Peace Corps to Open a New Program in Colombia

Peace Corps to Open a New Program in Colombia
Washington, D.C. 5/12/2010 02:55 PM GMT (TransWorldNews)

Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaime Bermúdez and Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams met Tuesday morning to sign an Understanding to establish a Peace Corps program in Colombia. The Colombian Ambassador to the United States Carolina Barco hosted Bermúdez and Williams at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C. for the signing.

"We are honored that the government of Colombia has invited Peace Corps to establish a program in Colombia,” said Williams. “It has been nearly 50 years since President Kennedy established the Peace Corps, and although times have changed, our mission to promote world peace and friendship has not. This Peace Corps program will encourage Americans and Colombians to work side by side on Colombia’s education initiatives, with a focus on youth development in local communities.”

In 2009, following the invitation from the Government of Colombia, Peace Corps conducted an assessment of programming possibilities, compelling educational needs, security conditions, local initiatives, and a potential time frame for implementation.

“The return of the Peace Corps to Colombia marks a sign of our deep, long-standing bonds and Colombia’s continued progress in delivering security to its people, said U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield. “From the time that Peace Corps volunteers stood beside Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the literary circle of The Cava in Barranquilla to today the presence of Americans teaching English to Colombians promotes a better understanding of each other’s cultures and the democratic values we share. Improved English skills will, in turn, better Colombians economic and educational opportunities allowing them to compete in a globalized world.”

More:
http://transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?storyid=350291&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TransWorldNewsCurrentReleases+%28TransWorldNews+Current+Releases%29

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From earlier postings in the D.U. Latin America forum:

Colombian Militia Boss: We Burned Hundreds of Bodies
Edited on Fri May-01-09 02:10 AM by rabs

Another horror story out of Colombia; the first mention I have seen of crematoria set up by rightwing paramilitaries (who have been linked to President Uribe) to burn the bodies of their victims. The irony is that today Uribe met with the pope, the former Hitler Youth pontiff, in Rome.


Mancuso said the burning of the bodies “was a favor that (now-deceased AUC founder) Carlos Castaño was doing for the authorities.”

He said the decision came after a meeting where politicians, senior military officers and other notables asked the AUC to dispose of victims’ bodies as a way of holding down the number of deaths that could be attributed to the militias.

That discussion took place at a time when evidence of militia massacres was coming to light, according to Mancuso, who said the militias dug up their buried victims and cremated them in ovens set up near the Venezuelan border.

Another former AUC member, Jorge Ivan Laverde, testified last October that the first of the ovens was built in 2001 in Norte de Santander province to incinerate 98 bodies.

More:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3858050#3858083

to serve in the PC in Colombia what with rightwing paramilitary thugs, vicious narco-traffickers, FARC and ELN guerrillas and plain common criminalss running around all over the country? Talk about being targets for kidnapping.

Btw, there was controversy about the Peace Corps in LatAm back in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of that was generated by movies unflattering to the PC. Quick search turned up following from Wiki:

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While it may seem preposterous to many Americans, many Colombians believe that Peace Corps volunteers first taught Colombians how to process coca leaves into cocaine.<51> U.S. officials and Peace Corps volunteers have long denied the allegations, but some Colombian historians and journalists have kept it alive for years.<51> The movie El Rey directed and written by Antonio Dorado in 2004 attacks corrupt police, unscrupulous politicians and half-hearted revolutionaries but also portrays Peace Corps volunteers as having participated in the beginnings of cocaine processing in Colombia.<51>

The 1970 movie ¿Qué Hacer? filmed in Chile and directed by Saul Landau on the eve of the election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile, tells the story of CIA agent Martin who is sent to Chile to recruit Suzanne, a Peace Corps volunteer.<52> Suzanne instead falls for the Chilean revolutionary Hugo and gets involved in a plot to kidnap Martin.<52> Suzanne finally realizes that the revolution must be fought, but that for her the fight is back in the USA.<52>


In the 1969 film Yawar Mallku/Sangre de cóndor/Blood of the Condor, Bolivian Director Jorge Sajinés portrayed "Peace Corps volunteers in the campo as arrogant, ethnocentric, and narrow-minded imperialists out to destroy Indian culture. One particularly powerful scene showed Indians attacking a clinic while the volunteers inside sterilized Indian women against their will."<53> The film is thought to be at least partially responsible for the expulsion of the Peace Corps from Bolivia in 1971.<53> Peace Corps volunteer Fred Krueger who was serving in Bolivia at the time said, "It was an effective movie - emotionally very arousing - and it directly targeted Peace Corps volunteers. I thought I would be lynched before getting out of the theatre. To my amazement, people around me smiled courteously as we left, no one commented, it was just like any other movie."<53>

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P.S. Second part of your post maybe should be in another thread?

doubtful that they will be targets for kidnapping, since the US government wouldn't pay.

many tourists go to Colombia now days. I believe its becoming somewhat of a new hot spot. I don't hear too much about tourist being kidnapped. common crime is more of a problem. Peace Corps won't place volunteers in areas with security problems. I imagine most will be placed in and around Bogota, Medellin, the coffee region, and the Caribbean coast.

These volunteers just might find themselves all ending up in the same camp together, almost like summer camp from their childhood. Easily could happen.

Had no idea Saul Landau had ever done work on films. Multi-talented man. That would have been such a good film to have seen, too.e

Regarding early Peace Corps workers in Bolivia: U.S. Montana rancher Ronald Larsen arrived in Bolivia back tathen as a Peace Corps worker, and within a year or two mysteriously ended up owning HUGE tracts of land. I looked it up once, and if I remember correctly, the President then was Garcia Mesa. At any rate, it was one of those super criminal coke narcotrafficker Presidents.

His son Duston became "Mr. Bolivia" in 2003 or 2004, around there. He's a spoiled, creepy, repulsive little brat who was a fraternity boy at one of the Montana universities. The father, Ronald, has divided his ranches and given some of them to his sons, and has been the subject of conflict because he keeps Guarani Indian people on his ranches who do ALL the work, including building lodges, etc. for tourists, for his Eco-Tourism business, and essentially keeps them as slaves, which is illegal as well as evil.

When people from the Bolivian government tried to go into the ranch to talk with the workers, Ronald Larsen and other ranchers and their employees gathered and shot the tires out on the vehicles so they couldn't retreat, and it's been said they kept them hostages and dealt innappropriately with them. Larsen is close to the white separatist huge landowners in Santa Cruz, the violent separatists like Branko Marinkovic, who has been implicated in the plot to assassinate Evo Morales, using imported assassins from Europe, whom the police blew up in a shoot-out at their heavily foritifed hotel room in Santa Cruz.

Right. I remembered seeing something about what I had remembered as one crematorium not so long ago at D.U., so I looked it up as an additional reference for the thread.

I think I'll just attach it to the one you posted when I find it. Thanks for the idea.

went to Bolivia and was immediately button-holed by the U.S. Embassy, and asked if he would please make a list of addresses and pertinent information on any and all Cuban and Venezuelan workers living in the area when he ran across them, and turn it over to them.

He protested publicly, it kicked up a loud argument, the embassy denied, the young man persisted, the Bolivian government was furious, naturally, and finally the ambassador Phillip Goldberg publicly appologized and dumped it all on the shoulders of one lone employee.

More Peace Corps workers came forward and gave statements that the Embassy had made the same demands of THEM, as well.

Eventually Phillip Goldberg was expelled, but not before he conspired with the white separatists in Santa Cruz, and was followed by a local TV news crew with cameras who caught him sneaking off to meet privately with high-ranking white separatist Santa Cruz plotters AFTER 12:00 a.m., alone, in secret in a secret meeting place (or so they thought). The tv station ran the videos and exposed them.

It's all so squalid, isn't it? Jeez.