by Brad Miller

18-11-04 Out of the swamps of Colombia’s Magdalena Medio rises the "Cristo Petrolero," a metal statue depicting Christ, the oil worker. His outstretched arms offer salvation to the city of Barrancabermeja, a gesture that appears to release a flock of black vultures circling above.
Since oil was first discovered along the Rio Magdalena in the early 1900s, companies such as Texaco, Occidental, British Petroleum and Harken Energy (where George W. Bush sat on the board of directors) have arrived to stake claims throughout Colombia. Their investments brought an initial economic surge.

The largest refinery in the country was established here in the "Petroleum Capital" of Colombia, which is now one of the most militarised cities in the country. It is also one of the most violent, since oil exploration also brought pollution, conflict, paramilitary violence and most recently, Plan Colombia.
The billion-dollar aid package known as Plan Colombia, initiated by the Clinton administration under the guise of the "war on drugs," has always stressed military force and the destruction of illicit crops, virtually ignoring development and crop substitution to reduce the drug trade.

But under the Bush administration, US tax dollars are now being used directly for counterinsurgency purposes, with $ 98 mm being allocated to train elite units to guard oil pipelines and infrastructure. Colombia is one of the top eight oil exporters to the United States.
On Oct. 9, Congress voted to raise the cap on the number of military advisors allowed in Colombia from 400 to 800, and the number of contract workers from 400 to 600. According to Francisco Ramirez, president of the miner’s union Sintraminercol, the strategy of the military and paramilitaries under Plan Colombia is to "enter the areas, get rid of the people and secure the region for multinational corporations." He says the petroleum and mining industries have direct connections to the paramilitaries.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Bush administration continues to break the law as specified in the Leahy Amendment, which states that Colombian military units may not receive US aid until they break ties with the paramilitaries. The "paras" work in collusion with the military, feeding off and gaining strength from US military aid, pay checks from wealthy landlords and their own illicit drug operations.
"They (the multinational corporations) clearly pay the Autodefensas for security," confirms Jorge Gomez, who serves as the government’s public defender for the Magdalena Medio Region, which comprises the districts where Harken Energy’s subsidiary, Global Energy Development, operates.

Pres. Bush’s connection with Harken started in 1986 with a six-figure consulting job, a seat on the board of directors and $ 2 mm in stock options. Six years later, Global Energy Development was awarded five contracts in Colombia by the Director of Mines and Minerals Rodrigo Villamizar, who Pres. Bush met at a fraternity party in Austin, Texas, in 1972.
In 2000, Pres. Bush recruited Mr Villamizar, who had taken exile after an unrelated corruption scandal, to develop a strategy for Colombia. He recommended an expanded US role to eliminate the leftist Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionario de Colombia and Ejercito Liberacion Nacional guerrillas, who were impeding the investment of multinational corporations.

In a crackdown on the 40-year-old resistance that has seen the guerrillas involved in kidnapping, extortion and the drug trade, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe initiated several "Zones of Rehabilitation and Consolidation" in Autumn 2002, escalating military operations in the more economically important areas of the country.
Pres. Uribe and the Colombian Congress also passed their own "anti-terror" legislation, granting the military judicial police powers as they conducted mass detentions of rural activists, Indigenous leaders and trade union members.

In the town of Buturama, Global Energy Development has operated several wells since 1997. According to theex-mayor, the area is controlled by paramilitaries, who arrived a year before the corporation.
Paramilitaries also rule the city of Aguachica, which is located in the centre of Global’s Bolivar concession, developed with the help of $ 55 mm from the World Bank. Global’s investment brought a temporary boom to Aguachica, as local workers were hired in the initial development and construction phases. But it was a "fictitious boom," says Vicente Sarmiento, a professor at the Escuela de Cuidania, because oil companies enjoy large tax breaks and don’t transfer technology to local workers or invest heavily in the community.

Global’s money also brought inflation, prostitution and crime, and Plan Colombia’s military operations and fumigation filled the outskirts of the city with squatters as campesinos displaced from their farms.
The Bush-Cheney administration, with its close ties to oil companies, has little reason to stop the civil war that has killed over 4,000 non-combatants per year and displaced 3 mm people.