• by Humberto Márquez (caracas)
• Tuesday, August 03, 2010
• Inter Press Service

The latest political and diplomatic conflict between Colombia and Venezuela has coincided with celebrations of the bicentennial of the two countries' independence, won by their common liberator Simón Bolívar, whose ideals of integration continue to be undermined.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe once again accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez of harbouring leftwing guerrillas from Colombia, while Chávez has lashed out at Bogotá for lending the U.S. armed forces seven military bases, from which he says an attack to overthrow him might be launched.

Caracas announced that forces have been deployed 'to defend (Venezuela's) sovereignty in case of aggression.' Chávez said 'airborne, infantry and special operations units' have been moved to the Colombian border 'quietly, because we do not want to attack anyone or cause alarm in the villages.'

A statement from outgoing President Uribe said 'Colombia has never thought of attacking its sister nation (Venezuela) as the president of that country claims, in a clear political deception of his own country.' This is just one example of the kind of invective frequently bandied about between Bogotá and Caracas since mid-July.

Venezuelan Defence Minister General Carlos Mata, in a statement in support of Chávez, warned that foreign forces attempting to 'violate the sacred soil of our liberator Simón Bolívar' would be met with an 'overwhelming response.'

'If the history of these sister nations becomes stained with blood, we blame the Colombian oligarchy and their current government, the heirs of Santander,' said Mata.

From 1819 to 1830, both countries were part of a single state named the Republic of Greater Colombia. For many years their president was Caracas-born Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) and the vice-president was General Francisco de Paula Santander (1792-1840), known as the 'man of laws', from Cúcuta, in the northeast of present-day Colombia.

Relations were tense between Bolívar and Santander, occasionally breaking out into open conflict, 'but to revive that confrontation in the 1820s when we are living in the 21st century is baseless, unjustified nonsense,' Colombian historian Jaime Carrasquilla of the private Universidad del Rosario, in Bogotá, told IPS.

To identify the personalities involved in the present conflict with Santander and Bolívar 'is to lose sight of the fact that they were both liberals, followers of 18th century French ideas, who acted in a particular time and context, and who may be the subject of academic study, but not of aggressive polemics,' Carrasquilla said.

In his view, to identify Venezuela's leftwing government with Bolívar and the rightwing Colombian administration with Santander 'contradicts the facts: for instance, Laureano Gómez, a former Colombian president who sympathised with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (1939-1975), criticised Santander and praised Bolívar.'

Gómez, the leader of the Conservative Party that was in power from 1950 to 1953, wrote a book, 'El mito de Santander' (The Myth of Santander), which debunked Santander and extolled Bolívar.

In Carrasquilla's view, the way history is being manipulated in the current controversy 'makes no sense, and neither does carrying on this personal confrontation with a diplomacy that is off the rails, in front of microphones. In any case, it reflects very badly on the bicentennial celebrations.'

Caracas celebrated the 200th anniversary of its 1810 independence movement on Apr. 19, and Bogotá on Jul. 20.

Another casualty of the clash between Uribe and Chávez is the process of subregional integration, driven economically by trade between the two countries, which grew from a few hundred million dollars two decades ago to seven billion dollars in 2008, in spite of Venezuela having already withdrawn from the Andean Community of Nations (CAN).

Last year, bilateral trade fell to 1.3 billion dollars, and it appears to be falling further still, with Colombian exporters finding alternative markets and the Venezuelan state turning more and more to countries in the southern cone of South America for supplies.

The CAN, created in 1969, is made up of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Chile was a member for the first seven years, and Venezuela joined the bloc in 1973 but pulled out in 2006, in protest over the negotiation of bilateral free trade agreements with the United States by Colombia and Peru.

In the Andean subregion, at least, 'integration has been sacrificed to ideology and the lack of a vision worthy of the heroic deeds of emancipation,' Venezuelan historian and former foreign minister Simón Alberto Consalvi remarked to IPS.

Integration in this subregion 'was going well, after 40 years of efforts in trade and finances, with strong results that were set to go on expanding, and a great deal of work was done in judicial institutions and at the level of political talks,' he said.

'Just when so many difficulties had been overcome, and the negotiations were plainly on the right track, having selected the integration scheme that worked best, because the countries involved were neighbours with a shared history, similar levels of development, complementary economies and border populations accustomed to trading, Venezuela's withdrawal came as a heavy blow,' Consalvi deplored.

Analysts like Carlos Romero, a professor of postgraduate studies in international affairs at universities in Caracas, say that while 'microphone diplomacy' and the 'personalisation of foreign policy' have wreaked havoc with the integration process, 'the damage that could be caused by an armed confrontation does not bear thinking about.'

Against that backdrop, it seems perverse to evoke Bolívar, who envisioned the union of present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama as a single country.

In Panama City in 1826, Bolívar convened a congress of the newly independent states of the former Spanish America, to create 'a nation of republics'.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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