Spirit Lakes Church speaker calls for release of Colombian activist Ricardo Palmera

Imelda Daza-Cotes recently completed a national speaking tour that included a stop in Minneapolis. Once a political activist and elected official in Colombia, Daza-Cotes was targeted by a murderous campaign that wiped out the Patriotic Union, a leftist political party that rose to prominence in the 1980s. She fled to Sweden where she's been living in exile since 1989. On Feb. 13, Daza-Cotes addressed an audience of 40 people at Spirit of the Lakes Church in Minneapolis to discuss her experiences, as well as the extradition and trial of Colombian rebel Ricardo Palmera and U.S. intervention in her homeland.

In Colombia, 65 percent of the land is owned by 5 percent of the population, creating an elite ruling class and a poverty-stricken majority. Due to pervasive inequalities, the Colombian people have a long history of resistance to injustice. For decades, Colombian activists have struggled for social change by organizing trade unions, demanding human rights and advocating for land reform. Frequently, they suffer violent repression from the Colombian military and paramilitaries. Discouraged by the lack of progress, thousands have joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a 27,000-strong guerilla army formed in 1964.

The U.S. intervenes' directly in the Colombian civil war on the side of the wealthy. Since 2000, the Colombian government has received $4.7 billion from the U.S. military aid package, "Plan Colombia." U.S. tax dollars fund a counter-insurgency war against Colombians fighting for social change^ Using violence and intimidation, the Colombian army and their paramilitary allies make no distinction between those who choose the political process versus the armed struggle.
In 1984, the Colombian government and the FARC agreed to a cease-fire and entered negotiations that created the Patriotic Union (UP), a leftist alternative to the two ruling parties. In exchange for guaranteed amnesty, thousands of guerilla fighters laid down their arms and joined the UP. Teachers, unionists, peasants and various professionals also joined the party. At that time, Daza-Cotes was an economics professor organizing the peasant community in her hometown, Valledupar. A founding member of the UP, she was elected as a city council representative.

The UP was recognized as a legal political party, yet the military and paramilitaries began assassinating its members, murdering 3,000 people. "One day in 1989, I came home to find a wteath of flowers and an invitation to my own funeral," said Daza-Cotes. She fled the country, seeking refuge in Sweden with her husband and three children. Of the 19 founding members of the UP, only three are still alive: Daza-Cotes, another Colombian woman now living in Sweden, and current U.S. political prisoner Ricardo Palmera.

"Ricardo was my friend," said Daza-Cotes. "We worked at the same university and did political organizing together. When I left the country, he joined the FARC. He didn't see any alternative." Despite the enduring armed struggle, Daza-Cotes emphasized that the rebels want peace. On Jan. 2, 2004, Palmera went to Ecuador to make contact with a United Nations representative about negotiations with the Colombian government. He was captured by the CIA and extradited to the United States. In November 2006 he was tried in U.S. federal court for narco-traf-ficking and kidnapping.
Daza-Cotes said the charges are ridiculous. "He was always against drug trafficking, and they have no evidence that he was involved." The kidnapping charges stem from a February 2003 incident in which a helicopter carrying U.S. private contractors was shot down over FARC-controlled land.