Although Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. financial aid after Iraq and Israel, it still remains a mystery nation to the majority of taxpayers. Over the years politicians at all levels of government with the help of the media have painted a horrifying picture of this country.

Twenty years ago you would ask somebody what they knew about Colombia and they would mention coffee, Juan Vald?z, and maybe even emeralds. Today you ask the same question and you get responses such as drugs, cocaine, drug lords, guerrillas, terrorism, corruption, Pablo Escobar, and maybe something about coffee. Others more in tune with U.S. foreign policy might mention Plan Colombia and a very few will mention the Andean Free Trade Agreement.

Colombia’s leaders and decision- makers made a conscious decision to narcotize their foreign relations with the United States. They had a choice to do otherwise, yet they chose this route because it represented billions of dollars in foreign aid; money that for the past 20 years has been used to expand regional political power, increase the living standards of highly ranked military officials, inflate the political bureaucracy at all levels of government, and fill the pockets of corrupt leaders. Not to mention the financial benefits obtained by U.S. transnational corporations indirectly linked with the aid packages sent by the U.S. government year after year.

Today’s version of the drug war, known as Plan Colombia, is a multi-billion dollar counternarcotics effort that includes U.S. military aid in the form of training, equipment, intelligence and technology. A large part of the plan relies on a fumigation program whose goal is to eliminate all the coca- and heroin-cultivated land in the region. Under this program the Colombian government is required to use a portion of the aid package to rent the fumigation planes and pay for the services of U.S. contractors hired to execute the fumigation with glyphosate-based chemicals.

Furthermore, the local government must use more of the aid funds to purchase the chemical, exclusively supplied by Monsanto. The spraying of glyphosate has been successful in eradicating some of the coca plantations in that country; however, it has also destroyed the land of small- and medium-size farmers growing legal crops for sustainable uses. Furthermore, water sources have been polluted and many cases of birth deformation have been linked to the effects of this chemical. These and other negative effects have forced thousands of civilians to abandon their homes, leading to the expansion of poverty rings in the large metropolitan areas of the country.

The Colombian government also recycles U.S. aid back into our national economy by purchasing military equipment and technology from our private-sector industry. Finally, the aid that is not channeled back into the U.S. private sector falls into the Colombian bureaucratic system and the local military institution, leaving nothing for social and rural economic development programs such as “Plante” which are designed to help small farmers diversify their production and move away from the cultivation of illegal crops. Over the years the Colombian government has created new departments and entities primarily designed to deal with the issues of the drug war; yet these have also failed to achieve any clear success.

In November, President Bush stopped in Colombia for four hours to congratulate right-wing conservative president Alvaro Uribe for the implementation of Plan Colombia. Bush told the press that Uribe was achieving great results with the massive aerial fumigations, stating the number of acres under cultivation of coca was down significantly. He also praised Uribe’s efforts in dismantling the two leftist guerrilla groups FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and ELN (Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional). He stressed how important the outcome of the battle was for the future security of both nations. He was able to take advantage of the opportunity to identify drug traffickers as terrorists. He also mentioned the Andean Free Trade Agreement scheduled to be signed during the first quarter of 2005 between the United States and Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Plan Colombia is directly linked to the Andean Free Trade Agreement. From the administration’s point of view, it is not good business to sign a free trade agreement with a nation that is socially and politically unstable. Instability represents a threat to the interests of transnational corporations, which at the end are the entities that benefit and actively participate in the negotiations of free trade agreements. The Bush-Uribe combination seems to ensure that Plan Colombia will be able to control the drug traffickers, guerrilla groups, paramilitary groups, military elites, labor groups, human rights groups, the masses, and all others that oppose the exploitation of national natural and human resources in Colombia.

Uribe, on the one hand, is seeking a constitutional amendment in the Colombian Congress that will allow presidents to run for a second term, starting with his administration. If approved, he will be able to implement his right-wing policies and make sure that Plan Colombia is carried through at the expense of human rights. Bush, on the other hand, will have four more years to support the efforts of Plan Colombia.

This free trade agreement is no different than the North American Free Trade Agreement or the future Central American Free Trade Agreement: negotiated and signed behind closed doors between government officials representing the interests of transnational corporations and local elite private sectors. The objective is to allow the indiscriminate entrance of foreign capital into countries like Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, while removing local government control over social and public services, as well as key national economic sectors.

It will increase poverty in the region as jobs are lost; increasing the unemployment rate of the region which is already in the two digits. The agricultural industry will be threatened as U.S. highly subsidized agricultural products invade the market; forcing the Andean countries to import their native crops just like it happened in Mexico with corn. It is a threat to subsistence of local economies and local communities.

The drug war, declared during the Reagan administration, is then nothing more than a regional economic development plan between the United States and Colombia. If the drug war that our country has been financing for the past 20 years was indeed about solving the problem of drug use in America, then the most efficient use of our tax money would have been to finance social and health programs aimed at treating the true victims of illegal drug use. Instead, humane social and health policy was replaced by inhumane foreign military policy.

The billions of tax dollars spent over a 20-year period have done little if anything to stop the flow of illegal drugs coming into our country. As citizens, whom can we hold accountable for the continuous support of this erratic foreign policy? Why does our government continue to insist on financing the war on drugs if it has visibly failed to reduce cocaine production and export into our country?

Stefano Tijerina is the director of PICA (Peace through Interamerican Community Action) in Bangor.