U.S. big business is worried that what unfolded only a week earlier in Ecuador, where millions of striking workers forced the resignation of austerity-happy president Abdalá Bucaram, can be repeated elsewhere in Latin America. Throughout the continent - from the Río Grande to Tierra del Fuego - capitalist exploitation and imperialist plunder has subjected millions of workers and peasants to deteriorating misery. That's why the financiers and other businessmen on Wall Street are right to expect more rebellions.

One should begin with the obvious question. Who gave the U.S. government the right to "certify" or "decertify" any sovereign nation? For that matter, who's going to "certify" Washington on stemming drugs?

The drug trade is a highly profitable capitalist business internationally, with U.S. capitalist interests playing a starring role in it. Capitalist governments - in Washington, Bogotá, or anywhere else - have no intention of ending it. U.S. imperialism simply uses its "war on drugs" to go after working people and anyone they don't like - anyone who's not subservient enough to Washington's dictates. The cries from the U.S. State Department that Samper is corrupt are cynically selective at best. Organized corruption and bribery on a massive scale, accompanied by threats and blackmail, are Washington's stock-in-trade.

The U.S. rulers are simply not confident that the Samper administration is competent to do the dirty work for the empire to the north. Unending protests by workers and peasants, along with a decades-long guerrilla insurgency, threaten the ability of Wall Street sharks to continue to devour the wealth the toilers in that country produce through the slavery of the foreign debt. This is why Clinton has increased funding for the Colombian military and police, ever since Washington first "decertified" the government of Colombia last year, preventing it from getting further international loans.

Hundreds of thousands of Colombian army troops were deployed in the cities during the recent strike. The same army and police, backed by U.S. "counternarcotics" training, and money, has been used against peasants who repeatedly rebelled last year against the forced eradication of their coca crops. These peasants and other food-growing producers revolted because the authorities destroyed their livelihood, while refusing to provide them with any alternative. Low market prices of basic food crops and lack of government assistance for fertilizer, seeds, and other inputs have forced thousands of peasants into coca cultivation, a lucrative cash crop.

While the U.S. government is threatening new sanctions against Colombia, it is also preparing to act unilaterally to protect imperialist interests. That's what the secret presidential decision directive - PDD 39, revealed by Associated Press in early February - is all about. That order allows U.S. agents to arrest anyone on the soil of another country Washington accuses of "terrorism" and wants extradited, "without the cooperation of the host government."

Working people should demand Washington scrap its arrogant "decertification" plan and cancel the foreign debt of Colombia and the rest of the Third World.  
 
 
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