The FTA's Explosive Arrival

The scene in north Bogotá after today's car bomb.

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement arrived with a bang today, as a deadly bomb went off in north Bogotá while protesters denounced the treaty in central Bogotá.

In the evening in La Candelaria:
'The people provide the dead.'
Which dead and which people
do they mean?

The bomb went off in wealthy north Bogotá, which is how the presumably leftist bombers likely justified it to themselves - but on the street there were likely rich and poor, young and old, lawyers, maids, students and street cleaners; supporters and opponents of the FTA. And the target, ex-Minister Fernando Londoño himself was only lightly injured. Two people were killed and dozens injured. 

The attack caused Pres. Juan Manuel Santos to cancel a trip to Cartagena, where he was to inaugurate the Free Trade Agreement. But that's no more than a formality - the agreement, good or bad, will be implemented anyway. 

A group, who I suspect would call themselves
anarco-communists, walk toward the protest. 

'Señores: This nation is not for sale or rent.'

Satire: 'For Sale: Colombia. Great savings!
For info, see Juan Manuel Santos.'

If the attack was directed at Londoño personally rather than the government generally, then it'll likely accomplish the opposite of what they want. Londoño was already barred from holding public office for 15 years, of which eight remain, for alledgedly favoring a private company for which he had worked. Now, Londoño will will become the object of sympathy and a sort of hero, and his influence will rebound. 

Uncle Sam carries a hammer labeled 'TLC.'

Coffee icon Juan Valdez orders Yankees to go home. 

I agree that the FTA will likely harm Colombia overall. Some industries, such as flowers and exotic fruit will benefit. But it'll open the country to a flood of cheap, sometimes subsidized, agricultural goods. (A report issued yesterday by non-governmental human rights organizations concluded that the FTA will harm 70% of the country's peasants.) The government insists that the FTA will benefit Colombia macroeconomically. That might be true, if the GDP grows as a result as Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Natural Resources scoop more material out of the ground and ship it overseas. But isn't a nation supposed to worry first about its poorest, like those peasants who will be overwhelmed by foreign agri-business? And, how about the country's quality of life, as more foreign cars and motorcycles clog the streets and poison the air, while Colombia's domestic car assembly plants go idle?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Death from the Sky! Return of the Cylinder Bombs.

Lethal weapon (Photo: Colmbian military)

In recent weeks, the FARC guerrillas have brought back perhaps their most horrific and unethical weapon - the cylinder bomb.

Aftermath of attack on a police station (Photo: El Nuevo Dia)

These are home-made bombs made out of the sort of cooking gas cylinders which restaurants commonly use. The guerrillas fill the cylinders with shrapnel, stick them into tubes and launch them in a primitive mortar. They are simple, deadly, and worst of all, terribly inaccurate.

Of course, the FARC's is a futile, wrong-headed, destructive drug-financed effort which inflicts most of its damage on Colombia's poor. The guerrillas' tactics - planting land mines, extortion, displacing civilians, drug trafficking and recruiting children are as a rule reprehensible. But the group's cylinder bombs have received particular condemnation from human rights organizations because of their arbitrariness and the toll on civilians. (The same can be said of land mines, which don't distinguish soldiers from child goat herders.)

Aftermath of the 2002 Bojayá bombing. 

In 2002, the FARC were fighting against their paramilitary enemies for control of a small town in Choco, an impoverished Afro-Colombian region near the Pacific Coast. The town's women and children believed that they'd found safe refuge in the town's church. But a FARC cylinder bomb aimed at the paramilitaries landed instead - you guessed it - on the church's rooftop, killing 130 people.

And now the FARC have brought this horrific weapon back.

In recent weeks, these weapons have damaged a school, attacked a police station killing civilians, and killed three members of a family, including a two-year-old girl, when a bomb fell on their house while they were sleeping.

"The FARC-EP’s continued use of gas cylinder bombs shows this armed group’s flagrant disregard for lives of civilians," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "The FARC must immediately cease these horrific attacks, which violate the most basic principles of the laws of war."

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours