The US Hand In War & Peace In Colombia
The US Hand In War & Peace In Colombia
‘The U.S. bears a tremendous responsibility for the fact that Colombians are convinced that … the guerillas are the ones who are the ones most responsible for the civil war,’ one NGO worker told MintPress
By Andalusia Knoll Soloff @andalalucha | October 13, 2016
In this March 18, 2015 photo, a man walks his dog next to a mural depicting former President Alvaro Uribe, in Bogota, Colombia.
BOGOTA — Over 100,000 students and members of the general public took to the streets of Bogotá on Oct. 5 in support of the peace accords which had been rejected by razor-thin margin in a public referendum three days prior.
While expressing their support for the peace process, the protesters specifically criticized former Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe, calling him a paraco, or paramilitary, and letting him know that the people were berraco, Colombian slang for furious.
They chanted: “¡Uribe, paraco, el pueblo está berraco!” (“Uribe, paramilitary, the people are furious!”)
. . .
The FARC was formed in rural Colombia in 1964, when a group of farmers rose up in arms to challenge the landowner class and take political power. Since forming, the FARC has been at war with the Colombian army and the various U.S.-backed paramilitary groups that have formed to combat them. The 52-year armed conflict took a devastating toll on Colombian society, with 7 million people displaced, 267,000 murdered, and more than 46,000 disappeared, according to the Colombian government’s Register of Victims.
The majority of these human rights violations have occurred since 1999, when the United States pledged billions of dollars in foreign aid to help the Colombian army fight the FARC through counter-insurgency tactics. Dubbed “Plan Colombia,” the operation helped the army to decimate the FARC’s ranks, but it also forced Colombian civil society to grapple with the atrocities of death squads, disappearances and massacres. The U.S.-based organization Fellowship for Reconciliation documented 3,000 extrajudicial killings between 2000 and 2009 alone.
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http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-us-hand-in-war-peace-in-colombia/221369/