Update on the recent Latin Pulse episode, Colombia: Stories That Kill

The Colombian government has been conducting intensive spy operations on opposition members for years. This revelation earlier this year garnered promises of reform from agency directors, but new evidence shows the spy program still seems to be expanding. This expansion comes as President Uribe seeks a third term in office.

Targets of this operation include lawyers, activists, union leaders, indigenous leaders and journalists. Hollman Morris, director of Contravía, recounted his personal experience with the state's intelligence agency to Latin Pulse in July.

The Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, reports directly to the president and works closely with the U.S. The U.S. State Department authorized another $545 million dollars in military aid in September, despite the scandal and a troubling human rights record.

The New York Times also recently reported on this issue, and you can watch Al Jazeera English's report below.

The execution of seventeen recovering addicts in last week's shooting in Juarez struck me as one of the most perverse crimes I have ever heard of in my life. Despite having read about a wide variety of atrocities in war -- the killing of pregnant women and children in Rwanda, or the dragging of charred American bodies through Fallujah -- this act struck me as something so cold as to be sub-human. Yet it was the not first time either. Fifteen others have been killed previously in this exact way in Juarez in the last two years.
 
The violence in Juarez seems to be ignored by most of the media, yet this is truly one of the world's prime war zones right now. A recent New York Times video report stated that in 2008 a civilian was more likely to be killed in Ciudad Juarez than in Baghdad.

Wednesday's attack came on the same day that at least twenty-three others were killed around Mexico, including the number two security official in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan. It also came just a week or two after Mexico officially decriminalized personal use of many formerly illicit drugs. The new orders for police are that they are to refer addicts to treatment clinics rather than take them into police custody. After Wednesday's attack though, that option may no longer seem so safe.

It seems clear that we Americans share some of the blame for this violence; though perhaps there have been good intentions in criminalizing marijuana, cocaine and other substances, when our prohibitions are combined with our high demand, we have ended up giving these cartels incentive for their work. And now apparently, the weapons that have come through our borders have allowed them to create carnage in their country.

This is a war many of us can can shut our eyes to on a daily basis, because we are not losing anyone there in Mexico. Yet this war is so close to us at the same time: the war zone of Juarez stands a few miles across the border from the relatively safe city of El Paso, Texas.

We can try to keep this violence and chaos out though militarizing the border, and perhaps that will allow us to continue turning a blind eye to this bloodshed. However, it will not absolve us of the responsibility and obligation to help search for an end to this conflict. Some cartels may be brought down, and the centers of violence may move from one city to another, as they seem to be moving now towards Central America. However, as long as the economic incentive exists for these cartels' work, can we really expect to see an end to this violence?

This week as Venezuela shut down its border with Colombia, cargo trucks bringing perishable food sat in park on the highway. It was a perfect image to capture the state of affairs between Venezuela and Colombia: a standstill, with potential for spoiling.

For the last several years, Colombia's Alvaro Uribe has maintained a tricky alliance with both the U.S. and Venezuela, maintaining strong economic and diplomatic ties with both countries. While the U.S. continues funneling military aid to Colombia through Plan Colombia, Colombia has maintained a huge export business with a longtime adversary of the U.S. government, Venezuela. Chavez and Uribe’s friendship has paid off over the years, particularly when Chavez helped broker the release of dozens of FARC hostages back in 2003.

Yet the recent agreement by Colombia to allow seven of its military bases to be used by the U.S. for counternarcotics and antiterrorism operations has soured relations. As of this week, Venezuela has closed its borders for some Colombian exports, and Chavez has pulled his ambassador out of Bogota. Chavez has stated that he will "freeze" relations with Colombia, and that Venezuela is not dependent on the country for imports. In the wake of the report, the Colombian peso fell in value for the first time in a month, after having been the world’s best performing currency for four months.
 
However, even as Chavez says that Venezuela can survive without Colombia’s imports, the standoff seems like it would hurt his country much more than Colombia. Venezuela has been the main market for Colombia’s non-traditional exports in plastics, poultry, textiles, and other exports. In the first five months of ’09, Venezuela absorbed 33 percent of Colombia’s exports, followed by the U.S. taking in 19.6 percent. Analysts quoted by Bloomberg News stated that Venezuela would suffer in worsening food shortages, which would increase the country’s already high inflation and put more pressure on their deficit. Then there’s the effect on Venezuela’s petroleum industry. Venezuela looks to Colombia for imports of 300 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, and that gas is required for the country’s oil reservoirs to increase pressure and boost production, and as raw material for the petrochemical industry.

The question now becomes whether either country will flinch. Uribe has garnered sympathy for the new bases from Uruguay and Brazil. Also, Uribe has built up foreign investment in his country by building confidence in counternarcotics and antiterrorism programs that the U.S. has funded. In 2007, BusinessWeek hailed the new Colombia as the most “extreme emerging market” in the world, because Uribe had successfully changed the country’s image from a haven for drugrunners to a center for investors. If Uribe can find alternatives to Venezuela for the country’s exports, he may not need to continue relations with Chavez.
 
And if so, the Colombian truckers now stalled at the Venezuelan border may find cause to turn around and never look back.