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Power of the Pen

Ah, it all becomes clear. Here's one reason Uribe came to his senses on the fumigation issue. Public opinion seems to count more in the Latin American countries. I would guess it's because the people have demonstrated their willingness to fight, and even die, for their political beliefs.

Daniel Samper Pizano has turned his column in the Bogota daily El Tiempo into a megaphone rallying the public against U.S.-backed antidrug spraying in Colombia's 49 national parks. His writing led to a two-day deluge of more than 1,100 angry messages on El Tiempo's Web site. It sparked a March 18 protest in Bogota outside the agency that oversees the parks. And it threatens to turn an upcoming Senate debate on the spraying into another protest scene.

Samper, whose brother Ernesto served as the nation's president from 1994 to 1998, has been been shining the spotlight on this issue since February, exposing the conflict of interest between newly appointed Minister of the Environment Suarez with the U.S.-funded antidrug program.

He ratcheted up the public outcry with susequent columns urging his readers to take action. The response emboldened the newspaper of record there, El Tiempo, to take for the first time an editorial stand against the fumigation and also solicit comments. They received 1,167, some with new information.

The parks fumigation order, for example, came from former Col. Alfonso Plazas Vega, head of the narcotics council. Plazas helped plan and carry out the 1985 bombing of Colombia's Palace of Justice, occupied by members of a guerrilla group called M-19. The bombing killed at least 76 civilians, including the country's 11 Supreme Court justices. Plazas also helped form Death to Kidnappers (MAS), a forebear of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the country's main paramilitary federation.

Don't have to look hard to see a private agenda there. The US gives them guns and other artillery in addition to the herbicide deliveries. They routinely pass M-16s out to kids there.

There are 800,000 indigenous Colombians living in the parks and countless species of flora and fauna. Not to mention the cities that depend on them for their water supply. All are threatened.

Quote of the day on this issue goes to El Tiempo!'s editorial.

"To not fumigate the national parks would be, for one honorable time, to put the national interest of a country with the second greatest environmental wealth on the planet before the interest of the United States." [emphasis added]