Oliver Stone, the maverick Hollywood director, has returned from the jungles of Colombia to launch a scathing attack on the US' "secret war" in the country and blame US President George W. Bush for the failure of an international mission to free hostages held by armed rebels.
The Oscar-winning maker of films including Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Wall Street gave the first full eyewitness account of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's effort to secure the release of captives from the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Stone also spoke out in defense of Chavez, whom he called "an honest man, a strong man and a soldier," and condemned the US for treating Latin America like a backyard to "throw trash, piss, do whatever the hell they want."
PHOTO: EPA
FARC said last month that it was prepared to release into the hands of the left-wing Chavez two women politicians -- Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez -- held hostage for six years, as well as Rojas' four-year-old son, reportedly born of a relationship with a guerrilla fighter. Colombians hoped it might be a step toward peace in their decades-long civil war. If FARC was willing to go ahead with this gesture, many believed, it could pave the way for a broader agreement for the release of all 46 hostages, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, three US defense contractors and dozens of local politicians and military and police officers.
RALLYING SUPPORT
Chavez sent helicopters to the city of Villavicencio on the edge of the Colombian jungle. He rallied support from Latin American governments which made up an international verification commission. An acquaintance of Chavez who worked with Stone on his film Comandante, about the Cuban President Fidel Castro, invited the director to witness the rescue for his next documentary, a study of the US relationship with Latin America.
At first Stone was told to remain in his hotel for his own safety in case he became a kidnapping target himself, but he soon ventured out and passed time in town talking to "coke dealers and murderers." His trip ended in frustration as he watched Chavez's negotiations unravel. "Chavez played a poker game where he was trying to really make this work and I think that he couldn't do it alone," said Stone from his home in California. "From where I was standing, he was beating the drum to rescue these hostages and to break the ice in the ongoing war between the state and the rebels. I thought that it was a significant first move and there was resentment towards him for this on the part of Colombia and the United States."
He says FARC had promised to provide coordinates for the location where the helicopters could go to pick up the two women and the child. Each day began with the hope that at last the hostages would be freed and for four days each day ended in discouragement for their families. Finally, on New Year's Eve, FARC announced it was "suspending" the handover. It was not possible, it said in a letter to Chavez, to continue because Colombian military movements were compromising the safety of the hostages and their captors.
VEHEMENT DENIAL
This was vehemently denied by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who is credited with improving law and order in recent years, but is also accused of close ties with right-wing paramilitary groups. He claimed that FARC was not in possession of the four-year-old boy, called Emmanuel, who had actually been living in a state-run orphanage under the name Juan David since 2005. On Friday the Colombian government said that DNA evidence proved this to be true and hours later FARC confirmed that it had placed the child in the care of "honorable people" while a humanitarian agreement for a hostage release was hammered out.
Stone, speaking before FARC's statement was released, denied that the discovery of Emmanuel in the orphanage was a major blow to the rebels' credibility.
"Even if it were true, I would say to you, so what? What would be the motive for FARC to create such a build-up and not release the hostages? That would be such bad intention, such bad faith, that it would condemn them from the whole world and if that was the truth I would be surprised and upset with them," he said.
Stone, 61, served in the US army in Vietnam, was wounded twice and received the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He has won Oscars for his Vietnam dramas Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, as well as for his screenplay for Midnight Express. He is a trenchant critic of US foreign policy.
He blamed the collapsed deal not on FARC but on Uribe and his US backer.
"It's Colombia's fault, Colombia did not want it to happen and I think there were other outside forces, like Bush. Uribe went to great lengths to justify his behavior that day. For the President to fly down to this place and give a long press conference and have his general give a long talk feels like a lot of over justification to me. I think there was a lot at stake in getting Chavez out of the hostage situation. I heard that day from two rival sources that Uribe had made a phone call to Bush the day before or that day. The Bush phone call is significant," he said. "I said at the time, shame on Colombia, shame on Uribe and I meant to say shame on Bush, too. I think Bush has a spiteful attitude towards Chavez, as does the American establishment. They want to see Chavez fail. The New York Times had an article the next day saying: `Chavez's promised hostage release fizzles, his second major setback in weeks.' If that's the headline, that's certainly a surprise to all those people who were down there, including the families of the hostages. It was a genuine effort to free them."
EXPLOITATION
Uribe's war on drugs has been waged with the support of Bush's program to eliminate one of the most plentiful sources of cocaine in the world. Stone regards it as another chapter in the US' long history of interference and exploitation in Latin America, supporting dictators when in its own self-interest.
"America seems to treat it as its backyard. I guess people do all kinds of things in their backyards. They throw trash, piss, do whatever hell they want, let the weeds grow. I think we've always had that idea, that it's ours," he said. "Colombia is the last one we have left. It's a big investment, I gather we're talking almost a billion a year now. It is the equivalent of a secret war. In my time it would have been shocking, the equivalent of the Laotian war or the Cambodian war. The country is crawling with military equipment and American equipment and supervisory technologies -- satellite technology, information technology. It exists for the FARC, I think they know that. They're very paranoid; they're right to be. Every Colombian that I spoke to was scared of the military in some way or another; they're the most dangerous people, not the FARC."
DESPERATE BATTLE
FARC is regarded as a terrorist group by the US and the EU and is thought to be holding up to 3,000 hostages in the country's eastern jungles. But Stone refused to condemn it outright.
"I do think that by the standards of Western civilization they go too far; they kidnap innocent people. On the other hand, they're fighting a desperate battle against highly financed, American-supported forces who have been terrorizing the countryside for years and kill most of the people. FARC is fighting back as best it can and grabbing hostages is the fashion in which they can finance themselves and try to achieve their goals, which are difficult. They're a peasant army; I see them as a Zapata-like army. I think they are heroic to fight for what they believe in and die for it, as was Castro in the hills of Cuba," he said.
FARC has said its intention to release the two women hostages still stands but it has returned to an intractable demand -- the demilitarization of two municipalities in southwestern Colombia to negotiate an exchange of the hostages for jailed rebels. Uribe has repeatedly refused that demand and, given his apparent political victory in the case of the boy Emmanuel, is unlikely to change his position any time soon.
IN VAIN
As they waited in vain for the handover, Chavez quipped that Stone was Bush's emissary; Stone in return called Chavez a "great man."
Asked to explain this description, he said: "Because he's really made a difference. You sense a revolutionary spirit throughout Venezuela. He doesn't seem like a tyrant to me at all, he doesn't seem even like a strongman, he seems like a man who respects the law. He's abided by the Constitution far faster than Bush has abided by our Constitution."
Stone also said that he was impressed with the socialist President at close quarters.
"America has heavily invested in publicizing anything negative about Chavez, but I have to admire him in person as an honest man, a strong man and a soldier," he said.
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