Vol. 72/No. 12      March 24, 2008

The Ecuadorian government broke relations with Bogotá over the territorial violation and sent 3,200 troops to the border area where the air strike occurred. The government of Venezuela also recalled its ambassador and sent 9,000 troops to its border with Colombia. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez threatened to end all trade with Colombia. The Nicaraguan government broke off relations with Bogotá.

A March 7 meeting of the Río Group, made up of 20 Latin American and Caribbean governments, adopted a resolution condemning “the violation of Ecuador’s territorial integrity.” Colombian president Alvaro Uribe issued a formal apology to Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa and said there would be no more raids. The governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua restored diplomatic relations with Bogotá, but as of March 10, the Ecuadorian government had not yet done so.

The March 7 resolution also stated a “firm commitment to combat threats to the security of all states coming from the action of irregular forces or criminal ones, in particular those linked to drug trafficking.” This was understood to refer to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a guerrilla group that has carried out armed struggle against successive Colombian regimes for more than four decades. The government of the United States, Colombia, and the European Union all label the FARC “terrorist.” For years, Washington and Bogotá have charged the FARC with involvement in the cocaine trade, and on that basis steadily built up the Colombian military.

Uribe justified the raid into Ecuador saying the Colombian military was targeting a FARC base. The raid killed 24 FARC members, including its second-in-command, Raúl Reyes.

Since the election of Hugo Chávez to the presidency in Venezuela, Washington has stepped up its military aid to neighboring Colombia. The U.S. government has given more than $5 billion to Colombia’s army and police since the William Clinton administration launched Plan Colombia in 2000.

The chief victims of the military buildup have been trade unionists, peasants, and other opponents of the Uribe government. The Colombian Commission of Jurists reports that between July 2002 and June 2005, paramilitary death squads linked to the government killed or disappeared an average of 1,060 persons per year.

The buildup also gives Washington a military advantage against its opponents in Latin America by operating through Colombia. Colombia’s army is more than twice the size of the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan armies combined.

Two days after Uribe apologized to Correa, the Colombian military released messages and files it claimed to have found on Reyes’s computer showing a plot by Chávez and the guerrillas to topple Uribe, as well as extensive financing by Chávez and support from Correa for the FARC. Chávez denied the charges and said the documents were forgeries.

The March 10 Washington Post noted that Washington could use the charges “to cite Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism” and urge UN Security Council action based on a 2001 resolution that prohibits all states from providing financing or havens to “terrorist” organizations.

Most Latin American governments expressed opposition to the raid on Ecuador. Washington, on the other hand, has shown no signs of abating its military buildup in Colombia or its support for Uribe. On March 4, U.S. president George Bush called on Congress to adopt a “free trade” accord with Colombia, calling it “a matter of national security.”

Meanwhile, the Colombian defense ministry announced March 7 that another top leader of the FARC, Manuel Muñoz, had been killed a few days earlier by his own troops. Bogotá claims there have been hundreds of desertions from the FARC in recent months.

A February demonstration in Bogotá supporting Uribe’s war against the FARC drew several hundred thousand, according to the BBC. On March 6, following the incursion into Ecuador, some 40,000 marched in Bogotá against the war and Uribe’s use of paramilitary death squads. “Uribe is the one who has always wanted war—and the United States too,” marcher Jorge Sánchez told Fox News.  
 
 
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