...please give us the benefit of your travel, work and life in Colombia.
What sort of company did you work for? (big? small? type of product? Colombian employees? etc.)
Did you work for the U.S. government or any private contractor of the U.S. government?
What was (is?) the nature of your work?
What kind of neighborhood did you live in? (urban? rural? rich? poor? middle class? etc.) (did you live in a hotel, at a military base, at company-provided accommodations, or did you rent or buy living space among ordinary Colombians?)
What parts of Colombia have you visited? (coastal resorts? urban business centers? barrios? rural--peasant farms? big ranches? U.S. military "forward operating locations"?)
What sorts of people do you work with and hang out with? Rich, poor, middle class? Business people? Military? American? Colombian? Other? Ordinary workers? Landowners? Developers? Maids or gardeners? The unemployed? (Where have they stowed those five million displaced peasant farmers?) DEA agents? Colombian government officials? Tourists? Grocers? Waiters? Shoe manufacturers? Palm oil magnates? Politicians (left? right?)? Etc.
You say you are "intimately familiar with Colombia since 1967"--but that tells us nothing. Colombia is a big country, and it has one of the worst rich/poor discrepancies and some of the worst poverty in Latin America. Know any Jesuit humanitarians? Union organizers? Peasant farmers? Survivors of Colombian military massacres? Families of "false positives" murder victims? Leftist politicians? Leftist journalists? Amnesty International investigators? Litigants against Chiquita International or Drummond Coal on those corporations' death squad activities? Sweatshop workers? Farm workers? Small farmers?
Did you (do you) work for any large U.S. transglobal corporation, such as Chiquita, Drummond Coal, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Monsanto, Dyncorp, Bechtel or similar entity? And if not--if you had (have) a private business or small business, or worked (work) for one, does it have subcontracts to a large U.S. transglobal corporation?
In order to trust that you truly are "intimate" with Colombia--and not just with the rich elite--I need more details of your experience there, at least in a general sense, and a sense of the kinds of people you deal with and what they have to say. Even if your experience is necessarily limited to the privileged class, you could still have an open mind about conditions in Colombia for the poor and what is needed to create a more equitable society and to stop the horrible human rights violations that are occurring there. Indeed, an objective view would be all the more laudable if your work and contacts are among the rich (and/or the military, and/or the U.S. government).
But I cannot accept a vague assertion of "intimacy" with Colombia as the equivalent of "expertise" on Colombia, giving you the right to call my views "comical." I closely follow U.S. government policies, corporate and alternative news reports, the reports of human rights groups and whatever other sources that I can access on Colombia and Latin America, including many sources on past and recent history. My views are well-informed. My sympathies are with the poor majority and I have watched the U.S. government crush the poor, time and again, in Latin America, for too long--for my whole life.
MY perspective is as a U.S. citizen who is forced to PAY FOR the many crimes of the U.S. government and its fascist allies in Latin America. I have no private interest in the matter. You do. Please explain your private interest so that I and others can evaluate your reply to me.
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