- LaRouche and the Colombian-Venezuelan Railroad -
- by Maximiliano Londono Penilla, President, Lyndon LaRouche Association of Colombia -
July 10, 2008 (LPAC)-- Barely three days had passed since the Colombian Army's successful operation rescuing former Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three American citizens, and the eleven policemen and soldiers who had been hostages of the FARC, when President Alvaro Uribe once again surprised the country.
On July 5, he announced that during his upcoming trip to Caracas, he was prepared to sign a memorandum of intent on the building of the Colombian-Venezuelan railroad proposed by President Hugo Chavez, one of whose lines would connect the Venezuelan plains with the Colombian plains to reach Ecuadorian territory. A second corridor would go from Venezuela through Colombia and then into Central America via the Caribbean.
These projects are part of the agenda for the physical integration of the nations of Ibero-America proposed by American statesman Lyndon LaRouche in his 1982 Operation Juarez. There he explained how to use the `debt bomb,' (a moratorium on foreign debt), to put an end to the usury practiced by Wall Street and the City of London. In 1986, LaRouche commissioned the book "The Economic Integration of Ibero-America: 100 Million Jobs by the year 2000," which detailed the railroad, water, industrial and agricultural projects, that could transform the region into a great industrial power.
Speaking from Aguadas, Caldas on July 5, President Uribe said: "In the past, President Chavez proposed that we move forward with railroads to integrate our nations. We believe we should accept that proposal. It is my hope, therefore, that in our July 11 meeting, we can sign the memorandum of intent, accepting President Chavez's proposal to integrate our countries by building railroads--one line alongside the Caribbean, and the other through the Eastern Plains. [Let] Venezuela and Colombia become integrated in both directions; and may the line built through the Caribbean be the beginning of our integration with Central America, and also with Mexico, with a vision of Mesoamerica.
And, Uribe continued, "let the line that extends toward the southwest, through the Eastern Plains--first through Venezuela's plains and then through Colombia's--move us toward integration with our sister nation of Ecuador. Then, hopefully, thinking big, we can continue moving south. This is the subject we are very excited about, looking toward the July 11 meeting."
On August 31, 2007, when President Hugo Chavez visited President Uribe's countryside residence in Hato Grande, Colombia, during their final press conference, members of the LaRouche Youth Movement proposed that President Chavez consider the proposal to finance a railroad that would unite Colombia and Venezuela, and link the two nations to the rest of the world. This would lay the groundwork, so that the high-speed railroad corridors of the Eurasian Land Bridge could, after linking Russia's Far East with Alaska via the Bering Strait tunnel that would be built by the Russian government, extend through North and Central America and continue on to South America, with Colombia as their entryway.
At least one line would border the Caribbean Sea, from Colombia, passing through Venezuela and continue south, finally reaching Argentina after crossing Brazil. A second line would be closer to the Pacific Ocean and extend down to the Argentine Patagonia. Lyndon LaRouche and German leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche have taken the lead in proposing construction of these great development and infrastructure corridors to link all of the planet's continental masses.
On October 27, in an article entitled "Maglev Trains and Nuclear Energy Should be the Priorities for the Bank of the South," I warned that "President Chavez should eliminate his anti-U.S. posture, and instead seek a new relationship with the country to our north, through a Democratic Party revitalized by Lyndon LaRouche's leadership. If Chavez really wants to unite the nations of the continent, he should invest Venezuela's petrodollars in the great Railroad of the Americas or the Pan-American Railroad, as this latter project was known in 1889 when the United States organized the first conference to promote this integrationist initiative."
Unfortunately, by 1923 the railroad project had been replaced by the Pan-American Highway, which in turn was interrupted by the ill-named Darien Gap (from now on this should be referred to as the Darien Train). The nascent Bank of the South could be the vehicle through which this great project to physically unite the nations of the continent, and particularly those of the region, could become reality.
On November 4, 2007 in an article entitled "Prometheus, the Bogota Metro and the Bolivarian Railroad," I proposed building what is now being called the Colombian-Venezuelan Railroad: "Taking advantage of the warm friendship he enjoys with President Hugo Chavez, President Uribe could request that the sister republic of Venezuela invest in the Bogota Metro, and also in the building of the Bolivarian Railroad. The latter would connect Venezuela with Colombia, entering through Arauca, continuing on to the plains, then through Villavicencio and intermediate points until reaching Ecuador."
A new era has begun in the Americas, in which a lasting peace can be secured not only by defeating narco-terrorism, but by simultaneously launching economic reconstruction. Specifically, security for both Presidents Chavez and Uribe must be strengthened, to prevent their assassinations by the hitmen controlled by the Anglo-Dutch financial cartel that seeks to control the world. To date, the British Empire has succeeded in imposing a dictatorship of global free trade, and to create perpetual warfare which prevents any discussion of industrialization projects. It is now time to revive the legacy of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and the American System of Political Economy, today embodied in the American statesman and economist Lyndon H. LaRouche.
--Bogota, July 7, 2008
