From: jcamacho@phakt.usc.edu (Jose Camacho)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: Re: Colombia Newsbriefs 12/9 ed-lp
Date: 13 Dec 1992 13:17:11 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: phakt.usc.edu

In article <20059@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> ez000281@hamlet.ucdavis.edu writes:
[...]
>>guerrilla leaders. (edlp 12/08 from AP)
>
>What the pinkos don't say

I had no idea that AP news was a pinko agent...

Not only has the guerrilla "senderized" itself by getting involved in drug
businesses, but what is even worse from the point of view of Colombians, they 
are involved in the kidnapping business. As has been often mentioned, drugs
are grown in South America because they are consumed elsewhere. As far as 
anyone can tell the guerrilla doesn't get involved in the coffee business, 
because there is no profit in it. 
In fact, the drug market is a very clear and excellent example of how market
 economy works. If you are true to your liberal and market views above 
everything else, as you have shown all over, why are you against this excellent
example of how it runs?

If you want to end the drug problem it's very easy: you don't need to keep
blaming it on producers, just stop consumption of it in the States. It would
be much more effective, and you wouldn't need to go around invading other 
countries and making prisoners of war like Noriega. But of course, that would
amount to admitting that there is something fundamentally wrong with the system
in the "world's most powerful nation", and that we don't want to do, do we?


  While their at it, 
>they have done a marvelous effort in duping what left of the U.S. "left" in 
>making drug traffickers/addicts and environmental terrorists appears popular 
>heroes.  Communists and druglords seem to be on the same side throughout Latin
>America.

I won't argue with you on the "U.S. left", since I don't even know there is one
. However, I must say that an increasing number of people on the non-U.S. left
have been criticizing precisely that. I don't know if you are aware of the 
letter signed among others by Garcia Marquez in Colombia against the guerrilla.
Perhaps once again, not only the left but the country as a whole in the US is 
not really concerned with reality in South America but rather with how that 
affects their "interests".

So I don't think it is fair to say that "communists and druglords seem to be on
the same side". First, as I said, several "communists" have dennounced both
the guerrilla and the drug-cartels, second, if you knew something about how
the drug-lords have systematically ordered the killings thousands of popular
 leaders and representatives of the UP in Colombia (a Communist group) perhaps you wouldn't be as quick to make such senseless affirmations.

Guerrillas, as I said before, have finally converted to market economy: they 
realized it was a great business to grow drugs. I don't approve of it, and I
don't approve of them in general, but I don't see how that can be condemned 
from the point of view of a economic liberal.

> and now Galan is caught red handed with his cocaine 
>cargo while sniffing some of it himself. 

Perhaps he was following the example of the former mayor of DC, who is now
seeking office after being convicted of that same crime. Shouldn't you take 
care of your own house before trying to tell other people how to run theirs?

>  In any event if our Colombian friends 
>have trouble convicting this assasin, we will happily do so for him and, who 
>knows, perhaps he could share a cell in Marion with pusher Noriega, so that his 
>"human rights" will not be violated.

Thanks for the offer, but as I said before, I think you have enough things to
care about in your country. How does the cocaine get into the country? How is
it distributed? Where does the money go? It seems that a very small percentage
of the drug money returns/stays  in Colombia. The rest seems to be fueling
the US economy. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about that?

Why doens't anyone ever mention the fact that the largest marijuana producer in
the world is not Colombia, nor Mexico, but...the US? It is always so much 
easier to blame things on other people, and perhaps invade a couple of 
countries so that it looks like you are doing something about the problem, but
no one in this country has the courage to face reality: the problem is in the
US, demand is in the US, distribution networks are in the US. Money is 
laundered in the US and other advanced Western countries. If you tackle those
issues, I assure you, the price of cocaine will go down so quickly as that of
coffee (and believe me, it was quick).
>
>Edelmiro


Jose Camacho