John Lindsay-Poland Plan Colombia Book sku-336947535

Plan Colombia: U.S. Ally Atrocities and Community Activism is a hardcover by John Lindsay-Poland, listed under Latin American History Books. The book examines more than fifty years of U.S. support for the Colombian military during a war that cost over 200,000 lives. It reports that the Colombian military killed more than 5,000 civilians during Plan Colombia, a period of heightened U.S. assistance.

Lindsay-Poland recounts a 2005 massacre in the San José de Apartadó Peace Community, the investigation that followed, an official cover-up and the international response. He examines how multibillion-dollar U.S. military aid and official indifference contributed to atrocities.

Drawing on his human rights activism and interviews with military officers, community members and human rights defenders, he describes grassroots initiatives in Colombia and the United States that resisted militarized policy and proposed alternatives to war.

Despite limited resources, those initiatives offered models for more just and peaceful relationships between the United States and other nations. The book also describes how Washington, DC, treated the counterinsurgency campaign as a successful blueprint for U.S. military intervention elsewhere despite civilian deaths and documented atrocities. SKU: sku-336947535.