The Commander of U.S. Southern Command, Gen. Douglas Fraser, presented his first annual “Posture Statement” to the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, a week doing the same in the Senate. This document (PDF), presented to the oversight committees every year, explains how the regional unified command views threats in the region, and how it plans to address them. This was the first such testimony for Gen. Fraser, who assumed command in July. (Video of his House testimony is here, and video of his Senate testimony is here.)
The two testimonies were most notable for a flip-flop on Venezuela — a country that is only mentioned in 2 paragraphs in Gen. Fraser’s entire 42-page testimony — during the hearings’ question-and-answer phases. Asked about Venezuelan support for Colombia’s FARC and Spain’s ETA in the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 11, the general responded that there was no solid evidence indicating that Caracas is, as a matter of official policy, supporting the two groups, both on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.
“We have continued to watch very closely for any connections between illicit and terrorist organization activity within the region. We are concerned about it. I’m skeptical. I continue to watch for it. … But I don't see that evidence. I can't tell you specifically whether that continues or not.”
Yesterday, however, Gen. Fraser said something different. According to Reuters, “Fraser said Venezuela continues to provide the FARC a safe haven and ‘financial logistical support’ based on information found on a laptop computer of a FARC commander seized by Colombian soldiers during a raid on a guerrilla camp in Ecuador in 2008.” A week earlier, the general had dismissed the laptop files as “old evidence.”
Fraser’s words matter because of the seriousness of the allegation. If the U.S. government signals that it believes it is Venezuelan government policy is to fund a group that kills large numbers of people in neighboring Colombia, then the U.S. government is effectively signaling that Colombia has a casus belli. That is why both U.S. and Colombian officials have generally avoided stating publicly that Hugo Chávez is backing the FARC. (It is undeniable that Venezuela has not been at all aggressive in clearing the FARC out of its border zones, but the same can be said about Colombian narcotraffickers and “new” paramilitary groups that also operate across the border.)
In addition to a lengthy section about Haiti relief efforts, Gen. Fraser’s written testimony puts a strong emphasis on “trafficking” as a principal threat to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. He uses the term to describe more than just narcotics, encompassing organized crime and gangs as corollary challenges to be confronted.
More than his predecessors, the general directly links organized-crime activity with a potential terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland: “the same routes and networks by which illicit traffickers smuggle 1,250-1,500 metric tons of cocaine per year around the region could be used wittingly or unwittingly to smuggle weapons, cash, fissile material or terrorists.” (This quote is also notable because it clashes strongly with State Department estimates, presented in the March 1 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, that the entire region produced only 705 tons of cocaine in 2008.)
Other notable stories from the past day:
- For the first time, an Argentine military officer who worked in the Navy Mechanics’ School (ESMA) during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship has admitted that human rights were violated inside the facility. Former Navy Captain Jorge “El Tigre” Acosta, currently on trial, recognized that “there were people detained” at the ESMA. Argentine human rights groups say that about 5,000 people were taken to the ESMA and tortured before being “disappeared”; the building is now a human rights museum.
- At the behest of President Evo Morales, Bolivia’s armed forces are adopting a new coat of arms incorporating the wiphala, the checkered-rainbow flag used by the country’s indigenous groups. The new shield also includes the slogan “patria o muerte, venceremos” (“fatherland or death, we shall overcome”), a saying most frequently associated with Fidel Castro.
- Bolivian police uncovered a cocaine “mega-laboratory” in Santa Cruz department, apparently capable of producing 200 kilos of cocaine per day. The bust occurred a week after police found a similar-sized lab in the same province.
- Colombia’s El Tiempo reports that the country’s narcotraffickers are showing a preference to be paid in pills of MDMA (the drug known as ecstasy) instead of dollars. Apparently the pills are more profitable than the weak U.S. currency — especially after increased busts of sassafras oil in Cambodia have caused a worldwide shortage of the drug — and far easier to transport.
- Colombia is claiming some advances in the fight against “new” paramilitary groups. Police announced the arrest of 9 suspected associates of Perdo Oliveiro Guerrero, alias “Cuchillo” (“Knife”), whose so-called “Colombian Popular Revolutionary Antiterrorist Army” (ERPAC) controls much narcotrafficking in the country’s eastern plains. The police also captured 14 members of the Rastrojos, which includes remnants of both the AUC and the North Valle cartel, in three southwestern departments.
- Meanwhile, as the L.A. Times notes, Colombia’s Supreme Court has refused to extradite Daniel Rendón, alias “Don Mario,” to the United States to face narcotrafficking charges. Rendón is the brother of Freddy Rendón (alias “El Alemán”), former head of the AUC’s Élmer Cárdenas Bloc, and is widely accused of being a chief sponsor of the new generation of “paras” that is proliferating throughout the country. The court denied the extradition because it determined that “Don Mario” is cooperating with prosecutors in the “Justice and Peace” process, which was designed for paramilitaries who demobilized willingly.
- Colombia’s Supreme Court also handed down a nine-year prison sentence to Alvaro Araújo, a senator and brother of one of President Uribe’s former foreign minister, for collaborating with the AUC’s Northern Bloc in his home department of Cesar. Araújo, once a rising star among the pro-Uribe legislative bloc, is one of the most powerful politicians to be sentenced in Colombia’s “para-politics” scandal.
- Colombia and Ecuador are still discussing a possible renewal of diplomatic relations, which has been believed to be imminent for months now. Neither of the neighboring countries has had ambassadors in each other’s capital since March 2008, when Colombia raided a guerrilla encampment a mile inside Ecuadorian territory, killing a top leader of the FARC. A main sticking point now appears to be Ecuador’s request for Colombia to share all files mentioning Ecuador on the guerrilla leader’s laptop computer, which has been a source of many allegations of guerrilla ties to the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela. Meanwhile the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission is holding a hearing in Washington today to consider Ecuador’s complaint that the March 2008 raid killed an Ecuadorian citizen.
- The Inter-American Press Association’s mid-year meeting convened in Aruba yesterday. Its president issued a dire warning about “backsliding” on freedom of expression in the hemisphere, singling out Cuba and Venezuela as nations with a “very hostile attitude toward the press.”
- Finally, just days before the 30th anniversary of the murder of El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, the “Latin Americanist” blog shares a video from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show depicting the Texas School Board’s recent decision not to include Romero in its history textbooks. Apparently Romero was not “famous” enough to make the cut.
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