In the belly of the beast, the Business section of the NYT, appeared today an unbelievably nice article about the Venezuelan socialist revolution underway. The articles describes Chavez’ push to transform both public and private enterprises into worker-managed and worker-owned… Read moreThe Bolivarian revolution goes mainstream
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
Two stories from Venezuela this month exemplify the pressures faced by President Hugo Chavez: on one hand, an increased push from Washington and the bourgeois opposition to capitulate in his populist programs or face destabilization; on the other, a powerful campesino movement demanding an extension and faster pace of populist reforms, especially land redistribution. Reports of local military commanders taking a hard line with campesino protesters point to continuing divisions within Venezuela’s armed forces.—WW4 REPORT
U.S. TO LAUNCH PROPAGANDA BLITZ?
On July 20 the US House of Representatives approved appropriations of $9 million in 2006 and $9 million in 2007 for groups opposing the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, according to information minister Andres Izarra, who complained that the beneficiaries of the aid are promoting abstention in the country’s Aug. 7 municipal council elections and encouraging civil disobedience. The same day, the House passed an amendment authorizing the broadcasting of radio and television signals into Venezuela to provide “precise, objective and complete” information to Venezuelans and counter “the anti-Americanism” of a new regional television network, Televisora del Sur (Telesur). “Chavez is an enemy of freedom and of those who support it and promote it,” said Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL), who introduced the amendment.
Chavez responded on July 21 by warning that his government will block any US attempts to interfere with the Telesur broadcasts, which were set to begin on July 24. Chavez noted that if the Cuban government had been able to successfully neutralize the signal of the rightwing Radio Marti broadcasts since the 1980s, “here too we will neutralize any signal.” Chavez warned that the US government “will regret [this] because the response would be more powerful than the action, and will generate more conscience in Latin America.”
The Venezuelan embassy in Washington also issued a communique rejecting Mack’s amendment. The communique notes that Venezuela has private and public television stations, and suggested that it would be cheaper for US taxpayers if Mack were to try to convince private Venezuelan media to carry the US government’s Voice of America broadcasts, since none currently do.
Telesur is controlled 51% by the Venezuelan government, 20% by Argentina, 19% by Cuba and 10% by Uruguay. The station is set to broadcast four hours a day during a two-month trial period, with plans to expand in September. Headquartered in Caracas and with offices in Buenos Aires, Brasilia, Montevideo, La Paz, Bogota, Havana, Mexico City and Washington, Telesur hopes to offer an alternative to CNN and European networks. (La Jornada, Mexico, July 21, 22)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24
CAMPESINOS TAKE CARACAS
On July 11, as many as 5,000 Venezuelan campesinos (2,000 according to Agence France Presse) marched in Caracas to protest the violent deaths of some 130 campesinos around the country and to demand that the government take steps to halt the killings and abuses against campesinos and to speed up the process of agrarian reform. The protest, dubbed “Zamora Takes Caracas,” was organized by the Ezequiel Zamora National Campesino Front (FNCEZ) and backed by the Ezequiel Zamora National Agrarian Coordinating Committee (CANEZ), numerous agricultural cooperatives and the Jirahara and Prudencio Vasquez movements, among others. (Ezequiel Zamora was a populist military leader who led battles for campesino rights in Venezuela in the mid-1800s.)
The campesinos marched from the capital’s Fort Tiuna to the Attorney General’s Office, where they handed in a document detailing their demands, then to the National Assembly, where they submitted a proposal for an “agrarian constituent assembly” to strengthen the rights of the campesino movement and step up the process of agrarian reform. An estimated 75% of Venezuela’s land is in the hands of 5% of the population and remains mostly unused, while the country imports 70% to 80% of its food.
Agriculture and Lands Minister Antonio Albarran, who also serves as acting president of the National Land Institute (INTI), announced that a high-level commission will be set up to study the demands of the campesino movements and address specific complaints on a case-by-case basis. FNCEZ leader Braulio Alvarez, a deputy of the legislative council of Yaracuy state and member of the INTI board, said the new commission would work to get the courts to begin legal proceedings against 30 people believed to have ordered the murders of campesinos. Alvarez himself survived an attack on his life on June 23. (Radio Nacional de Venezuela, July 12; Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales, July 13; Centro Nacional de Tecnologias de la Informacion (CNTI), July 11; Resumen Latinoamericano, July 12; Report by Adriana Rivas posted July 14 on Colombia Indymedia)
On May 14, nearly 4,000 campesinos organized by the FNCEZ marched through the streets of Guasdualito, Apure state, in western Venezuela near the Colombian border. They were protesting, among other issues, the abuses committed by Gen. Oswaldo Bracho, commander of the Theater of Operations #1, which covers the states of Barinas, Tachira and Apure. The FNCEZ says campesinos in the zone have suffered an increase in human rights accuses since Bracho took over the command last November. In one incident, Bracho led 40 soldiers in a raid on the community of Canadon-Bella Vista, in the south of Barinas state, and seized five members of a campesino cooperative whom he accuses of providing shelter to leftist rebels. The five campesinos remain jailed in Santa Ana, Tachira state, even though there is no proof to back up the accusations against them, and local leaders point out that campesinos often have no choice but to provide shelter to armed groups. The FNCEZ said Bracho also tried to block campesinos from reaching the May 14 demonstration, holding them up on the highways for as long as five hours. (Endavant, July 13) In the July 11 mobilization in Caracas, the campesinos informed Congress about Bracho’s abuses. (RNV, July 12)
The US media seemed to ignore the July 11-13 mobilization by thousands of Venezuelan campesinos, but did cover a July 15 anti-government march in Caracas by fewer than 400 doctors and nurses who work in public hospitals. The health care workers were demanding wage increases and protesting the presence of some 14,000 Cuban doctors in Venezuela. The Cubans provide health care to the country’s most underserved neighborhoods and rural areas under a special program sponsored by the government of left-populist president Hugo Chavez Frias. (AP, July 15)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17
Weekly News Update on the Americas
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NOTE: The leftist rebels active in western Venezuela are the Bolivarian Forces of Liberation (FBL). They took up arms shortly before Chavez came to power in 1998. According to the report on Colombia’s Agencia Prensa Rural: “Their objective is in no case to attack the actual government, but to guarantee that the Bolivarian revolution will continue advancing towards the consolidation of popular power, and to contribute to defending the process in case of external aggression. In spite of being an armed group, they have initiated very few actions.”—WW4R
Agencia Prensa Rural, July 13
http://www.prensarural.org/venezuela20050713.htm
See also WW4 REPORT #111
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from Weekly News Update on the Americas
In spite of the “Justice and Peace” law passed in June, which provides an amnesty for Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary networks in exchange for “demobilization,” the networks appear to be as active as ever. Peasant and unionist leaders throughout the country continue to be targeted, even as the government of President Alvaro Uribe touts the “demobilization” program as evidence of progress towards peace to keep the US aid flowing in. Killings are reported this month from Dabeiba and Ciudad Bolivar, both in the Cordillera Occidental in Antioquia department, and El Castillo, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Meta department.—WW4 REPORT
DABEIBA: PARAMILITARIES KILL CAMPESINO
On July 3, at a checkpoint on the road leaving the town of Dabeiba in the Colombian department of Antioquia, rightwing paramilitaries took campesino Albeiro Higuita Agudelo off a local bus heading for Camparrusia. Later that afternoon, Higuita’s body, showing visible signs of torture, was found in Boton, 10 minutes from Dabeiba on the road to Medellin. Higuita was a member of the Campesino Association of Dabeiba; he lived in Balsillas, a rural community two and half hours from the town of Dabeiba.
The paramilitaries operate a permanent checkpoint at the exit point from Dabeiba, where they stop campesinos and control the amount of goods they can carry. Campesinos are not allowed to take tools, horseshoes or more than 30,000 pesos (less than $13) worth of food out of Dabeiba. Police and army forces are well-informed of the existence of the paramilitary checkpoint but leave it alone, since they are operating in coordination with the paramilitary groups, according to the Campesino Association of Dabeiba. Often the paramilitaries tell the campesinos that the confiscated goods can be reclaimed at the police station, and “in fact we do find them there,” the Association reports.
The Association is asking national and international solidarity organizations to demand that the government put a stop to the paramilitary checkpoint and the collaboration between public security forces and the paramilitaries. (Comunidad Campesina de Dabeiba, July 9 via Agencia Prensa Rural)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17
META: ANOTHER CAMPESINO KILLED
On the morning of July 10, armed paramilitaries abducted campesino Edgar Palacios in the urban center of El Castillo municipality, in the southern Colombian department of Meta, and took him to a house in the town of Medellin del Ariari, also in Meta. Later that evening the paramilitaries took Palacios in a vehicle to the bridge over the Cumaral river, five minutes from the town center of Medellin del Ariari. His body was found the next day, in the garden of a home next to the bridge. Colombian soldiers and police agents from a counter-guerrilla force had an active presence in the town and surrounding area from July 10 to 17–including carrying out a house-by-house census and setting up strict checkpoints on access roads–yet they failed to take any action against the paramilitaries. On July 11, after Palacios’ body was found, police agents called together town residents and urged them to expose the paramilitaries present in the area. Yet on July 13, several known paramilitaries were seen playing soccer with the police agents stationed in Medellin del Ariari. Later the same day, the body of a man dressed in camouflage who was unfamiliar to local residents was found 15 minutes outside the urban center of the town. (Comision Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz, July 20)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31
CIUDAD BOLIVAR: UNIONIST ASSASSINATED
On July 28, hired killers shot to death union leader Gilberto Chinome Barrera in La Estrella neighborhood of Ciudad Bolivar. Chinome was a former president of the refinery section of the United Union of Workers (USO), which represents workers at the state-run oil company Ecopetrol. In recent years he had focused on writing, including articles exposing administrative corruption at Ecopetrol. He had also sued Ecopetrol and the Colombian state. (USO Communique, July 29, via Colombia Indymedia)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31
COLOMBIAN AMBASSADOR GETS IADB POST
On July 27 Luis Alberto Moreno, Colombia’s ambassador to the US, was elected president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), replacing Enrique Iglesias of Uruguay, who retired in May after 17 years in the position. Moreno won 60% of the votes of the bank’s shareholders and 20 votes from the 28 member nations. Brazilian candidate Jose Sayad, currently an IADB vice president, came in second with seven country votes. Moreno’s election was seen as a victory for the US, which failed to get its candidate elected president of the Organization of American States (OAS) in April. IADB disburses over $5 billion in loans every year. Moreno starts his five-year term on Oct. 1. (Financial Times, UK, July 27)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31
Weekly News Update on the Americas
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See also WW4 REPORT #111
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2005
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HUGE PROTEST AGAINST TRADE PACT
On July 14, some 500,000 people–construction workers, teachers, students and many others–marched in seven of Peru’s regions to protest the Andean free trade treaty being negotiated between the US, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. The protests, organized by the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), were also seeking an end to privatization and other neoliberal economic policies, and the resignation of Labor Minister Juan Sheput. The CGTP is also demanding the convening of a constituent assembly to rewrite Peru’s Constitution, and a new social security law based on the principles of solidarity. (Adital – World Data Service, July 15; Campana Continental Contra el ALCA, July 15)
A day earlier, July 13, some 4,000 people marched in Lima in another protest against the Andean trade pact, this time organized by the Association of Pharmaceutical Industries of National Origin and Capital (ADIFAN) and the National Convention of Peruvian Agriculture (CONVEAGRO). The noisy march stretched for 20 blocks, ending at the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Rather than rejecting the Andean trade pact as a whole, ADIFAN and CONVEAGRO are demanding that Peru drive a harder bargain in the negotiations. “The Peruvian negotiators seem to be gringos, since until now they have achieved nothing for the country. On the contrary, they have given up 50% of the national market to the US,” said CONVEAGRO president Luis Zuniga. Protesters, some of them on horseback, carried signs that said: “Competition, yes. Monopoly, no,” and “Don’t give it away. Negotiate.” Growers of sugar cane, rice, corn, potatoes and cotton fear US agricultural subsidies will make it impossible for them to compete. The negotiations have been going on for more than a year; the next round begins on July 18 in Miami. (Adital, July 15; CCCA, July 15; AP, July 14; Miami Herald, July 14)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17
AMAZON: INDIGENOUS SEIZE OIL COMPANY
On July 8, some 300 Shipiba Coniba indigenous people from the community of Canan de Cachiaco (or Cashiyacu) entered the Maquillas (or Maquias) camp of Maple Gas Corporation in Ucayali province, in the Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto. Led by 80 Shipiba warriors armed with machetes, spears, and bows and arrows, they proceeded to take control of at least nine of the 27 oil wells on the company’s lot 31-B; the 150 workers at the camp were taking their lunch break and were caught off guard. “The occupation was totally peaceful, there were no material damages, since the company’s security personnel proceeded to close the fuel extraction valves to prevent leaks, and this was done in the presence of the crime prevention prosecutor, Julio Barreto,” said Ucayali deputy mayor Jose Diaz. The 80 Shipiba warriors are maintaining the occupation of the camp; the other community members returned home later on July 8.
Roberth Gimaraes, a leader of the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Jungle, in Ucayali, said the Shipiba seized the camp to protest the environmental, social and cultural damage done to their communities by Maple Gas. Gimaraes said that in recent years an epidemic of stomach infections has affected the Shipiba communities, killing an average of five people a year. The Shipiba believe the stomach infections are caused by the company’s dumping of toxic waste in the Cachiaco river. They are demanding an environmental impact study to determine the extent of the pollution. They are also demanding that Maple Gas pay rent for the use of their territory, and provide basic necessities like schools and medical examinations. They want a high-level government delegation to come and meet with them over their demands. Barreto, the local prosecutor, apparently brokered a pact between the Shipiba and Maple Gas personnel in which both sides agreed not to touch the installations until a dialogue process could be established to address the Shipiba demands. As of July 10, the Shipiba were continuing to occupy the site.
Maple Gas general manager Guillermo Ferreyros said the conflict arose because the community doesn’t receive any of the royalties that the company pays to the Peruvian state. Ferreyros said the government’s oil company, Perupetro, was going to address the problem in a meeting with the Shipiba during the first week of July, but the meeting was cancelled for economic reasons. (La Ultima, Peru, July 9; AFP, July 8; 24 Horas Libre, Peru, July 9; RPP Noticias, Peru, July 10)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 10
Weekly News Update on the Americas
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See also WW4 REPORT #111
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From Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31: In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the Oral Criminal Court in the Chilean city of Temuco acquitted six Mapuche rights activists in a retrial on charges of “terrorist illicit… Read moreChile: Mapuche acquitted of “terrorist” charges
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
On May 29 in Tocache province, in the Huallaga valley of San Martin in north central Peru, at least 3,500 campesino coca growers (cocaleros) armed with sticks surrounded a group of 230 police agents charged with carrying out coca leaf eradication operations. According to police, the resulting clash left 17 agents hurt–one by a bullet, the rest by beatings. Twenty cocaleros were injured; Tocache mayor Nancy Zagerra said three of them are in serious condition with bullet wounds. (La Jornada, Mexico, May 31, from DPA)
The 230 anti-drug police agents had arrived in the area on May 26, along with 50 workers from the Control and Reduction of Coca Crops in the Alto Huallaga (CORAH) project. On May 28, the anti-drug forces set up camp in the village of 5 de Diciembre, where according to cocalero leader Nancy Obregon they forced the campesinos from their homes and destroyed their crops, even after the campesinos showed them documents from the state-run National Coca Company (ENACO) demonstrating that the crops were legal. “They said those [documents] were no good and they threw everyone out. The people have had to sleep outside,” said Obregon. Outraged at the incident, Obregon organized nearly 4,000 cocaleros to confront the agents at their camp the next day. (La Republica, Lima, May 30)
On May 31 a representative of the Office of the Defender of the People, Manlio Alvarez Soto, traveled to Tocache from Tingo Maria, in neighboring Huanuco region, to meet with the cocaleros and gather information about the conflict. Alvarez also visited two of the wounded cocaleros in the Tingo Maria hospital, where they were taken for treatment. (LR, June 1) On June 3, some 6,000 cocaleros from Monzon and Alto Huallaga marched in Tingo Maria in support of the Tocache cocaleros. (LR, June 4) Obregon said the cocaleros will start an open-ended strike on June 27. (LR, May 30)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 5
Weekly News Update on the Americas
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 10, 2005
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Another escalation is reported in the persecution of the Mapuche indigenous people of Chile: the imprisonment of the editor of a Mapuche magazine on six-year-old charges related to a land occupation, effectively preventing him from travelling to Canada for a… Read moreChile: Mapuche editor imprisoned
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
AMNESTY LAW PASSES
On June 20, the last day of ordinary sessions for the Colombian Congress, the Senate approved the “Justice and Peace” law, which paves the way for a “demobilization” and amnesty process under negotiation with the country’s right-wing paramilitaries since last July. The law grants the paramilitaries political status, allowing them to potentially benefit from pardons. Under the demobilization program, paramilitary commanders are supposed to confess all their crimes in order to benefit from reduced sentences of 4-8 years in prison. The Chamber of Representatives approved the law on June 21 in an extraordinary session. Colombia’s right-wing paramilitaries have historically been strongly supported by the state. (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, June 21 from AP; Inter Press Service, June 22)
Under the “Justice and Peace” law, which President Alvaro Uribe Velez signed on June 22, a group of 20 prosecutors will investigate within a maximum period of 60 days the crimes of each of the 10,000 paramilitary members who are eligible to demobilize from now through December.
Congressional representative Gustavo Petro of the leftist Independent Democratic Pole (PDI) party accuses Uribe of pushing through the “Justice and Peace” law in order to benefit relatives linked to paramilitary groups in Antioquia, where Uribe served as governor from 1995 to 1997. Petro said that Santiago Uribe Velez, the president’s brother, formed and financed a paramilitary group called “The 12 Apostles” around 1993-1994. The group, based out of the Uribe family’s La Carolina ranch in Yarumal, Antioquia, killed at least 50 people. Santiago Uribe was interrogated in 1997 about the group but the case was archived in 1999 for lack of evidence. Relatives of the victims of the June 1990 Campamento massacre, in which four people were killed and two disappeared by “The 12 Apostles,” have brought the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Petro also said two first cousins and an uncle of President Uribe led a paramilitary group known as “Los Erre,” linked to the killings of another 50 or more people in Titiribi and Armenia-Mantequilla municipalities in Antioquia. Carlos Alberto Velez Ochoa, Juan Diego Velez Ochoa and Mario Velez Ochoa were initially sentenced in the case but were released from prison after a year for lack of evidence. President Uribe and his family also apparently had close ties to Antioquia drug lords Pablo Escobar Gaviria and Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, who is related to the Velez Ochoa family.
(ENH, June 23 from correspondent; IPS, June 22)
On June 20, Colombia’s Congress approved two other laws pushed by Uribe’s government: a pension reform law which will take effect in 2010, and a law providing foreign investors with legal guarantees protecting their contracts from any changes in law or policy. But Congress rejected four legislative proposals presented by Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe, including one which would have unified the state’s intelligence services and another which would have increased the length of obligatory military service from 18 to 24 months. The defense minister narrowly avoided being fired the previous week when the Chamber of Representatives–but not the Senate–passed a vote of censure against him. (ENH, June 21 from AP)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 26
U.S. HOUSE OK’S NEW MILITARY AID
On June 28, the US House of Representatives voted 189-234 to defeat an amendment which would have cut $100 million in military aid for Colombia from a $734 million “Andean Counterdrug Initiative” in the 2006 foreign operations appropriations bill (HR 3057). The amendment to cut funding for the US-sponsored “Plan Colombia” military program was introduced by Reps. James McGovern (D-MA), Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Dennis Moore (D-KS). The Washington-based Latin America Working Group (LAWG) described the Colombia amendment as “the single most hotly-debated issue on the foreign operations bill.” Congress members who spoke out against it included Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), who noted how Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by Colombia’s ongoing internal violence, and amendment co-sponsor McCollum, who pointed out that in Colombia, “90% of violent crimes…go unpunished, and human rights abuses among Colombia’s military are all too common.”
Later on June 28, the House voted 393-32 to approve the full bill, officially titled the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2006. In addition to the $734 million Andean Counterdrug Initiative, the bill will provide military aid of $2.3 billion for Israel and $1.3 billion for Egypt. In order for the bill to become law, a final version must be passed by both the House and Senate and then signed by the president. A subcommittee met June 29 to begin work on the Senate version. (LAWG Update, June 30; News from Lutheran World Relief, July 1; US Department of State Press Release, June 29 via allAfrica.com; Press Release from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, June 28 via US Newswire)
Weekly New Update on the Americas, July 3
SOLDIERS CHARGED IN MASSACRE
The Colombian attorney general’s office has ordered the arrest of six soldiers to face homicide charges for the killing of five civilians on April 10, 2004, in the village of Potosi, Cajamarca municipality, Tolima department. The army claimed the five villagers were killed in crossfire as a military patrol was pursuing a group of leftist guerrillas; the soldiers argued that they hadn’t been able to distinguish the victims as civilians because dense fog limited their visibility. The attorney general’s office ordered the arrests after an autopsy on 17-year old campesino Albeiro Mendoza showed he was shot at a distance of between 30 and 60 centimeters–practically point blank. The other victims were Mendoza’s son, six-month old Cristian Albeiro Mendoza Uruena; the baby’s mother, 17-year old Yamile Uruena Arango; 14-year old Julio Cesar Santana; and 24-year old Norberto Mendoza. The family was taking the baby to the doctor for an ear infection when they were killed. (El Tiempo, Bogota, July 1 via Servicio Prensa Rural)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 3
Weekly News Update on the Americas
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 10, 2005
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Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: PARAMILITARY AMNESTY PASSES, NEW AID PENDINGfrom Weekly News Update on the Americas
On May 21, residents of the northern Ecuadoran provinces of Sucumbios and Orellana began an open-ended civic strike to demand improvements to roads, schools, housing and health care in the region, which borders on Colombia and Peru. The protesters seized 114 oil wells on nine fields operated by the state-run oil company Petroecuador and blocked access roads to oil facilities, forcing a shutdown of drilling and repair work.
As the strike continued on May 25, President Alfredo Palacio declared a 60-day state of emergency in Sucumbios and Orellana, deeming the oil region a “security territory.” The state of emergency allows the restriction of certain civil rights. (La Jornada, Mexico, May 25; AP, May 26)
Late on May 25, after the government signed an agreement promising to address their demands, the protesters ended their strike and left the oil fields. Under the terms of the agreement, Petroecuador and other state agencies must finance roads and electricification projects in the region. The state of emergency remains in effect. (AP, Reuters, May 26)
On May 24, Palacio outlined a six-point plan for restoring stability in Ecuador over the next 18 months with a call for “a great national accord.” The proposed steps include calling a “People’s Assembly” to define an agenda of change; the assembly’s proposals would then be put to a referendum, and in the same election, representatives would be chosen for a constitutional assembly. Palacio became president on April 20 after mass protests forced the ouster of Lucio Gutierrez from office. (LJ, May 25, 26, from wire services)
The National Federation of Campesino, Indigenous and Black Organizations (FENOCIN) and other grassroots organizations in Ecuador are planning protests during the 10th round of negotiations over a free trade treaty (TLC) with the US, Colombia and Peru, scheduled for June 6-19 in Guayaquil. Grassroots groups are demanding that Palacio suspend the TLC negotiations and instead call a referendum on the trade pact. (El Comercio, Peru, May 28, from EFE)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 29
Weekly News Update on the Americas
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Continue ReadingECUADOR: STRIKERS SEIZE OIL WELLSfrom Weekly News Update on the Americas
HUALLAGA VALLEY: COCALEROS CLASH WITH COPS
On May 29 in Tocache province, in the Huallaga valley of San Martin in north central Peru, at least 3,500 campesino coca growers (cocaleros) armed with sticks surrounded a group of 230 police agents charged with carrying out coca leaf eradication operations. According to police, the resulting clash left 17 agents hurt–one by a bullet, the rest by beatings. Twenty cocaleros were injured; Tocache mayor Nancy Zagerra said three of them are in serious condition with bullet wounds. (La Jornada, Mexico, May 31 from DPA)
The 230 anti-drug police agents had arrived in the area on May 26, along with 50 workers from the Control and Reduction of Coca Crops in the Alto Huallaga (CORAH) project. On May 28, the anti-drug forces set up camp in the village of 5 de Diciembre, where according to cocalero leader Nancy Obregon they forced the campesinos from their homes and destroyed their crops, even after the campesinos showed them documents from the state-run National Coca Company (ENACO) demonstrating that the crops were legal. “They said those [documents] were no good and they threw everyone out. The people have had to sleep outside,” said Obregon Outraged at the incident, Obregon organized nearly 4,000 cocaleros to confront the agents at their camp the next day. (La Republica, Lima, May 30)
On May 31 a representative of the Office of the Defender of the People, Manlio Alvarez Soto, traveled to Tocache from Tingo Maria, in neighboring Huanuco region, to meet with the cocaleros and gather information about the conflict. Alvarez also visited two of the wounded cocaleros in the Tingo Maria hospital, where they were taken for treatment. [LR 6/1/05] On June 3, some 6,000 cocaleros from Monzon and Alto Huallaga marched in Tingo Maria in support of the Tocache cocaleros. (LR, May 6) Obregon said the cocaleros will start an open-ended strike on June 27. (LR, May 30)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 5
CUSCO: RESIDENTS SEIZE MINE
On May 24, some 2,000 residents of Espinar province in the southern Peruvian region of Cusco seized a copper mining camp run by the British-Australian corporation BHP Billiton-Tintaya. The protesters looted and burned camp facilities, and police used tear gas to try to remove them; dozens of people were injured. Residents are demanding that the mining company provide $20 million a year in funding for social programs in the region and that it take measures to improve infrastructure and protect the environment. BHP Billiton-Tintaya is the third largest copper mine in Peru, producing 80,000 tons a year, 12.1% of national production.
As the number of residents surrounding the camp swelled to 4,000 on May 25, BHP Billiton-Tintaya pulled its personnel out and shut down operations at the camp. The same day, the protesters beat the mayor of Espinar when he asked them to dialogue with the mining company.
On May 26, a government delegation headed by Energy and Mines deputy minister Romulo Mucho arrived to negotiate with the protesters, who now numbered some 6,000 and were gathered in the plaza in Yauri, the provincial capital of Espinar. The crowd was furious to see that the Energy and Mines minister had not come with the delegation, but eventually agreed to a dialogue.
The company is not participating, saying it will not negotiate under pressure, and that it will not contribute more than what it agreed to in an 2003 contract: 3% of utilities, with a minimum payment set at $1.5 million a year. In the first year of the contract the company paid $2 million. (LJ, May 25 from Reuters; Reuters May 26)
Police in Yauri say that early on May 26 they found pamphlets of the Maoist rebel group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) scattered in the streets, calling on residents to “rid our land of the traitor dogs and those miserable gringos who loot our resources.” The news led some media to suggest that the Espinar protests were organized by “subversives,” but legislator Jose Taco, a member of the government negotiating team, rejected the theory. “I’m from the zone, I know the people, and I deny the subversive character, they’re not criminals, [though] there are groups which take advantage,” he said.
On May 27, after a 12-hour meeting with the government delegation, Espinar residents agreed to suspend their protests while local leaders consult with their bases about whether or not to accept a June 2 meeting to renew dialogue with the company. BHP Billiton-Tintaya has not yet agreed to the dialogue, and says it will keep its operations shut down for security reasons. Economy minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski told the media on May 26 that the company will leave Peru if the protests are not resolved quickly. (Reuters, May 26, 27)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 29
AYACUCHO TO AMAZONIA: CAMPESINOS STRIKE
On May 23, thousands of campesinos in seven Peruvian regions began blocking highways in an agrarian strike to demand fair prices for their produce, protest unfair competition from imports and reject a free trade treaty being negotiated with the US, Ecuador and Colombia which they say will exacerbate their current crisis. In addition, the campesinos were demanding that sales tax be reduced from 19% to 4% for the agricultural sector, and that the state agrarian bank, Agrobanco, open up branches in rural areas to grant low-interest credits to campesinos. The strikers mainly produce rice, cotton and bananas in Peru’s northern regions, and potatoes in the south.
The protest was initially called as a 48-hour strike in Tumbes, Piura, Cajamarca, Loreto and Ayacucho departments, and as an open-ended strike in Lambayeque and San Martin. In Tumbes, on the northern coast bordering Ecuador, some 5,000 rice and banana producers blocked several kilometers of the Panamerican highway. In the northern coastal city of Chiclayo, in Lambayeque, police arrested some 20 people who were watching campesinos blockade the Panamerican highway. Strike actions also took place in Piura, also on the northern coast, and in Cajamarca, just inland in the northern Andes.
Further east, on the edge of the Peruvian Amazon, more than 10,000 rice growers from San Martin and Loreto departments blocked the road linking the towns of Yurimaguas (Loreto) and Tarapoto (San Martin) and shut down activities in the zone. Campesino leader Luis Zuniga, president of the National Convention of Peruvian Farmers (CONVEAGRO), noted that Peruvian authorities had encouraged farmers to grow more rice, causing a production glut which has forced prices down.
In Ayacucho, in the south-central Andean highlands, more than 8,000 campesino potato growers began their strike on May 23 by occupying the offices of the Regional Department of Agriculture and blocking the main access highways into the city of Huamanga.
Agriculture Minister Manuel Manrique said late on May 23 that he had reached a pre-accord with the Ayacucho producers, and that they had agreed to lift their strike once negotiations with campesino representatives from the other regions were successful. Under the terms of the accord, the government agreed to purchase 4,100 tons of potatoes from the Ayacucho producers. (Telam, AP, May 23, 24; Prensa Latina, May 24; ANSA, May 23; La Jornada, Mexico, May 26) The strikes ended May 26 after the government signed an accord with the northern producers, in which it pledged to buy this year’s entire crop of rice in order to stabilize prices. (LJ, May 27 from DPA)
President Alejandro Toledo left Peru on May 24 to begin a 17-day trip in which he is to visit China, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the Occupied Territories. Manrique, the agriculture minister, was also scheduled to take part in the trip. (AP, May 24)
The agrarian strike came in a conflictive week in Peru. On May 24, some 7,000 nurses employed by the state-run Social Security agency began an open-ended national strike to demand a wage increase. In the northern city of Trujillo, state workers burned tires and threw paint at offices of the Chilean airline Lan-Peru in a protest to demand a series of labor laws. On May 23, Aymara indigenous residents of the Uros islands in Lake Titicaca began a 48-hour strike to demand that the National Institute of Natural Resources stop barring them from using the lake’s flora and fauna. On May 24, the Aymara announced that their strike would be open-ended. (LJ, May 26 from DPA, AFP, Reuters; AP, May 24)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 29
Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html
See also WW4 REPORT #107
/node/278
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
http://WW4Report.com
Ecologists Warn of Disaster as U.S. Sprays Glyphosate in Threatened National Parks
by Daniel Leal and combined sources
In the past few months, the people of Quibdo, capital city of the Colombian Pacific coast department of Choco, have observed daily the landing at their local airport of helicopters and small aircraft, packed with “gringos” from Plan Colombia and their Colombian associates.
They have come with one objective: to spray the illicit crops located in the huge territory of Choco. In the Feb. 11 edition of the Colombian news magazine Semana, Choco journalist Alejo Restrepo, writes that biodiversity and watersheds of the region are threatened by this chemical assault.
For centuries, indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians have preserved the natural environment of Choco, one of the richest areas in flora and fauna of the country. Their way of life, based on fishing and small-scale cultivation of yucca and banana, is now threatened. Restrepo especially protests the decision to approve the spraying of glyphosate without an environmental impact study.
Bismarck Chaverra, director of the Choco-based Institute for Environmental Studies of the Pacific, interviewed in that same issue of Semana, reported 347 documented cases of people with acute respiratory and dermatological diseases in Choco, with 70% of the affected children under three years old.
Chaverra’s group is part of a coalition of Colombian and international environmental and human rights groups that oppose the spraying. A February petition against the spraying in Choco has been signed by Friends of the Earth Latin America, the Open Society Institute, Washington Office on Latin America and the biodiversity protection organization Grupo Semillas, as well as several Colombian groups.
Also of special concern is potential damage to Colombia’s 50 national parks, which cover 10 million hectares, according to Ecolombia, a network of Colombian environmental groups. Ecolombia also notes the irony that this threat comes just as the parks are increasingly being opened to “eco-tourism” interests. Ecolombia protests this policy as a “privatization” of the nation’s parks. The group writes that “the national parks are the genetic bank of Colombia. To privatize them or bombard them with poison would be much more grave than to put the National Library to the flame.”
In late March 2004, Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo of Independent Workers Revolutionary Movement (MOIR) led a significant number of Colombian legislators in issuing a formal statement of protest against the spraying. The Transnational Institute, a global group of activist scholars, notes that spraying in the national parks would constitute a violation of several treaties to which Colombia is signatory, including the Biodiversity Convention, ILO Convention 169 on the rights of indigenous peoples, the Ramsar Convention on wetlands, and articles 97 and 80 of the Colombian constitution, which protect natural resources.
Under such pressures, the administration of President Alvaro Uribe agreed to suspend spraying in the parks last March pending further study. In the 2003 Colombia aid package approved by the US Congress under the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, conditions were also imposed mandating protection of water sources and protected areas, and restitution for damaged property and legal crops. The measure required that funds for the aerial eradication only be made available if the Department of State certified to Congress that certain condition are being met. In December 2003, the Deparment of State issued a study to Congress, “Report on Issues Related to the Aerial Eradication of Illicit Coca in Colombia,” officially certifying that the conditions were being met. In February 2004, the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), a hemispheric alliance of environmental law professionals, issued a statement contesting the certification and urging Congress to “withhold funding for the chemical eradication program until DoS demonstrates full compliance with the conditions.” AIDA stated: “A thorough look at the DoS report demonstrates that the…conditions have not been satisfied. For example, DoS fails to demonstrate that the spraying does not pose unreasonable risks of adverse effects on the environment, or that complaints of harm to health or legal crops are appropriately evaluated and fair compensation provided.”
But Congress did not act, and the Uribe administration has just announced its intention to resume spraying in three national parks: Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a northern park declared a biosphere reserve in 1986 by UNESCO; and Catatumbo and La Macarena, both in the cloud forests of the eastern Andean slopes.
Colombia’s deputy interior minister Mario Iguarán told reporter Yadira Ferrer of TierramĂ©rica, a Mexico-based trans-American environmental journal, that the renewed spraying is permitted by Resolution No. 0013, issued in 20003 by the Colombian National Narcotics Council (CNE). The Resolution allows fumigation of nature reserves where there is evidence of illicit crops and little possibility of eradicating the drug plants by hand.
Colombian environmental groups have filed a motion to annul the resolution before the Council of State, the highest juridical body for administrative decisions, but Iguarán argued that it does not have the power to suspend the operations. In Ferrer’s May 14 account, Iguarán also noted the March study by the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), an OAS body, finding that glyphosate does not have significant environmental impacts.
The report, requested by the US, Colombia and the United Kingdom, investigated the human health and environmental effects of the glyphosate mixture used for drug eradication in Colombia. The report concluded that human health risks from exposure to the spray mixture–glyphosate mixed with a surfactant, Cosmo-Flux–were “minimal,” while the risk of direct effects for wildlife were judged to be “negligible.” But the US Office on Colombia, a coalition of NGOs, notes that buried deep in the 121-page report are concerns about the impact of the spraying on aquatic organisms and amphibians. The report points out that the environmental “toxicity of the mixture of glyphosate and Cosmo-Flux was greater than that reported for formulated glyphosate itself.” (This contrasts with the toxicity of the mixture for humans, which was found to be consistent with the levels reported for glyphosate alone.) The report states that “aquatic animals and algae in some shallow water bodies may be at risk” from “direct overspray of surface waters.” The report recommends the eradication program “identify mixtures of glyphosate and adjuvants that are less toxic to aquatic organisms than the currently used mixture.” There was no immediate response from US or Colombian governments to this recommendation. Colombia praised the report. “This scientific study shows us the way. We are doing the right thing and we are going to continue the spraying program,” said Colombian Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt.
Ferrer’s story questioned the report’s findings that the herbicide’s risk for the environment “is not significant.” Santiago Salazar CĂłrdova, coordinator of a commission of Ecuador’s Environment Ministry that advises the Foreign Ministry on drug fumigation policy, protested to Ferrer that the report failed to define what would constitute a “significant” threat. Spraying in Colombian areas near the Ecuador border has been a source of tension with Quito, which has formally protested to the Uribe government.
Salazar also said the study was conducted between September and March, “too little time to talk in terms of cancer-causing effects, for example…”
Iguarán admitted the ideal option would be manual eradication of drug crops, a method the government hopes to use on some 3,000 hectares of protected areas. But he insisted that it is necessary to fumigate some 75,000 hectares, which include areas of the national parks where the presence of armed groups impedes access by land.
The decision to fumigate in the parks may cost Colombia development aid from EU countries. The Colombian daily El Espectador reported April 28 that the Netherlands asked the national parks director, Julia Miranda, to confirm the decision to fumigate in the protected areas, because the measure “could be motive to request the suspension of activities financed by this Embassy.”
Juan Mayr, a former environment minister, told Ferrer the 2003 CEN resolution has created “one of the gravest situations that can happen in regards to the environment in Colombia” and is “an attack against the collective heritage of the Colombian people.”
Peasants and Bari indigenous peoples who inhabit the threatened areas are also protesting the planned fumigations. The Bogota daily El Tiempo reported May 16 that 11 peasant organizations from the Rio Guayabero region and La Macarena National Park issued a statement calling for manual eradication rather than spraying. Gustavo del Rio, spokesman for the Association of Peasant Environmentalists of the Ariari and Guayabero Rivers (ACARIGUA) said that spraying will only cause the peasants to start planting coca in other areas, destroying more forest. He said that the peasants would be willing to eradicate the crops manually if the government were to provide them with alternatives for survival and eventual relocation outside the park area, where farming is officially forbidden.
Spraying has apparently already begun in Sierra Nevada National Park. Elber Dimas, a community leader from the corregimiento of Guachaca, located on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, told El Tiempo that that children are suffering from diarrhea and skin problems as a result of exposure, and that some Kogui and Wiwa Indians have been forced to abandon their communities due to the spraying. Col. Oscar Atehortua, commander of the Counternarcotics Police North Region, assured that the spraying is taking place outside the national park and the indigenous reserves.
There are two opposite international perspectives on what has to be done in Colombia to address the roots of the coca phenomenon. The first, dictated by the US, calls for simple eradication of the crops, by force and by chemical spraying. The second, promoted by the European Community, is to address the injustice of the Colombian social structure, and investing in the needs that drive peasants to plant coca. But Uribe is now jeopardizing relations with the EU to pursue a national agenda that calls for privatization and free trade as well as forcible eradication of illicit crops. Free trade and the eradication program were said to be the top items on the agenda in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s five-hour meeting with Uribe in Bogota April 26.
RESOURCES:
Alejo Restrepo Mosquera in Semana, Feb. 11
http://semana2.terra.com.co/archivo/articulosView.jsp?id=84740
Bismark Chaverra interview in Semana, Feb. 11
http://semana2.terra.com.co/archivo/articulosView.jsp?id=84735
“El Choco Tambien es Colombia,” petition online at Rebelion
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=11667
Ecolombia page on threat to national parks
http://www.ecolombia.org/parques.htm
TNI Drugs and Democracy program page on Colombia
http://www.tni.org/drugscolombia-docs/thedebate-e.htm
Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) statement
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Z8z58__oJ40J:www.aida-americas.org/template
s/aida/uploads/docs/AIDA_on_DOS_2003_certification.pdf+Resolution+No.+0013+colom
bia&hl=en
AIDA homepage
http://www.aida-americas.org/aida.php
Yadira Ferrer in Tierramerica, May 14
http://www.tierramerica.net/2005/0514/iarticulo.shtml
US Office on Colombia Info-Brief on the CICAD report
http://usofficeoncolombia.org/InfoBrief/042505.htm
CountryWatch summary of article from El Tiempo, May 16
http://aol.countrywatch.com/aol_wire.asp?vCOUNTRY=54&UID=1521182
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
A Father Waits for Justice as Deadly Accident Reveals Air-Interception Exercises
A tragic air accident on Peru’s northern coastline in August of 2001 cost the lives of two exemplary pilots, one Peruvian and one American. It received little notice at the time. But a WW4 REPORT investigation into the incident has exposed a series of blunders, mysterious official silence from both Lima and Washington, and finally a trail of corruption extending from the hand of Peru’s former intelligence czar Vladimir Montesinos–now convicted on multiple corruption charges–to the U.S. State Department. The regime of Peru’s authoritarian President Alberto Fujimori, ousted in November 2000, is now widely recognized to have allowed drug flights to get through, and the U.S.-coordinated program to shoot the flights down was officially suspended after the embarrassing downing of an innocent missionary plane in April 2001. But training for the program apparently continued at least through 2003 and the State Department won’t talk. The father of the Peruvian pilot killed in the 2001 accident wants to know why. And since your tax-dollars may be funding a clandestine military operation in South America that violates official policy–you should too.
by Peter Gorman
“If you want to talk about corruption, the United States is continuing to sacrifice youth such as my son in the name of stopping cocaine. But this is not what they are doing. This is a charade.”
So says Carlos Lama Borges, a retired Peruvian Air Force captain whose pilot son’s body was found washed up on a desert beach four years ago. Despite evidence of faulty equipment in his son’s plane, a Peruvian government investigation blamed the pilot in the accident, prompting Lama to file a lawsuit against the Peruvian armed forces and U.S. military contractors to discover the truth. For his effort, his home was burglarized, and materials related to the case stolen. The ongoing case, ignored by both the U.S. and Peruvian media, may reveal that a controversial air-interception program launched under Plan Colombia continued well after its official suspension.
In 1990, Washington and Peru entered into an agreement–formalized as a bilateral treaty in 1993–whereby the U.S. would aid Peru’s armed forces in the location, identification, interception and/or neutralization of small aircraft suspected of carrying coca base from Peruvian territory to finishing laboratories in Colombia. The Airbridge Denial Program, as it was known, defined the role of U.S.-contracted planes and pilots (and later, radar operators) as one of location and identification, with the Peruvian Air Force (FAP) calling the shots on which planes were to be intercepted or shot down. The actual shooting was also to be the responsibility of the Peruvians. A similar program with the same name was also utilized in Colombia with the same public protocol.
That either the Peruvians or Colombians were actually given the green light to call the shots on shootdowns has been disputed by former DEA agent Celerino Castillo, who was one of the US men involved in a precursor program to Airbridge Denial in Peru in the 1980s. Castillo, in conversation with this reporter, claimed that despite the Peruvians being given the final word on paper, the shootdown orders “always originated with the U.S. That was not something we were going to trust to anyone else.”
Castillo, a Bronze Star winner in Vietnam who served with the DEA in Peru in 1984 and ’85, said the real authority was with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, whose men accompanied the DEA flights that in turn accompanied the FAP flights. “I flew on those shoot-down missions. Nobody, I mean nobody, shoots down anything unless the CIA says so. n those days we flew on helicopters and the Peruvian soldiers would lean out the window with FN rifles and blast holes from above drug smugglers’ planes. I was on those flights. Yes, the Peruvians did the shooting but it was always the U.S. who gave the OK.” Several Peruvian pilots involved with the program, speaking on condition of anonymity, concurred with Castillo’s assessment.
Between the years 1990 and 2001, official FAP reports claim to have intercepted and forced down or shot down a total of 101 drug-carrying planes. Whether that number is accurate has long been open to debate, as it omits all reference to planes that were forced or shot down which were not found to be carrying drugs. If those are included the total would probably be considerably higher. But the program probably never would have come under public scrutiny if not for some deadly incidents which cost innocent lives. The first actually resulted in the program’s suspension, following an investigation and demands for justice from the survivors.
BUNGLE IN THE JUNGLE
On April 20, 2001, at roughly 10:35 AM, a Cessna 185 pontoon plane carrying three missionaries and an infant was misidentified as a suspected drug-carrying plane by US pilots contracted by the CIA as part of the Airbridge Program and shot out of the sky outside of Pevas, in the Peruvian Amazon. The pilot, Kevin Donaldson, had his leg shattered by a gunshot fired by a Peruvian fighter jet, a Cessna A-37B Dragonfly, but managed to bring the plane down into the Amazon safely. James Bowers, like Donaldson a missionary with the Association for Baptist World Evangelism, as well as Bower’s son Cory, escaped unharmed–but his wife, Veronica Bowers, and their infant adopted daughter Chastity, were both killed by a single bullet that passed through the mother’s head and then killed the baby. Donaldson believes the same shot set the engine alight and ricocheted into his leg.
The shootdown occurred on the eve of newly elected President George Bush’s first appearance at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec. In the weeks leading up to the summit, the president of Uruguay, Jorge Battle Ibanez, had announced his intention to call for an end to the failed War on Drugs. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Vicente Fox of Mexico had announced their intentions to second Ibanez’ call. If they proceeded with their plan, George Bush–who had inherited Bill Clinton’s Plan Colombia and intended to expand it–would have not only been upstaged, but the entire Plan Colombia could have been thrown into a political tailspin. The shootdown, therefore, was either tragic serendipity–or carried out on orders that a drug plane be encountered and shot down that day to give Bush a “victory” to trumpet in Quebec.
If it was the former, the shootdown involved absolute stupidity on the part of the two CIA-contracted pilots who identified the plane as a possible drug flight, as the Cessna was known throughout the region and had filed a flight plan and was following it to the letter. If it was the latter–if an order was given take down a drug flight to undermine Ibanez’ position at Quebec–then any plane would have served the purpose, and it was simply bad luck that Donaldson and the Bowers happened to be in the sky that morning.
As both Donaldson and his wife later maintained, the plane was repeatedly strafed while listing upside down in the river. A photographer in Iquitos, the Amazon port city where the plane was brought, reported that only one bullet out of over 60 came from anywhere other than the bottom of the plane.
Did the CIA contractors know the plane was not carrying drugs? Was the strafing was intended to ignite the plane’s remaining fuel, causing an explosion which would have erased all trace of its occupants and identification number, allowing Washington to claim the plane was a drug flight? In any event, the plane did not explode–but the shoot-down did upstage the call for an end to the Drug War by the three South American presidents.
The shoot-down also caused Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) to call for Congressional hearings into the Airbridge Denial Programs in both Peru and Colombia. The programs were suspended immediately. At the subsequent hearings it was decided that both programs would be revamped–with better procedures in place to protect innocent planes–before the suspensions would be lifted.
A U.S. investigation into the shoot-down placed the blame on the Peruvian pilots and poor communications; the Peruvian investigation exonerated the Peruvian pilots, while blaming the U.S. personnel and, again, poor communications. Both countries agreed to financial settlements with survivors. (See postcript below.)
DEATH PLUNGE ON THE PACIFIC
On August 19, 2003, more than two years after the suspensions began, the White House announced that President Bush had approved resumption of the Colombian Airbridge Denial Program within three days. Among the changes to the program was that the State Department, through Plan Colombia, would take over the training of Colombian pilots and the flying of the identification planes, effectively taking it out of the hands of the CIA. The subcontractor DynCorp, which had been assigned the mission of identifying the drug flights for the CIA, lost that contract. (The company continues to carry out aerial fumigation flights in Colombia.)
However, a new State Department contract went to ARINC, a Maryland-based aviation company that regularly contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense–particularly in the areas of providing communications, electronics and night-vision capacity to fighter craft. According to an ARINC press release dated April 24, 2002, over a year before the program was resumed in Colombia, the company was “awarded a competitive contract by the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command to act as contractor for the U.S. Airbridge Denial Program in Colombia and Peru.” The release said the contract was to run “through July 28, 2003.” Yet the Airbridge Program has never been officially resumed in Peru.
In fact, ARINC was working with the Airbridge Denial Program long before the missionary plane shoot-down. A contract between the FAP and ARINC dated June 2, 2000, secured by WW4 REPORT, has ARINC in charge of upgrading Peru’s fleet of Cessna A-37B Dragonfly jets and training FAP pilots in interception techniques and tactics. Calls to ARINC and Flight Test Associates, an Oklahoma company subcontracted by ARINC to run the pilot training program, verifies that the contract was ongoing even prior to 2000. No White House announcement of the continued training after the Amazon shoot-down was made, however, and no one outside a small group of people involved it was aware of its existence.
Nonetheless, the training did continue after the shoot-down, and on August 23, 2001, several months after the Airbridge Program was suspended, FAP pilot Lieutenant Miguel Angel Lama Barreto, 28, and USAF Lt. Col. (r) Arnold Balthazar, 47, plunged into the Pacific Ocean just north of Piura, on Peru’s northern Pacific coast, while executing drug-plane interception practice maneuvers in a Dragonfly. Both Lama and Balthazar died in the crash, caused when their jet stalled and their ejection equipment failed. Lama’s body, still strapped into his seat in the ejection position, was recovered two days later. Balthazar’s body has never been recovered. A team of U.S. Navy divers brought in from Hawaii searched for more than eight days before search was called off.
Lt. Miguel Angel Lama was one of Peru’s brightest pilots, specializing in flight maneuvers in the Dragonfly. A drug-plane interdiction instructor, he was the son of FAP Captain Carlos Lama, a highly respected pilot in the Peruvian Air Force. Miguel is referred to in official Peruvian materials as “an instructor’s instructor.”
Arnold Balthazar’s resume reads like an induction speech at the Air Force Hall of Fame. A cum laude graduate of the University of Portland, OR, which he attended on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, he graduated from USAF Pilot Training in 1978, became an Air Combat Maneuvering Instructor the same year, training in basic interceptions. He became a Flight Commander in 1982 and an F-15 instructor pilot the same year, a position he held, with increasing responsibilities, until 1988. Between 1988-1991 he was Chief of Weapons and Tactics at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, during which time he was selected by the USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chariman Gen. Colin Powell, Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney on the F-15’s capability and employment during Operation Desert Storm.
Balthazar retired from the Air Force in 1991, joining the Air National Guard and working out of the Air Force Reserve Test Center in Tucson, AZ, from 1991-1998. He retired as a lieutenant colonel USAF.
Awards he earned during his career included the Wing Top Gun F-15 Award in 1988, the Pacific Air Force’s Outstanding Performer of the Year Award in 1991; and the Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Channault Award as the USAF’s Outstanding Aerial Tactician of the Year in 1995–the only time the award has been presented to someone not on active duty in the Air Force. He also developed no-cabin-light night-flying systems currently in use in the Air Force, and developed an F-15 Training Plan that was included in USAF manuals “in its entirety”.
In short, both Lama and Balthazar were superior pilots who should not have crashed and died while performing an exercise. But they did. And they did it while exercising for a program that was supposed to be suspended. Unraveling their deaths leads to a web of corruption as well as an abyss of incompetence.
THE TRAIL
Following his retirement Balthazar became an owner/operator of Lead Turn Enterprises, a flight-test, navigational training, air-to-air engagement and aviation systems consulting firm. He contracted with Flight Test Associates of Tucson, AZ, to install his night-vision system in FAP interceptor planes in 1999, and had a second contract with Flight Test Associates as a counter-drug intercept instructor for Colombian and Peruvian instructor pilots that ran from 1999-2000. Flight Test Associates was itself subcontracted by ARINC, already established as a contractor for both aircraft upgrades and intercept training for the Defense Department. Balthazar’s partner in the intercept training, USAF Captain (r) Neville Sonner, was employed directly by Flight Test Associates.
After the missionary shoot-down, someone–though neither the State Department, DoD, ARINC or Flight Test Associates will admit it was them–decided that one of the key ingredients to maximize the safety of non-drug flights was to have Peruvian pilots pull up alongside all planes suspected of carrying drugs and make eye contact with the pilots. Eye contact would theoretically allow the pilots to make a judgement as to whether the suspect plane was being piloted by someone who looked like a drug-smuggler or a missionary and respond accordingly. For some aircraft–those capable of flying at speeds the A-37B is capable of–this was a wacky but physically possible maneuver. For others–like the single-engine Cessna that Kevin Donaldson was flying when it was hit–eye contact with the pilot of an A-37B was impossible: Donaldson’s plane had a top speed of 137 mph when empty; with five passengers it couldn’t hit 125 mph. The A-37B, on the other hand, with a top speed of over 500 mph, stalls at under 140 except when the flaps are in a take-off or landing position.
On the flight in question, FAP pilot Miquel Lama and Balthazar were practicing exactly this intercept maneuver with a second plane piloted by FAP Lt. Nilton Lopez Zuniga and Sonner. They had already practiced three maneuvers; the fourth called for the planes to drop in altitude to under 3,000 feet, slow to 140, intersect, and then for one of them to try an evasive maneuver. Lopez and Sonner did just that; when Lama and Balthazar turned to chase, their plane stalled. Moments later Sonner claimed he saw the cockpit roof fly off the stalled plane; he expected to see both pilots eject and parachute to the sea. He and Lopez took their plane up to 9,000 feet to be able to identify the exact points where the parachutes landed, but there were no parachutes. The ejection seats failed and both pilots crashed into the Pacific still strapped into the plane.
A Peruvian military investigation into the accident quickly blamed it on “pilot error”–blaming Lama and Balthazar for their own deaths. But Lama’s father, retired FAP pilot Carlos Lama, demanded a Peruvian congressional investigation and launched a lawsuit against both the FAP and ARINC. His legal demands unleashed a mountain of official paperwork–nearly 1,000 pages, including the contracts between the FAP and ARINC, Balthazar’s training logs in Peru, US Embassy and DoD paperwork, and a host of other materials.
Initially, Lama was trying to ascertain whether ARINC’s “aircraft modernization” contract held them responsible for modernizing the ejection equipment and parachutes in his son’s plane–equipment that was more than 29 years old. Some of that remains unclear: the paperwork suggests that the FAP was responsible for changing the equipment, but that GRUCAM, the U.S. Defense Department military liaison program in Peru–which had contracted ARINC–was to provide that equipment with monies from Plan Colombia. ARINC’s Bob Warner, who heads up the corporation’s Oklahoma City office, claims that the modernization contract “had us there to install night vision cockpits but nothing in our contract called for us looking into the ejection seat apparatus.” When asked about the accident, Warner said “The flight that went down was not one of the modernized aircraft,” then quickly added that “I cannot speak to the accident in which the pilots died. There’s a lawsuit going on related to that and my lawyers have told us not to talk about it.”
But Carlos Lama’s investigation turned up more than he’d anticipated. Shortly after his investigation into his son’s death began his home in Lima was subject to a robbery in which all of his initial notes and nearly everything he owned pertaining to his son was looted. “They took pictures, his military things, paperwork, his letters telling me about the intercept program–everything. I was supposed to stop looking. No one wants anyone looking too deeply into this.”
There were reasons for his feelings. One of the names that comes up on three separate contracts that connect the U.S. Embassy in Lima to GRUCAM and the DoD as well as to ARINC, Flight Test Associates and the FAP is a retired Peruvian Air Force major, Jose Luis Gamboa Burgos, listed as the official representative of ARINC and FTA in Peru. The address he lists as the official address of both ARINC and FTA in Peru is that of his brother, Luis Felipe Gamboa Burgos–today recognized as a major player in Peru’s cocaine mafia.
While there has never been any proof that the lawyer Jose Luis Gamboa is dirty, his brother Luis Felipe is another story–and the use of his address as the official location in Peru of a DoD subcontractor raises eyebrows. A former security officer in the FAP, Luis Felipe left the military (and his five brothers who were still in it at the time) in 1989 to become an aide to Vladimiro Montesinos, a former Peruvian army captain with School of the Americas training who was then working on the presidential campaign of Alberto Fujimori. The following year, Fujimori was elected to his first term as Peru’s president and Montesinos became the power behind the Fujimori throne as well as the CIA’s man in Peru, earning $1 million a year from the Agency for ostensibly helping Peru eliminate the coca trade. Montesinos actually used that money to create a secret police force–the National Intelligence Service (SIN)–that helped coordinate all of the coca base shipments moving from Peru to Colombia for finishing and export. Between 1990 and 2000, Montesinos became the jefe to whom all those who wanted their shipments protected paid protection money. Those who didn’t pay, with few exceptions, found their shipments being discovered and confiscated by the Peruvian narcotics police with the help of the DEA–or their planes shot out of the sky by the FAP with the help of the CIA. Montesino’s SIN rarely missed anything.
To help him coordinate his efforts, after Fujimori’s election, Montesinos hired Luis Felipe Gamboa to work with CORPAC–the Peruvian corporation that runs all commercial aviation in the country, including security. Rumors began to spread almost instantly that Gamboa was helping cocaine leave the country by circumventing security, through his work with CORPAC. It wasn’t until several years had passed, however, that he was indicted for security fraud, a charge that appears to have disappeared as quickly as it came up. He nonetheless left CORPAC and went to work as a liaison between the FAP and Montesinos.
Not long after he began working with Montesinos, Luis Filipe Gamboa suggested that his wife, Maria del Carmen Lozada Rendon de Gamboa would make a good congresswoman, and in 1995 she was elected to Peru’s Congress. She had a reputation for strong-arming her colleagues, but nothing came of it until July, 27, 2001, when she was impeached after it was revealed that she had received the monies used in her 1995 election campaign from Montesinos. She was removed from Congress on August 18, 2001 and remains under investigation for influence peddling and spying for Montesinos in Congress.
During the investigation of Carmen Lozada Gamboa, it became public record in the notorious “vladi-videos”–secret videos of Vladimir Montesinos meeting with top Peruvian politicians whose relase were instrumental in the downfall of the Fujimori regime–that her husband had been receiving between $3,000 and $5,000 monthly from Montesinos for more than 10 years from 1990 to spy on CORPAC and later the FAP for the SIN. He became a fugitive shortly after his indictment and remains in hiding.
When questioned by WW4 REPORT on the propriety of using the address of a man who was (at that time) a suspected cocaine mafioso and spy, ARINC’s Bob Warner responded: “He [Jose Luis Gamboa] was a fellow vetted and recommended to us by the US embassy. He was a former officer in the Peruvian Air Force. I think this ends this conversation.”
More than two-dozen calls to the State Department over a three-month period asking about Luis Felipe’s connection to ARINC and their having cleared the use of his address as ARINC’s Peruvian location–as well as inquiring as to why there continued to be Airbridge Denial exercises when the program had been shut down indefinitely–went unreturned.
Calls to the former GRUCAM commandant who signed off on at least one contract between ARINC and the FAP that named the indicted Luis Felipe Gamboa’s address as ARINC’s official Peruvian address, were met with a genteel response from his spokesman, Lee Rials. “Col. Perez doesn’t remember that contract. He probably signed off on thousands of things while he was Group Commander down in Lima and he just doesn’t remember it.”
Rials is probably telling the truth for Col. Gilberto Perez, who is now the Commandant of the Western Hemisphere Institite for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of Americas) at Fort Benning, Georgia.
The question of who signed off on the vetting of Jose Luis Gamboa as ARINC’s representative is a valid one, and that of ARINC’s official Peruvian headquarters being in the home of his brother Luis Felipe, a man who was spying for Montesinos, even more so. Luis Felipe would be privy to flight schedules and missions, the number of U.S. planes in the air on a given day, even what pilots were working in Peru at a given time as well as a host of other information that would be invaluable to someone moving drugs through the air.
That the State Department refuses to return calls addressing the issue after several months of calling would appear inexcusable.
IN THE END
What began as a father’s concern that his son was being wrongfully blamed for pilot error in the accident that cost his life, is certainly more than that. How much more is difficult to ascertain given that no one will answer the questions. And there are several.
First: Who authorized the Airbridge Denial Program practice exercises to continue after the program was suspended indefinitely?
Second: Who decided it was in the interests of the pilots to look into the eyes of the pilots they were intercepting, potentially requiring them to fly at stall-speed?
Third: Who was actually supposed to modernize the ejection systems? A second stall occurred over Piura on Feb. 10, 2004 while the pilots performed the same maneuver as Lama and Balthazar, but in that crash both pilots ejected successfully. ARINC’s Warner says his company’s contract ran out at the end of 2003, and so denies any knowledge of it. In a second suit, Carlos Lama brought a civil action against the Peruvian government for continuing to perform the dangerous maneuver; Peruvian authorities claimed they were no longer carrying out such maneuvers, and dismissed the case.
Fourth: Who allowed Luis Filipe Gamboa’s address to be utilized as the official Peruvian address of ARINC and FTA–and why didn’t anyone notice that that would be the equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse?
No one is liable to take the responsibility for any of those decisions. Carlos Lama has already been offered a settlement by the Peruvian FAP for the loss of his son’s life, but he has turned it down, preferring to find out who was responsible rather than taking the money to shut up. His lawsuit against ARINC is proceeding but may not get far: ARINC has apparently never officially registered as a company in Peru and therefor not only has avoided paying taxes, but has avoided having any assets to lose either. And it is doubtful that the DoD will permit any lawsuit to be pursued in the U.S. that would require the release of classified documents–which involve much of ARINC’s work in Peru.
“My Angel is gone,” says Carlos Lama. “I just want to find out who is responsible, but I don’t know if they will let me. They have too much to protect and don’t want light in those dark corners.”
POSTSCRIPT: The Missionary Plane Shootdown Settlement
The April 20, 2001 shoot-down of a plane carrying American missionaries over the Peruvian Amazon by the Peruvain Air Force (FAP) after it was identified by CIA-contractors as possibly carrying drugs continues to have ramifications in both Peru and the US.
US Payment for the Shoot-down:
In 2002, the US, which maintained that the wrongful shoot-down was the result of a problem with Peruvian communications, nonetheless agreed to pay the survivors and their families a total of $8 million dollars. The monies were paid out in this way:
James Bowers: $3,270,000.
Cory Bowers (James and Veronica’s son): $1,000,000.
Kevin Donaldson (surviving pilot of plane): $1,000,000.
Barbara Donaldson (Kevin’s wife): $1,000,000.
Garnett Luttig, Sr (Veronica’s father): $ 575,000.
Charlotte Luttig (Veronica’s mother): $ 575,000.
Garnett Luttig, Jr.(Veronica’s brother): $ 290,000.
Patrick Luttig (Veronica’s brother) : $ 290,000.
In addition, Peru agreed to reimburse the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism $100,000, for medical expenses incurred as a result of Kevin Donaldson’s wounds, and $43,561 in reimbursement for expenses incurred in the funerals of Veronica and Charity Bowers. The Peruvian government also agreed to refurbish or replace the plane that was shot down and to contribute to the building of a recreation center for the association in Iquitos, to be open to the public.
The final decree ordering and accepting the above payments, which was signed in Peru on March 21, 2002, also included a gag order, which effectively prevents Kevin and Barbara Donaldson–who initially stated that the downed plane continued to be strafed while upside down in the Amazon–from repeating that claim.
RESOURCES:
Peter Gorman’s October 2001 story on the Iquitos shoot-down from Narco News
http://www.narconews.com/Issue15/junglebungle.html
Peter Gorman’s wesbite
http://www.pgorman.com/
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
