[News] The Annexation Of Colombia To The United States

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Annexation Of Colombia To The United States

November 09, 2009

By Fidel Castro

Anyone with some information can immediately see 
that the sweetened ‘Complementation Agreement for 
Defense and Security Cooperation and Technical 
Assistance between the Governments of Colombia 
and the United States' signed on October 30, and 
made public in the evening of November 2, amounts 
to the annexation of Colombia to the United States.

The agreement puts theoreticians and politicians 
in a predicament. It wouldn't be honest to keep 
silence now and speak later on sovereignty, 
democracy, human rights, freedom of opinion and 
other delights, when a country is being devoured 
by the empire as easy as lizards catch flies. 
This is the Colombian people; a self-sacrificing, 
industrious and combative people. I looked up in 
the hefty document for a digestible justification and I found none whatsoever.

Of 48 pages with 21 lines each, five are used to 
philosophize on the background of the shameful 
absorption that turns Colombia into an overseas 
territory. They are all based on the agreements 
signed with the United States after the murder of 
the distinguished progressive leader Jorge 
Eliecer Gaitan on April 9, 1948, and the 
establishment, on April 30, 1948, of the 
Organization of American States debated by the 
foreign ministers of the hemisphere meeting in 
Bogota, with the US as the boss, during the 
dramatic days when the Colombian oligarchy cut 
short the life of that leader thus paving the way 
to the onset of the armed struggle in that country.

The Agreement on Military Assistance between the 
Republic of Colombia and the United States of 
April 1952; the one related to Army, Naval and 
Air Missions from the US Forces, signed on 
October 7, 1974; the 1988 UN Convention against 
the Illegal Trafficking of Drugs and Psychotropic 
Substances; the 2000 UN Convention against 
Organized Transnational Delinquency; the 2001 
Security Council Resolution 1373 and the 
Inter-American Democratic Charter; the Democratic 
Security and Defense Policy resolution and others 
referred to in the abovementioned document, none 
of them can justify turning a 713,592.5 square 
miles country located in the heart of South 
America into a US military base. Colombia's 
territory is 1.6 times that of Texas, the second 
largest state of the Union taken away from Mexico 
and later used as a base to conquer with great 
violence more than half of that country.

On the other hand, over 59 years have passed 
since Colombian soldiers were sent to distant 
Asia, in October 1950, to fight alongside the 
Yankee troops against Chinese and Korean 
combatants. Now, the empire intends to send them 
to fight against their brothers in Venezuela, 
Ecuador and other Bolivarian and ALBA countries, 
to crush the Venezuelan Revolution as they tried 
to do with the Cuban Revolution in April 1961.

For more than one and a half year before the 
invasion of Cuba, the Yankee administration 
fostered, armed and used counterrevolutionary 
bandits in the Escambray the same way it is now 
using the Colombian paramilitary forces against Venezuela.

At the time of the Giron [Bay of Pigs] attack, 
the Yankee B-26 aircrafts piloted by mercenaries 
operated from Nicaragua. Their fighter planes 
were brought to the theater of operations in an 
aircraft carrier and the invaders of Cuban 
descent who landed in our territory were escorted 
by US warships and by the American marines. This 
time their war equipment and troops will be in 
Colombia posing a threat not only to Venezuela 
but to every country in Central and South America.

It is really cynical to claim that the infamous 
agreement is necessary to fight drug-trafficking 
and international terrorism. Cuba has shown that 
there is no need of foreign troops to prevent the 
cultivation and trafficking of drugs and to 
preserve domestic order, even though the United 
States --the mightiest power on Earth­has 
promoted, financed and armed the terrorists who 
for decades have attacked the Cuban Revolution.

The preservation of domestic peace is a basic 
prerogative of every government and the presence 
of Yankee troops in any Latin American country to 
do it on their behalf constitutes a blatant 
foreign interference in their internal affairs 
that will inevitably elicit the peoples' rejection.

A simple reading of the document shows that not 
only the Colombian airbases will be in the 
Yankees' hands but also the civilian airports and 
ultimately any facility that may be useful to 
their armed forces. The radio space is also 
available to that country with a different 
culture and other interests that have nothing in 
common with those of the Colombian people.

The US Armed Forces will have exceptional prerogatives.

The occupants can commit any crime anywhere in 
Colombia against Colombian families, property and 
laws and still be unaccountable to the country's 
authorities. Actually, they have taken diseases 
and scandalous behavior to many places like the 
Palmerola military base in Honduras. In Cuba, 
when they came to visit the neo-colony, they sat 
astride the neck of Jose Marti's statue, in the 
capital's Central Park. The limit set with 
regards to the total number of soldiers can be 
modified as requested by the United States, and 
with no restriction whatsoever. The aircraft 
carriers and warships visiting the naval bases 
given to them can take as large a crew as they 
choose, and this can be thousands in only one of their large aircraft carriers.

The Agreement, which will remain in force for 
successive 10-year periods, can't be modified 
until the end of every period, with a one-year 
prior notice. What will the United States do if 
an administration as that of Johnson, Nixon, 
Reagan, Bush sr. or Bush jr., and others like 
them, is asked to leave Colombia? The Yankees 
have ousted scores of governments in our 
hemisphere. How long would a government last in 
Colombia if it announced such intentions?

Now, the politicians in Latin America are faced 
with a sensitive issue: the fundamental duty of 
explaining their viewpoints on the annexation 
document. I am aware that what is happening in 
Honduras at this decisive moment draws the 
attention of the media and the foreign ministers 
of this hemisphere, but the Latin American 
governments cannot overlook the extremely serious 
and transcendental events taking place in Colombia.

I have no doubts about the reaction of the 
peoples; they will be sensitive to the dagger 
being shoved deep inside them, especially in 
Colombia: They will oppose! They will never cave in to such ignominy!

Today, the world is facing serious and pressing 
problems. The entire humanity is threatened by 
climate change. European leaders are almost 
begging on their knees for some kind of agreement 
in Copenhagen that will prevent the catastrophe. 
They practically concede that the Summit will 
fail to meet the objective of reaching an 
agreement that can drastically reduce the 
greenhouse gas emissions and promise to continue 
struggling to attain it before 2012; however, 
there is a true risk that an agreement cannot be reached until it is too late.

The Third World countries are rightly claiming 
from the richest and most developed nations 
hundreds of billion dollars a year to pay for the climate battle.

Does it make sense for the United States 
government to invest time and money in building 
military bases in Colombia to impose on our 
peoples their hateful tyranny? Along that path, 
if a disaster is already threatening the world, a 
greater and faster disaster is threatening the 
empire and it would all be the consequence of the 
same exploiting and plundering system of the planet.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 6, 2009
10:30 a.m.

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From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: 
<http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23095>http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23095




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