Critical articles about Colombia

Something that always drove me crazy in the US was trying to consume responsibly. For instance, I advised my parents to buy domestic cars, but of the Big Three, Chrysler is now foreign-owned, and Ford produces many of its components outside of the US. On the other hand, Toyota's production is increasingly US-based (though usually in the Union-poor South). So my final conclusion was always that it didn't really matter. Many companies in the US are a mix of foreign and local capital, and mainly foreign manufacturing. What's a patriot to do? Well now it seems that Colombia companies are caught up in the same wave of selling out to foreign capital. In our town I've long avoided a big French supermarket chain as long as I could, but then I found out that the "local" option, the emblematic Colombian company Exito, is now owned by another French conglomerate! Likewise our beloved local gas station chain, Terpel, is passing to Chilean hands.

On that note of discontent with Colombian society, I'm posting a few articles critical of recent happenings here.

This article details how the Justice and Peace process is not as auspicious as its supporters say. Justice and Peace is a procedure whereby paramilitary leaders and soldiers can get reduced prison time for their war atrocities, in exchange for confessing their crimes and helping the State to investigate and prosecute paramilitary crimes and compensate victims. However, there are a number of problems. For one, the process has seemed to favor paramilitary criminals. The government insists on calling them "self-defense forces" as opposed to paramilitaries. This places implicit guilt for paramilitary crimes on the shoulders of the guerrilla groups from which they are supposedly defending themselves. The government offers no solution to the scores of witnesses and victims' advocates that have been murdered during the Justice and Peace process. The legislature (of whom one third of its members at one point were prosecuted for links to paramilitaries) continually weakened the penalties assigned to paramilitaries, while the Supreme Court tried to uphold the force of the law. Furthermore, the government reports success in the Justice and Peace process by citing big numbers--so many mass graves discovered, so much paid out as reparations to victims--but it doesn't relate these numbers to the total case load or need. For instance, the justice system is having trouble processing the 4000 paramilitaries who have agreed to participate, much less the 27000 others that are still out there, theoretically no longer in paramilitary groups but having paid no debt to society for their crimes. In fact, many of these supposedly demobilized paramilitaries are back in action again, sowing terror in the cities and the countryside through gangs or newly-formed paramilitary groups. Lastly, the Justice and Peace process isn't totally aimed at peace. There are many references in official documents to offering certain amnesties for ex-guerrillas as a way of weakening and defeating these insurgent groups. This is a measure of war, not of peace. An even more chilling indication of this is that the government justifies its foot-dragging on returning stolen lands to displaced victims of the paramilitaries, saying that it's unwise to return lands to potential guerrilla sympathizers while the conflict continues!

And here is an article about the UN's numbers for cocaine production in Colombia. The UN released a report on June 20th with the latest stats on the trade. Colombia's acreage of coca supposedly diminished and is now just a bit more than that of Peru, but our higher efficiency of cocaine produced per acre still leaves us in the leading spot by far for total production. While the author recognizes the important and respected role the UN plays in estimating world drug production, he criticizes the many inconsistencies in the numbers. For instance, in 2008 there were confiscations of 711 tons of cocaine, of an estimated world production potential of 865 tons. This would leave 154 tons for world consumption, but Europe and the US alone consumed an estimated 320 tons that year! The author says that it's understandable that accurate statistics are hard to come by, as cocaine production is illegal and hidden, and the UN relies on numbers provided by each country. But at least the UN should point out and explain any inconsistencies or uncertainties.