The Air Force as Welfare Worker

The jungle airstrip was hardly big enough, but a Colombian air force DC-4 touched down to unload a most unmilitary cargo: beds, trunks, dogs, chickens and 64 stony-faced peasants who had been strapped in the bucket seats. The peasants were homesteaders arriving at the outpost town of Florencia to start a new life in Colombia's rich but remote southwest. By sunset, the air force plane was back in Bogota, 240 miles away, with a load of hardwood.

Lugging peasants and lumber hardly fits the usual picture of a Latin American military outfit. But with a lot of land to be settled--more than half of Colombia's territory is virtually uninhabited--and no foreign wars to fight, the Colombian government decided to put the air force to work by setting up Satena (for "Service to the National Territories"). The Colombian air force contributed the planes and the pilots, but Satena's other expenses had to be met from revenues. Charging one-fourth the fares of commercial lines, it still manages to stay in the black. Now Satena has eleven cargo planes making 35 trips a week over jungles and mountains to 52 communities--wherever it is needed and where no commercial airlines fly.

To most communities along Satena's route, the air force planes are the only regular link with the outside world. From Bogota, Satena takes off daily with fabrics, fertilizers, medicines and home appliances; commissaries are being set up to sell these goods at bargain prices. On return trips, the planes bring out fish, hides, rubber and dairy products. Farmers in the Caqueta region last year shipped 1,000,000 sacks of rice to market via Satena; at the village of El Refugio, fishermen who used to have no way to market their catch now fly out four tons weekly. This month Satena will put a converted PBY seaplane into service as an "air hospital" for river communities.

Military "civic action" is spreading. Colombian air force engineers are hacking out jungle highways; army troops are detailed to remote villages to build schools and clinics, dig wells and paint houses. Other armies--in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela--have also established public-works beachheads in the boondocks. "The role of the military," says Lieut. Colonel Alvaro Baquero, Satena's general manager, "is not only to defend the nation, but also to help it."

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