Background
Plan Colombia is a long-prevailing foreign aid package bestowed to the country of Colombia from the United States. This foreign aid package grants substantial financial assistance to Colombia, intending to fight the “War on Drugs” and to reduce the trafficking of narcoleptics, but there is a multitude of other factors and implications, both unintentional or indirect and intentional due to ulterior motives. To accomplish the goals of Plan Colombia, most of the aid has been provided in the form of armed forces. This situation is complicated because of the ongoing civil war between the government of Colombia and the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People’s Army (FARC). Additionally making matters difficult has been the strong association of the Colombian military and some right wing paramilitary units. Such conflict in Colombia exacerbates its drug problem, but Plan Colombia allegedly seeks to tame.
From the perspective of the United States, the U.S. was a keen backer, especially since the policy reinforced both U.S. domestic and foreign policy initiatives: war on drugs and security. Yet, United States foreign policy towards Colombia continues to be a topic of fiery dispute both among specialists in foreign policy and in Congress. During the deliberation over supporting Plan Colombia as a United States foreign policy initiative, a large number of Democrats in Congress were anxious that the U.S. was getting too ensnared in a foreign civil war that was more and more affecting Colombia’s neighboring nations as well. Previous human rights violations by the Army of Colombia and paramilitaries were a source of trepidation for the United States. However, the U.S. ultimately supported the government of Colombi...
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“Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace, Prosperity, and the Strengthening of the State.” 1999. United States Institute for Peace. Washington, D.C. US Institute for Peace Website. http://www.usip.org/library/pa/colombia/adddoc/plan_colombia_101999.html (Accessed 02/07/14).
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Youngers, Coletta. 2001. “Collateral Damage: U.S. Drug Control Efforts in the Andes.” Paper presented for the meeting of “The Latin American Studies Association,” The Washington Office on Latin America, Washington D.C., September 6-8.
In the Documentary “Mexico’s Drug Cartel War”, it displays a systematic approach of drugs and violence. The Drug War has been going on since the United States had a devastating impact on Mexico after the recession where it nearly doubled its interest payments. Mexico could not afford the interest payments but did have many agricultural imports. This created the trade between the United States and the land owned by the two million farmers. It spread the slums to Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez to work in maquiladoras (assembly plants just across the border) (Jacobin, 2015). This paper will focus on explaining how drugs are related to violence in Mexico, how drug enforcement policies influence the relationship between drugs and violence, and how battle for control in their own country.
Mignolo, W. D. (2005). The Idea of Latin America (pp. 1-94). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
The republic of Colombia has been fighting an internal war for over 50 years. On April 9th 1948, 1:00P.M. The leader of the Liberal Party Jorger Eliecer Gaitan walked out of his office in the downtown area, got shot 3 times and died once he got to the hospital. This day went down in Colombian history as the Bogotazo. Gaitan was a moderate socialist congressman that gave a voice to the middle and lower classes in Colombia. He gave hope to those that had nothing under the right wing elitist government. In 1948 after his death, the era of the Violencia started. A civil war between the Colombian communist party and the farmers against the right wing military conservative government due to the high inflation and unfair assistance to those that
The Center for Strategic Studies. Dominican Action—1965: Intervention or Cooperation?. Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic Studies, 1966.
Over the course of the history of the United States, specific foreign policies have affected the methods in which the U.S. involves itself around the globe. Specifically, certain policies have affected U.S. involvement in Latin America. It is the intention of this essay to explain the United States foreign policy behind specific doctrines. In order to realize current objectives, this paper will proceed as follows: Part 1 will define the Monroe Doctrine, Sections 2, 3, 4, and 5 will concurrently explicitly explain the Roosevelt Corollary, Good Neighbor Policy, and the Nixon Doctrine, discuss how each policy resulted in U.S. involvement in Latin American countries, describe how it was justified by the U.S. government, respectively, and finally, will bring this paper to a conclusion.
It is my intention to investigate the relationship with Pablo Escobar and the development of Colombia as this is a very controversial and wide topic that covers many aspects regarding the economic growth of Columbia. The topic "changing communities" can be interpreted many ways for this topic, changing communities shall be measured in economic development, change in culture and geographic development. In this research paper I am going to discover Pablo Escobar's relationship with the development of Colombia as in the early stages of Escobar's reign over Columbia and the drug world he was coined the nickname "the robin hood of Colombia" for his millions of US dollars
April 9, 1948, was a tragic day in Colombia’s history. On this day, Jorge Eliécer Gaítán, a candidate for the presidency of Colombia, was assassinated. In the 10 hour period that followed the assassination, angry mobs marched throughout the city of Bogota, looting and burning down over 100 buildings. Before the night would end, nearly 3,000 people would die in the streets. This terrible event in Colombia’s history is today referred to as the Bogotazo. This paper examines some of the underlying reasons contributing to the outbreak of this violence and the events that transpired during the Bogotazo. The paper concludes that the events leading to the violence of the Bogotazo are still present in Colombia today and will hamper its prospects for peace in the future.
Since it was first discovered by European explorers, Latin America has supplied raw materials and labor to Europe and other locations around the world. Eduardo Galeano writes about the exploitation of native Latin Americans in his 1973 book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Galeano takes a historical approach and examines colonial and post-colonial interactions between Europeans and Latin Americans. He asserts that the native Latin Americans were essentially powerless to fight this exploitation because of the dominance of the European powers. In his 2008 book Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug, Paul Gootenberg writes about the discovery of cocaine and its transition from a regional good to a global commodity. Gootenberg combines history and economics in his view of the relationships between the two powers. Unlike Galeano, he shows a side of Latin American history in which the native people of Latin America had power, however limited, to control their positions in the economic system imposed by the Europeans. Gootenberg accepts Galeano’s theory of dominance as a starting point but complicates it by including the agency of the local people of Latin America, especially Peru. Gootenberg shifts the focus of his book from the national and European players to the local Latin American actors involved in the cocaine commodity chain—from growers and harvesters to refiners and distributors. This theory involves more of the disparate components present in the economies of Latin America; therefore, it is a better way to describe historical relationships between Latin America and Europe.
Mignolo, W. D. (2005). The Idea of Latin America (pp. 1-94). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
n.p., 25 Sep. 2013. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. Corcoran, Katherine. “Mexico’s Drug War Strategy Remains Unchanged With New Government.”
Quinn, Tom, and Maurice Weaver. "Colombia's Robin Hood." Chronicle-Herald (Halifax, Canada). Dec. 4 1993: A10. SIRS Issues Researcher.Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Bruneau,C.,(2005, May).The Maras and national security in Central America. Strategic insights (5). Retrieved from http://www.nps.edu/academics/centers/publications/onlinejournal/2005/may/bruneaumay05.html
Concerned authorities have focused essentially on criminalization and punishment, to find remedies to the ever-increasing prevalent drug problem. In the name of drug reducing policies, authorities endorse more corrective and expensive drug control methods and officials approve stricter new drug war policies, violating numerous human rights. Regardless of or perhaps because of these efforts, UN agencies estimate the annual revenue generated by the illegal drug industry at $US400 billion, or the equivalent of roughly eight per cent of total international trade (Riley 1998). This trade has increased organized/unorganized crime, corrupted authorities and police officials, raised violence, disrupted economic markets, increased risk of diseases an...
Potter, George Ann. “Is the War on Drugs Bringing "Dignity" to Bolivia?”TheWashington Report on the Hemisphere. Vol. 19.11. July 30, 1999.
However, this does not necessarily mean colonizing Latin America, but rather having it allied and influenced by the United States' mentality and agenda. The book describes the tactics used by the United States to align these countries' policies and politics with its own. The book effectively portrays the role of the United States in the political affairs of Latin American countries. Higgins examines the Eisenhower administration's invasion of Guatemala, which resulted in a revolt to remove the leftist President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. The Arbenz administration posed a threat to the dominance of American companies in Guatemala, particularly the United Fruit Company.