Why indymedia should have ongoing reports on Colombia's civil war

by Paola Ponce Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2001 at 1:36 PM

This is a comment I posted in response to the article "The FARC faces the empire" http://la.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=9478

As a Latin American, I loved the article. I think, ultimately, the problem is an ideological one, it is the strength of anti-communism in the US and in Western countries.

If indymedia has had ongoing reports on the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Middle East crisis and other places, why not have one of, at least, Colombia's Civil War? Surely, by now, they would have got the message on how important it is.

I do not think indymedia is completely independent, because I do not beleive Western countries have yet recovered from decades of anti-communist indoctrination and ideological attacks from political influences, including anarchist ones.

Furthermore, there is also a great deal of ignorance in Western countries of the Latin American left and its long history of fighting US imperialism. As anyone with good knowledge of it will know, Marxism in Simon Bolivar's America, and Latin American politics in general, is truly an autonomous phenomenon, and cannot, and does not, mirror the European experience.

I call upon everyone and anyone, who is true to the class struggle, to unite and fight, a disease in western society called anti-communism, whether one is sincerely conscious of it, or not, because; our class enemies surely are.

"All the world's peoples who

have fought for liberty have,

in the end, eliminated their

tyrants..."

Simon Bolivar

San Mateo, March 1814

Original: Why indymedia should have ongoing reports on Colombia's civil war