US Interventionism in Latin America

Plan Colombia: Exporting the Model
From: North American Congress on Latin America
Author: Bill Weinberg

The Merida Initiative, Washington’s new security program for Mexico and Central America, was immediately dubbed “Plan Mexico” by its critics—implying it is a new version of Plan Colombia. Mexico is now poised to supersede Colombia as the hemisphere’s top recipient of U.S. security aid.

From its origins 10 years ago, the multibillion-dollar aid package and militarized anti-narcotics program known as Plan Colombia was understood by its proponents as a model to be applied elsewhere in the hemisphere, and it was—first in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, through the Andean Regional Initiative. More recently, Pentagon planners have been explicitly evoking Plan Colombia as a model for the war in Afghanistan, where counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts have likewise become inexorably entwined.
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