[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 162 (Tuesday, November 16, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H12096-H12101]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE SITUATION IN COLOMBIA, SOUTH AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cooksey). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Baldwin) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.


                             General Leave

  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks and include extraneous matter on the subject of my special 
order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss one of the most 
pressing foreign policy issues facing our great Nation. That is, the 
situation in Colombia, South America.
  Tonight my colleague and I want to speak about the many challenges 
that are faced in Colombia. We will discuss the civil war, the 
inequalities of wealth, the drug problem, the failure of the judicial 
system there, and the problem created by large numbers of displaced 
persons.
  As we begin this discussion on Colombia, I guess I want to state from 
the outset that I would like this discussion to deal broadly with 
Colombia's problems and challenges. This body has all too frequently 
focused on Colombia, and in fact our Nation usually narrowly focuses on 
the issue of illegal drug production and trafficking. I strongly 
believe, however, that without addressing directly the broader problems 
that are faced in Colombia that we will not make significant progress 
in addressing the drug trafficking problem, because these problems are 
so interrelated.
  I think we all must agree that drug addiction and abuse must be 
addressed by our government, that too many Americans and frankly people 
all over the world are addicted to illegal and sometimes legal drugs. 
We know that this is a problem that must be addressed. I think we can 
do so respectfully, agreeing that this is a problem that we are all 
committed to, but agreeing that we may have some different approaches 
and different perspectives on how to do that.

  Colombia presents an important case study in this regard. It is a 
country that must be viewed comprehensively, not simply as a drug-
producing Nation. The flow of drugs will not stop unless Colombia can 
achieve peace and economic security.
  I wanted to start by sharing a little bit about how I first became 
interested in the policy in Colombia, U.S. policy towards Colombia, 
interested in the problems faced by the people of Colombia. I, too, 
used to view Colombia as a Nation, mostly by what I read about the drug 
production there, until I had the opportunity as a local elected 
official on my county board to become involved in a sister community 
project.
  Our county essentially adopted a community in Colombia; in fact, a 
community in one of the most violent and war-torn parts of Colombia. 
Through this sister community, we got to experience exchanges. We had 
people come up, religious leaders, labor leaders, those interested in 
impacting poverty and fighting human rights abuses in Colombia. They 
came to our community and discussed the problems. In turn, people from 
my community got to travel to Colombia, as I did in 1993, to meet 
people there, to ask firsthand what was happening.
  Perhaps learning about Colombia in this way stands in stark contrast 
to how many of our colleagues first discover the issues and the 
challenges faced by the people of Colombia, through high-level 
briefings, perhaps, meeting with generals, ambassadors, presidents, 
Members of Congress.
  I started by meeting with people in agriculture, human rights 
leaders, people trying to organize collectives and cooperatives. It was 
a fascinating way to learn about Colombia. I met environmentalists who 
were engaged in the task of trying to protect the rainforests. I met 
people engaged in social work, trying to help address poverty in the 
big cities in Colombia, trying to help former gang members find another 
way of life. It was eye-opening for me.
  One of the things I remember very vividly about my 1993 trip to 
Colombia

[[Page H12097]]

was learning about the human rights situation there. Years of civil war 
and state-sanctioned repression have resulted in nearly 1 million 
displaced persons, sort of internal refugees, many of them young 
people, children.
  There are problems with paramilitary death squads, with revolutionary 
guerillas, and these have led to an escalating level of violence in the 
past decade. In the last year alone, over 300,000 people have fled 
their homes and have become newly displaced persons in Colombia. These 
are people who we do not always hear about.
  As I mentioned, I traveled to Colombia in 1993 to see the situation 
firsthand. One of the shocking and sort of striking memories I have was 
understanding that some of the aid that we sent to Colombia as military 
aid, aid intended to help fight the war on drugs, was ending up being 
misused perhaps by corrupt officials, but was ending up being used in a 
way to repress the people, those who might be organizing labor unions, 
those who might be organizing collectives for the farmers, those who 
might be fighting for human rights.
  The U.S. now provides almost $300 million annually in military aid, 
making Colombia the third largest recipient of aid after Israel and 
Egypt. I must add, though, that things have improved in Colombia, very 
much so since the time that I was able to travel there. The military is 
beginning to address within their own ranks some of the issues of human 
rights abuses. The leadership, the President of Colombia, the Congress, 
has begun to act.
  We have a number of policy options before us right now in the United 
States. There is a call for providing almost $1 billion or perhaps a 
lot more than $1 billion in new aid to Colombia. I think it is an 
important debate on how we allocate that money, how we approach this 
issue, how we look at the future of a war on drugs, how we look at 
making an impact in a country that is dealing with civil war, is 
dealing with human rights abuses, is dealing with poverty and economic 
downturn and struggling with a lot of things to put its country back 
together.
  Before I go on to details about what policy options are facing the 
United States right now, I want to yield to my colleague, the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Farr), who has been also very well acquainted with 
the people of Colombia, the issues that Colombians face, perhaps from a 
different perspective than my own. But I would love the gentleman to 
share his wisdom with us.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from 
Wisconsin very much. It is a pleasure to be on the floor with the 
gentlewoman, a very distinguished Member of this body who has so much 
compassion for people all over the globe, and particularly for the 
people of Colombia.

  My introduction to Colombia was back in 1963. I was a young college 
graduate who just applied for the Peace Corps and was told that I was 
going to be accepted to a Peace Corps program in Colombia, South 
America.
  I was excited about it. I had traveled through Latin America when I 
was in college working as a factory worker in Argentina, and I fell in 
love with Colombia the minute I stepped off the plane. It is a country, 
an incredibly beautiful country with lots of green. Obviously the green 
is well known around the world because it is the major exporter of 
emeralds.
  Colombia, as a Peace Corps volunteer, was the best 2 years of my 
life. I lived in a very poor barrio. We did not have much running water 
or electricity. Sewage was inadequate. But the people were so genuine 
and so friendly, and so much so that when my mother passed away with 
cancer when I was in the Peace Corps I came home, and immediately went 
back to Colombia, and my father, I brought my two sisters to Colombia.
  My youngest sister, Nancy, who was in high school at the time, 17 
years old, unfortunately was killed in an accident in Colombia. Rather 
than being very bitter about the country, we ended up falling in love 
with the country because the people were so friendly to our family and 
realized what a plight we were going through, and how much tragedy we 
were bearing.
  The thing that I hope we can do tonight is put a human face on a 
country that we hear a lot about. It is a country that the Americans 
know of, Colombia, and unfortunately know of it for two reasons, one 
very negative, which is drugs, a country that grows the drugs and 
processes the drugs that are so destructive to our lives here in the 
United States and around the world.

                              {time}  2230

  Unfortunately, we are the purchaser of those drugs and so we have 
this problem of those who produce and those who buy and use. And this 
relationship, Colombians always tell us that if we did not buy the 
drugs, they would not produce them. And we always say if they did not 
produce them, we would not buy them. And this is a battle where we have 
sort of lost sight of what this country is all about.
  I hope tonight we can get into some of those issues. So put a human 
face on a country that is unique in its geographical location. It is 
the only country in South America that borders on both the Atlantic and 
the Pacific Oceans. It is a country much bigger than most think by 
looking at a map. The third largest country in Latin America. It is 
bigger than California, Texas, Montana and Illinois all combined for 
about 625,000 square miles. It is a huge country.
  It has 38 million people. The people are spread out in Colombia in 
many big cities. The most urbanized of all Latin America countries. The 
Colombian market is bigger than that of the market of New York and 
Texas put together.
  It is a remarkable country because not only does it touch both 
oceans, but it starts almost at the equator and goes up to 20,000 feet 
with snowcapped mountains close to the shore. So it has every kind of 
microclimate and can grow anything. Colombia is the second most 
diversified country in the world. It grows more fruits and vegetables 
than any other country in the world; and, obviously, that makes it a 
climate that is attractive to growing things that are illegal. And with 
the poverty in the country, we can see why the drug crops expanded 
there.
  Mr. Speaker, the issue now is how do we take a country and really get 
it on its feet? In many ways Colombia, despite all of the problems that 
it has had with drugs, has remained an economically strong country with 
an honest economy. It is one of the strongest in Latin America. It has 
had a longer period of growth with an average of 4.5 percent per year 
for the last four decades. Between 1990 and 1995, it has grown at 4.2 
percent. This is the longest sustained record of economic growth in the 
Americas. In all of the Americas. Colombia has outperformed the United 
States.
  Now Colombia is in the midst of a recession after more than 30 years 
of unbroken growth. It is in the midst of problems, turmoil, but it is 
a democratic country. It had a remarkable turnout in its election for 
its president, President Pastrana, despite the pressures on people not 
to vote. It has political factions in the country that are historical 
between the rebels, between banditos or mafiosos as they are known. So 
it has got a collection of interests where people are trying to defend 
their own private lands with privately hired mercenaries, so we have 
private armies, a public army, a national police. They have rebels, and 
they have other factions that play in the shadows of all of these.
  So we as the United States are now giving aid to Colombia. We have 
given an awful lot of that aid in the military section primarily for 
suppressing drugs. The country has now come to the United States. The 
President has met with our President. They have sat down and worked out 
an agreement that encourages that Colombia needs to get its own act in 
order, so to speak. It has done so by coming up with a plan. It has 
taken that plan not only to the United States but to its allies in 
Europe and asked for help.
  Now, we are on the verge of the last night of the session of the 
first year of the 106th Congress. The big vote here tomorrow night will 
be the vote on appropriating monies and particularly the foreign aid 
money. Colombia is not getting a great deal of that money, 
unfortunately, because other priorities have taken its place. And I 
think that we have to recognize that if we are a country that is going 
to ask them to extradite their criminals, the people

[[Page H12098]]

they are arresting in their country, in violation of their laws and our 
laws, and extradite these people to the United States so that they can 
be tried, sentenced, and imprisoned here, at great risk to the 
Colombian politicians and to the Colombian government, that they are 
doing that at the request of our government, and in turn we need to 
think comprehensively about how we are going to give them enough aid. 
Not just military aid, but compassionate aid to help the people help 
themselves in a better life.
  Mr. Speaker, I know that the gentlewoman from Wisconsin has come to 
discuss some of that; and I really, really appreciate it. I appreciate 
the gentlewoman being a new face in Congress with a new slant on the 
Colombian situation. It is so healthy for this body, which has sort of 
been debating the macho military aid by essentially people that are 
pro-military and pro-national police, to say that if we just help them 
we are going to really help the country. When we know and the 
gentlewoman knows, particularly the first voice that has really come in 
and talked about the plight of women in this culture, and the fact that 
we are not going to win this war on poverty; we are not going to win 
the drug war; we are not going to win the political war or any war just 
by might. We are going to have to win that war through education. We 
are going to have to win that war through help with understanding 
family planning in countries like this. We are going to have to have 
micro-loan programs and do what we did in the Peace Corps.

  Unfortunately, the Peace Corps left Colombia because it became too 
dangerous. But there are some 8,000 returned volunteers from Colombia, 
Americans who have lived in Colombia for at least 2 years who have 
learned the language and the culture, and who are very passionate about 
those years that they spent there and are wanting to see the country 
regain its incredible grandeur that it can and to develop the wonderful 
culture and people and particularly the opportunity for tourism. Making 
it safe for people to travel, safe for our sons and daughters to go and 
be educated in their great universities and essentially a much better 
cultural, educational, political interchange leads to support of a 
country through tourism and microtourism.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that Colombia, because it is on both oceans, has 
so many opportunities for small economic development programs that 
would enhance the plight of people in rural areas by allowing them to 
have kind of ecotourism expand. So I appreciate the gentlewoman 
bringing these issues to the floor of the United States Congress 
tonight on the verge of our significant vote tomorrow night.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. And one of the 
similarities I think of our approach to this is that each of us comes 
from a background of getting a real opportunity to meet and exchange 
with the people of the country of Colombia. Not so much their advisors 
and their elected officials, perhaps local elected officials, but we 
really got a chance to interchange and understand what a person who is 
living in the rural areas or a person who is living in the cities 
experiences living there and the struggles that they face due to some 
of the economic challenges.
  The gentleman was very right to note the success economically that 
Colombia has enjoyed. I always observed that while on the macro-level 
that country was observing great prosperity and growing, although now 
there is certainly an economic downturn, there is now 23 percent 
unemployment in some of the major cities, about an average of 20 
percent unemployment nationwide. But one of the nuances of Colombia is 
that there is a concentration of wealth in the hands of few. That is 
particularly exaggerated in the case of landownership.
  Mr. Speaker, about the top 3 percent of Colombia's landed elite own 
about 70-plus percent of all the agricultural land, while 57 percent of 
the poorest farmers subsist on about 2.8 percent of the land.
  Those sort of challenges internal to Colombia, I think, play a big 
role in what we see happening there and the concerns that we have there 
right now. I look at it as a country struggling with civil war, 
struggling beyond that with a justice system that is in some ways 
broken down and for that reason people take justice into their own 
hands. And, of course, that creates in some parts, even though it is a 
wonderful democracy nationally, in some localities there is almost 
anarchy existing. It is very violent in certain regions.
  But I want to be helpful this evening. I had the opportunity today to 
meet with a wonderful activist who is visiting the United States from 
Colombia. What he was doing was describing a program that he is working 
with in the central part of the country that has been operational for 
about 4 years now that is bringing a diverse array of parties together 
to the table to talk, to be engaged in dialogue, and to tackle drug 
issues, to tackle issues of the unstable economy right now, to tackle 
issues of violence and large numbers of refugees in a dialogue with 
people at the regional level.
  This individual told us a very hopeful story of a program that is 
working because, rather than sending merely military equipment to 
respond to a problem, they are talking about alternative crops. They 
are giving peasants who would otherwise possibly be lured into 
production of coca and giving them options that are viable, that allow 
them to support their families, that allow them to have a hopeful 
future. It is this sort of balanced approach that I think is the hope 
for the future.
  Now, one thing that we were delighted to see and will hopefully serve 
as a basis of our conversation as we move forward about how to really 
and truly tackle drug problems here and in producer countries is the 
Plan Colombia that President Pastrana and his government have put 
together.
  What we see is a plan that has been offered to an international 
community that does not just focus on one component of the struggles 
that Colombia faces, but really is a multifaceted program that I think 
we can take heart in. What they recognize is how unstable the Nation 
has been and the fact that in this plan they need to really consolidate 
in the State of Colombia, make sure that the State is the entity 
responsible for protection of the public interest, for promoting 
democracy, the rule of law, to make sure that it is the monopoly in the 
application of justice and that it plays a stronger role in full 
employment, in respect for human rights.

  They look at building peace as a building process. Not something that 
will happen, but things that will take years to accomplish. As the plan 
says, peace is not simply a matter of will; it has to be built. And 
central to their strategy is, of course, a partnership with other 
countries to look at not only production of illegal drugs, but 
consumption and recognizing that there are principles of reciprocity 
and equality that need to occur in order for countries to move forward 
together in a partnership to confront mutual problems.
  Mr. Speaker, Colombia is in an economic crisis right now, and we have 
got to tackle that in part also to respond to the larger problems.
  Mr. FARR of California. Will the gentlewoman yield?
  Ms. BALDWIN. I certainly will yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman 
yielding to me. I wanted to point out that this Plan Colombia I think 
is very exciting because it outlines not just a military approach, and 
a national police approach, and a law enforcement approach to 
preventing crime and to stopping the drug traffickers and so on, but it 
really is a plan about education of the country. It is a plan about 
economic revitalization through land reform and having more people have 
a stake in the outcome. It is about a plan about economic development 
at the micro level, at the rural level, at the barrio level.
  I mean, it is interesting. I do not think we ever outlined it as 
Peace Corps volunteers some 30 years ago when we were serving there, 
but what this plan reflects is many of the things that young Americans, 
professionals recognize that the country needed to do.

                              {time}  2245

  It is almost as if the ideas that we are espousing have caught up 
with the government, and they are now wanting to implement it. I think 
that is really

[[Page H12099]]

 courageous of the government because, obviously, if they just went out 
and said all we want to do is get money for military purposes to 
eradicate the drug program, I think the countries would be more 
interested, but they are going far beyond it.
  They are looking into programs that would, and I have a list here 
just asking for $50 million for the year 2000 for the Agency of 
International Development in the area of human rights to do things like 
train judicial officials so that they can investigate and prosecute on 
human rights claims.
  One can have violations of human rights, but if one does not have the 
ability to document them and one does not have the ability and the 
court, get access to the court and standing before the court, have a 
court that is honest, a system that, indeed, will listen to the law and 
listen to the facts and then will sentence people and hold them in 
sentence and not let them off, this is all a process where the ability 
is there, but not necessarily a comprehensive training of how one puts 
it all together.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, I remember learning about this issue of 
impugnity that perhaps is a foreign notion here in the United States. 
But in the past, in Colombia, and they are under way to reform this, 
if, for example, a military official engaged in an egregious human 
rights violation, they would be tried in a sort of military court. The 
judges were hired by the people that they were then trying. The 
relationship was such that almost always people were let off the hook, 
almost always. This is now beginning to change, which does give us 
tremendous hope for the future.
  The congress of Colombia has now passed a law that would put teeth in 
the military judicial system and hold military officials accountable if 
they were found to have engaged in human rights violations. So it is a 
very positive step forward. But I think for many of us in the United 
States who expect the rule of law, it is confusing to hear the people 
who conducted massacres might not even be held accountable, might not 
even be discharged from their job, let alone imprisoned and held 
accountable for their actions.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Ms. BALDWIN. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, it is very hard, I do not know, 
we can imagine it, but it is very hard to sort of project this on 
another country, because we take it so much for granted. We feel secure 
in our workplace. We feel secure in our communities. Now, there is 
always exceptions to that with crime, but we do not wake up every 
morning thinking today is the day something awful is going to happen to 
me or my child or my spouse when they go to work.
  But in Colombia, that happens. There is not a sense of individual 
security. One is not secure in one's workplace. One is not secure on 
the street. If one does have money or resources one will be a target 
of, perhaps, kidnapping. People know who the people are with wealth. If 
one has wealth, one has to hide it, or one lives a prisoner of one's 
wealth. One cannot really go out and enjoy society.
  I had friends who told me that their children were in school, and 
they would get a picture, like picture postcards with the crosshairs of 
a rifle on their children's faces as they exited school, meaning that 
somebody had taken a picture of these children through a scope of a 
rifle, showing that they know what school they are going to, when they 
are getting out, and that they could shoot them at any time they wanted 
to. If that does not strike fear into a family.
  So what happens is if one does have means, one wants to leave. That 
is the worst thing that can happen to a country is to take the talent, 
the educated talent, and leave, because it takes a dedication of a 
total society.
  One of the things that you did not mention that I think I am so 
impressed with is just, what, 2 weeks ago, Colombia, in a demonstration 
of its own self, of its country, asked people to march in a march they 
called No Mas. They did it, I believe, in eight of the major cities in 
Colombia. Anywhere between, depending on the count, 6 to 10 million 
people marched. That is one in about every eight persons or less that 
lives in Colombia.
  No other country in the world, to my knowledge, has ever turned out 
that many people to march in protest of what is occurring to the 
society. I think we ought to be very encouraged as Americans that 
Colombians feel strong enough about the problems in their country that 
they are willing to demonstrate in that type of fashion, in a peaceful 
fashion, with so many people. I do not think we have ever had a 
demonstration in the United States, and we are a much bigger country, 
of that many people.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, the story that I remember so vividly about 
the lack of security in all realms of life is, when I visited a banana 
plantation in the areas outside of Portado, Colombia. I remember seeing 
graffiti spray-painted on one of the buildings on the plantation and 
asking what the, I could not read the language, and asking what it 
said. It was graffiti in this case from one of the guerilla 
organizations.
  I asked, what would happen if one simply painted over this? The 
graffiti was beckoning to the workers at the plantation to join the 
FARC. I said, what would happen if one spray-painted this? Well, the 
next week, the paramilitary forces might come through, and if the spray 
paint is still there, they will be accused of being sympathizers for 
not having painted over it. But on the other hand, if they paint over 
it and get rid of the graffiti, the guerillas might come through and 
also intimidate these individuals as being sympathizers with the 
paramilitary organizations.
  So you have a group of civilians literally in the crossfire of a 
civil war in a country who go to work, and one knows their buildings 
have been essentially tagged by these forces, one side or the other, 
and know that they are so close to, perhaps, being kidnapped or being 
sent away. This is a daily thing that these people live with.
  So when the gentleman talks about the peace rally with, I have heard, 
up to 10 million people marching in cities across Colombia, the courage 
that it took to protest openly, to march for peace, no more openly, is 
remarkable because the consequences are so high.
  Well, one of the things that I got a chance to do as a county board 
official when I first traveled to Colombia was to meet other local 
officials, many who had run for office with a real commitment to peace 
and had done things like inviting warring factions to speak, and how 
many of these individuals risked assassination. I thought, what amazing 
courage it took for somebody to run for local office in parts of 
Colombia that we could not fathom here the courage that that would 
take.
  So this march for peace was quite remarkable at the beginning stages 
of the peace talks in Colombia that Pastrana is leading.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Ms. BALDWIN. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I have a question, and it is a 
question that I think we both know the answer to, but it bears asking, 
and that is: Why should the American public care about Colombia? It is 
one of many countries in Latin America. It is historically very dear, I 
think, to our country. Our President Kennedy traveled to Bogota. The 
airport was named after him. Many schools were named after the 
President.
  It is a country that has had a lot of people come to the United 
States to be educated. I think there is about almost a half a million 
Colombians living in the greater Washington area. I mean, there is a 
lot of connection.
  But for those people in the gentlewoman's State and in my State of 
California, or others around who are listening to this and who are 
watching Congress in its foreign aid appropriations who are saying, 
well, we have enough problems here in the United States, why should we 
give any money to a country overseas and particularly one country that 
is producing all of these drugs that we seem to be addicted to? Why 
should we be helping them at all?
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, well, for me, in many ways it is an easy 
question because I have had the opportunity to get to know people 
there, leaders there, people with great hope, not only for their 
country, but for co-existence in a more peaceful world. We are large 
trading partners in the sense

[[Page H12100]]

that the agricultural products of Colombia, and I am not talking about 
illegal ones, I am talking about coffee, bananas, and many other 
products, are so important.
  One of the exciting things for our local community when we first 
decided to adopt or be adopted by a Colombian community when we started 
this sister community project, and I know there are so many across the 
country now, there are many communities across the United States that 
have sister communities in Colombia, that we found all the 
similarities.
  I come from an agricultural State. We are partnered and have a sister 
community with the banana growing region, which actually is not one of 
the major drug-producing areas of Colombia, but, yet, still faces some 
of the violence that we have been talking about, a lot of the violence. 
It is an area that has absorbed a large group of refugees. It is an 
area struggling for a more fair division of wealth.
  I described before the ownership of vast amounts of land by one or 
two landlords. They are struggling to start collectives. So we had 
experts from Wisconsin in the cooperative movement, electrical co-ops, 
credit unions, et cetera, go and advise people in Colombia on how they 
can set up collectives to prosper. Those type of ties for me, all aside 
from the very important issue of fighting drug addiction and drug 
abuse, call for us to care about what happens there.

  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to hear that. 
Colombians are very entrepreneurial. As the gentlewoman talked about 
agriculture, the one thing that has really hit our district probably 
more so than drugs is how successful the Colombians have been in 
growing flowers.
  I represent an area in California which has a substantial number of 
flower growers, and they are really hurt by the Colombian imports. I 
mean, it is a good news-bad news story. It is a good news for Colombia 
that they have been able to be so successful that they have a $4 
million export business to the United States and have 80 percent of the 
entire U.S. market for cut flowers. We have given them free rein to 
have that because we do not charge them any tariffs where we do charge 
other countries.
  So it is good news for them and it has been bad news for our flower 
growers. Hopefully, we can negotiate with Colombia and make some 
differences about that.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, that offers another example of a way we can 
also be very helpful to Colombia, because when I visited the flower-
growing region, a carnation-growing region, I had the chance to speak 
with a number of the workers who were trying to organize, trying to 
address a number of worker-related issues that I think it would make a 
big difference to people here in the United States, particularly, the 
labor conditions and issues of use of pesticides, to make sure that we 
promote trade in a way that helps the Colombian worker as well as the 
U.S. worker.
  When we have discussions about NAFTA and GATT and expansion of trade 
agreements, and of course NAFTA does not include Colombia, but there 
are people talking all the time about global trade, we have a capacity 
because they are trading partners, to help address some serious issues 
of abuse of labor that ought to concern us all.
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, we are going to have a chance to 
do that in the year 2001. The Andean Trade Pact, which gives these 
preference trade agreements to the Andean countries, will be up for 
renewal, and we will be able to have the ability to negotiate on that.
  I look forward to some hard, tough negotiations. Hopefully, we can 
improve the condition of the working class in these countries, the 
Andean countries, and particularly, I think, help some of our flower 
growers that are struggling as well.
  Another interesting thing about Colombia that many people do not 
think about, I just got some facts today that today there are 25,000 
American citizens who live in Colombia. From October 1997 to September 
1998, more than 158,000 Americans visited Colombia. Currently, we have 
250 private American businesses that are registered in Colombia.
  There is a strong American-Colombian connection, despite all of the 
violence and problems that have been going on. The key that we are here 
tonight on the floor talking about is how do we move beyond this 
impasse. Colombia has come to us and said we want to move on. We want 
to move significantly further than we have ever been before in all 
kinds of reforms. We need the aid of the United States. We have a plan. 
It is a well-thought-out plan. It has been applauded wherever it has 
been presented as a comprehensive plan, as a plan that could work.
  But there is no free lunch. Colombians are asking us, as well as the 
Europeans and other countries, to help finance that plan.

                              {time}  2300

  Because as the gentlewoman mentioned, they are in a historically deep 
recession right now, and no country in conditions like that can pull 
out of that without some international help.
  And so as we approach how we are going to bail out Colombia, what we 
have to break here in Congress is the stranglehold that has said the 
only way we are going to help Colombia is to give them Blackhawk 
helicopters, more money for military, more national police money. It 
may be that some of that is essential, but that is not the whole 
package. And Colombians keep reminding us that is not all that we have 
asked for, we have asked for a lot of other help that is essential. 
Because none of the aid to the military for suppression of drugs will 
work unless the rest of the country is brought up on its feet.
  Ms. BALDWIN. And, in fact, there is certainly some sobering 
statistics that we have heard in terms of the effectiveness of some of 
our targeted expenditures in Colombia before. Drug production is up 
markedly, even though U.S. military assistance and police assistance 
has been increased. And that is obviously not the direction that we 
want to go.
  And as people who are truly concerned about the problem of drug abuse 
and drug addiction, we want our resources to be used effectively. I 
believe in so doing what we will recognize is that the problems in 
Colombia are truly interrelated, and achieving peace, and achieving a 
more balanced economy, and achieving a greater rate of employment in 
Colombia, achieving all those things will truly help us reduce the 
production of drugs and the importation of drugs and the drug 
trafficking, and thereby decreasing violence, and that that is where we 
have to push our U.S. policy.
  Now, I am still not sure when we are going to have this grand debate 
on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. I know that there 
was some suspicion that we might be having this debate yet this fall, 
but it appears that it is a debate that will be deferred until the 
early months of next year. We have heard of a variety of proposals. 
There is a bill in the other body that has been put forward. There has 
been discussion in this House of proposals. Different parts of the 
administration have talked about different ways of providing increased 
funding to Colombia.
  I think my strongest concern is that we not oversimplify the problem 
there; that in a combined and dedicated effort to really respond to a 
drug crisis, that we do so in the most effective way possible, using 
our resources as best we can, and that that, in this case, probably 
means responding to poverty and investing in economic development, 
helping rebuild a responsive judicial system. It is, as the gentleman 
indicated, not merely a matter of providing more guns and helicopters 
and sending more people through the School of the Americas, and simply 
a matter of almost engaging in part of their civil war; that, instead, 
it is a much more comprehensive and complex strategy that we must 
engage in.
  Mr. FARR of California. Has the gentlewoman not been impressed with 
the number of organizations, nongovernmental organizations, the human 
rights organizations, the number of active missions, of technicians, of 
people, as the gentlewoman talked about, who are just skilled farmers 
or skilled nurses, people who would really want to help Colombia? I 
think if we can make this country safe to return to, we will see an 
outpouring of Americans. It is such a beautiful country. There is so 
much possibility there. And I just

[[Page H12101]]

think that we in Congress have to provide the resources to make this 
possible.
  My daughter is 21 years old. I would hate to think that there is any 
place in the world that she cannot as an American citizen go and be 
safe in, and particularly in a country which her father spent two of 
the most marvelous years of his life as a Peace Corps volunteer. Yet my 
wife and others do not think it is safe for her to go down there, 
particularly alone. It may be, but the perception is that it is not. 
And that is a tragedy, that we have a country that we are so close to 
and people that we have had such a long historical relationship with 
and a country that has probably been historically the strongest 
democracy in Latin America that our own children cannot feel safe to 
visit or study in their schools.

  I hope that those of us who are Members of Congress who care about 
this will have the ability to do something about it in a very short 
time.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that the gentleman was able 
to join in this discussion. I think it is a very important discussion. 
I suspect that the next special order will carry on with a similar 
concern about fighting drug abuse and drug addiction in this country 
and talking about those efforts. And I certainly want to be one to 
reach out to both sides of the aisle, to reach over to the other body, 
to work with the administration, and certainly to keep in close contact 
with the people of Colombia who can, I think, inform this debate and 
help us find true solutions to real problems. And I very much thank the 
gentleman for joining in this with me.
  Mr. FARR of California. Well, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman 
for scheduling this hour, and I would encourage everyone who has 
listened to this, who cares about Colombia, to petition and to write 
the President, to let the President of the United States know that it 
is important for the President to make Colombia a high priority, not 
just Members of Congress. And also to remind us that we, as Americans, 
are part of the problem. Because we are the buyers of the illicit drugs 
that are coming out of Colombia. If there was no market, there would be 
very little production. We need to take some responsibility for that as 
well.

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