Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia

 

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2011
Since the late 1990s, the United States has funneled billions of dollars in aid to Colombia, ostensibly to combat the illicit drug trade and State Department-designated terrorist groups. The result has been a spiral of violence that continues to take lives and destabilize Colombian society. This book asks an obvious question: are the official reasons given for the wars on drugs and terror in Colombia plausible, or are there other, deeper factors at work? Scholars Villar and Cottle suggest that the answers lie in a close examination of the cocaine trade, particularly its class dimensions. Their analysis reveals that this trade has fueled extensive economic growth and led to the development of a "narco-state" under the control of a "narco-bourgeoisie" which is not interested in eradicating cocaine but in gaining a monopoly over its production. The principal target of this effort is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who challenge that monopoly as well as the very existence of the Colombian state. Meanwhile, U.S. business interests likewise gain from the cocaine trade and seek to maintain a dominant, imperialist relationship with their most important client state in Latin America. Suffering the brutal consequences, as always, are the peasants and workers of Colombia. This revelatory book punctures the official propaganda and shows the class war underpinning the politics of the Colombian cocaine trade.


Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia (Paperback) I just had the pleasure of reading an important new book entitled, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror (U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia). This book, which was ten years in the making, is written by Oliver Villar & Drew Cottle and published by Monthly Review. The premise of the book is that, despite the U.S. claims that it is engaged in a war against drugs in Colombia, it is in fact engaged in an anti-insurgency war against the left-wing FARC guerillas - a war which does not seek to eradicate coca growing and cocaine production in Colombia at all. Rather, the U.S. war effort (which has cost U.S. taxpayers over $7 billion since 2000) is designed to ensure that the allies of the U.S. in Colombia -- that is, the Colombian state, paramilitaries and wealthy elite who are favorable to U.S. business interests and to the U.S.'s desire for exploitation of Colombia's vast resources -- are themselves able to monopolize the drug trade so critical to their survival.

And, the cost to human life as the result of this U.S. policy is staggering. The book, citing Colombian investigative journalist Azalea Robles, claims that 250,000 Colombian civilians have been "disappeared" in the last two decades in Colombia, dwarfing the "disappearances" carried out (also with U.S. support by the way) by the fascist juntas of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay in the 1970's. According to Robles, these numbers have been "systematically reduced" (that is, hidden) by mass graves, like the one discovered in Meta in 2009, and even crematory ovens. The murder and "disappearance" of such vast numbers of people is part and parcel of the U.S.'s policy -- used most famously by the U.S. in Vietnam, El Salvador and Guatemala - to "drain the sea [the civilian population] to kill the fish [the insurgents]" which represent a continued impediment to the U.S.'s designs of super-exploitation of Colombia's vast natural resources. And, the U.S. view is that, if this policy also forces us to collaborate and even protect forces which are deeply involved in the drug trade, then that is acceptable as well.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to carry out such a duplicitous policy in the interest of a "war on drugs and a war on terror." As the book properly concludes, this war is, in fact, "a war for drugs and of terror."