by JOHNNY HAZARD

On Saturday, March 1, Colombian bombers attacked members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) who were hiding across the southern border in Ecuador. The attack came from the south, meaning the Colombian planes had penetrated farther still into Ecuador and turned around. The attack killed 21 people, including Raúl Reyes, the No. 2 in command in the FARC structure and their negotiator in talks to exchange hostages under their control for various of their imprisoned members. (Also killed were two Mexican university students.) The victims died in their sleep and many were shot at point blank afterward by Colombian military personnel who dropped down to pick up their trophies. Three heads of self-proclaimed socialist Latin American governments, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, broke relations with or recalled their ambassadors from Colombia in the wake of the incident. (The latter two have since re-established relations.)

The initial attitude of the Colombian government of president Alfaro Uribe was of unrepentance and of blaming Chávez for the incident. A computer that somehow survived the bombing was said to have evidence linking Chávez to the FARC. The Bush administration, predictably, declared its support of its Colombian counterpart. Colombia is one of the closest allies of the U.S. in Latin America.
U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidates have responded on cue: Clinton and Obama read the boilerplate script: “______________ has a right to defend its borders.” Usually the blank is filled in with Israel or the U.S. itself; always the country with the “right to defend” itself is the attacking party, also violating international law in the process.

It’s worth looking at this case in light of the hostage release negotiations. Ecuador’s Correa has pointed out that Colombia committed the massacre knowing that ex-Green Party Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was about to be released thanks to negotiations among the murdered Raúl Reyes, Correa, Hugo Chávez and French president Sarkozy. (Betancourt also has French citizenship.)

This is not the first time that Colombia’s Uribe has interrupted hostage release. The last time it wasn’t so violent: in the summer, he’d asked Chávez to intercede on behalf of Betancourt. When these efforts were bearing fruit, he suddenly canceled the negotiations, arguing that Chávez had contacted a Colombian general without permission. Apparently, the U.S. pressured Uribe to break off the negotiations so as not to give Chávez a public relations victory, not only as an international negotiator who could bring tangible results but also as one who got along with two right-wing presidents, Uribe and Sarkozy.  

The FARC has subsequently released two groups of hostages to Chávez personally, among them various ex-congress members. The group that was to be released before the massacre included Betancourt and various U.S. contractors, according to Correa.

Huge protests in Bogotá and other cities on March 6 (belying the claim that there is unanimous support for Uribe in Colombia), in addition to rebukes from the Organization of American States and, later, a Latin American summit in the Dominican Republic, finally forced Uribe to apologize and all-out war has, for now, been averted.

Johnny Hazard lives and writes from Mexico City.