Scapegoating Colombians

Deported Colombians wait with their belongings.
(Reuters)

"They're driving them out of their homes, and stealing their belongings," one of the guys who works with me said angrily, turning away from the TV news.

He had been watching a report about Colombians being driven out of their homes in Venezuelan border regions and deported back to Colombia.

Those Colombians are, according to the Venezuelan government, the cause of Venezuela's problems.

Venezuela has one of the world's highest homicide rates - so high that its government has stopped publishing crime statistics. Its economy is floundering so badly that the economics ministry has quit publishing inflation statistics. Its troubles with shortages and corruption go on and on.

Now, with parliamentary elections just a few months away, the Venezuelan government has decided that the culprits are not Venezuelans, but Colombians (not to mention the evil, imperialistic U.S.)

Venezuela's continuing crisis will likely only get lots worse before things get better. And, Venezuela will badly need the goodwill and assistance of its most important neighbor and important trading partner.

Venezuelan Pres. Maduro may see electoral advantages in scapegoating Colombians, but he's not doing his nation any long-term favors.

Maduro's '21st-Century Socialism', which consists mostly of populist give-aways and economic controls, is based on denial of economic realities. Price controls and a command economy caused shortages and long lines in communist Eastern Europe. Now they're bringing the same results to Venezuela. Why should anybody be surprised?

It is true that, on a small scale, Venezuela's troubles are contributed to by Colombian (and Venezuelan) smugglers, who carry subsidized Venezuelan gasoline and foodstuffs across the border and cocaine the other way.

Guess what happens when something costs pennies on one side of a line and dollars on the other? That product gets shifted from the cheap side to the rich side, no matter what anybody tries to do. It's like water flowing downhill.

Venezuela has always been unsustainably dependent on oil income. But that independence has only increased during the years since Hugo Chavez was elected president, making the recent price plunge extremely devastating. The Venezuelan government has only made the situation worse by making gasoline free, hemorraging many billions of dollars annually with a subsidy which also harms the environment and goes disproportionalely to the wealthy.

Until Venezuela discovers economic reality its troubles will worsen. Sadly, that means that persecution of Colombians may only get worse.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Colombia: International Outlaw?

That's what it looks like after Colombia withdrew from the Bogotá Pact, which gives the International Court of Justice in the Hague jurisdiction over disputes between members.

Colombia's motivation is obvious: Colombians didn't like the court's ruling last week expanding (from Colombia's perspective) Nicaragua's maritime sovereignty in the Caribbean at Colombia's expense.

But the ruling leaves Colombia with one less international legal mechanism to peacefully resolve disputes between members and erodes Colombia's authority in every international organization. The pact, signed in 1948, is formally named The American Treaty for Peaceful Solutions, and it appears to have worked. As far as I know, there's never been a war between two nations which had ratified the pact. (Peru and Ecuador fought their border wars before Ecuador's 2008 ratification.) Previous to the pact, however, Latin American nations fought numerous border wars, including the ones which dismembered Paraguay and Bolivia and the 1932 Peru-Colombia war over Leticia.

Several border disputes, including ones between Chile and Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru and another between Colombia and Venezuela over their border in La Guajira - which brought them close to war in 1987 - still fester in the region. The Bogotá Pact provides a presumably objective authority to resolve those peacefully, if not to everybody's liking.

By withdrawing from the Pact, Colombia rejects the authority of that court. But its decision comes too late juridically. After all, at the time the court ruled last week, Colombia was still a member of the pact and recognized the court's authority. And the Colombian government should also remember that, along with expanding Nicaragua's waters, the court also reaffirmed Colombia's sovereignety over the San Andres islands and their surrounding keys - which was what Colombia had asked for in the first place. By rejecting the new maritime boundary, Colombia also delegitimizes the ruling on the islands and keys.

Nicaragua has said it is sending military ships to patrol the waters which it now considers its territory. But Colombia says it is maintaing warships in the region. Does this sound like a threat of war?

Colombia's decision to leave the Bogotá Pact, like a child who abandons a game because he didn't win all he wanted, will also delegitimize Colombia in all international organizations, because other nations will suspect that Colombia, if it doesn't get its way, will simply abandon the field.

Colombia's decision, "means not only a violation of an international norm, but also confronts Colombia against the United Nations system and the international community," Walter Arévalo, professor of international relations at the Universidad del Rosario, said in an analysis published on the Congreso Visible website.

That's not a good position for a nation like Colombia, which has relied heavily on international cooperation, to be in.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Nicas, Ticas and Colombia

Costa Rica calls them police, but they sure look like soldiers.

So, let's get this straight. Nicaragua sends troops to what just about everybody else seems to agree is Costa Rican territory, justifying its actions on Google Maps - and long-suffering Colombia somehow gets tangled up in the mess.

Costa Rica appears by all measures to be the good guy in this ridiculous border dispute. Costa Rica, whose people are known as ticas, had accepted an international tribunal's ruling giving Nicaragua, whose people are known as nicas, sovereignety over the San Juan River, which forms their border. However, not satisfied, Nicaragua pushed on onto the Costa Rican side, damaging the environment there by piling up dredging waste.

Just about all of the region's countries, with the exception of Venezuela, for whom anything generating political booty is righteous, have sided with Costa Rica. But that so far hasn't provided much help on the ground for little Costa Rica, which doesn't even have a military.

Both nations' official maps show the riverbank as belonging to Costa Rica. So Nicaragua backed its claims using Google Maps as its official reference. But Google officials quickly declared that their maps are not intended to be geopolitical references, and were wrong in this case, anyway.

Exactly where does Nicaragua end and Costa Rica begin?

Who's the demonic puppetmaster heading this international conspiracy against poor, victimized Nicaragua? Colombia, of course. Coincidentally, Nicaragua also claims several Carribean islands over which Colombia has long held autonomy.

But Nicaragua's leftist Pres. Carlos Ortega, no matter how desperate he may be to whip up nationalism at home, must also care about international opinion, and he must be looking for a graceful way to declare victory and back out of this mess he's made.

By Mike Ceaser of Bogotá Bike Tours

Santos and Chavez Bury the Hatchet

Best Buddies?

Presidents Hugo Chavez and Juan Manuel Santos made up yesterday and apparently buried their differences. That's a dramatic turnaround, since just a few weeks ago Colombia was accusing Venezuela of harboring anti-Colombian guerrillas on its territory and Chavez was calling Colombia a puppet of the United States.

Chavez, with his economy slumping and his international image looking progressively more bellicose and authoritarian, Chavez needed good relations with his country's second-biggest trade partner, as well as a good photo opportunity. Santos wanted to start out his presidency on a positive note, to mark a break with Uribe and to end the economic crisis along the border.

Thankfully, the buddying up also pushes back the threat of a border growing into violence.

Unfortunately, it won't last.

Despite Chavez's statements, and even any policy changes he might make, the guerrillas will continue using Venezuelan territory. The border is simply too long to control and Venezuelan officials are too corrupt to impose any genuine controls, even if Chavez wanted to. But, it's hard to believe that Chavez, with his romantic fantasies about revolutionary guerrillas and paranoia about Colombia and the United States, really wants to.

Chavista true believers demonstrate in central Bogotá. Have they reflected that demonstrations and free speech aren repressed in Venezuela's allies like Belarus, Cuba and Iran?

So, the guerrillas will remain a sore point between the neighbors, and Colombia will continue being a convenient enemy for Chavez when he wants to distract attention from his country's many domestic troubles.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser of Bogota Bike Tours