after Plan Colombia was initiated.
That money went to the military, to the politicians, the people remained deeply impoverished, living in terror. The military-allied paramilitaries (death squads) conducted massacres throughout the country, sometimes working tandem with the Colombian military, it threw thousands into mass graves, even used mobile crematoria, tortured and murdered campesinos (farmers) publicly, to instill terror throughout the country, hoping to keep the people so traumatized they would refuse to resist the hard-right feudal government which has always been supported by the US Gov't.
The money does NOT go to the public, to help the struggling poor. Their plight has remained the same.
Both the military and the paramilitaries have worked to dupe innocent or ignorant young Colombian men by luring them to locations with the promise of a job, or a chance to serve in the military, then murdered them, and planted objects on them to identify them as rebels. This practice was given the name "false positives." Both death squads and soldiers and well up the officers' ladder have testified to this in trials brought against members.
Paramilitaries have also coerced people at the election booths, even to the point of going into the voting booths with the frightened people to make sure they voted right.
Their entire government from the local to the national level is corrupt, with politicians at all levels using death squads to kill or get rid of their enemies any way possible. High ranking officers arranged for death squad members to murder a nationally beloved political comedian, Jaime Garzon. There are hundreds of politicans who have been tried already, sent to low security prisons, etc. for short sentences. There are still Congressmen and mayors, etc. who use the new replacement paramilitaries, the neo-paramilitaries, who are the same people, reshuffled, working in smaller, more numerous groups doing the same things, including social cleansing, murdering people they don't want in their society, like drunks, street vendors, gay, lesbian, prostitutes, etc. Anyone who ticks them off.
When that money goes, it flies out of this country by the boatload, and benefits those at the top. That's why the hard-right politicians have fought like maniacs to keep that money flowing to the WAR MACHINE, forever.
Money going to peace would clearly, have the goal of achieving peace. The hard-right has no interest in peace, as it has benefited wildly from war, from death, from the support of the US ####ing right-wing, racist corporate whores.
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