Holy Crap! I actually agree with Greg Weeks on a Venezuela issue

The Colombia/Venezuela FARC spat, the fallout, the timing. Here's an extract of what Weeks sez and it passes the smelltest easily:

A more plausible argument is that Alvaro Uribe is doing this on purpose right before he leaves office, thus leaving Santos in the position of making nice with Hugo Chávez from a position of strength. Santos has already made a point of talking diplomatically, and thus far seems much less antagonistic than Uribe with regard to Venezuela. Uribe will take all the heat, and Santos can calm things down.

Full post here.

Twelve years a hostage and Moncayo clearly kept his sanity

from Colombia Reports:

Moncayo: To thank Uribe would make me a hypocrite

Former FARC hostage Pablo Emilio Moncayo said at a press conference Monday that he snubbed Colombian President Alvaro Uribe following his release because to thank the president would have made him "a hypocrite."

Moncayo explained that he thanked the presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil, but not Uribe, because "I would have been a hypocrite if I had thanked him," after, in a proof-of-life video made during his captivity, Moncayo aggressively pounded the table and demanded that Uribe "open the door" for his liberation.

Moncayo made his explanation at a joint press conference with former FARC hostage Josue Daniel Calvo, which was called to reveal new details about the two Colombians' time in captivity.

Moncayo revealed that despite his twelve years as a FARC hostage, he still plans to remain in the Colombian military, saying that he wears the Colombian military uniform "with pride."

Calvo also told the press that he is planning to return to military service.

Moncayo also revealed that CONTINUES HERE

Pablo Moncayo freed

The world's longest surviving hostage has been freed. In Colombia a couple of hours ago Pablo Moncayo was handed over by the FARC terrorist scum and is now on his way home after spending over 12 years in captivity.

Good.

UPDATE: Wow...I have a lump in my throat after watching this:

Now remember what they told you

Venezuela is mean and nasty and horrible and in an arms race to destabilize the whole region.

Colombia is nice and kind and soft and gentle, it's recent problems are now all gone and it's a perfectly safe and morally upstanding place to invest...for example, landgrabbing for goldmine territory in the middle of the jungle.

But wait! What's this? Why on earth is Colombia spending more on defence and security in its 2010 budget than it is on education? Click through and allow the always excellent 'Plan Colombia and Beyond' to fill you in on the details.

Disassociated Press

Sombrero tip to the magnificent Mexfiles.

Your humble correspondent has plainly stated on many occasions that the English speaking media covering Latin America provide a woeful service. The coverage is biased, the message doesn't reflect reality down this way, the etc ad infinitum. But you guys up there go "Hmmm, Otto...just your opinion isn't it?" and insist on crummy things like 'evidence' and 'proof' and stuff. So check out this post from Cowboy in Caracas that has the Disassociated Press's reporter in Venezuela omitting the whole pro-Chávez argument in a recent political issue because he himself..the reporter..didn't believe what the President of his host country was saying.

Here's how the post begins and I heartily recommend that you click through because CIC makes a solid, reasoned and sober argument (unlike the normal rants you suffer through at IKN).

On August 5, Chávez held a special news conference with the international press that lasted several hours. He presented evidence that the rockets were among five that were stolen from the Venezuelan armed forces on February 25, 1995, when a military base was attacked by Colombian guerillas. This was four years before he became president.

In an Associated Press article with the byline of Christopher Toothaker published on the Internet on August 9, mention is made of Colombia’s accusation and that Sweden confirmed the sale of the weapons to Venezuela. (That happened in the late 80s). It also said that, “Chávez denies aiding the FARC.” But the article did not say anything about the weapons being among those taken in 1995.

So I called Mr. Toothaker to ask why he omitted that. He replied that he didn’t “believe” that they were the weapons that were stolen. He added that Chávez said the weapons involved were taken by the ELN, (the National Liberation Army in Colombia). That was pretty much all of our conversation.

Afterwards I was thinking that maybe the weapons that the Colombia government retrieved were taken from the ELN and not the FARC. It is difficult for me to trust anything coming from the Colombian government. I thought about calling Mr. Toothaker again to ask about that possibility, but decided not to do so because I felt I would just receive another of his beliefs.

I, too, have beliefs and I often express them in my writing. But I write commentaries. The Associated Press is supposed to present facts in their news stories, not beliefs. Unless, that is, it is a religion and its readers are supposed to accept whatever it says as an act of faith. The fact that Chávez called a special press conference to explain the source of those rockets seems to me to be a rather important fact that should have had a place in Mr. Toothaker’s article.

CONTINUES HERE

Semper Fi

Y'know, sometimes I wonder whether all this blogging from LatAm in English is worth it. It sometimes occurs to me that there are enough intelligent people around that can work it all out for themselves without the aid of a safety net or this humble corner of cyberspace, even in the US military.

But just when these thoughts start to well up I'm invariably reminded that the vast, cavernous majority of the commentary available in the English language about matters LatAm is TEH STOOOOOPID....

"....Ecuador ordered the American aircraft out because the new president there, Rafael Correa, was elected with the assistance of drug gangs, and getting rid of those American patrol aircraft has been a longtime goal of the drug smugglers. Correa also allowed leftist Colombian rebels, like FARC, to set up bases in Ecuador. This was exposed when Colombian troops captured FARC documents, when one of those border bases was raided. Correa was very angry about this, and tried to divert attention from his close relationships with the drug gangs and FARC, by accusing Colombia of being an American puppet and assisting the Americans in taking over South America. Or something along those lines...."

...and it keeps me rolling on. I mean, would you actually believe the name of that website quoted above is "strategy page", devoted to all things military and all things...errr...like thinking, right?

So let us salute the other 99% of those souljas who would Change™ the world....

....and remind one another that yes, oh yes, you need IKN in your life. Just admit it.

FARC, Correa and a video

This youtube video is the talk of Colombia and Ecuador this evening and comes from this report.

What it seems to show is the FARC leader 'Mono Jojoy' talking to his troops just after the death of Tirofijo Marulanda, but the explosive information it holds is the part where Jojoy clearly says that the FARC contributed funds for the presidential election campaign of Rafael Correa.

There are no English subtitles and the Spanish is not super-clear so it's really only for those proficient in the language right now, but I've played over the key part several times (minute 3:10 onwards of the 4.14 youtube) and although we don't get the context of the sentence from the moment before Jojoy takes his drink, he clearly says:

"...y ayuda en dolares a la campaña de Correa y posteriores conversaciones con sus emisarios..."

...which translates as;

"...and help in dollars for the Correa campaign and subsequent conversations with his representatives...."

So, here we go with the next scandal, folks. They are never too far in the future down this way.

UPDATE: Ecuador's Interior Minister Miguel Carvajal is reported here as saying:

"We have to verify if the video is real and not a fake. If it is real, the FARC will need to be asked the names of the people they gave money to, because neither the País Movement (Correa's party) or the government has asked for or received money from the FARC."

I wonder why Ventana Gold doesn't talk about political risk much.....

Funny old world, innit? You get reams and reams written on Ventana Gold (VEN.to), not to mention next door neighbour Greystar (GSL.to). There's also Anglo at La Colosa and then after those big three a whole bunch of hangers-on in the area, too. But I'll be darned if I can find a word written by any analyst hot on VEN.to and/or the other stocks about political risk in the cocaine-smuggling, fast-shooting, blood-stained Colombia/Venezuela border region.

Which is strange. I mean, to the East of Santander (where the gold-bearing region in question lies) you have Arauca, controlled by the far-left wing FARC, so why not check out the latest on what's happening in that area by going over to the CAJA blog and reading this post (excerpt here)

Pablo Rodriguez, of the Sikuani people, taught in the indigenous school in Marrero. He was murdered in his classroom by the FARC on June 9. Because of the difficult access to that community, his body wasn’t recovered until two days later. When I arrived in Arauca City, the wake had finished and the funeral procession was marching to the cemetery.

Humberto Echeverri taught for 18 years in the community of Los Colonos and he was with his students on June 11. The Social Pastorate program of the Catholic Church has a nutrition and community garden program in Los Colonos, and they were monitoring the weights of the children. FARC guerrillas came into the school and told Humberto they needed to speak with him. They led him away, prevented the people from following, and then killed him.

.... and then when you've had your heart broken by the stories and photos of the children left behind, check out this other recent post at CAJA when the blog author suddenly found himself on the wrong side of town(excerpt here):

The bursts of gunfire were becoming longer and the direction of the sound was changing. It seemed as though the shots were coming closer. There was a particularly long, and ugly, burst of automatic rifle fire. At one point, shots were fired in the plantain grove – 100 yards away.

We also heard explosions which could have been army mortars or guerrilla cylinder bombs. The guerrillas sometimes launch propane cylinders filled with shrapnel – deadly devices that often veer off course and miss their intended target.

A group of soldiers had set up camp in the neighboring house – 50 feet away. I was afraid that the explosions could have been cylinder bombs and that the guerrillas would attempt to hit the army encampment. I counted the explosions (something else to focus on) and noted 16.

...................................................

A helicopter came and circled overhead five minutes later. A roar of machinegun fire came from the helicopter – the ugliest sound I’ve heard in my life. I looked behind me and saw Nidia crouched underneath a table with her son Brandon, who was crying. One of the bullet cases tore through the metal roof of a house fifty yards away and landed on the ground a few feet from a mother and child (see attached photos).

Sounds like a safe place to start a multi-billion dollar gold mine or two next door to, doesn't it? So what about the far-right wing Paramilitary zone that includes and runs North of Santander? Well, here's Plan Colombia and Beyond with a video post of what an area looks like after the paras surge through and force people to relocate. And here's a report on the paras' recent admissions that they're responsible for 21,000 extrajudicial killings in Colombia.

That video example is North of the exact zone, but Bucaramanga, just next door to Ventana & friends, is a well-known para stronghold, too. So why not do a bit of DD and ask your friendly stockbroker about political risk on these stocks the next time he pumps them down your throat with his $10 target prices? If he tells you the truth, I'd guess the investment may not sound as inviting as it did when he was giving you the full spiel. If he tells you there's little risk and there's nothing much to worry about, I'd guess it's time to change your investment advisor.

Is Borev run by Ecuador's Ambassador?

On May 20th the man battling Simon Rosemary of the title of 'LatAm's worst hack', namely Juan Forero of 'The Washington Post' filed this report entitled "Ecuadoran Town a Hub for Drug-Running Rebels, Colombia says" that was basically yet another ridiculous and politically laden hit-piece trying to blame anyone except America's Friend™ Uribe and the abject failure of Plan Colombia for the ever-rising production of Colombia's number one export.

So when Borev took up the cause to rebut Forero's guff&nonsense, a small section of the world cheered a little cheer. Here's a quick excerpt from da booorev, but go see the full thing here:

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"The information is incontrovertible, because it comes from Forero's knowledgeable and 100% disinterested source-base including, let's see: unnamed Colombian intelligence officials, unnamed paid government informers, unnamed "Senior Colombian officials," and Sergio Jaramillo, Colombia's vice minister for defense. Indisputable!"

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But then today the weirdest thing happens: The WaPo has published this e-mail from Ecuador's Ambassador to The United States which is nothing less than protocol-laden diplomatic officialdom telling Forero and his controllers that they are talking out of their lower orifices. Here's the whole thing:

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The May 20 news story "Ecuadoran Town a Hub for Drug-Running Rebels, Colombia Says" provided a misleading account, driven by senior Colombian officials, that was designed to confuse readers. Colombian irregular groups cross the border because of the Colombian government's omissions on its side of the border, thereby gravely affecting Ecuador.

Ecuador has had to devote onerous resources to meet the challenges of security and development in a border dominated by Colombian irregulars. This effort by Ecuador has been praised by the U.S. State Department in the "International Narcotics Control Strategy Report" and the "2008 Monitoring Report on Terrorism," which highlights as an Ecuadorian achievement the dismantling of 11 laboratories for cocaine production and more than 130 FARC camps, as well as the deployment of more than 100 battalions at the border, despite not having the billions of dollars of support that Colombia receives from the U.S. government.

It was worth mentioning that Ecuador is free of coca cultivation because it is the most successful country in the region in combating drug trafficking. It is unfortunate that Colombian armed forces are being diverted to discredit the government and people of Ecuador.

LUIS GALLEGOS

Washington

The writer is Ecuador's ambassador to the United States.

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All this begs the question; Are Luis Gallegos and blogmeister Borev related? Is the mysterious and knowledgeable Borev really a LatAm diplo hanging in the Empire somewhere? Is there some sort of international conspiracy going on via the humble media of internetwebpipes?* I think we should be told.

*natch

Colombia: Great piece of straight reporting from Australia

Go to this link and watch the video report from Australia's ABC channel and watch a really solid, well made report on today's Colombia by Eric Campbell. He does an excellent job of giving both sides of the story and pulls no punches against both the FARC and the government. It's 25 minutes long, so before you hit "play video" make yourself a coffee and find a comfy chair, but do it anyway. This isn't a soundbite special, this is real journalism.

To labour the point, this is great reporting be in no doubt. So good to see a bit of straight talk on Colombia via an English-speaking medium. Here's the link again.

Hat tip to reader 'MB' for the headsup.

Plan Colombia and cocaine

Top blog 'Plan Colombia and Beyond' put up the following chart this week and asked a couple of interesting questions.

1) If the US funded Plan Colombia (at seven billion dollars and counting) is working, then why hasn't Colombia's cocaine production dropped?

2) If there's the same or even more cocaine being produced at the same time as the FARC is being defeated, then who is in control of the industry now? And who is making all the money?

Any suggestions, folks?

By the way, that chart from an official UN report (available as a download from that Plan Colombia article) doesn't take into account the 27% rise in coca plantations YoY 2008 recently reported by the UN.

Not just bananas in that republic

Click to enlarge (gets big)

Up in the northern and northeastern parts of Colombia, the cocaine trade is run by both far left and far right groups. The best known of the bunch is of course the leftwing FARC insurgents, but equally as nasty (though kind of ignored by the national gov't...who knows why?) are far rightwingers such as the Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles).

However not all their revenues come from Colombian marching powder, as both sides in this particularly dirty war are adept at extorsion and racketeering, too. The big export brand of Chiquita Banana made headlines and got into trouble a while back for admitting that it had paid protection money to right wing paramilitary groups, but well worth a read is this new story from Colombia Reports that makes it clear just how pervasive the protection racket is in provincial Colombia. Here's an extract from the report:

• So far, Chiquita Brands is the only multinational company that admitted paying the AUC. Other companies deny having paid the paramilitaries, despite the growing number of testimonies of paramilitary warlords who say the opposite.

But be advised here that it's not just the banana growers that suffer under this weight, so if you are invested any companies currently operating in the region, perhaps a quiet mail to their IR department on this matter would be in order. Just so you have your back covered on the issue. Yeah?

DYODD. I really mean it this time.

Colombia Combo

1) Read the story of Flor Diaz at the excellent CAJA blog. She was recently released after three years and four days in jail for "rebellion", the term used when you have the guts to stand up for human rights and try to help people being trampled upon by government forces in provincial Colombia.

2) Plan Colombia and Beyond has a four minute video of Alvaro Uribe speaking in Spanish with English subtitles about peace activists and journalists that dare to oppose the government line. This type of interview is common in Colombia but rarely reaches the wider, Enlgish-speaking world. The ease in which Uribe connects anyone against his governmental line with the word "terrorist" is chilling, especially considering his government's appalling record on human rights. Equally interesting is how, in 2006, he claims to be on the brink of bringing down the far right wing paramilitary organizations. Anyone visiting the northeastern coca growing regions today will know differently.

3) More Plan Colombia and Beyond. Here's the moneyline from this article:

".....Colombian leader chose to speak about local issues like Families in Action [an economic subsidy program] and successes against the FARC. After a few minutes, some of the meeting’s organizers observed with alarm that Timothy Geithner, the U.S. treasury secretary, chose to disconnect himself from the simultaneous translation feed."

Fading influence, anyone?

4) After noting earlier this week that the Bolivia actions in targetting the transporters of drugs is working well, here's a note from Colombia Journal that shows how Uribe is still barking up the wrong tree in his attempt to stamp out Colombia's biggest export business.

Happy Birthday Magic Laptops!!

Wow, it seems like just a few weeks ago that Raul Reyes' magic laptops were about to finish off all the FARC sympathizers, including that scallywag Hugo and his pal Studmuffin.

But here we are a year later, Correa and Chávez have both won key victories in elections and the laptops have been largely (bar the rabid right) consigned to the dustbin of history. Why so? Probably because they were clearly doctored and those that would charge the world have been telling porkies all this time. Ahhh...I remember the day that Andres Oppenheimer told us about all the e-mails he'd read from the laptops. It took nearly the full year to find out that, when under oath, the Colombian police officers involved knew there were no e-mails ever found.

Never mind...there's always the traditional method of bombing, guys. So happy birthday, magic laptops! Enjoy your redux of fame this weekend.

Tourist attractions, Colombian style

In the town of Piedecuesta in northeastern Colombia, a local waxworks exhibition has been packing them in over the festive season with the dead body of Raul Reyes, the FARC leader bombed to death in the now infamous cross-border attack in Ecuador on March 1st 2008. The body is under glass and is said to be a faithful reproduction of the images of Reyes as shown by the Colombian army to TV and press cameras after the attack. You get the beard, the T-shirt covered in blood and the underwear (as he didn't have time to get his khakis on before dying). No word on the laptops, though.

Also on display are other figures modelled by the same local artist, Luis Augusto Martínez Ramírez. The eclectic collection includes Álvaro Uribe, Hugo Chávez, Ingrid Betancourt, Adolf Hitler, FARC leader Manuel Marulanda, paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño, Pablo Escobar, Simon Bolivar, Princess Diana, Che Guevara, President Kennedy, Mother Theresa of Calcutta and three images of Pope John Paul II. Here are a few more images from the museum's collection:

Simon Bolivar

Álvaro Uribe(!)

This is too bizarre for words

For the grande finale, here's Telam news agency on the "personal touch" that Martínez has brought to his sculptures (translation Otto):

"Another of the interesting aspects of the exhibition is that the figures of Martínez, who is a dentist, move and smile, showing off teeth that the author elaborated by taking advantage of his professional knowledge."

Even in the mondo bizarro that is South America, Colombia beats 'em all hands down. Applause for dentist, wax artist and museum owner, Luis Augusto Martínez Ramírez (below):

The sign translates as :
"Augusmar wax museum presents personalities from history, politicians, artists, monsters, guerrillas, child phenomena, victims of crimes and much more".

Colombia: read this

Some people are predicting the end of Uribe due to the ever-unravelling pyramid scheme crisis in the country. Me? I don't care much. But I really, really care about stories like this one that Scott Nicholson has just dispatched from the state of Arauca in eastern Colombia:

Dear friends,

My friend Carlos Cabrera was killed in Arauquita on November 28. He was forcibly removed from his home, taken to the outskirts of town, and then shot and killed. He was the secretary general of the Arauquita Displaced Persons Association, which represents people who have been forced to flee from their homes because of the violence. He had a spouse and two young daughters, and it appears that he was killed by ELN guerrillas.

Continue reading here

If you do continue reading (and I hope you do) you'll find out that things are not good at all in Arauca, and the two ultra-left terrorist groups FARC and ELN are fighting amongst themselves in an ongoing local rivalry. You'll also get to read the remarkable conversation Nicholson had with one of Cabrera's daughters.

Carlos Cabrera, Q.E.P.D

What happens if you oppose violence in Colombia?

They bomb your building.

Scott of CAJA had a nasty experience last weekend, and here's the link to find out what happened. You'll also note he's not quick to blame leftist extremists or rightist extremists. Too wise for that, he's long since learned that a bullet fired by the FARC is just as deadly as a bullet fired by the paramilitaries.

Non-Existent Colombian Paramilitaries Update

The Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles) paramilitaries. Neatly equipped, aren't they?
Where the devil did they get the cash for that little lot...........?

Now remember what you've been told, folks: The problem in Colombia is the nasty far left-wing FARC terrorists. The nasty far right-wing Paramilitaries do not exist, they are not a problem and they don't have anything to do with cocaine trafficking or anything. We know this because the "alleged" groups are sponsored by the Colombian gov't which is in turn sponsored by the US gov't.

Here's a story from today. Yet another illegal incurson into Ecuador from Colombia. This time it was 20 heavily armed paramilikos trying to search and destroy a woman in a disco on the Ecuador side of the border. This is an big story in Ecuador (Google has 57 reports and counting...here are a few listed) , but strangely...bizarrely...amazingly...I could only find one report of the event in the English media.

I wonder why?

There's nothing like making the best of a trip, is there?

When you're out traveling, touring and visiting it's best to pack in as much as you can to make the most of your time, isn't it? Well, as you're about to read the paramilitary groups in Colombia (the ones that the USA insists are the good guys and also insists on funding) have the same attitude as any other holidaymaker.

Here's an extract from businessman-turned-paramilitary chief Raúl Hasbún's recent testimony. You can find the rest of the report (in English) right here, and it's pretty compelling stuff. Hat tip to Lillie at the wonderful Memory in Latin America blog for passing this one on.

"...Without blinking, he confessed to the San José de Apartadó massacre of 1998. He said he ordered the massacre because the town was so secluded, and the logistics of getting there were so difficult, that it wasn’t worth it to make an incursion just to kill one or two people. Therefore, in order to make the most out of the trip, they killed the largest amount of people that could possibly be associated with the FARC ..."

Now go read the rest.

Message to Colombia: Time to grow up

A couple of Colombia stories have caught my eye in the last 24 hours. Firstly, this link shows that President Uribe's approval rating has dropped seven points from the boost he got from the hostage-freeing 'Operacion Jaque', and currently sits at 78%. Not that Uribe will be quaking in his boots about the loss of popularity; 78% is an extremely impressive approval rating for a long-serving President in any part of the world, and perhaps doubly so for LatAm.

The second was a call by the once and future presidential candidate, ex-hostage Ingrid Betancourt, to include the FARC in Colombian political debate (Spanish language Reuters link here). Now I'm sure this will be greeted by cries of "never surrender", "bomb the bastards", "string 'em up it's the only language they understand" and suchlike, but isn't it time that Colombians stopped beating the crap out of each other and talked a bit more?

The FARC are (to my knowledge at least) the only belligerant guerrilla force left in this part of the world, and the continuing outbreak of regional democracy will have to include them at some point, just as Sinn Fein is now (grudgingly by some) included in the Irish debate after years of bombs and guns. Of course, Betancourt obviously has her eye on the top job already thus keep in mind there's always the scheming politico angle to filter out. Even so, I welcome her statement, even though it won't be a night-to-day changemaker. In the words of the warrior-democrat Winston Churchill, "Jaw jaw is better than war war."

The aggressive stance taken by Uribe towards the FARC has undoubtedly worked on one level, and this explains the roots of his current popularity. But it has also caused innumerable human rights violations that will have to be reckoned sooner or later. Argentina has come to terms with its past. Peru is having more trouble facing the stark reality of its armed forces atrocities in the 1980s and 1990s, but it has made progress. As for Colombia, the day will come when a warrior leader such as Uribe is not needed nor wanted any more. The sooner the better.