Author: Winifred Tate
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804792011
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In 2000, the U.S. passed a major aid package that was going to help Colombia do it all: cut drug trafficking, defeat leftist guerrillas, support peace, and build democracy. More than 80% of the assistance, however, was military aid, at a time when the Colombian security forces were linked to abusive, drug-trafficking paramilitary forces. Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats examines the U.S. policymaking process in the design, implementation, and consequences of Plan Colombia, as the aid package came to be known. Winifred Tate explores the rhetoric and practice of foreign policy by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, Congress, and the U.S. military Southern Command. Tate's ethnography uncovers how policymakers' utopian visions and emotional entanglements play a profound role in their efforts to orchestrate and impose social transformation abroad. She argues that U.S. officials' zero tolerance for illegal drugs provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. The U.S. also ignored Colombian state complicity with paramilitary brutality, presenting them as evidence of an absent state and the authentic expression of a frustrated middle class. For rural residents of Colombia living under paramilitary dominion, these denials circulated as a form of state terror. Tate's analysis examines how oppositional activists and the policy's targets—civilians and local state officials in southern Colombia—attempted to shape aid design and delivery, revealing the process and effects of human rights policymaking.
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Narcotics Affairs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 88
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Book Description
Author: Russell Crandall
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781588260895
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
Crandall (political science, Davidson College) examines the evolution of US policy towards Columbia, largely driven by factors relating to the US's "war on drugs," as well as the roots of violence in Colombia. He then focuses on US policy towards the country during two key periods: the Samper administration (1994-1998) and the Pastrana administration (1998-2002). He concludes by assessing current US policy toward Colombia and suggesting directions for future policy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Doug Stokes
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848136129
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
This controversial book maintains that in Colombia the US has long supported a pervasive campaign of state violence directed against both armed insurgents and a wide range of unarmed progressive social forces. While the context may change from one decade to the next, the basic policies remain the same: maintain the pro-US Colombian state, protect US economic interests and preserve strategic access to oil. Colombia is now the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world, and the largest by far in Latin America. Using extensive declassified documents, this book shows that the so-called "war on drugs", and now the new war on terror in Colombia are actually part of a long-term Colombian "war of state terror" that predates the end of the Cold War with US policy contributing directly to the human rights situation in Colombia today.
Author: John Lindsay-Poland
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478002611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
For more than fifty years, the United States supported the Colombian military in a war that cost over 200,000 lives. During a single period of heightened U.S. assistance known as Plan Colombia, the Colombian military killed more than 5,000 civilians. In Plan Colombia John Lindsay-Poland narrates a 2005 massacre in the San José de Apartadó Peace Community and the subsequent investigation, official cover-up, and response from the international community. He examines how the multibillion-dollar U.S. military aid and official indifference contributed to the Colombian military's atrocities. Drawing on his human rights activism and interviews with military officers, community members, and human rights defenders, Lindsay-Poland describes grassroots initiatives in Colombia and the United States that resisted militarized policy and created alternatives to war. Although they had few resources, these initiatives offered models for constructing just and peaceful relationships between the United States and other nations. Yet, despite the civilian death toll and documented atrocities, Washington, DC, considered Plan Colombia's counterinsurgency campaign to be so successful that it became the dominant blueprint for U.S. military intervention around the world.
Author: Jonathan D. Rosen
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438452993
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
Critical analysis of Plan Colombia, a multibillion dollar US counternarcotics initiative.
Author: Human Rights Watch/Americas
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
ISBN: 9781564322036
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
VI. The U.S role
Author: Rex A. Hudson
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780844495026
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544
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Book Description
Treats in concise and objective manner the dominant historical, social, political, economic, and national security aspects of contemporary Colombia. Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book.
Author: Alejandro Gaviria
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 0826503756
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 542
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Book Description
Forty years after the declaration of the "war on drugs" by President Nixon, the debate on the effectiveness and costs of the ban is red-hot. Several former Latin American presidents and leading intellectuals from around the world have drawn attention to the ineffectiveness and adverse consequences of prohibitionism. This book thoroughly analyzes the drug policies of one of the main protagonists in this war. The book covers many topics: the economics of drug production, the policies to reduce consumption and decrease supply during the Plan Colombia, the effects of the drug problem on Colombia's international relations, the prevention of money laundering, the connection between drug trafficking and paramilitary politics, and strategies against organized crime. Beyond the diversity in topics, there is a common thread running through all the chapters: the need to analyze objectively what works and what does not, based on empirical evidence. Presented here for the first time to an English-speaking audience, this book is a contribution to a debate that urgently needs to transcend ideology and preconceived opinions.
Author: Mario Murillo
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609801180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 100
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Book Description
While 1998 marked the 100th anniversary of the United States' invasion and takeover of Puerto Rico, it wasn't until 1999 that the island's political movements reappeared on the radar screen of the American people. That year, two major developments occurred that transformed the relationship between Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.: the limited clemency granted by then-President Clinton to eleven Puerto Rican Nationalists, and the death of Puerto Rican civilian security guard David Sanes, killed by missile fragments from U.S. naval bombing tests on the island municipality of Vieques. How does Vieques fit into the political future of Puerto Rico? While anti-Navy protesters are careful not to mix the island's political status options with their battle against the Navy, it is important to understand the role Washington has played in shaping Puerto Rico's current reality and how it has allowed the Navy to use Vieques as a bombing range for 60 years. It also helps one begin to predict what is the future of Puerto Rico. Is it to be a colony? Fifty-first state of the United States? Sovereign nation? In Islands of Resistance, Mario A. Murillo approaches these questions by examining how Puerto Rican politics have been shaped as much by 100 years of U.S. economic, military, and cultural domination of the territory, as by the enduring grassroots resistance of the Puerto Rican people. Islands of Resistance puts the contemporary situation in Puerto Rico into an historic context that will help people understand what is at stake in Vieques, not only for Viequenses, but for Puerto Ricans, both on the island and in the diaspora.
