CHAPTER 22


American Republic vs. Global Empire

“I’ll be frank,” Paula said one day, while we were sitting in a coffee shop. “The Indians and all the farmers who live along the river you’re damming hate you. Even people in the cities, who aren’t directly affected, sympathize with the guerrillas who’ve been attacking your construction camp. Your government calls these people Communists, terrorists, and narcotics traffickers, but the truth is they’re just people with families who live on lands your company is destroying.”

I had just told her about Manuel Torres. He was an engineer employed by MAIN and one of the men recently attacked by guerrillas at our hydroelectric dam construction site. Manuel was a Colombian citizen who had a job because of a US Department of State rule prohibiting us from sending US citizens to that site. We referred to it as the Colombians Are Expendable doctrine, and it symbolized an attitude I had grown to hate. My feelings toward such policies were making it increasingly difficult for me to live with myself.

“According to Manuel, they fired AK-47s into the air and at his feet,” I told Paula. “He sounded calm when he told me about it, but I know he was almost hysterical. They didn’t shoot anyone. Just gave them that letter and sent them downriver in their boats.”

“My God!” Paula exclaimed. “The poor man must have been terrified.”

“Of course he was.” I told her that I had asked Manuel whether he thought they were FARC or M-19, referring to two of the most infamous Colombian guerrilla groups.

“And?”

“He said neither. But he told me that he believes what they said in that letter.”

Paula picked up the newspaper I had brought and read the letter aloud.

“‘We, who work every day just to survive, swear on the blood of our ancestors that we will never allow dams across our rivers. We are simple Indians and mestizos, but we would rather die than stand by as our land is flooded. We warn our Colombian brothers: stop working for the construction companies.’” She set the paper down. “What did you say to him?”

I hesitated, but only for a moment. “I had no choice. I had to toe the company line. I asked him if he thought that sounds like a letter a farmer would write.”

She sat watching me patiently.

“He just shrugged.” Our eyes met. “Oh, Paula, I detest myself for playing this role.”

“What did you do next?” she pressed.

“I slammed my fist on the desk. I intimidated him. I asked him whether farmers with AK-47s made any sense to him. Then I asked if he knew who invented the AK-47.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, but I could hardly hear his answer. ‘A Russian,’ he said. Of course, I assured him that he was right, that the inventor had been a Communist named Kalashnikov, a highly decorated officer in the Red Army. I brought him around to understand that the people who wrote that note were Communists.”

“Do you believe that?” she asked.

Her question stopped me. How could I answer honestly? I recalled Iran and the time Yamin described me as a man caught between two worlds, a man in the middle. In some ways, I wished I had been in that camp when the guerrillas attacked, or that I was one of the guerrillas. An odd feeling crept over me, a sort of jealousy for Yamin and Doc and the Colombian rebels. These were men with convictions. They had chosen real worlds, not a noman’s-territory somewhere between.

“I have a job to do,” I said at last.

She smiled gently.

“I hate it,” I continued. I thought about the men whose images had come to me so often over the years, Tom Paine and other Revolutionary War heroes, pirates and frontiersmen. They stood at the edges, not in the middle. They took stands and lived with the consequences. “Every day I come to hate my job a little more.”

She took my hand. “Your job?”

Our eyes met and held. I understood the implication. “Myself.”

She squeezed my hand and nodded slowly. I felt an immediate sense of relief, just admitting it.

“What will you do, John?”

I had no answer. The relief turned into defensiveness. I stammered out the standard justifications: that I was trying to do good, that I was exploring ways to change the system from within, and — the old standby — that if I quit, someone even worse would fill my shoes. But I could see from the way she watched me that she was not buying it. Even worse, I knew that I was not buying it, either. She had forced me to understand the essential truth: it was not my job, but me, that was to blame.

“What about you?” I asked at last. “What do you believe?”

She gave a little sigh and released my hand, asking, “You trying to change the subject?”

I nodded.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Under one condition. That we’ll return to it another day.” She picked up a spoon and appeared to examine it. “I know that some of the guerrillas have trained in Russia and China.” She lowered the spoon into her café con leche, stirred, and then slowly licked the spoon. “What else can they do? They need to learn about modern weapons and how to fight the soldiers who’ve gone through your schools. Sometimes they sell cocaine in order to raise money for supplies. How else can they buy guns? They’re up against terrible odds. Your World Bank doesn’t help them defend themselves. In fact, it forces them into this position.” She took a sip of coffee. “I believe their cause is just. The electricity will help only a few, the wealthiest Colombians, and thousands will die because the fish and water are poisoned, after you build that dam of yours.”

Hearing her speak so compassionately about the people who opposed us — me — caused my flesh to crawl. I found myself clawing at my forearms.

“How do you know so much about the guerrillas?” Even as I asked it, I had a sinking feeling, a premonition that I did not want to know the answer.

“I went to school with some of them,” she said. She hesitated, pushed her cup away. “My brother joined the movement.”

There it was. I felt absolutely deflated. I thought I knew all about her, but this . . . I had the fleeting image of a man coming home to find his wife in bed with another man.

“How come you never told me?”

“Seemed irrelevant. Why would I? It isn’t something I brag about.” She paused. “I haven’t seen him for two years. He has to be very careful.”

“How do you know he’s alive?”

“I don’t, except recently the government put him on a wanted list. That’s a good sign.”

I was fighting the urge to be judgmental or defensive. I hoped she could not discern my jealousy. “How did he become one of them?” I asked.

Fortunately, she kept her eyes on the coffee cup. “Demonstrating outside the offices of an oil company — Occidental, I think. He was protesting drilling on indigenous lands, in the forests of a tribe facing extinction — him and a couple dozen of his friends. They were attacked by the army, beaten, and thrown into prison — for doing nothing illegal, mind you, just standing outside that building waving placards and singing.” She glanced out a nearby window. “They kept him in jail for nearly six months. He never did tell us what happened there, but when he came out, he was a different person.”

It was the first of many similar conversations with Paula, and I now know that these discussions set the stage for what was to follow. My soul was torn apart, yet I was still ruled by my wallet and by those other weaknesses the NSA had identified when they profiled me a decade earlier, in 1968. By forcing me to see this and to confront the deeper feelings behind my fascination with pirates and other rebels, Paula helped me along the trail toward salvation.

Beyond my own personal dilemmas, my times in Colombia also helped me comprehend the distinction between the ideals behind the old American republic and those of the new global empire.

The republic offered hope to the world. Its foundation was moral and philosophical rather than materialistic. It was based on concepts of equality and justice for all. But it also could be pragmatic — not merely a utopian dream but also a living, breathing entity. It could make big mistakes, like denying nonlandowners, women, and minorities the right to vote for more than a century. It could open its arms to shelter the downtrodden, then force their children to work under slave-like conditions in its factories. It could be an inspiration and at the same time a force to reckon with; if needed, it could swing into action, as it had during World War II, to defend the principles for which it stood. The very institutions — the big corporations, banks, and government bureaucracies — that have threatened those ideals could instead be redirected to institute fundamental changes in the world. At least in theory. Such institutions possess the communications networks and transportation systems necessary to end disease, starvation, and even wars — if only they could be convinced to take that course.

The global empire, on the other hand, is the republic’s nemesis. It is self-centered, self-serving, greedy, and materialistic, a system based on mercantilism. Like earlier empires, it opens its arms only to accumulate resources, to grab everything in sight and stuff its insatiable maw. It will do whatever is needed to help its rulers gain more power and riches.

Of course, in learning to understand this distinction, I also developed a clearer sense of my own role. Claudine had warned me; she had honestly outlined what would be expected of me if I accepted the job MAIN offered. Yet, it took the experience of working in countries like Indonesia, Panama, Iran, and Colombia in order for me to face the deeper implications. And it took the patience, love, and personal stories of a person like Paula.

I was loyal to the American republic, but what we were perpetrating through this new, highly subtle form of imperialism was the financial equivalent of what we had attempted to accomplish militarily in Vietnam. If Southeast Asia had taught us that armies have limitations, the economists had responded by devising a better plan, and the foreign aid agencies and the private contractors who served them (or, more appropriately, were served by them) had become proficient at executing that plan.

In countries on every continent, I saw how men and women working for US corporations — though not officially part of the EHM network — participated in something far more pernicious than anything envisioned in conspiracy theories. They would do whatever they thought it would take — or were told it would take — to perpetuate the system we EHMs advocated. Like many of MAIN’s engineers, these workers were blind to the consequences of their actions, convinced that the sweatshops and factories that made shoes and automotive parts for their companies were helping the poor climb out of poverty, instead of simply burying them deeper in a type of slavery reminiscent of medieval manors and Southern plantations.¹ As in those earlier manifestations of exploitation, modern serfs or slaves were socialized into believing they were better off than the unfortunate souls who lived on the margins, in the dark hollows of Europe, in the jungles of Africa, or in the wilds of the American frontier.

The struggle over whether I should continue at MAIN or should quit had become an open battlefield. There was no doubt that my conscience wanted out, but that other side, what I liked to think of as my business-school persona, was not so sure. My own empire kept expanding; I added employees, countries, and shares of stock to my various portfolios and to my ego. In addition to the seduction of the money and lifestyle, and the adrenaline high of power, I often recalled Claudine warning me that once I was in, I could never get out.

Claudine had been right about a great many things.

“That was a long time ago,” Paula said. “Lives change. Anyway, what difference does it make? You’re not happy with yourself. What can anyone do to make things worse than that?”

It was a refrain Paula often came back to, and I eventually agreed. I admitted to her and to myself that it was growing more difficult to use the money, adventure, and glamour to justify the turmoil, guilt, and stress. As a MAIN partner, I was becoming wealthy, and I knew that if I stayed longer, I would be permanently trapped.

One day, while we were strolling along the beach near the old Spanish fort at Cartagena, a place that had endured countless pirate attacks, Paula hit upon an approach that had not occurred to me. “What if you never say anything about the things you know?” she asked.

“You mean . . . just keep quiet?”

“Exactly. Don’t give them an excuse to come after you. In fact, give them every reason to leave you alone, to not muddy the water.”

It made a great deal of sense — I wondered why it had never occurred to me before. I would not write books or do anything else to expose the truth as I had come to see it. I would not be a crusader; instead, I would just be a person, concentrate on enjoying life, travel for pleasure, perhaps even start a family with someone like Paula. I had had enough; I simply wanted out.

“Everything you’ve learned is a lie,” Paula said. “Your life is a lie.” She added, “Have you looked at your own résumé recently?”

I admitted that I had not.

“Do,” she advised. “I read the Spanish version the other day. If it’s anything like the English one, I think you’ll find it very interesting.”