Page 94 - Marlie Burton Roche : Landscape and Bread
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IMPERIALISM:
A DEVASTATING ENTERPRIZE
COLOMBIA
military-political-economic offensive in Latin America takes many
The U.S. forms, depending on the circumstances. Crumbling client regimes
are shored up, independent regimes are toppled or disrupted, and popular movements that
challenge U.S. empire and its dependent states are destroyed or isolated.
U.S. involvement in Colombia denotes political, economic, ideological, and geopolitical factors.
The primary concern for the United States is that a revolutionary regime in control of Colombia
would countenance similar radical socio-economic and political changes in neighbouring countries
and weaken U.S. hegemony in the region. U.S. control over oil production and supply in the area
would also be affected and, most significantly, the U.S. sponsored Free Trade of the Americas
FTAA, the primary new instrument of imperial control in Latin America, would be put at risk.
The pretext for Washington’s counterinsurgency policy in Colombia is the ‘anti-narcotic
campaign’. But this so-called war on drugs targets only the localities where the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia FARC have a dominating influence. The areas under control of the
paramilitary vassals of the Colombian Armed Forces are effectually ignored.
90 MARLIE BURTON-ROCHE LANDSCAPE & BREAD
