On January 19, a automobile bomb exploded within the small metropolis of Saravena, within the division of Arauca in jap Colombia, just a few miles from the border with Venezuela. The blast killed one particular person and wounded at the least 15 others, and appeared to have been focusing on the headquarters of a number of native human rights organizations. The assault was not an remoted case. Based on the United Nations, at the least 130 folks have been killed and one other 3,000 have been displaced within the first few months of 2022. Arauca is but once more on the heart of a lethal battle involving left-wing guerrillas, paramilitaries, multinational firms, and the U.S. authorities.
In 2020, President Trump despatched 50 U.S. particular forces personnel to coach and advise Colombian forces in strategic areas, together with the division of Arauca. The next 12 months, america offered Colombia with 5 UH-1 Bell Huey helicopters and 20 M1117 armored safety automobiles in an effort to extend army capabilities. In December, Colombia’s Protection Minister, Diego Molano introduced that the brand new fleet of army automobiles can be deployed to the nation’s north-eastern division of Arauca close to the border with Venezuela, together with two new army bases.
Why has Arauca been singled out for this “enhanced” safety coverage? One reply is oil.
Battle in Colombia’s Oil Frontier
Oil was first found in Colombia in 1866 close to the port metropolis of Barranquilla.Ten years later, extra was discovered across the Gulf of Urabá, close to the Panamanian border, however severe exploitation didn’t happen till 1922, after the ratification of the Urrutia-Thomson Treaty between Colombia and america. This settlement dropped at a detailed the diplomatic imbroglio attributable to U.S. help for the Panamanian separatists who revolted towards Colombia in 1903 and paved the best way for large U.S. funding in Colombian banana plantations and oil fields. Quickly Tropical Oil, a subsidiary of Commonplace Oil, started manufacturing within the central Magdalena Valley and constructed a refinery complicated within the metropolis of Barrancabermeja.
In 1983, checks on wells dug by Ecopetrol and Occidental Petroleum, often known as OXY, at Caño Limón in Cravo Norte, Arauca, indicated that oil reserves in that location amounted to 500 million barrels. By 1994, the circulation was greater than 1,000,000 barrels a day, and the increase in Colombia’s oil frontier was underway.
Sustained guerrilla warfare in Arauca dates again to the start of La Violencia, when Liberal rebels, incensed by the 1948 assassination of populist chief Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, started a nearly unwinnable battle towards the Conservatives who had lengthy held energy. On June 13, 1953, military commander Lt. Basic Gustavo Rojas Pinilla seized energy and instantly known as for an finish of civil strife. He provided amnesty to just about all of the guerrillas however banned the Communist social gathering. Many have been left dissatisfied by the reparations provided and their incapability to take part politically. Within the late 1950 the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the ELN (Nationwide Liberation Army) reorganized their operations. Quickly they got here to dominate a lot of the border area the place the central authorities had by no means established a robust presence.
The exploitation of petroleum in Arauca starting within the late Eighties exacerbated the armed battle. Each leftist guerrilla and rightwing paramilitary teams fortified themselves economically and militarily. The FARC and ELN have been fast to capitalize on the alternatives to open a brand new entrance of their warfare towards the central authorities and extract financial assets provided by the presence of multinational firms (MNCs) exploring for oil. In Arauca, oil pumped by way of the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline grew to become a serious goal for each guerrilla forces. Based on a high OXY govt, rebels blew up the pipeline 460 instances between 1985 and 1997.
Nonetheless, it’s not solely the unlawful armed actors which can be liable for the bloodshed in Arauca. The Colombian Armed Forces and, not directly, U.S. help and OXY have worsened the struggling for harmless Colombians. In 1998, the Colombian Armed Forces, supported by U.S. antidrug help and a non-public U.S. surveillance firm with logistical help and gear from Occidental, used U.S. cluster munition to bomb the small village of Santo Domingo, killing 18 harmless civilians, together with 7 kids and wounding greater than 25 others.
On August 20, 2004, Isabel Hilton, a reporter for The Guardian newspaper, noticed that “a fancy mosaic of armed teams—rightwing paramilitaries and the military, typically working carefully collectively, and leftwing guerrillas—have been struggling for management of the profitable pipeline and cocaine routes.” In response, President Álvaro Uribe declared a particular safety zone across the three northern municipalities of the division the place the oil pipeline is situated, and OXY and the U.S. authorities started funding the Colombian military’s 18th Brigade, the principle authorities drive within the zone. Regardless of this effort, safety within the area didn’t improve, and civilians who assumed any place of management, comparable to faculty academics, well being employees, and union activists, have been being killed in “appalling numbers.”
Blood and Oil: U.S. Counterinsurgency Coverage in Arauca
The United States started funding and coaching the Colombian army within the late Fifties and early Sixties. U.S. army officers instructed the Colombian armed forces to focus on armed and unarmed actors suspected of harboring communist sympathies or “subversive ideas.”
Alongside these threats to U.S. political affect in Colombia have been particular financial pursuits. In 1959 for instance, Colombia was one of many largest markets in South America for U.S. direct overseas funding.
Beneath the Clinton administration, america started sending billions of {dollars} in army help to Colombia. As a part of this multi-year counter-narcotics package deal known as Plan Colombia, america despatched $98 million to coach roughly 4,000 Colombian army personnel to guard the OXY-owned Caño Limón pipeline, regardless of the army’s well-documented ties to right-wing paramilitary demise squads. Based on a report by Human Rights Watch these paramilitary teams have been ”…totally built-in into the military’s battle technique, coordinated with its troopers within the area, and linked to authorities items through intelligence, provides, radios, weapons, money, and customary function that they successfully represent a sixth division of the military.”
In 2020, the Carlyle Group, one of the necessary funding teams on the planet with over $221 billion in belongings, bought all of OXY’s onshore continental belongings for $825 million {dollars}. Regardless of OXY’s claims of environmental sustainability and social accountability, the communities in Arauca are soundly against their extractivist actions that threaten to destroy the native ecosystem and engulf the area in an armed battle over management of the area’s huge oil reserves.
Company Plunder and Standard Resistance
The Colombian authorities has issued sweeping oil concessions within the division of Arauca, some estimate as a lot as 80 p.c of Arauca’s territory. By making the most of institutional weak spot and bribing native officers, transnational firms like OXY have been in a position to ignore environmental laws, dumping tens of hundreds of barrels of contaminated water into the flood zones of Caño Limón and the Arauca River, destroying the vegetation and organic assets within the headwaters of the Cinaruco and Capanaparo rivers.
“[OXY] has a complete historical past of significant impacts on the lives of the Colombian folks, and particularly the folks of Arauca” mentioned Jose Vicente Murrillo, a nationwide spokesperson for the Cumbre Agraria, Campesina, Étnica y Standard (Agrarian, Peasant, Ethnic and Standard Summit), and a member of Congreso de los Pueblos (Peoples Congress), one of many teams focused by the car-bomb assault on January 19. He known as OXY’s exploration and exploitation of the Caño Limón oil area in Laguna de Lipa an “ecocide,” including, ”By drying up the lagoon and dispossesing Indigenous communities from their religious territory, they have been eradicated spiritually […] thats why we think about that there was a genocide on high of the ecocide of the species of natural world that have been there.”
A U.S.-backed coverage of militarization is clearly underway in Arauca. In October 2021, the U.S. Southern Command donated 20 M1117 armored safety automobiles in a handover ceremony on the Buenavista Navy Fort. The 20 M1117 ASVs showcased in the course of the ceremony are a part of the primary of 145 automobiles scheduled to be delivered to Colombia, practically doubling Colombia’s present fleet of armored automobiles. A month later, on January 3, Colombian President Ivan Duque despatched over 680 troops to the division of Arauca, becoming a member of the practically 7,000 already deployed to the border area. On March 10, President Joe Biden designated Colombia as a serious non-NATO ally, paving the best way for even better army cooperation.
Multinational firms like OXY have even financed particular investigation items throughout the Lawyer Basic’s workplace to analyze acts of sabotage towards the pipeline, nonetheless, these particular items have later been weaponized to criminalize and stigmatize civil society organizations against their pursuits.
“In the event you have a look at all of the investigations that these particular items have carried out, they’re instances which were fabricated, orchestrated, and framed […] that in 99 p.c of instances are confirmed to be false by federal courts,” mentioned Murillo, “this implies [OXY] is concerned within the armed battle, but in addition concerned within the social and political battle as a result of they’re injecting assets for constructions which can be devoted to the stigmatization, persecution, and criminalization of social actions in Arauca.”
Regardless of many years of U.S.-funded counterinsurgency warfare and criminalization, common actions in Arauca stay among the strongest within the nation. In an effort to defend their territory and confront giant oil pursuits, greater than 80 native grassroots organizations led an Worldwide Humanitarian Caravan to Arauca. The “Caravan for Life in Arauca,” which passed off in March 2022, sought to boost consciousness and stand in solidarity with the folks of Arauca as they denounced the continuing humanitarian disaster occurring within the area.
“It’s unimaginable how state insurance policies replicate its incapacity to ensure complete rights to the Araucanos,” mentioned Lidia Afanador, one of many Caravan’s members. “This caravan involves accompany, to hear, and to help the organizations that stay and are current within the division of Arauca.”
On August 7, Colombia’s new leftist authorities, led by Gustavo Petro, took energy. Through the marketing campaign, Petro vowed to finish Colombia’s historic dependance on fossil gas extraction and transfer in the direction of a inexperienced financial system. He additionally centered the necessity to negotiate a peaceable finish to the armed battle with teams just like the ELN and attempt in the direction of constructing “complete peace” within the nation. This may have huge impacts throughout Colombia, particularly oil-rich areas like Arauca. Nonetheless, Petro and his authorities face stiff opposition from multinationals and america, whose geopolitical pursuits have fueled battle in Arauca for many years.
Regardless of President Joe Biden’s marketing campaign rhetoric about environmental sustainability, his administration has doubled down on interventionist insurance policies set in movement by the Clinton administration within the early 2000s, opening up conflict-ridden areas in Colombia to overseas multinationals. The Biden administration has requested Colombia to extend oil exports to america by 40,000 barrels per day. The transfer comes as a part of a U.S. diplomatic push to safe world oil provides and preserve a lid on world power costs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These insurance policies profit firms searching for earnings on the expense of the atmosphere and the lives of individuals already struggling to construct peace after many years of civil warfare. Removed from being an answer to Colombia’s armed battle, additional militarizing the area might show to be the catalyst for a brand new wave of violence in Colombia.
Evan King is a member of Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective, which supplies bodily and political accompaniment to grassroots actions advocating for justice and sustainable economies within the Americas. He’s additionally a Grasp’s candidate in Political Research and Worldwide Relations on the Universidad Nacional de Colombia
