Key bump for the Cause?

The FARC has for years funded its armed rebellion against the US-backed Columbian government with money from the cocaine trade, which depends on the massive demands from noses in the United States. Recently, the Shining Path guerilla army has resumed its struggle against the government in Peru using a stream of income from a similar source — coke cartels. At the same time, US anti-drug efforts to block distribution routes from South America to the United States has prompted the cartels to move their product through Mexico, which has exacerbated drug-related violence in that country to the point where Mexico is about as safe as any moderately war-torn African region you could name. Furthermore, the violence has crossed the political border between the US and Mexico, and now law enforcement in Arizona get to deal with beheadings and kidnappings and house raids the same as the Mexican police do.

I, like president Obama, have done “maybe a little blow” in my time, mostly during the zany days of college. I have since shrugged it off as something I have no interest in doing any more, for obvious reasons, but more and more I have thought of the political ramifications of snorting those white lines. I remember seeing a Bill Maher show on HBO years back that featured a charming graphic that said something like, “Columbia: 30 Years of Civil War Because America Can’t Kick Its Coke Habit.”

This is, for the most part, true. Without funding from the cocaine trade, rebels in Columbia and the rest of Latin America would be seriously hurting for cash in the post Cold-War era. Groups like FARC and Shining Path are dramatically flawed ideologically and enjoy little popular support outside of small, specific regions, mostly because they have burned so many bridges with villagers by their association with rampant drug-related violence. If drug money were to dry up, the guerillas would be trading their machine guns for machetes, which would be little match for the millions and millions of dollars of military support the US grants Latin American governments each year to fight against “the drug dealers.”

But, as we all know, the War on Drugs in places like Columbia has as much to do with fighting communism as it does with “fighting drugs” (ever try to shoot a pile of powder?). The FARC, the Shining Path, and most other serious rebel groups in South America are almost exclusively Marxist in their (professed) political stances. During the Cold War, the United States built up a massive funding infrastructure to battle cartels, mostly because the cartels supported Leftist guerilla armies. The claim that the United States was simply attempting to eradicate drugs for moral or societal reasons is a Reaganistic smoke screen at best (unless you consider that most people who do coke in its powder form are rich whiteys, which would explain why the government would battle against that while supplying cocaine in rock form to the black inner cities).

This begs a question, then: Should a person in the United States who supports Leftist armed resistance against capitalist governments in South America disavow the use of cocaine because giving money to coke dealers perpetuates violence, chaos and unrest in the lands of our southern neighbors? If the only active Leftist armies in the Western hemisphere rely almost entirely on money from cocaine, shouldn’t their supporters in the United States be buying up all the yay-yo they can get their privileged hands on in order to keep the struggle alive? Since it is true that all revolution demands severe sacrifice, isn’t this one we should be willing to make?

In this case, no, probably not. The FARC and the Shining Path are Cold War remnants who attract only those who have yet to figure out a better way to fight against capitalism in the globalized age. Although their spirits are admirable, they are destined to lose because they are not even fighting the correct wars, and they show their desperation by aligning with drug lords who really do not have the good of the people in mind. Even Hugo Chavez, despite his professed support for FARC, is a step up from the formerly grand Columbian Marxist army. The Left must find new ways to forward itself, and the FARC and Shining Path are doing little to help. I am not saying that everyone should give up on armed resistance altogether, but the time for an incubation period during which ideologically like-minded members can get together and regroup is at hand. The cocaine-fueled rebel army model is broken, whether it be the classic Columbian version or the new Peruvian. Their efforts to continue down the same path, which was forged in a direction that may have been appropriate for the Cold War but is not now, seem a bit sadly pathetic these days, and buying cocaine in the United States is actually probably the worst thing you could do for any serious Leftist progression in South America. So, stop it.

If the coke money runs out, maybe their buzz will finally wear down, they’ll drink a few beers, doze off into a light sleep and wake up with their party leader as president. That’s what just happened in El Salvador.