Can we call Colombia a failed state yet?

I mean, this many dead, in one grave, this year alone…it’s kind of telling, isn’t it?

During a visit by a British delegation of parliamentarians and union leaders, the remains of 2,000 persons were found in a mass grave in La Macarena.

According to current information, it is impossible to identify any of the victims.

Jairo Ramírez, spokesman of the Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, told Caracol Radio that forced disappearances are still occurring in Colombia.

According to Ramírez, several of those found in the mass grave were killed this year.

Translation mine.

Just to put things in a bit of perspective, three thousand desaparecidos were killed in Chile during the reign of Pinochet. That’s just one thousand more than were found in this one grave in Colombia. An estimated thirty thousand is the number most commonly attributed to the Argentine military junta of 1976-83. How long has Colombia’s civil war (and its offshoot drug-gang wars) been raging now? Five decades at least.

Two thousand is an awful lot for one mass grave alone in Colombia, and it’s not the only one.

Meanwhile, for a further bit of perspective, let’s look at a neighboring country…namely Ecuador, which got the Colombian treatment in March of last year:

“The strategic intelligence processed from the Manta base was fundamental for the pursuit and location of Raúl Reyes, who was a priority target for the government of Colombia,” reads a report from the Truth and Transparency Commission created in Quito this past March.

According to the document, the treaty between Ecuador and the United States concerning the Manta base “for control of narcotrafficking, overstepped its stated ends”. The investigation also found that the US financing of Ecuador for the presumed co-operation in the War on Drugs “determined the submission” of its security organisms.

On the other hand, the commission ruled out all relations between President Correa and the FARC, in contradiction to the Colombian government’s claims. Last weekend, Correa responded to the contents of a book written by the Colombian ex-minister of defence, Juan Manuel Santos, assuring that Santos lied about the alleged ties between the government of Ecuador and the FARC.

“The ex-minister Santos, poor man, keeps lying to us,” said Correa of Santos’ book, “Checkmate to Terror”, which tells the tale of the Uribe government against the armed group.

Again, translation mine.

Isn’t it funny how intelligence processed at a US base in Ecuador–was used in a bombing of Ecuadorian turf? And isn’t it funny how the bombers came from Colombia, where the US is now installing the seven bases it “needs” to replace the one that bad, bad Rafael Correa, damn his Ecuadorable little ass, isn’t letting them use anymore to arrange further bombings of Ecuador, along with Venezuela and assorted peasant villages in the Colombian jungles?

And yet, Colombia is supposedly a model democracy, and Venezuela and Ecuador are the regional bad guys.

Go figure.