The relationship between Colombia and the United States evolved from a mutual cordiality during the 19th and early 20th centuries to an early-2000s partnership that linked the governments of both nations around several key issues; this includes fighting communism, the war on drugs, and the threat of terrorism due to the September 11 attacks in 2001.
During the fifty years prior to 2005, different American governments and their representatives became involved in Colombian affairs through the implementation of policies concerned with a number of these issues. Some critics of US policies in Colombia, such as Law Professor John Barry, claimed in 2002 that US influences had catalyzed internal conflicts and substantially expanded the scope and nature of human rights abuses in Colombia.John Barry, From Drug War to Dirty War: Plan Colombia and the U.S. Role in Human Rights Violations in Colombia, 12 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 161, 164 (Spring, 2002). Supporters, such as Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman, in 2002 defended the idea that the United States had promoted respect for human rights and the rule of law in Colombia; in addition, adding to the fight against drugs and terrorism.Marc Grossman. Subsecretario de Estado para Asuntos Políticos . Universidad de Georgetown. Conferencia Uniendo esfuerzos por Colombia. US Embassy of Colombia (2 September 2002). Retrieved on 27 March 2006. (Spanish) (English version available) A signing member of the Rio Pact and SICOFAA, as well as a regular participant in RIMPAC, Colombia was notably the only South American nation to support the US-led Iraq War in 2003. In 2022, Colombia was designated a Major non-NATO ally. Relations deteriorated significantly during the second presidency of Donald Trump, during which the US government imposed sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, however, following the election victory of Abelardo de la Espriella, relations between the two nations improved once again as bilateral cooperation was restored.
Historical overview
19th century On 20 July 1810, Colombia became the first Spanish colony of New Granada and the first country in South America to win independence against Spanish rule which was followed after Haiti's independence from France on 1 January 1804 after the Haitian Revolution as well as the United States to declare independence from Britain in 1783 after the American Revolution. Colombia became the third oldest independent republic in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti and the United States which won their revolutions against European imperialism. During the Spanish American wars of independence, the United States was officially neutral but permitted Spanish American agents to obtain weapons and supplies. With the reception of Manuel Torres in 1821, Colombia became the first "former" Spanish colony recognized by the United States, and the United States was the second government (after the Kingdom of Brazil) to recognize an independent Spanish American state. At that time, Gran Colombia included the territory of the present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panama. Mutual relations have existed since the U.S. established a diplomatic mission in Santa Fe de Bogota. Richard C. Anderson was appointed as the first United States Minister Plenipotentiary to the Gran Colombia on 27 January 1823. In 1824 he negotiated with the chancellor Pedro Gual and concluded the Anderson–Gual Treaty, the first bilateral treaty that the U.S. signed with another American state. Anderson took his leave from his post on 7 June 1825, after being commissioned as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Panama Congress of Nations. Anderson died en route to his post in Turbaco, near Cartagena de Indias on 24 July 1826. U.S. relations with the government in Santa Fe de Bogotá were not interrupted even when Ecuador and Venezuela left the federation in 1830. In 1846, the U.S. Polk administration signed a treaty with Colombia, which owned Panama at the time. A railway across the isthmus was opened in 1855. Under the treaty, U.S. troops landed in Panama six times in the nineteenth century to crush rebellions, ensuring that the railway was not hindered.Robert A. Friedlander, A Reassessment of Roosevelt's Role in the Panamanian Revolution of 1903, W. Pol. Q., Jun. 1961, at 538–539.
Early 20th century
In 1903, the U.S. and Colombia negotiated a new treaty. The representative of the company which owned the railway publicly predicted and threatened that Panama would secede if the Colombian Senate rejected the treaty. In 1903, despite U.S. threats, the Colombian senate refused to ratify the Hay–Herrán Treaty. The United States encouraged an uprising of historically rebellious Panamanians and then used US warships to impede any interference from Colombia. A representative of the new Panamanian government then negotiated a treaty favorable to the U.S. for the construction and operation of the Panama Canal.
In 1928, U.S. business interests were threatened in Colombia. The workers of the U.S. corporation United Fruit banana plantations in Colombia went on strike in December 1928. The workers demanded "written contracts, eight-hour days, six-day weeks and the elimination of food coupons".United Fruit Historical Society. (last visited 9 April 2006). After several weeks without an agreement, an army regiment from Bogotá was brought in by the Colombian government of Miguel Abadía Méndez to crush the strike. The soldiers erected their machine guns on the roofs of buildings at the corners of the main square in Ciénaga, Magdalena, closing off the access streets. After a five-minute warning, they ordered "Fuego!", opening fire into a dense crowd of plantation workers and their families who had gathered after Sunday Mass. They waited for an anticipated address from the governor of that region; between forty-seven to 2,000 workers were killed in the Santa Marta Massacre.
A populist Colombian congressman, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, began to develop a nationwide reputation, especially among the poor, after visiting the site of the United Fruit massacre the same week. Gaitán returned to Bogotá and argued passionately in Congress in favor of the workers, arguing that the army’s actions did not protect Colombia's interests but instead those of the U.S.
Mid-20th century
In 1948, presidential candidate Gaitàn was assassinated in Bogotá during the conference that gave birth to the Organization of American States. Gaitan's assassination marked the beginning of La Violencia, a Colombian civil war which lasted until the mid-fifties and killed an estimated 300,000 Colombians. Towards the end of the conflict, Liberal and Communist armed peasant groups who remained at large, together with displaced peasants who had either fled from the violence or lost their land, formed small independent enclaves in the south. According to author Stokes, citing Jenny Pearce, these enclaves had "no broader political project" other than agriculture and self-protection. The Colombian government, pressured by Conservative Congressmen who defined these enclaves as "independent republics", saw this as a potential threat. In addition, the U.S. government saw these peasant enclaves as potentially dangerous to U.S. business interests in Colombia.
In May 1964, as part of Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, a CIA backed program called Plan LAZO was initiated. The United States trained Colombian military troops to invade the largest peasant enclaves. They used a bomber aircraft with Napalm in order to destroy the threat. Many of the armed inhabitants of the enclaves escaped and two years later part of this group formed the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). The FARC became the oldest and largest revolutionary "guerilla" movement (guerilla referring to insurgent militias inspired by the Chinese, Cuban, and Vietnamese revolutions) in the Western Hemisphere.Juan Forero, New Role for U.S. in Colombia: Protecting a Vital Oil Pipeline, The New York Times, 4 October 2002, at A1. Stokes and other critics believed that the U.S. government focused on the destruction of the FARC and other left-wing guerrilla movements, ignoring and even supporting other destabilizing elements in Colombian society.
1959 "U.S. Special Survey Team" and 1962 Plan LAZO As La Violencia was ending a "U.S. Special Survey Team" composed of worldwide counterinsurgency experts arrived in October 1959 to investigate Colombia's internal security. Among other policy recommendations the U.S. team advised that "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and U.S. authorities against 'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature." This recommendation is a form of plausible deniability, common in secret U.S. government documents which are later declassified.
In February 1962, three years after the 1959 "U.S. Special Survey Team", a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough visited Colombia for a second survey. In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yarborough encouraged a stay-behind irregular force and its immediate deployment to eliminate communists representing a future threat:
"A concerted country team effort should be made now to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations in case they are needed later. This should be done with a view toward development of a civil and military structure for exploitation in the event the Colombian internal security system deteriorates further. This structure should be used to pressure toward reforms known to be needed, perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents. It should be backed by the United States... If we have such an apparatus in Colombia it should be employed now."Visit to Colombia, South America, by a Team from Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Headquarters, U.S. Army Special Warfare School, 26 February 1962, Kennedy Library, Box 319, National Security Files, Special Group; Fort Bragg Team; Visit to Colombia; 3/62, "Secret Supplement, Colombian Survey Report."
Interrogation procedures and techniques, including regular questioning of rural villagers "who are believed to be knowledgeable of guerrilla activities" were advised. "Exhaustive interrogation of the bandits, to include sodium pentathol and polygraph, should be used to elicit every shred of information. Both the Army and the Police need trained interrogators." Pentathol, or truth serum, was originally used by doctors for relaxation, but in the 1970s it was reported used by some Latin American militaries to induce "paralysis, agony, and terror.", quoting, Report of Torture, Amnesty International (Duckworth 1975) at 55–58. The use of truth serum would later be encouraged in SOA manuals.
"In general, the Yarborough team recommended that the US provide guidance and assistance in all aspects of counter-insurgency...Civilian and military personnel, clandestinely selected and trained in resistance operations, would be required in order to develop an underground civil and military structure. This organization was to undertake 'clandestine execution of plans developed by the United States Government toward defined objectives in the political, economic, and military fields'...it would…undertake...'paramilitary, sabotage, and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents'."