CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA—As he presses the flesh and meets with the locals in this impoverished slum community, known as Vía Perimetral, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe resembles an American-style urban populist. Short and bespectacled, he has a physical stature that belies his charisma and steely toughness. Uribe moves through the crowds of Afro-Colombians, promising them housing and receiving cheers, before holding forth at an impromptu town hall-style meeting. The heat and humidity are oppressive—this is a swampy area right along the Caribbean coast—but the Colombian president listens to the Vía Perimetral residents and responds to them dutifully.
His audience includes a U.S. delegation led by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, which has come to Colombia to witness the stunning transformation wrought by Uribe over the past five and a half years. The Bush administration has run a few of these Colombia junkets—and is planning more—with one goal in mind: increase support for the bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) that was signed in November 2006 and is awaiting Congressional approval.
House Democrat Gregory Meeks needs no further convincing. He has visited Colombia several times since 2003 and hails the “miracle” produced by Uribe. Here in Vía Perimetral, the Colombian president invites Meeks to the microphone. Surveying the crowd of Afro-Colombians, Meeks, a Congressional Black Caucus member from New York City, remarks that they look just like his own family.
“I want to express my gratitude to your great President Uribe,” he says, praising the government’s efforts to boost the living standards of Afro-Colombians in places like Vía Perimetral (which is one of Colombia's poorest communities). Uribe is better known for his security agenda than for his social agenda, but Meeks insists the two are related. “He’s intertwined both,” Meeks says. “I am tremendously impressed with his commitment to social programs.”
When Uribe, a Harvard-educated lawyer, first took office in 2002, Colombia seemed to be on the verge of disaster. The peace process initiated by his predecessor, President Andrés Pastrana, had failed to curb the Communist guerrillas that have been waging war on the Colombian state for decades. Instead it had allowed the largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), to dominate a patch of territory roughly the size of Switzerland. Brutal right-wing paramilitary forces were fighting against the FARC and its smaller rival, the National Liberation Army (ELN), while also fighting against the official Colombian army. There were tens of thousands of illegal armed combatants running drugs and wreaking havoc. The government appeared unable to stanch the violence. Things were spiraling out of control.
Between 2002 and 2006, Colombia reduced the number of murders by 40 percent, the number of terrorist attacks by 63 percent, and the number of kidnappings by 76 percent. More than 33,000 paramilitary fighters have been demobilized.
Uribe embraced a hardline approach. He expanded the army, created specialized new units, and pursued the guerrillas relentlessly. At the same time, he spearheaded a parallel strategy of demobilizing the paramilitaries. Colombia saw immediate results. As a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) explains, “In 2003, some 133 percent more paramilitaries and narco-traffickers were captured than the previous year, and 85 percent more guerrillas. Desertions from the FARC and ELN and paramilitaries more than doubled between 2002 and 2004, with some 10,000 guerrillas and their supporters breaking ranks from 2002 to 2007, including an increasing number of seasoned veterans. By 2004, the FARC had lost its offensive momentum, and the paramilitaries were seeking to demobilize. The FARC’s current order of battle troop strength is an estimated 10,000, down 40 percent from its peak.”
Ever since 2000, Bogotá has benefited from a U.S. aid initiative known as Plan Colombia, which includes massive supplies of military and development assistance designed to curb the drug trade. In 2002, the Bush administration broadened Plan Colombia to encompass anti-terrorism aid, acknowledging that the drug war and the guerrilla war had become deeply enmeshed. This provided a critical financial boost to Uribe’s efforts.
Between 2002 and 2006, Colombia reduced the number of murders by 40 percent, the number of terrorist attacks by 63 percent, and the number of kidnappings by 76 percent. More than 33,000 paramilitary fighters have been demobilized. Though still a menace, the FARC has lost thousands of its armed combatants and been pushed out of the cities. “For the first time,” says the CSIS report, “there is a legitimate state presence in all of Colombia’s 1,099 municipalities.”
On their recent trip, U.S. lawmakers saw a stark example of the security turnaround in Medellín, which was once the most dangerous city on Earth. In a slum neighborhood known as Santo Domingo Savio, which used to be overrun by guerrillas, paramilitaries, and narco-traffickers, the outgoing mayor, Sergio Fajardo, has built a library. It is accessible via Medellín’s new cable car system. Fajardo, a mathematician who studied at the University of Wisconsin, “has turned the city into a showcase for new educational and architectural projects,” reports The New York Times. Its murder rate now compares favorably to those of several big cities in the United States.
“Since 2003,” Newsweek reports, “per capita income has increased by 25 percent, unemployment has fallen from 17 percent to 12 percent, and business investment and new construction have surged. At the same time, the percentage of the city’s schools considered low-performing by national standards fell from 50 to 14. Complaints about congestion and pollution are typically met with the observation that residents have gone from discussing the daily body count to grumbling about their commute.”
Despite these gains, Colombia remains a troubled country. Its judicial system is weak, the military continues to face internal corruption, and the drug trade exerts a poisonous influence on all parts of society. The guerrillas are battered but not beaten. The FARC is still holding hostages, including several Americans and a former Colombian senator named Ingrid Betancourt, and assassinating politicians. The demobilization process has been remarkably successful, but there are legitimate concerns that ex-paramilitaries may return to illegal activity.
One product of the demobilization drive has been new information about the extent of paramilitary political infiltration. Most of the current and former politicians linked to right-wing militias in the ongoing “parapolitics” scandal are Uribe supporters. His opponents have used this to damage the government’s reputation. But Uribe has backed the “parapolitics” investigations—indeed, they would not be possible absent the security gains, demobilization program, and independent judicial institutions that he has promoted—and his personal approval rating remains high, hovering around 70 percent. (Uribe won a landslide reelection in 2006.)
Besides encouraging Bogotá to maintain and expand recent economic reforms, the U.S.-Colombia FTA would upgrade the geopolitical standing of a key U.S. ally.
Congressional Democrats opposed to the U.S.-Colombia FTA have complained about extrajudicial killings by the military and violence against trade unionists. "There have been some recent reports on extrajudicial killings,” says a Bush administration official. “Their stats seem to run counter to the longer-term trends that have shown an overall decrease in violence in Colombia, so the issue needs to be looked at closely. We take very seriously extrajudicial killings, and the Colombians have said they share this view and are working to continue their efforts to stop the violence.”
As for anti-labor violence, it persists—but, overall, it has dropped off appreciably since 2002. Uribe has taken steps to protect trade unionists from attacks, such as creating a labor subunit in the prosecutor general’s office and funding a special labor security program. Whereas there were nearly 200 documented murders of trade unionists in 2002, there have been around 30 this year.
“Violence is a huge problem in Colombia,” says Luis Guillermo Plata, the Colombian trade minister. But “significant progress has been made.” He considers the FTA “a means to fight that violence,” and urges outsiders to focus on Colombia’s long-term trajectory of improvement rather than on “the scandal of the day.” If Congress rejects the FTA, says Plata, “this would be very, very hard to explain.”
Anti-FTA Democrats have thus far focused less on the economics of the trade deal than on human rights. Two-way trade between the U.S. and Colombia totaled roughly $16 billion in 2006. The U.S. is Colombia’s biggest trading partner, and most Colombian exporters have benefited from unilateral trade preferences. The FTA would solidify and expand these benefits, while dramatically increasing market access for American exporters. Supporters reckon it would enhance Colombia’s investment climate.
Uribe has already done much to spur foreign investment through his security achievements and strong fiscal policies, says Alberto Ramos, senior Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs. In particular, Ramos points to tax reforms and privatization. Last year, the Colombian economy grew by 6.8 percent—which, as the CSIS report notes, was “two points faster than the Latin American average.” Inflation was about 4.5 percent in 2006, down from 16.7 percent in 1998.
According to the World Bank’s latest survey of global business conditions, Colombia is Latin America’s “top reformer,” and “has made great strides in easing trade. By extending port operating hours and adopting more selective customs inspections, it reduced the time for port and terminal handling activities by three days. The country strengthened investor protections by increasing disclosure requirements for related-party transactions. It introduced an electronic tax filing system, cutting the average time businesses must spend on tax compliance each year by 188 hours, or 41 percent. And it is progressively reducing the corporate income tax rate, from 35 to 34 percent in 2007 and 33 percent in 2008.”
Besides encouraging Bogotá to maintain and expand these reforms, the U.S.-Colombia FTA would upgrade the geopolitical standing of a key U.S. ally—an ally that shares a long border with Venezuela, home to anti-American gadfly Hugo Chávez. In a region where authoritarian radicals are said to be gaining strength, Uribe has made Colombia a bulwark of pro-market democracy. Implementing the FTA would confirm this.
So will Congress approve it? “I don’t think it’s going to happen,” says Ramos. For now, Democrats say they are delaying a vote until Colombia shows “concrete evidence of sustained results” in curbing violence. Of course, the Uribe government has shown “sustained results”—amazing results, in fact, given recent Colombian history. “You get a clearer understanding when you visit yourself,” Meeks says. The Bush administration hopes more Democrats take that opportunity in 2008.
Duncan Currie is managing editor of THE AMERICAN.
