This controversial book maintains that in Colombia the US has long supported a pervasive campaign of state violence directed against both armed insurgents and a wide range of unarmed progressive social forces. While the context may change from one decade to the next, the basic policies remain the same: maintain the pro-US Colombian state, protect US economic interests and preserve strategic access to oil. Colombia is now the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world, and the largest by far in Latin America. Using extensive declassified documents, this book shows that the so-called "war on drugs", and now the new war on terror in Colombia are actually part of a long-term Colombian "war of state terror" that predates the end of the Cold War with US policy contributing directly to the human rights situation in Colombia today.
For more than fifty years, the United States supported the Colombian military in a war that cost over 200,000 lives. During a single period of heightened U.S. assistance known as Plan Colombia, the Colombian military killed more than 5,000 civilians. In Plan Colombia John Lindsay-Poland narrates a 2005 massacre in the San José de Apartadó Peace Community and the subsequent investigation, official cover-up, and response from the international community. He examines how the multibillion-dollar U.S. military aid and official indifference contributed to the Colombian military's atrocities. Drawing on his human rights activism and interviews with military officers, community members, and human rights defenders, Lindsay-Poland describes grassroots initiatives in Colombia and the United States that resisted militarized policy and created alternatives to war. Although they had few resources, these initiatives offered models for constructing just and peaceful relationships between the United States and other nations. Yet, despite the civilian death toll and documented atrocities, Washington, DC, considered Plan Colombia's counterinsurgency campaign to be so successful that it became the dominant blueprint for U.S. military intervention around the world.
This volume analyzes the economic effects of a prospective free trade agreement between the United States and Colombia. The study uses the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model of world trade and economic activity to analyze the expected trade and other economic impacts of the prospective FTA and to examine bilateral trade and investment flows, bilateral trade frictions, and implications of the prospective accords for the bilateral, regional, and global trade relations of the two countries.
Strategically located at the gateway to the South American continent, Colombia has long been a key player in shaping the United States' involvement with its Latin American neighbors. In this book Stephen J. Randall examines the course of U.S.-Colombian relations over two centuries, taking into account the broad spectrum of political, social, cultural, and economic contacts that have figured in the interaction. A leader in the movement for independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century, Colombia shared with the United States the aspiration of becoming a leader for the entire hemisphere. Its early efforts in this direction--notably its initiation in the 1820s of the first Pan-American Conference--soon languished, however, as the unequal growth between the two countries took its toll. By the turn of the century, after years of destructive civil war, Colombia had slipped far behind its northern neighbor militarily, economically, and politically. The United States, meanwhile, had emerged as a great power, and the first major manifestation of the two countries' divergence came with the U.S.-supported secession of Panama in 1903--an event that deeply shocked Colombians and tainted their view of the United States for subsequent generations. During the twentieth century, Randall explains, a tension in Colombian politics and culture has persisted between those who advocate an independent, even antagonistic, stance toward the United States and those who propound a policy of realism that accepts Colombia's place as a middle, regional power within the U.S. orbit. For its part, the United States has continually failed to realize that Colombians, with their European intellectual heritage stretching back four hundred years, do not see themselves as an insignificant Third World nation. The result has been an often strained relationship, which Randall traces through two world wars, economic booms and depressions, the Cold War, and, finally, the present-day guerrilla conflicts and drug trade controversies. Drawing on archival sources in both countries, many previously unused, this book is the first comprehensive overview in more than fifty years of the U.S.-Colombian relationship.
Through the lens of global capitalism theory, William Avilés examines democratization and civil-military relations in Colombia to explain how social and international forces led to the ostensibly contradictory outcome of democratic and economic reform coinciding with political repression. Focusing on the administrations in power from 1990 to the present, Avilés argues that the reduction in the institutional powers of the military within the state reflected changes in the structure of the global economy, the emergence of globalizing technocrats and politicians, and shifts in U.S. foreign policy strategies toward "democracy promotion." These same factors explain Colombia's establishment of a low-intensity democracy—a structure of elite rule in which the strategies of coercion (state and para-state repression) and consensus (competitive elections, civilian control over the military) maintain control and legitimacy. In the age of capitalist globalization, a low-intensity democracy is most concomitant with neoliberalism, establishing the political and economic environment most suitable to the investments of transnational corporations.
This book reveals the history behind the trade of Colombian birds as a means of comprehending the scientific, economic and environmental relations between the United States and Colombia from the 1880s to the 1960s. Through the study of the feather trade, scientific expeditions, scientific communities and nature conservation, the author brings to light how international relations and national agendas shaped the study and perception of nature in both countries during those years.
Treats in concise and objective manner the dominant historical, social, political, economic, and national security aspects of contemporary Colombia. Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book.
The authors argue that despite a shared continent and heritage, ambivalence has always characterized relations between the two countries-- an ambivalence stemming from differences that Americans underestimate and that Canadians overstate. Thompson and Randall begin with the century in which Canada was a pawn in the relations between the United States and Great Britain. They consider the years until World War II, during which Canada and the United States erected many of the bilateral institutions and mechanisms that govern their relationship in the twentieth century. The authors then explore the World War and Cold War alliance based on economic interest and shared anti-Communist that made Canada part of a "new American empire." The years from 1960 until 1984 most merit their sub-title Ambivalent Allies, as this continental consensus fragmented. In 1984 the relationship was restored as Canada's Conservative government embraced the United States with an ardor which stunned a Canadian body politic nurtured on the milk of anti-Americanism. Throughout CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES, the authors consider the economic and social dimensions of the relationship, from Canadian responses to the increasing weight of the U.S. cultural presence, to the archaic stereotypes in which Canadians and Americans understand each other. While Canadians have been obsessed with the United States, they conclude, Canada has been a matter of consuming disinterest to the United States public and to most of its leaders. Despite the oft-repeated platitudes about a "special relationship" between the two countries, the authors maintain that what is striking is the extent to which United States policy toward Canada conforms to U.S. policy toward the rest of the world. For its part, Canada's preoccupation with the United States has shaped Canadian national policies. Any apparent contemporary trend toward consensus and convergence between the United States and Canada, they conclude, must be viewed through the lens of two centuries of ambiguity and ambivalence. CONTENTS Introduction A Revolution Rejected, 1774-1871 Canada Encounters Industrial America, 1871-1903 Beginning a Bilateral Relationship, 1903-1918 The New Era, 1919-1929 Acquaintance to Alliance, 1930-1941 World War to Cold War, 1941-1947 Canada in the New American Empire, 1948-1958 The Moose that Roared, 1958-1968 The Ambivalent Ally, 1968-1984 Republicans and Tories, 1984-1992 Epilogue: "Plus �a Change"
