Neoliberalism Needs Death Squads in Colombia

[joeblow]

Neoliberalism Needs Death Squads in Colombia

http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/21073/Neoli ... n_Colombia

Summary:

The relationship between the US and Colombian elite is truly an unholy alliance. With US President Barack Obama praising the Colombian government and attempting to build several new military bases in Colombia, it is more important than ever to expose the truth about who supports death squads and why. Hopefully Blood & Capital will receive the attention that it deserves, and Hristov's meticulous research can be used to truly disarm the state coercive apparatus in Colombia.
[Posted By hbjournalist]
By Hans Bennett
Republished from Upside Down World
In her new book Blood & Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia, Jasmin Hristov seeks to expose the rational motivations behind state violence for capitalism's economic elites

Alfredo Vasquez Carrizosa, President of the Colombian Permanent Committee for Human Rights reports that in the 1960s, "during the Kennedy administration," the US "took great pains to transform our regular armies into counterinsurgency brigades, accepting the new strategy of the death squads." This "ushered in what is known in Latin America as the National Security Doctrine...not defense against an external enemy, but a way to make the military establishment the masters of the game...the right to combat the internal enemy...this could mean anyone, including human rights activists such as myself."

In the 1960s, the US and Colombian governments launched Plan Lazo, designed to target the "internal enemy." Hristov writes that "the military aid that was part of Plan Lazo (and all subsequent programs, including those in place today, such as the Patriot Plan) were given on the condition that Colombian forces would use terror and violence, since these formed a legitimate part of the overall anticommunist offensive. In 1966 the field manual US Army Counterinsurgency Forces specified that while antiguerrilla should not employ mass terror, selective terror against civilians was acceptable and was justified as a necessary response to the alleged terrorism committed by rebel forces....
[end excerpt]