U.S. government will start to pay attention now that Monsanto and other genetically modified seed corporations are at risk of losing money.

The post U.S. media washes hands of Colombian free trade criticism appeared first on Colombia Politics.

Plan Colombia’s success reducing coca cultivation and strengthening Colombia´s democracy was tackled in two earlier articles, here I ask how it helped the fight against the FARC guerrillas.

When Plan Colombia started in 2002 the terrorist group stood 18,000 strong. Today they are a much smaller, more dispersed, yet still dangerous guerrilla group, currently in negotiations with the Colombian government to end their near 50 year fight.

While Plan Colombia originally focused on stemming the flow of illicit substances into major American cities, the events of 9/11 and the election of President Uribe, who campaigned for hard line measures against guerrilla groups, changed the rhetoric. And over 75% of Plan Colombia’s funding has been devoted to military and police assistance.

A success?

But despite this spending and while there have been high profile successes against the FARC throughout this period, the illegal group´s ability to adapt, innovate and remain a significant threat is notable.

When Plan Colombia began, Colombia was considered a failing state, and there were those who saw the FARC as a serious challenge to the authority and longevity of the Colombian state. The ability of the armed forces to halt the guerrilla´s progress was far from guaranteed. They were fighting against a well oiled and well funded military machine in the FARC.

Academic Jim Rochlin explains Plan Colombia´s work as a process to transform the Colombian military from an immobile, vulnerable and predictable force into a rapid, all terrain military machine capable of defeating a highly successful and well funded guerrilla group.

Plan Colombia sought to provide the Colombian military with a better level of equipment, training and intelligence capabilities. It was essential the military were trained for fighting in difficult terrain; high mountains and rivers.

Plans Patriota and Victoria

In 2004, President Uribe responded by enacting Plan Patriota which saw the deployment of 17,000 soldiers in an effort to debilitate the FARC. Plan Patriota´s success was mixed. During the operation of this plan, the FARC´s military capacity was shown with devastating effect. A 2006 attack on a bus full of innocent civilians in southern Colombia became an emblem of the group´s ability to strike at the heart of the nation.

Plan Victoria however, had far greater success. A key factor in this success was the role of intelligence and surveillance. A long standing problem in the Colombian military´s fight against the FARC was their inability to locate and target the guerrilla’s group’s senior leadership.

Colombian officials would often use the ‘impenetrable jungles’ as an excuse for such limited action where raids were impossible and bombing attacks too indiscriminate. Under Plan Colombia however, real time surveillance equipment was available to the Colombian military and included the use of heat sensors capable of detecting human activity, land radar systems, command and control systems for radar, the translations of intelligence analyses, improved logistical support and night vision goggles.

Such increased capabilities came to fruition in 2008, a year in which the FARC suffered numerous losses. An attack by the Colombian military on a FARC camp in Ecuador of that year saw the killing of the group´s second in command, Raul Reyes. The attack relied heavily on Plan Colombia’s heightened intelligence and surveillance capabilities and remains one of the msot successful hits against the rebel group.

The FARC suffered further serious setbacks in March 2008 when the group’s leader, Manuel Marulanda died of natural causes and the secretariat’s youngest member, Ivan Rios was murdered by one of his own bodyguards in exchange for a monetary award offered by the Colombian government.

The Santos regime has continued where the Uribe administration left off in terms of hitting the FARC secretariat. In September 2010, top military chief Mono Jojoy was killed in one of the first acts of the new government, and a year later Alfonso Cano, then leader of group was also taken out by the army while many assume Santos was negotiating in secret with the FARC to establish the talks today ongoing in Cuba.

The FARC’s control and command communications has also been weakened as a result of Plan Colombia, and the FARC’s declining membership can be attributed to this, along with demobilisation programmes. In 2002 for example, FARC soldiers numbered approximately 18,000 while today they are estimated at 8,000.

Despite such a drop in numbers, and a four year period in which the FARC suffered severe military setbacks, the guerrilla group still pose a significant threat (if not to the state itself as they once did). They have adapted to the increasing capabilities of the Colombian military and continually launch counter attacks due to their weaker position. (i.e. they are less able to launch military offensives).

This is highlighted by their response to the military’s successes of 2008. The FARC adapted, dispersing into smaller units in an effort to avoid surveillance and initiating more defensive, guerrilla like attacks. These include multiple pipeline bombings in the Putumayo municipality immediately after the death of Raul Reyes, and the execution of Luis Francisco Cuéller, the governor of Caquetá in December 2009.

In 2010, the FARC were responsible for the killing of 460 members of the security forces – and alarmingly – 2011 produced more casualties than 2002, when their membership was at its height.

Such attacks included a bomb blast in Antioquia, the use of mortars at a police station in Cauca and the continued use of mine’s throughout rebel controlled areas. In February of this year, seven members of the Colombian military were killed by the FARC and only this week, the FARC are accused of kidnapping two Spanish nationals, although they deny this.

What next?

The topography offered by Colombia is a key reason that the FARC have been able to successfully adapt their tactics in the face of Plan Colombia, and remain a live threat. Despite significant funding, the Colombian military have found it very difficult to control the remote and sparsely populated regions.

As such, despite the FARC being the military weaker side, Colombia´s geography mitigates the government’s advantage somewhat, thus making the rebels able to endure for longer periods. The rugged terrain of Colombia, with its high mountains, dense forests and other inaccessible landscapes, favours smaller guerrilla units as they are harder to detect and defeat. They can retreat to such terrain where they are protected from an enemy with increased capabilities and thus find it easier to regroup, rearm and continue fighting.

The FARC´s current leader, Timochenko has taken the rebels into negotiations with the Colombian government (although it is understood Cano himself initiated these talks) in an apparent effort to bring an end to a conflict that stems beyond the FARC’s inception in 1964.

That this is a sign of weakness by the FARC or by Santos himself is arguable, yet while negotiators mediate in Havana, the FARC and the Colombian military continue to battle back home. There is a long way to go before Plan Colombia objective of defeating the FARC can be realised. Many see the current state of play as a form of stalemate in which a negotiated end to the conflict is the most effective way out.

The post Plan Colombia and the FARC appeared first on Colombia Politics.

Plan Colombia has seen the United States provide approximately $8 billion worth of aid to Colombia since 2000.

Over the course of three articles I will look at how (and the what extent) Plan Colombia has worked to strengthen democracy, combat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and in this first piece, reduce  coca cultivation and trafficking.

When President Pastrana presented Washington the original version of Plan Colombia in 1999, the Colombian state was at a breaking point. The internal conflict had pushed the economy into crisis with the unemployment rate at a staggeringly high 18.2% and GDP retreating by 4.2%. The worst figures this side of the Great Depression.

Pastrana saw Plan Colombia as a way of reviving Colombia and issues such as coca cultivation were secondary concerns that would resolve themselves after peace had been achieved. The American Congress however had a different idea and  reformed Plan Colombia into an anti narcotics initiative, focusing aid on reducing the production and trafficking of cocaine from Colombian fields into major American cities.

Has it worked?

There are inconsistencies between the figures the United States and the United Nations have on coca cultivation but it´s clear Plan Colombia has reduced cocaine production. The UN shows that in 1999, 680 tonnes of cocaine were produced in Colombia; by 2011 (the latest figures available) this had reduced almost 50 per cent, to 345 tonnes. The US reports even more favourable results, suggesting a reduction from 520 to 195 tonnes over the same period.

Despite these positive results, initial efforts to stem cocaine production were not so successful. When Plan Colombia began, aerial eradication campaigns saw over 380,000 hectares of coca fields fumigated between 2000 and 2003.

The strategy was successful in reducing the hectares of land cultivated with coca crops, yet it  failed to stem cocaine production throughout this period. In 2007 for example, after seven years of continuous spraying increases, the UN statistics showed that cocaine production had risen to 600 tonnes per annum.

Why? Colombian coca farmers played the game and knew how to compensate for the effects of the aerial eradication campaign – they reduced the size of their fields, made their plots harder to find, and increased their per hectare crop yield. In short, innovation delayed the success of aerial eradication.

Farmers were forced to innovate, as for many there was no viable economic alternative to coca production. Worse, the attempts to resolve these economics have been weak, and played second fiddle once Alvaro Uribe was elected in 2002. Uribe undeniably achieved great success using Plan Colombia in his fight against the FARC,  but his relentless focus on tackling the security issues meant economic development plans were something of an after thought. Military funding and action eclipsed efforts to resolve the socio-economic factors behind illicit crop production.

Positive inducement schemes were introduced by Alvaro Uribe however, and ran from 2005 -2009. The objective was to create jobs with economic potential for rural families in conflict prone areas.

Despite the USAID mission in Colombia reporting ‘significant progress’ through 2010, the scope of the success has been limited by both the (restricted) size of the programme and security concerns.

In 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the alternative development programmes were – unhelpfully – not located in areas where the majority of coca is grown. And US experts, Jason Spellberg and Morgan Kaplan argue coca farmers have not been taught how to generate wealth independently.

But production has reduced in more recent years

Yes; analysts attribute this to a switch in focus from aerial eradication campaigns to more intensive, manual eradication. This strategy is more effective than aerial fumigation as it both kills the plant directly, and has the knock on effect of building a more significant government presence on the ground.

Risks, are however, higher as the military are more exposed. FARC and ELN guerrillas work to sabotage efforts, routinely laying mines and IED’s in coca fields. Such dangers may explain why manual eradication has been on a downward trend since 2010, despite its proven success.

Production is also down because of the increase in the presence of the security forces and the fact the guerrilla groups have been pushed back from areas they once controlled.

Statistics compiled by the US and the UN suggest Plan Colombia has been effective in reducing the production and trafficking of cocaine. The discrepancy in figures between the two bodies  however, troubles us. To understand the full success a more transparent and detailed methodology for data collection is needed.

Of course Plan Colombia has other aims too…We´ll look at those over the coming days.

Photo, Open Briefing

The post Plan Colombia: A success? appeared first on Colombia Politics.

A guest piece by Silvio Canto JR.

It is getting harder and harder to take President Obama seriously.  Can someone explain to me how last week’s “campaign speech” contributed to fixing our problems, or even understand them?

I agree with The Dallas Morning News: President offers programs but no debt solution 

He wants Congress to vote but forgets to tell us that the Senate Democrats have not passed a budget or even brought any of the Obama proposals to a vote. Does anybody remember the last time that the Senate Democrats put a serious issue to a vote?

Am I the only one who feels insulted by this man’s total lack of seriousness or disregard for reality?

Tuesday night, President Obama continued his disregard for Latin America. I guess that President Obama must think that Latinos just spend the whole day thinking about “immigration reform” or anticipating ”5 de Mayo” speeches.

Down under, and I mean south of Texas, we see violence exploding in Central America. The cartels are getting crushed in Mexico so they are finding fertile terrain in little countries like Guatemala and Honduras.

We spoke yesterday on my show with Ray Walser of The Heritage Foundation & Juan Gutierrez, a businessman who ran for president of Guatemala. They are both alarmed by what is happening in the region.

Even more dangerous, we see growing signs of Iran’s influence in Latin America.

Benny Avni reminds us of the Caracas-Tehran romance that will not promote US interests in the region:

“Western intelligence agencies have been watching Venezuela’s dealings with Iran with increasing alarm. Iran and its allies (including Syrian President Bashar Assad) get gasoline from Venezuela, which in return buys Iranian know-how – perhaps in housing, but surely in arms and other sinister stuff.
Trade between Iran and Latin America rose to $3.6 billion in 2011. With the exception of Brazil, the largest trading partners (Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela) were largely motivated by anti-Americanism.” (Avni)

This is happening 3 hours south of Miami!

President Obama’s indifference has divided Latin America into two blocs: The leftists who love preaching socialism and doing business with Iran; and the success stories, like Colombia, Peru, Chile & Mexico, who must be wondering if President Obama understands what is happening south of the border.

Frankly, it’s frightening to watch how President Obama has mastered the art of pandering, from calls for minimum wage & telling “hispanos” what they want to hear.

At the same time, it is even more frightening to see how Latin America is getting away from us because we have a leader who does not understand that “leadership” is also part of the job description.

Silvio Canto JR is author of the book, Cubanos in Wisconson, runs the US/Latin American talk radio show and writes here 

The post Another Obama speech that didn’t mention Latin America appeared first on Colombia Politics.