Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: U.S. Policymaking in Colombia

Anthropology of Policy

by Winifred Tate

In 2000, the U.S. passed a major aid package that was going to help Colombia do it cut drug trafficking, defeat leftist guerrillas, support peace, and build democracy. More than 80% of the assistance, however, was military aid, at a time when the Colombian security forces were linked to abusive, drug-trafficking paramilitary forces. Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats examines the U.S. policymaking process in the design, implementation, and consequences of Plan Colombia, as the aid package came to be known. Winifred Tate explores the rhetoric and practice of foreign policy by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, Congress, and the U.S. military Southern Command. Tate's ethnography uncovers how policymakers' utopian visions and emotional entanglements play a profound role in their efforts to orchestrate and impose social transformation abroad. She argues that U.S. officials' zero tolerance for illegal drugs provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. The U.S. also ignored Colombian state complicity with paramilitary brutality, presenting them as evidence of an absent state and the authentic expression of a frustrated middle class. For rural residents of Colombia living under paramilitary dominion, these denials circulated as a form of state terror. Tate's analysis examines how oppositional activists and the policy's targets—civilians and local state officials in southern Colombia—attempted to shape aid design and delivery, revealing the process and effects of human rights policymaking.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2015

Reviews

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 stars for the title even if it doesn't really make clear what the book is about. This is an anthropological look at the creation of Plan Colombia with a primary focus on various US gov agencies involved contraposed with the realities of implementation in Putumayo. Each chapter individually had some fascinating sections and insights, but the overarching organizational thread was sometimes lacking. The academic theoretical underpinnings also often just felt thrown in there. Overall, this felt like a book written by and for those of us with a lot of time thinking about and working in Colombia on why Plan Colombia actually came to be - trying to explain US gov actions to the communities on the ground who face a very different understanding of the reality of the conflict and the drug trade.

[Ana Paulina Maestre Camacho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tate arguments that Plan Colombia was intended as an aid package to fix all of Colombia’s problems (drugs, guerrillas, rural development, strengthen military) but its design and assessment got many critical issues wrong.

Even if I do not agree with her criticism of Plan Colombia, I value her nuanced approach as she interviews a diversity of actors ranging from US policymakers and implementers (including SouthCom) as peasant farmers from Putumayo in Colombia who are affected by the policies mentioned.

The book offers a different point of view (Tate is an anthropologist) from traditional stakeholders (US and Colombian policymakers, military or police officers, Colombian social leaders).

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most interesting part of this book was the inside look at how policy is made, specifically U.S. policy towards Latin America. It's worth a read for anyone trying to understand the inner working of diplomacy.