COLOMBIA — The Colombian government is currently involved in an agreement with the U.S. to lease Colombian military bases to the U.S. for a decade. The stated purpose is so that the U.S. could conduct anti-drug trafficking and anti-terrorism operations. However, considering the history of the U.S. government of conducting counterinsurgent warfare against colonized peoples — including those within its own borders — under the guise of wars of drugs and war on terror, it is quite clear that the purpose of this agreement is to give the U.S. government more capacity to intervene militarily in South America, where anti-imperialist fervor has been growing with Venezuela at its center.
This agreement comes in the wake of the expelling of U.S. military troops from a base in Mantra, Ecuador. Colombian president Alvaro Uribe said the base was necessary to help his regime’s “fight against drug traffickers and Marxist guerillas.
The presence of U.S. military forces has never meant anything good for oppressed people anywhere, and the people of Venezuela remember the U.S. government’s backing of an attempted military coup in Venezuela in 2002. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called on the people of Venezuela to prepare to defend themselves in anticipation that the U.S. would continue its trend of military attack against oppressed peoples determining to control their own resources. Other leaders in South America have also expressed their problems with the U.S. military presence in Colombia. Brazilian President Lula de Silva has stated that “an American base in Colombia doesn’t please me.” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured along with her father by a U.S. supported coup regime has called a meeting of the Union of South American Nations on August 10 in Ecuador.
