Yankee Brigade Announces Arrival in Colombia
Get the Yankees out of Colombia and the whole world!
The U.S. embassy in Colombia has announced that the Colombian people have learned of a new aggression against national sovereignty with the approval of the arrival of a brigade of U.S. soldiers to "help" fight drug trafficking that will arrive in the country in June.
This announcement came at a time when the Colombian armed forces have been carrying out a series of murders of peasants who are protesting the state's blatant disregard for the agreements on the substitution of illicit crops. It also comes at a time when the reactionary U.S. police forces are suppressing the rebellion of the people in their own home in the face of the brutal murder of an African-American of the people. It is clear then that the interests of this new measure are not to protect the people from the threat of drugs--if they cared about the people they would not murder them in cold blood or violate the agreements they make with them.
The "Brigade of Assistance to Security Forces" was the name given to this brigade to hide its character as an aggression to national sovereignty, and the most lackey politicians in Colombia have come out to defend it saying that these troops will not fight but only "advise" and therefore it is not an aggression to sovereignty. This "assistance" brigade is part of the United States Southern Command, whose commander, Craig Faller, had informed the U.S. Congress two months ago that he would increase the military presence in Latin America "in the face of complex threats in our neighborhood" and assured that the objective is to "reassure the partners" of the U.S. and "counteract a series of threats, including narcoterrorism. The threats he refers to are, on the one hand, the people's struggles and the threat of revolutions, and on the other hand, he refers to securing their economic and political domination of their backyard or "neighborhood" in the dispute with other imperialist countries, as he himself referred to the "Chinese threat" and the Russians on this very occasion to justify their presence in Latin America.
It is necessary to refresh the memory about some examples of "advice" from the U.S. military forces to Colombia and Latin America:
- During Plan Colombia it led to the strengthening of the Colombian army and particularly to false positives, where thousands of peasants and workers of the people were killed posing as guerrillas. They also helped strengthen paramilitary armies that murdered hundreds of people and displaced thousands, committing such macabre acts as playing soccer with the heads of the dead to frighten the people.
- During their cooperation and advisory work between 2003 and 2007 at the Tolemaida military base, US troops left dozens of investigations for rapes of underage girls in the surrounding areas (the figure ranges from 20 to 50 women and girls raped with total impunity).
- Going back a little further since the mid-20th century there was the School of the Americas in Panama, infamous for the hundreds of thousands of disappeared, executed, tortured, and political prisoners left by graduates of that school throughout Latin America, also known by international newspapers as "The School of Assassins. This School changed its name to the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation".
Thus, by changing aggression and invasion to "cooperation" and direction of military action to "advice," they aim to undermine the protests of the people who oppose the imperialists' blatant national subjugation.
Colombia is one of the U.S.'s best allies (read lackeys) in South America, and so strengthening military control of Colombia is important for maintaining control in the whole region. The U.S. brigade will fight our peasants to gain control of different areas of the country and ensure the best conditions from there to fight other threats both inside (the people's struggles) and outside (imperialist plunder) their own backyard. This military control is all the more necessary at this time when imperialism is in a crisis and the plunder between the powers to squeeze and control the oppressed countries of the Third World more tightly is intensifying and the people's struggles are being fuelled.
But no matter how much advice they give to the murderers of the people, their hands are smeared with blood and the more they act, the more they win the people's hatred and the more outrage and rebellion they generate.
