Too Much Roundup: The Plan Colombia Vote 

WINONA LADUKE / The Winona LaDuke Reader Mar02

Summer 2001

Too much Roundup is not a good thing. We all know that, this week in Congress, new funding for Plan Colombia (a.k.a. the Andean Regional initiative) will hit the floor for debate. The centerpiece of that plan is continued aerial spraying of Roundup Ultra over hundreds of thousands of acres of Colombia and expanded military aid to the region. It is, in my opinion, a gross misappropriation of federal funds.

This past year, Congress approved $1.3 billion to fund Plan Colombia, a plan whose goal in part is the elimination of coca bushes, which are seen as key to stemming the tide of drug trafficking in the U.S. The Bush Administration has proposed an expansion of this program, known as the Andean Regional Initiative, and is asking for $882 million to continue support for the work in Colombia, and expand it to the greater Andean region. The Colombian government has been spraying herbicides on drug fields for decades, but escalated the program with U.S. support in December 2000. Since that time, close to 40,000 hectares of land (or around 180,000 acres) in southern Colombia have been sprayed.

The spraying has not destroyed the majority of the coca bushes. Pesticide drift is inevitable with any aerial spraying and is exacerbated under Plan Colombia since planes fly higher than normal to avoid armed attack. The herbicides are consequently spread far beyond the targeted coca fields and into fields of food crops, other natural vegetation and waterways of the fragile ecosystem of the Amazon basin. While both the Colombian and U.S. governments have maintained that there have been few problems with the spraying, this is not the reality on the ground. Food crops on small family farms have been destroyed, children from local schools are showing signs of serious skin lesions that heal over but continually reappear, and animals and fish have died by the tens of thousands.

Elsa Nivia, a Colombian agronomist and director of Pesticide Action Network Colombia, responds to the federal government's claims that Roundup Ultra is safe and no more poisonous than aspirin or table salt. Early this year, she reported that in the first two months of this year local authorities reported that 4,289 humans suffered skin or gastric disorders, and that the chemicals killed 178,377 animals including cattle, horses, pigs, dogs, ducks, hens and fish.

Sort of a nasty tally, I'd say. Not content to sit at home and read about it, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone went down to Colombia this spring, inquiring about Plan Colombia. As the story goes, Wellstone was assured that the aerial spraying was safe and innocuous, yet, mistakenly, somehow, when the planes sprayed elsewhere, the aerial drift drenched the Senator.

In short, the whole question of how much Roundup to supply sets in motion a flashback to Vietnam and the Agent Orange Syndrome. Really, enough is likely enough.

Then there is the second facet of Plan Colombia, which is increasingly reminding me of Vietnam. Although there are not officially American soldiers in Colombia, there are about 500 U.S. "trainers" in Colombia, mostly private military contractors, who are working with both the Colombian military, and quite often the Colombian paramilitary. (According to sources at Amazon Watch, a public interest research group, nineteen out of twentyone Colombian military brigades have direct links to the paramilitary groups in the country.) Each year, the U.S. is getting more deeply involved in the country, and one might ask who are the largest beneficiaries of this involvement? For instance, around $700-800 million of the last "aid" package to Colombia ended up in the pocket of Huey, and other helicopter companies, who are not doing too badly as the country gets more and more militarized. Additionally, increasing amounts of U.S. military infrastructure is going to provide security and support for facilities and pipelines of Occidental Petroleum, whose (widely opposed) pipeline has been bombed-no kidding-110 times in the past six months, gushing a whopping 2.2 million gallons of oil onto Colombian soil.

The price of all this militarization is increasingly high-too high for any of us. According to Amnesty International's Annual Report 2001 on Colombia, in the year 2000 "more than 4,000 people were victims of political killings, over 300 disappeared, and an estimated 300,000 people were internally displaced. At least 1,500 people were kidnapped by armed opposition groups and paramilitary organizations; mass kidnaps of civilians continued." Sadly, if approved, over 70 percent of U.S. assistance to Colombia would be directed toward the military and police. I actually don't think the Colombians need any more guns.

I must confess some personal interest in this story. First of all, one of my closest friends, Ingrid Washinawatok-El Issa, was kidnapped and shot in Colombia in 1998, a victim of the political violence, and a bullet I essentially paid for with my tax dollars. Second, I have two sons and remember all too well the body tolls from Vietnam. I am absolutely sure that I don't want to see that era again. There are alternatives. Spend that money on drug treatment programs in the U.S. Spend that money on investing and financing small farmers in Colombia to switch to legal crops. Support humanitarian aid and a clean up of the oil spills left by American companies in the region. Consider amendments like that from Massachusetts Representative James McGovern, which urges a cut in the military budget for Colombia and a transfer of some of this money to TB prevention, child survival and maternal health. Our tax dollars can be better spent.

• Please visit The White Earth Land Recovery Project (a project of Winona's)
  32033 East Round Lake Road, Ponsford, MN 56575 1-888-779-3577 

• More on Roundup