U.$ companies, government aid, implicated in Colombian massacre Three Amerikan civilians providing airborne security for u.$.-based Occidental Petroleum coordinated an anti- guerrilla raid in Colombia in 1998 which killed 18 civilians, according to a Colombian military tribunal. Colombian Air Force pilot Cesar Romero testified that "The coordination was done directly with the armored helicopters that were supporting us and with the (Cessna 337) Skymaster plane flown by the U.S. pilots. The Skymaster and gunship crews talked directly to the ground troops." The helicopters involved in the attack were Vietnam-era surplus donated by the united $tates to the Columbian military under the guise of the "War on Drugs." During the raid, the u.$.-donated Huey helicopters strafed the town of Santo Domingo with machine gun fire, air-to-surface rockets, and cluster bombs. "Survivors said that the aircraft attacked them as they ran out of their homes with their hands in the air to show that they were non-combatants." Half of those killed were children; no guerrillas were killed. Occidental claimed that it had "no contractual links with the [u.$.] pilots or the plane." But Colombian government officials said that Occidental had switched from paying the Amerikan surveillance operation directly to "channeling payments through the Columbian Defense Ministry." Occidental has hired the Skymaster to patrol the 120,000 barrel-a-day Cano Limon oil field since 1997. Colombian guerrillas regularly sabotage oil infrastructure, correctly accusing multinationals like Occidental of plundering the country's natural resources.(1) The united $tates gave Colombia over $1 billion in 2000-2001 as part of the Pastrana government's ostensibly anti-drug "Plan Colombia."(2) The u.$. State Department says most of the 300 or so Amerikan civilians in Colombia are there to fight drugs.(1) There are also between 200 and 300 Amerikan military personnel in Colombia. For comparison, there were officially 50 Amerikan soldiers in El Salvador at the height of Amerikan participation in the civil war there. Some of the Amerikan soldiers in Colombia operate u.$.-built-and-funded radar stations; some fly spy planes; others sum up the intelligence gathered for the Colombian military. The Department of Defense admits that Amerikan special forces, a.k.a. Green Berets, train the Colombian military and police in combat techniques. The "Leahy Law," passed in the 90s, prohibits u.$. military aid from being used in anti-guerrilla actions. Explicit loopholes exclude half of the country from this restriction, however, and in practice, training and supplies designated for the "War on Drugs" have been used against both guerrillas and the civilians. (3,4) The Colombian military has close ties to reactionary, paramilitary death squads. Retired general Rito Alejo del Rio -- once chief of operations for the Colombian army -- was just arrested on charges of aiding the paramilitaries.(5) In the case of the Santo Domingo massacre, the equipment was donated in 1989, before the Amerikan Congress passed any restrictions on aid.(1) Washington is throwing money, personnel, and materiel at the reactionary Colombian government because it fears that government's collapse would threaten business as usual for Amerikan monopoly capitalists -- like Occidental - - in Colombia and throughout Latin America. On the other hand, the Colombian government, which turned down aid throughout the 1980s for fear of looking like an Amerikan puppet, now greedily accepts and asks for more and more aid. For example, one Colombian general argues that because the army is isolated from the people, "we cannot get intelligence from them."(6) Hence the need for Amerikan radar stations and spy planes. The crisis in the Colombian government stems from its inability to meet the people's basic needs -- food, jobs and real economic development for people's needs. This inability in turn stems from the fact that the government is in the hands of corrupt and reactionary bourgeois elements, which ultimately allies with Amerikan imperialists to preserve their power and wealth. This is why Communism, and in particular, Maoism, remains of utmost relevance to the oppressed and exploited masses, the majority of whom live in neo-colonies like Colombia. Because the imperialist- backed puppets will defend the status quo with arms, Protracted People's War is necessary to mobilize the masses to overthrow them and institute a socialist government. A socialist government could address the people's needs, unhampered by the need to defend a tiny minority's "right" to profit off of the working and toiling masses. Mao's theory that class struggle continues under socialism is the best weapon for preventing the rise of new bourgeois elements inside the revolutionary state, who would then sell the country back to the imperialists. -- MC206 Notes: 1. San Francisco Chronicle, 15 Jun 2001. 2. MIM Notes 212, 15 Jun 2000. 3. MIM Notes 195, 1 Oct 1999. 4. MIM Notes 171, 1 Oct 1998. 5. New York Times, 24 Jul 2001. 6. Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug 1999.