 Thank you so much for joining us. We're back. Code Pink Congress returns. We hope you all had a wonderful summer. And a big shout out to Grace Siegelman who is handling tech for us tonight. As we talk about Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and a whole lot more, we've got some wonderful guests lined up on our congresswoman Nadia Velazquez who's looking forward to being with us, had to postpone at the last minute with a schedule conflict. But we're really thrilled that Nadia was able to talk to Patricio Zamorano who's the director of the Council on Economic Affairs and a media analyst and journalist. He will join us and talk about Latin America and our featured guest is Jimena Sanchez who is the Washington with the Washington office on Latin America. And why are we talking about Latin America? Well, a congressional delegation led by AOC recently returned from those countries. And we're going to watch a few videos that will be sprinkled throughout the program about that trip. But first, we will have some news updates. Laura, why don't you go first? Tell us what's going on. Okay, well, first introduce yourself, Laura. You're Brooklyn for Peace. We're really so thrilled that Brooklyn for Peace is cosponsoring this tonight. And we're very happy to have you because you're so active and brilliant, really, a brilliant writer with the Peace in Ukraine Coalition. So perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about yourself and then give us a news update. Thank you. There's not so much to tell I'm, you know, a local activist. I've been an activist on issues of peace and or economic justice for many, many years. I write and I won the former school teacher, so high school teacher. So yeah, about this news update. In the news, NATO Secretary Jen Stoltenberg, speaking to the EU Parliament 10 days ago, clearly acknowledged for the first time that the reason for Russia's invasion of Ukraine was NATO enlargement. It's the first time this has been said so directly by a high NATO or other high Western official. We've been told that the invasion was because Putinate democracy. He's crazy. He wanted to take over most of Europe. And at the most hyperbolic that he wants to take over the United States with Adam Schiff implying this on the floor of Congress when he said that we must fight Russia in Ukraine so that we do not have to fight Russia at home. That's a quote. So anyway, Secretary Stoltenberg was very clear, repeating several times that NATO expansion to Ukraine was the worst cause. Importantly, this was an admission that Russia wanted to negotiate prior to the war. He refers to a draft agreement sent by Russia on December 2021, which in diplomatic terms was an opening gambit, a list of demands for negotiation. Stoltenberg put it a little differently. I quote, the background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021 and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And that was a precondition for not invading Ukraine. Of course, we didn't sign that. Then later Stoltenberg repeated. So he, Putin went to war to prevent NATO more NATO close to his borders. This confirms, however, that negotiation was desired by Russia. It may also be noted that Putin continues to maintain that it is. It also confirms what senior statesman and Russian ambassador George Kennan said in 1997 before Putin was even president that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post Cold War era. And that is a quote from Kennan. Our President CIA chief William Burns said something similar to Condoleezza Rice, when she was Secretary of State, saying in quote, I quote again, Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines, not just for Putin. We know from a range of sources that there was a tentative peace deal that were negotiations going on between Putin and Zelensky a month into the present war. Again, evidence of Russia's interest in negotiation as well as Ukraine's at that time with Ukraine neutrality, the prime objective on Russia's part. And in this tentative agreement, Russia agreed to withdraw to its pre February 22 borders in return for Ukrainian neutrality. This was nixed by NATO in the person of Boris Johnson. But it has been attested to by a range of people from former Prime Minister Bennett of Israel to our State Department's Fiona Hill. Fast forwarding to the present NATO chief Stoltenberg stance in his speech was to double down on Ukrainian NATO membership. In fact, fast tracking it. With the apparent failure of the counter offensive, some might say we're at a dangerous inflection point in a somewhat analogous situation when the US was faced with the prospect of Russian missiles in Cuba to avert nuclear war. Of course, we know that Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy compromised. Khrushchev withdrew his missiles, allowing John Kennedy to save face by not announcing right away that in return, the US would take missiles out of Turkey with Kennedy later saying, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations, which bring an adversary to a choice of either humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. Well, we certainly don't want that. And that leads me. And thank you so much, Laura Caster for that update. I want to share with everyone that the peace and Ukraine coalition is organizing global days of action in conjunction with anti-war activists in Europe, starting from September 30th to October 8th. We invite you all to join us at peaceandukraine.org. We're hosting events, banner drops, petitioning, tabling congressional delegations in home districts and on Capitol Hill will be in DC on October 3rd. That's October 3rd and October 4th, Wednesday. And anyway, October 3rd and October 4th will be there. We have a rally with Dr. Cornel West and Claudia de la Cruz and other people. Medea will be there. And this is the code pink dot org website for all the information and how you can connect with the live stream. Okay, Medea is with us. She's going to give us an update and introduce our first guest. Yes. So I'm here in New York City. You might hear some sirens in the background and here for the climate week, which has been fantastic so far. On Sunday, there was a very large spirited march of tens of thousands of people that march from Columbus Circle to the UN. And it was very exciting to be part of a march that was led by frontline defenders from the environmental movements from all over the United States and from places around the world. And it was preceded and followed by direct action, which makes it much more interesting than having just one march on a Sunday. The Friday before, there was a civil disobedience at Bank of America, which left hundreds of employees not able to get inside. People were protesting Bank of America's funding of fossil fuel projects. Then yesterday, there was a civil disobedience at the Federal Reserve Bank, also about the funding of fossil fuel projects, and one today at Bank of America again. And there have also been teachings every single evening. One thing I do want to say also is that in addition to protesting the funding of fossil fuels, there's been a lot of protest against President Biden and his going back on his promises when he was campaigning, that he was going to stop the licensing of more fossil fuel projects on federal land. And people were very upset about all of the licenses that he's been giving out for more drilling, more exploration, and for pipelines. And I also wanted to say that the UN General Assembly is meeting. And so at the same time, all this is going on, there have been events every single day in the last two days, and we'll go on all week long on all kinds of issues. There were protests today around Peru, France out of Africa. There were people there to welcome the President of Colombia and all kinds of other things. And the talks that have been given at the General Assembly have been very interesting with a lot of leaders from the Global South talking about the need for a new system that is not focused on capitalism and exploitation. And finally, I wanted to introduce our first speaker, who is somebody who has worked so much on Latin America for so many years. He is a Chilean American. He's the director of a wonderful organization called Council on Hemispheric Affairs. And he is also a great writer, a great organizer, and a fabulous musician. So I am really delighted to be able to welcome to the space Patricio Zamorano. And thank you so much for Patricio for joining us tonight. Thank you so much. Just to clarify very quickly, politically and philosophically, I'm not American. I'm only Chilean. So you were going to talk to us tonight about what's happening in Chile. Sure, sure. Thank you so much, everyone. We have a beautiful group. I think we have more than 60 people. Impressive. Congratulations to Cogping and all the organizers. Yeah, I have 10 minutes. And I wanted to brief you a little bit about what's going on in Chile. As you know, we have a giant milestone this month. We are commemorating 50 years of the Cudita against Salvador Allende by the Pinochet dictatorship. I'm sure that a lot of people that are actually present here, I'm sure that you guys have been involved maybe in anything related to the Chilean struggle during the dictatorship. I know that a lot of people present here maybe were activists in the 80s or in the 90s against the dictatorship. So I am really thankful for all this solidarity that we enjoyed in Chile during those times. In my case, I'm from a generation that actually was raised during the dictatorship. I was born within the dictatorship. I was raised without the Congress, without the justice system, without political parties, without democracy. And for me, that was extremely, extremely important for my personal journey. So we have 50 years now anniversary of that horrible event where democracy was destroyed in Chile just because Salvador Allende was a socialist and a very advanced politician trying to implement very, very good policies actually to help the poor of Chile. So we have a lot of tensions in the country. As you may know, we had a huge crisis last year when the referendum for a new constitution didn't have the outcome that the center left wanted. We have to remember that it was rejected, a very progressive constitutional reform, or a new constitution, actually a whole constitution, a brand new constitution that was going to replace the military constitution of Abu Dhabi Nusheed. That referendum was rejected. The new constitution draft was rejected by the population by more than 60%. Why did that happen? Well, because the country still has a lot of tensions, a lot of polarization and several elements of that constitution were extremely progressive. Another percentage of the Chilean population is still conservative. I have to say very clearly that my home country is a center right country. It is a conservative country. That's why you have this situation where the vote was mandatory. So millions of people who never voted, especially conservative people that never participated in the democracy after the dictatorship, they were forced to vote. And of course, they created an unbalance and at the end of the day, a constitution that was really supported by a big percentage of the population throughout a very complicated and complex process where more than 80% of the population wanted a new constitution to replace the military one. Even though we have those numbers, even though we have the biggest mobilizations ever in the streets of Chile, even though most of the society wanted a new constitution a new contract between the state and citizens, the constitution, the referendum was rejected. What we have now, I have to tell you that we have a very critical situation because the defeat of the previous draft created a crisis. And now after a year of process trying to rebuild a movement to create a new constitution, the extreme right took the lead of writing this new constitution. Exactly the same sector that supported the military dictatorship is now the sector, the political party that is writing the constitution by majority. So we have a very tricky, stupid situation, I would say, because we came from a situation where most of the population wanted a progressive constitution, wanted more rights, human rights, civil rights. And at the same time, now we have a situation where the right is leading the process of a new constitution. And it was the only way because once the constitution was rejected, then the president, President Boris, had to react quickly. And the only way to try to solve the crisis was to negotiate, especially with the opposition. So we came from a constitutional assembly that was elected by the people, more than 150 members. We came from that a very diverse body of deputies who were going to write this new constitution. That was the previous process. We have to go now to a constitution with writers that were actually selected by Congress, selected by the Senate, selected by the House of Representatives, and also a couple of more commissions that are more technical. So in that transition, we created a body of writers that tend to be conservative. So the good news, though, even though the new constitution, which is a huge irony that is being written by the right, the polls are showing that most Chileans are going to reject the constitution so far. The referendum is going to take place on December of this year. The polls show that more than 50, between 50 and 55 percent don't agree with the new draft. Only 20 percent or so are in agreement of what's being discussed. What are the main issues that we have in Chile? As you know, the Chicago voice policies were implemented in Chile in a very strong way. The dictatorship, because it didn't have any control by democracy, by Congress, by anyone, the dictatorship was able to create a society that was based basically on private sector. So it privatized the health sector. It privatized the education in Chile, the pension system. Everything was privatized very quickly based on those neoliberal policies from the Chicago voice. So the new writers are making a huge mistake because those fundamental things, education for all, health for all, a pension system that is progressive, all those fundamental elements, they are not respecting those. So the draft that they're writing now keep all these private entities that are actually in connection with Chilean lives in a daily basis. So that's why you can tell now that the polls are not supporting this new process. So we don't have any clue of what's going to happen. We have polls. We don't know what's going to happen in terms of the streets. I'm not sure you know, but we have a huge social unrest for at least a couple of years. People died in Chile again. The police was very repressive. We have a lot of violations of human rights during that process to create a new constitution. So we, as a society, we're very afraid of what's going to happen if the new draft is rejected. That's going to create another crisis. And again, that shows how difficult is to advance democracy in Chile after almost 20 years of dictatorship and after 20 more years of democracy that was incomplete, that was not perfect. And a process that is creating a lot of uncertainty for a lot of people and families in Chile. So that's something that I wanted to share with you all. And thank you so much for the invitation and coping as always. Thank you so much. And I know that you have another engagement. I'm sure people have questions. How can I reach you? One question maybe I can answer. A couple of questions. People can post them in the chat. I have a question. I was listening to you and I know that everybody's excited about the election of somebody like kind of a Bernie Sanders figure as far as I understand in Chile. And yet you have a very divided Congress and the right has been able to serve some of this power. If everybody was mandated to vote, I would think that you would get people who didn't normally vote who were poor or working class who would then sway it to the left. No? Actually, it was the opposite. As I explained, it was fascinating that basically conservative population, older population actually, older population that never mobilized because they didn't believe in democracy. They didn't believe in the in the civilian governments. They were dreaming about the dictatorship policies coming back. So that population never participated actively. So when the when the law was changed and the referendum electoral voting was modified, so it was mandatory, then we have millions of those votes that were very conservative and didn't agree with this progressive constitution. The constitution was very, very progressive. It created independence for the indigenous people, defending women rights, abortion rights. It was extremely, extremely progressive in terms of education, health, pension system, all those elements that I actually mentioned. So it was really, really a very, very difficult progressive constitution to defend. And it was huge. It was 50,000 words. It was very difficult to defend. So with more time, I would love to explain more the explanations of a crisis that we are still feeling it. And it's going to be very, very fundamental to understand the future of Chilean politics in the next years. Let's see. So a couple of other questions. Boric, okay, what can he do? I mean, does he have executive power that he can use to uplift any of these elements you mentioned in the constitution that were for the indigenous? He doesn't have any power. So that is the opposite. He's actually been identified as one of the factors why the constitution, the original draft, was actually rejected. So he's been basically blamed by, especially by the center-left that he didn't have the leadership to create a better process. The constitutional assembly was chaotic. We have to recognize that it was very difficult to handle. The work was very complicated, complex. So Boric doesn't have any, any constitutional rights to intervene in terms of the process. So unfortunately, and also his sector, the center-left is minority right now in Congress and also is minority in terms of the new decontitutional assembly. So the situation for Boric is, is very weak. Very challenging. Lastly, what, what can we do here in the United States and the belly of the base, you know, who had backed this horrific coup in the 1970s that led to the death of so many people and military oppression. I know that AOC was demanding that certain documents be unclassified, declassified, that presented evidence of U.S. complicity, engineering this coup on behalf of global capital. Some, I think some of those documents have been declassified. Any thoughts on what, what you would like us to do? I, I can tell you, it's very fundamental that we defend the law here. The, the U.S. as a government, as a state doesn't have the right to intervene in other countries in an illegal way. The Chilean case is dramatic. We have to remember that we have a cost here. People died. We have between 3,000 and 6,000 people that were directly killed by these policies supported by Nixon, by Kissinger. We have 100,000 people tortured, more than 700,000 people exiled. So the, the human cost, that's, that's the fundamental cost. Independently, if you are a right-wing or a left-wing person, here we have to be clear that the United States government doesn't have the right to intervene like that. Imagine all the countries trying to intervene in the U.S. or organizing a coup against the legitimate president. It's exactly what happened to President Salvador Allende. So I think that's a huge lesson that we need to learn from now on. And to remind people of that lesson and to demand further declassification. So thank you so much, Patricio, for joining us tonight. Great to meet you and to, to learn about what's happening on all the political struggles in Chile. Before we go to our next, yes, before we go to our next guest, Jimenez Sanchez is going to talk about Colombia, another destination for that congressional delegation that recently returned. We're going to share a couple of videos, at least one, just a snapshot of that delegation. So, Grace, if you can share the screen with that, that first video, that would be great. And the truth, too, is that the U.S. was involved with the dictatorship and the coup. So that's why we're here to recognize the truth, to start a new future. And we're here together saying that we want to create a new vision for our relationship with Latin America and with Chile, which is based on democracy and human rights. There's one simple vision hack anyone can use to improve vision. I think we're going to take it down now. Thanks so much, Grace, for playing that. So AOC led this trip. She was joined by, you saw on the video, Congressman Casar of Texas, also Maxwell Frost, you saw him on the video of Florida, and Nydia Velazquez, who wanted to join us tonight, but there was a last-minute scheduling conflict and a few others. So thank you for playing that, Grace. And now we're going to go to our next guest, and Laura is going to introduce her. Okay. Well, Jimena Sanchez is a human rights and anti-racism activist, advocate with the Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA, an independent organization that promotes human rights and justice within the framework of U.S. foreign policy in the region, where she leads the Columbia, Brazil, and Haiti work. Currently, she's focused on beating back Republicans in the House who have deferred all aid to Columbia of over 15 years. Jimena brought the voices of persons affected by U.S. policies in the region, Afro descendants, indigenous women, LGBTQ plus, trade unionists, victims, and the displaced to DC. Her work focuses on dismantling illegal armed groups, advancing peace accords, and anti-racism measures, protecting social leaders, seeking justice for atrocities, and upholding labor rights. Welcome. Thank you so much. And it's a pleasure to meet all of you virtually. I'm actually currently in my country of Argentina, because unlike Patricio, my situation was that my family ended up being displaced. And as a result of that dictatorship, I ended up living in five different countries and eventually the United States. And I'm actually back because there's going to be an exoneration of my parents with the current government. So that's why I'm here. Anyhow, we can talk about Argentina later, because last, unfortunately, there's some things happening here that are kind of scary. So, you know, after so many years of conflict and death and violence, in 2016, Columbia signed the historic peace accord with the longest running guerrilla group, the FARC. This being the most sophisticated peace accord in the world that integrated victims' rights, ethnic groups, LGBT rights for the first time in a peace agreement, drug policy in the peace agreement, and married the international law with having to demobilize the FARC. So it came up with a transitional justice system that actually is incredibly sophisticated, right? Sadly, this accord was signed in 2016. And shortly after there was a presidential election, and the person that won was basically an anti-peace person, reflecting the economic and political elites of the country who were completely opposed to peace named Ivan Duque. So he campaigned on shredding the peace accord when he got into power, but found himself, when he got into power, that he couldn't do that because all of the international community, all of the donors, including the United States, were all betting on peace and had tied all of their interest in working in Columbia on peace. What he did was a very sophisticated, complex thing where he presented programs that weren't the peace process, saying they were the peace process, basically a parallel agenda that he called peace, that was basically doing exactly what prior governments were doing before, which was interesting, interested in advancing large-scale economic projects, not addressing the drug war the way the peace agreement was signed, and completely ignoring Afro-Columbian and Indigenous rights. Then COVID hit, and first the retrocession in that government, but then also COVID, the exacerbated things led to a series of mass protests in Columbia, and one of them in 2021 ended up with a mass repression in multiple cities where many people were killed and where some places, like Kali, were turned into basically combat zones. It was really horrible. You had security forces basically attacking unarmed protesters in the streets. This prompted Colombians to be like, okay, we need to seek another way, and in the next elections we saw for the first time a candidate who was completely different from all the 200 years prior. He was different in the sense that for 200 years, about 62 families governed the country. They all went to the same schools. Most of them were from Bogota. Almost all of them were considering themselves white, but they're really mestizo, and they were all from the same social class and part of families that had either huge land holdings or other economic privileges. With the Petro government, you have for the first time someone who's not from Bogota, who has put in his government, the most diverse government ever in Colombia, actually represents what the country looks like, including a vice president who's Afro-Columbian from Calca, former environmental leader, and a very high number of women. It's a very balanced government. Not only is this new government, the Gustavo Petro government, completely different, it's very different in how it operates in multiple ways. The biggest one of interest for this conversation is that while it considers the U.S. a crucial ally, it sees the U.S. and Colombia on the same level. It's not like all the prior governments that always did whatever the U.S. wanted or what they thought the U.S. wanted or didn't even put out a tweet or anything without checking with the U.S. before they did it. Actually, a country that puts its own citizens first and actually puts the planet first because it really cares about the environment. It is not focused on war. In Colombia, for decades, war has been, war and violence have been incredibly linked to the economies, not just the illegal economies, the legal economies too, hence it being the country with one of the largest displaced populations in the world, more than 7 million. Rather than focusing on that, they wanted to find a way to put an end to all of Colombian conflicts, learning from the past that if you demobilize one group and you don't deal with the other groups that are there, those other groups that are going to kill the groups, the people who demobilize, or soon thereafter you're going to still have conflict with these other groups in the same area. It is trying something called total peace, which basically has multiple levels to it, but the end all and be all is that with the political groups looking for a politically negotiated solution and for what are known as criminal groups without political ideology or just pure narco traffickers because all the illegal groups in Colombia are narco traffickers. Not just the left, like the Colombian governments have made you think also the right. They're all narco traffickers, but there are some that are just pure narco traffickers, so to speak. He's seeking solutions to dismantle them, to have incentives so that they can be dismantled. Basically the whole idea is trying to find a way to calm the violence so that you can actually focus on everything else in those areas and bring in the country into those areas' institutions. He's also sent this message globally, so Colombia wants nothing to do with the war in Ukraine and no other war. They don't see how they would do that. That is radically different than all prior Colombian governments that have always sought to be the child that's always supporting the U.S. on Israel or supporting the U.S. on Ukraine or what have you. It's also the first time you have a government that actually cares about upholding ethnic rights and addressing climate change and wanting to protect the country's biodiversity. One of the downsides of the demobilization of the FARC has been in a lot of those areas. We've seen an increase for deforestation and an increase of the pollution of natural resources. Because of lack of that group being there, which in a sense preserved the environment, you've had more inroads of illegal activity in terms of environmental activity. He wants to try a different approach to attracting the drug trade, which hasn't been this war on drug approach that the U.S. has had for years and that has been devastating in Colombia because it included an aerial fumigation program that included dumping, basically herbicides on top of swaps of people. Basically, it would be like dumping gallons of roundup on top of people in areas where people don't have independent water sources and so forth. But rather trying to attack, oh, the financial flows, oh, actually do interdiction efforts, trying to find solutions for people that are coerced into having to grow coca or what have you. It also wants to have good relations with Latin American countries. Cuba, because Cuba was essential partner to Colombia on the peace process with the FARC and is the essential partner for the peace process with the ELN. Venezuela, because they are neighbors and the border between Colombia and Venezuela, if you ever go there, it's incredibly porous. You could be on one side or the other and you don't even realize you're in the other one. It's always been like that. Historically, Colombians have fled to the Venezuelan side and Venezuela has taken in millions of Colombians. And now, because of what's happened in Venezuela, you have millions of Venezuelans in Colombia. And it's asking for Cuba to be taken off of the terrorism list. Why? Because the prior Colombian government, the Duque government asked Cuba to be put back on the list supposedly because Cuba was harboring terrorists. They were referring to the ELN peace delegation that had signed a protocol that basically if talks ended with the government, they couldn't be repatriated back to Colombia. This was signed between Norway, Cuba, and Colombia. But that's why they put them back on, which is ridiculous and we can talk more about that condition and why they did it. But basically the point is that the Petro government has been asking the US to take them off the list because those conditions don't even exist anymore. He wants to build alliances with Brazil and all the Amazon nations, obviously. And he's really trying to think his government as a collective benefit for all these countries in Colombia. So he has this massive, ambitious agenda. And the structure of the country, the ones with power, are still there and still opposing peace. His government is a coalition in the Congress. And we've been seeing that as he's tried to push social reforms like labor, health, education, all of those have been stopped by these special interests influencing that coalition. So unfortunately we still have that problem. Also laws needed so that you can advance negotiations with these other illegal groups have been stopped. The one thing he did get through was a tax reform because one issue with the Colombian governments have been that they don't make enough revenue. And he's advanced land redistribution efforts and created what is known as the Ministry of Equality, which is led by the vice president. It is focused on trying to address these inequities, historical inequities in Colombian society. So these are all really positive developments and necessary for the people of Colombia and the region. And even though this is moving forward, Colombia still has a long way to go with the violence. Why? Because you don't change all of this overnight. You don't change decades and decades of using violence as a way to resolve all conflicts overnight. So this year alone, you've had 125 social leaders killed, which is a huge number. You've had 65 massacres with 211 victims and you've had 29 former combatants. These are the FARC that the mobilized killed. So this might that, which is actually less than prior years. So it's going in the right direction. We've found that Colombia has been caught in the crosshairs of the House Republicans, especially from Florida, who've decided to put Colombia and Petro in their Cold War 2.0 list. So their list is basically the enemies of the U.S. or Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, maybe Brazil, and now Colombia. And there's been all this inflamed rhetoric and horrible things said about Petro because he is a former guerrilla, although there are many former guerrillas in both the American government. They're also former paramilitaries. But anyway, and especially Salazar, Representative Salazar, who's the best friends with the former president, Alvaro Uribe Vélez, who was a massive human rights violator and who started the paramilitaries. And those Uribistas have strengthened huge ties in southern Florida. So what has happened? Diaz-Ballard has deferred all aid, all aid to Colombia, everything, military drug, everything. Frankly, we're fine with them not giving any military aid to Colombia. Perfectly fine with that. But what we think is really wrong is that basically they want to cut off all the aid to the peace accord to the ethnic groups. The U.S. is the number one donor to ethnic groups in Colombia. And because of a 15 year plus process whereby Colombia, the Colombia aid, the economic part was put under scrutiny from the U.S. Congress, because at that time the money was going to illegal things, including money laundering, illegal groups, and then basically things made up by the Colombian government at that time. They forced a civil society process, both U.S. and Colombia, to help shape that aid. And after a lot of difficulty, you somewhat have aid that does go to good things, like direct funding to human rights organizations, direct funding to Afro-Columbian indigenous organizations. Well, they want to cut all that off. They also want to cut off all the aid that goes to the migrants, the Venezuelan migrants, even though they scream about the migration issue. And they want to cut off everything. They've given no reason for this. They haven't given any what they're going to do next or what is needed to advance this. Nothing. All we can guess is that it's because they want to punch at Cuba even more. They want to basically make a statement or they want to make the migration situation worse because it benefits them in their domestic policy list. So that's where we are. The House, they have the majority and that's how it passed. So there's like zero aid for Colombia. And on the Senate side, we saw a version of the package, which was similar to what we had in prior years, which included 15 million for human rights, which includes protection of human rights defenders, given that it is the country with the highest number of human rights defenders killed. That would be good 25 million to Afro-Columbian and even money for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Office and the Truth Commission, the whole transitional justice process, which is moving forward during the time of the height of the FARC conflict, more than 6,000 people were extraditionally killed by the Colombian military forces financed by the U.S. These are people who are innocents, people who were targeted and then killed and then dressed as guerrilla killed in combat because there was such a pressure to show that they were killing people and the way that they proved that they were doing a positive job was by how many body counts they had. So anyway, so what we need and what we are asking everyone is to help us by contacting all their members of Congress. Yes, it's wonderful if it's people who are on the committees or appropriations or subcommittees, Western Hemisphere, but more than anything, we want all members of Congress to be pressuring so that as they try to reconcile this bill, we can get a version that is far more like the Senate. We're also asking everyone to help us getting Cuba off the foreign terrorism list, which is absolutely ridiculous. And I know that you all have done a lot of efforts on that. And then we think that it's important that Colombia's efforts to advance dialogues between Maduro government and the opposition is good. This is a Latin American issue and it's important that Latin American leaders are the ones trying to solve that issue. It's not imposed from the outside by the US through sanctions or whatever, but it's something that is resolved in a way. And then we're also asking people to help us encourage Congress to get the State Department to name a special envoy for peace on Colombia. Why? Because the FARC process did not advance until you have a special envoy, somebody who can go around and sort of make sure the US doesn't stick the foot in the wrong place to block the peace effort and understand whatever they need to understand. And so we need that. And so that's basically... That's a lot. We're going to tackle some of that tonight. Thank you so much. What an education. One final word. We may have in Argentina, the elections are coming up next month, and Argentine Bolsonaro Trump was horrific and probably worse than Bolsonaro Trump. And so, sadly, Argentina might become another country of interest again in the future. Hey, well, you'll keep us up to date on that. Maybe a couple of questions. One question I have is... Okay, so just to let everybody know, during our capital calling party, we'll be calling House representatives to urge them to vote no, should it come to a vote on the state and foreign operations bill, which tackles some of what Jimena was talking about, in the House version, because the House is now controlled by the Republicans. It cuts all sorts of aid to Colombia. It prohibits or restricts aid to Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and so forth. The Senate version, like you said, is better. So we're going to urge a no vote in a minute on that. But before we get to that, Jimena, what's been the reception on the part of the White House to the fact that this aggressive, who is a former member of a guerrilla group and is now the president? And so what's been the reception? Does he, Petro, have leverage to get Cuba off the state sponsor of Terrorist? I mean, I think that the Biden White House was terrified when they learned that Petro won. And prior to Vice President Francia Marquez, who all disclosure I've worked with since 2002 were very close. When she came to visit, you know, basically they told everybody nobody could talk to her, which is ridiculous. So I think that there is a lot of fear. I see a lot of fears in the Biden administration's Latin Americanists, because they don't know what to make of Petro. They were very close, even under Obama. It's the same people with the Duque government, you know, and Petro for them is scary because he's unpredictable. He doesn't know what direction things are going to be, and they don't have control over what they will or not do. Surprisingly, and in a good way, both Colombia and the U.S. have done delegation to us, delegation. There's nonstop delegations back and forth, so they're really talking. And this is really partly due to a real effort in the State Department and a real effort from the person who's the acting ambassador, Paul Murray. He really understands Colombian. He's really pushed. And so they've been able to mitigate some things that would have been blown out of proportion in the past and ruptured relations, even though they don't agree on a lot of things. They're talking, which is good. But I have zero confidence that the Biden administration is going to do anything to advance the Cuba taking off the terrorism list, because with the FARC being taken off the terrorism list, normally you sign a peace agreement, the group is taken off the terrorism list. They didn't do it for five years. And I worked on that for five years, and they refused to touch it. They were so afraid that this was going to have backlash from them, from the Republicans, and it was going to cost them votes in Florida. I'm like, well, you guys don't even have Florida. So why do you care so much? I mean, it was just, no. And so they were judging from that. And that was Florida. Like Florida running the country. Okay. Lastly, Jimena, people are asking the chat, how did Colombia go from his right wing militaristic society to one that is now being led by a progressive, a leftist, a visionary? How did this happen? Well, a lot of it had to do with the peace process. So there were five failed peace processes with the FARC prior to this one. Why was there a need for peace process? Why was there conflict in Colombia? Many reasons. But the biggest one is that you had two political parties, and this is going to sound familiar, who just switched sides each election, but followed their own same interests. There was no political opportunity for anybody else, hence the armed guerrilla groups, hence all these other movements, and all those movements demonized, not even the armed ones, the non-armed ones too, right? Because they were very happy just sharing power and, you know, ruling for the elites. With the peace process for the first time, you had a diversification, not just with the FARC becoming a political party, even though they didn't do that well. But overall, and you had sort of this like awakening that, hey, we're going to get into politics. So you had a lot of youth involved in politics, and they started protesting because there were lots of horrible things going on, and they got repressed horribly. And I think that really built a huge momentum in the country between the victims of the conflict, the youth that hadn't been so involved in the conflict, especially the urban youth, and saying like, no, they need something different. They really rallied around. So, you know, he won Scratch, they had a crazy candidate there that was a TikTok star that didn't campaign, he just did TikTok videos, that the right was willing to go behind just because they were so afraid of having somebody from the left in government. But they won. And when you saw after they won, the mass pouring of people from the entire country to the inauguration from everywhere, you know, has been really amazing. The other thing that's been amazing that I forgot to mention is that the ELN process, so that process has gone through like seven processes that have crashed and burned for the first time ever in history. Since 1970, they have a bilateral ceasefire and the support of like the whole society for that peace process. So, for the U.S. to read this. The answer is just maximum engagement, you know. You can't people expect to show up and vote, like every four years, they have to be engaged in constructing something. Thank you so much, Jimena. I mean, I've learned so much. I ask that you please post in the chat or let me know and I'll share with everybody. If you're not in our Google group, let me know you want to join it. That's how we disseminate information. It's marcia at CodePink.org. We're going to go to our capital calling part, but before you do, let's unmute and thank Jimena for joining us. If you can unmute everyone, Grace, for just a minute, we can say thank you. Good. I'm going to give you my email. Okay. Well, I want to hear you're doing that. Can I obsessively tweet on all sorts of different things? Sure, but yeah, put down your Twitter handle, too. Thank you. Is there a link to what we're talking about? Thank you, Madam. That is good. You made it. That was great. Thank you so much. That was amazing. Thank you. Yes, Jimena, if you have a link, please put the link to the website, too. All right, now we're going to go to our capital calling party and Grace, if you could be so kind as to please post that script in the chat and I don't know if you're able to put it on the big screen, that would also be helpful. Basically, what we're doing is we're calling our house representatives to say, all right, I'm Marcy. I'm Marcy Wintergrad. I'm coming to you from Santa Barbara, California. I mean, your constituency funds Colombia. We need aid for Colombia. It restricts aid to all sorts of countries like Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba, and so forth. And I think I listed some of them and also cut some cloth reparations.