Against Plan
Colombia
THIS resolution was adopted by the International Executive
Committee of the Fourth International, the worldwide organization of revolutionary socialists, at its October 2000 meeting.
sis, the growth of social resistance, and the loss of legitimacy of the "neoliberal model. In some countries, moreover, the governing elites face situations of ungovernability and crises of domination (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia).
The successive indigenous uprisings in Ecuador, popular and peasant uprisings in Bolivia, as well as the decomposition of the Fujimori regime on the one hand and the nationalist discourse of Chavez on the other, have whipped up the tempests in the Andean region. Simultaneously, we witness a growth of anti-neoliberal discontent and resistance in other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. US imperialism is then playing all its cards to achieve a "stabilization". Plan Colombia is intended to change decisively the relationship of forces in the Colombian internal conflict, if not to establish control over the Amazon region and the oil wealth of the Orinoco, or reaffirm a military presence in the zone of the Panama Canal and the Caribbean.
4. The argument based on the "national security" of the United States is a manifestation of tutelage and the most complete and arrogant ignorance of any notion of national sovereignty which conflicts with US interests. This policy submits the Latin American peoples and countries to the economic control and neocolonial pillage of the international financial organizations and the multinational companies (payment of the foreign debt, unequal exchange, privatization) and accelerates the path towards the creation of the American Free Trade Area (AFTA) which seeks an "integration" subordinated to US interests and which in many aspects puts into question the currently existing regional blocs, in particular Mercosur.
It also seeks to discipline more the Latin American governments and block any alternative project of democratic and sovereign development proposed by the left and the popular camp.
At the same time, Plan Colombia pursues a delimitation of areas of influence with the imperialisms of the European Union, competing for Latin American markets and the bioenergetic and strategic wealth of the Amazon, assigning to the EU governments the EU the role of "humanitarian" donors, above all to balance macroeconomic disequilibria, the payment of the public and private debt and the "collateral" social effects of the scorched earth policy.
5. Unlike other US interventionist operations, Plan Colombia uses military pressure to ensure the application of the anti-popular denationalizing adjustment plan that the Pastrana government and the IMF agreed in 1999. This accord established the conditions to pursue counter-reforms which undermine free education and public health and solidarity-based systems of social security; which deepen the flexibility of labour; the privatization of state companies, roads and rivers; the sale of biodiversity: the private exploitation of energy resources; and the negation of the rights of the indigenous peoples.
This adjustment plan aggravates unemployment and poverty in a country where 50% of the population survive on less than $2 a day and where a small oligarchic minority (3%) owns 70% of the land. These counter-reforms, which have an antidemocratic character — and can only be applied to the exclusion of. basic social rights and by violating elementary human rights — have been contested by the social movements through strikes and various mass demonstrations.
6. Before the gravity of the moment, and taking into account that "Operacion Sur" has already been implemented in the Putumayo region (as a pilot for Plan Colombia), the trade union, peasant, indigenous, neighbourhood, women's, religious, organizations and movements,
Amnesty International, and the Peace and Justice Service, as well as the political fronts and parties of Latin America (in particular those grouped in the Sao Paulo Forum), are beginning to mobilize against this US aggression and in solidarity with the Colombian people. Also diverse NGOs, solidarity groups in Europe, the US and Canada, together with personalities like Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Jose Saramago, Dario Fo, and Danielle Mitterrand, among others, have signed a Manifesto for Peace and Human Rights in Colombia.
All these mobilizations and campaigns demand: full respect for national sovereignty and human rights; the dismantling of paramilitarism, the immediate end to state terrorism, and the ending of impunity for those guilty of innumerable massacres; the withdrawal of the 300 US military "advisors" and an end to any foreign intervention; as well as respect for the autonomy of the social, peasant and indigenous movements — including in the zones controlled by the armed insurgency — and "dialogue with social justice" as a condition for peace.
7. The sections and sympathizing and fraternal organizations of the Fourth International participate in these movements and campaigns and in the battle against the media intoxication that, beneath the cloak of the war against drugs, seeks to neutralize the actions of a great number of NGOs and social and democratic movements. Simultaneously, we insist on the necessity of engaging in the development of a broad, plural and unitary campaign of solidarity with the popular and indigenous movements and organizations, not just in Colombia but also in Ecuador and Peru, which are directly targeted by the repressive strategy of Plan Colombia.
The forces of the Fourth International agree also on the necessity of emphasizing the class nature of this war and the legitimacy of insurrectional struggles which are in practice struggles of anti-capitalist resistance against the local oligarchies and the expression of a concrete anti-imperialism. In such conditions, the next World Social Forum (Porto Alegre, January 2001) is a militant opportunity to incorporate the consequences of the Colombian and regional conflict into the discussions and debates against capitalist globalization, and on political and social projects for a radical transformation of society. *
Colombia *