LATIN AMERICA DOESN'T
NEED MORE WEAPONS
A letter from Colombia.
By Amparo Jaramillo-Restrepo
Dear readers, Latin
America doesn’t need more weapons or more military personnel. Our
biggest problems are poverty and social injustice.
The last outrageous data
reveled this week, shows that 40 % of our Colombia’s population
lives in poverty, and a large number of them are indigents. It’s a
well known fact that 30 % of Cartagena’s population, the beautiful
tourist Mecca, go to bed hungry. And yes, even Brazil, our richest
Latin American country has a large number of its young population
trying to survive in the subhuman atmosphere of its “fabelas”
plagued with crime and desperation. I doubt that the millions of
dollars approved a few weeks ago in the Brazilian congress to buy
submarines and other sophisticated military equipment will change
that.
Ask Mexico, USA back
yard, with its large number of multimillionaires living in luxury,
if the constant flow of weapons coming from its closest neighbor has
helped to curb crime. Or ask President Hugo Chavez, the big mouth,
if the more than thirty five million dollars he squandered buying
weapons have made Venezuelan streets more secure.
I can go on and on from
country to country to prove that our biggest problems are poverty
and social injustice, something President Cristina Fernández forgot
to mention in her opening speech in Bariloche, though she spoke
about peace. But you can not have PEACE with an empty stomach Madame
President. You can not have peace without social justice.
Granted, we can’t deny
those other problems: drugs and narco-guerrillas.
Colombian President is right when he denounces illegal groups
criminal and random terrorist attacks, perpetrated especially on the
poorest of the poor, those who live in far away places and don’t
have enough money to pay bodyguards.
But again, bringing the
most sophisticated weapons to the Colombian military bases, and more
foreign advisers is not going to change that.
Go ask President Obama
if the most powerful army in the world was able to stop the carnage
in Afghanistan last week.
I never forget President
Bush’s rarest intelligent declaration when he launched that infamous
war against Afghanistan: “I’m not going to send an expensive
military aircraft against a 2 dollars tent”. But he did it and the
world will never stop lamenting that stupidity.
Terrorism is a new,
deadly, insidious but cheap weapon. Here in Colombia there are
entire towns mined with home made potatoes; terrible attacks
perpetrated by using a doll, a donkey packed with dynamite, an
ambulance, or a junk car.
In my opinion, keeping
the military industry alive, it’s not only obscene but criminal.
How can The United
States keep throwing away money building multimillion aircrafts,
warships, or submarines when some of those monsters need enough
energy to move an entire city, and are absolutely obsolete to stop
terrorism, just to please a number of blind congressmen and woman
who don’t care about their people’s real problems?
Latin America has become
the dumping place for every lethal weapon made by rich countries,
those which are fueling crime in Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, or
Central American streets, while some of our people die from pure
starvation?
Most FARC members are
illiterate and desperate children recruited by force, or forced to
join the illegal groups in Colombia out of hunger, and frustration,
and I’m sure some of them will repeat that terrible phrase I heard
in the Middle East from a suicide bomber a few years ago: “If you
don’t give us a reason to live, give us a crusade to die”.
Please, please,
President Obama, don’t listen to your military Hawks. Colombia
doesn’t need more weapons or foreign advisers to make our neighbors
uneasy and resentful. There have to be a more human and intelligent
way to bring us peace.
What we need desperately
are jobs, a better education system, decent housing, running water,
health care, training and crime prevention, programs for our youth,
etc. etc.
In other words, SOCIAL JUSTICE
P.S: Please, read “Addicts to war”. You´ll find it at any
Public Library.
Buga, Colombia, November 2009
