Hidden in Plain Sight about the SOA's role in Latin America and Colombia. What happened in Central America is now happening in Colombia--many in the Colombian military are SOA trained. With the millions given to Colombia from the US for the *drug war* front, 85% goes to the military. The military in turn trains and advices the paramilitaries who are responsible for more than 70% of the massacres carried out over the past two years. The area where the worst atrocites are carried out is the area that produces 80% of Colombia's oil. Colombia is the US' 8th largest supplier of oil.
Plan Colombia was a back room deal struck between Clinton, the State Dept. and former Colombian pres. Pastrena (sp)--the Colombian congress didn't even get to debate the idea. This and other facts brought out in
Plan Colombia.
Here's some information on these important, award-winning films. I think this was held over in SF at the Roxie on 16th between Valencia and Guererro.
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John H. Smihula's "Hidden in Plain Sight," a documentary on the United States Army's School of the Americas, brings together material from several politically engaged films about the government's activity in Latin America, creating a sort of anthology of atrocity.
The school, founded during the cold war to train Latin American soldiers in the techniques of withstanding Marxist aggression (and, not incidentally, protecting United States interests), was shut down in 2000 under the threat of a Congressional investigation. It soon reopened as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the name it continues to operate under today, in the hope that its cold war associations have been expunged.
The school, at Fort Benning, Ga., conducts its classes largely in Spanish and graduates 800 students a year. The Army says they are learning leadership skills; others say the school produces torturers and dictators, pointing to past graduates like Manuel Noriega of Panama and Gen. Leopoldo F. Galtieri of Argentina.
Mr. Smihula has little difficulty establishing a grave record of human rights violations by graduates of the institution. Scenes roll by of villages massacred, nuns raped and murdered, children maimed and tortured and politicians assassinated, all seemingly at the hands of soldiers trained by the School of the Americas — as almost everyone outside the bureaucracy continues to call it — or under the leadership of its graduates.
http://www.hiddeninplainsight.org/main/home.html
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I recently returned from a delegation to Colombia sponsored by the Colombia Support Network. The purpose of this trip was two-fold. First, to better understand and to see first-hand the effects of fumigation in the Putumayo region; second, to bear witness to the violence perpetrated by the Colombian military--of which more than 10,000 soldiers have been trained at the School of the Americas--and the paramilitary forces, which have been responsible for more than 70% of the massacres in Colombia over the past two years. The fumigations are part of the "anti-drug" campaign called "Plan Colombia," which is a multibillion dollar program purportedly developed by the government of Colombia to deal with the many conflicts of its country. To date, the US has pledged $1.3 billion in aid (which will primarily be paid to US weapons and chemical corporations) in the form of military training, helicopters, and fumigation related expenses. Additional funding has already been proposed.
During our time in Colombia, we met with community leaders, including tribal representatives from the indigenous people of the Putumayo region, religious leaders, Colombian officials, military leaders, the director of the UN High Commission on Human Rights, and the US Ambassador to Colombia.
Throughout our meetings and visits to the Putumayo it became vividly evident that due to the indiscriminate nature of the fumigation campaign not only were coca (the raw material of cocaine) crops being targeted, but food crops and medicinal plants were being eradicated, and water supplies were being contaminated. The herbicide, glyphosate (more commonly known as "Round-up"), is produced and manufactured by the US chemical corporation, Monsanto. In Colombia, this herbicide is used in a highly concentrated form and can obliterate a food crop with a single aerial application. The negligence associated with the fumigation campaign has not only had disastrous ecological and health consequences for the region, but it also has significantly increased the expansion of coca crops throughout Colombia.
Paradoxically, as coca was being eradicated in regions such as Peru and Bolivia, there was a nearly instantaneous surge in production and control in Colombia by the newly formed Medellin Cartel. Basic economics, and our own history, tell us that where there is a demand, especially of an illicit drug, there will always be those who find a way of not only providing the product, but of making a tremendous profit on it.
http://www.soawne.org/Pccrops.html
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