Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso on Why Legalization of Marijuana Will Reduce the Cartels' Threat to Latin Democracies. Washington - The classical argument in favor of marijuana legalization rests on personal liberty. Why, proponents ask, should the federal government tell free citizens what they may consume? It is also one reason why many conservatives fear it. They worry that legalization will mean more pot heads, an increase in the consumption of hard drugs, and a decrease in the quality of life for the sober and for society at large. [continues 779 words]
Frustrated ATF Agents Testify That Their Bureau's 'Operation Fast And Furious' Let Weapons Get Into The Hands Of Mexican Drug Cartels. One of the frightening things about the U.S. government's war on drugs is that it is being waged by federal bureaucracies. The legend of Elliot Ness notwithstanding, this implies that it is not only fraught with ineptitude but that before it is all over, there are going to be a lot of avoidable deaths. Witness "Operation Fast and Furious," a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms plan that allegedly facilitated the flow of high-powered weapons into Mexico in the hope that it might lead to the take-down of a major cartel. It did not. But it may have fueled a spike in the murder rate and led to the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. [continues 745 words]
An Increasing Number Of World Leaders Are Concluding That Laws Against Drug Consumption Do More Harm Than Good. Tomorrow marks the 79th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the U.S. prohibition on alcohol. On that day in 1932 John D. Rockefeller Jr., a vociferous advocate of temperance, called for the repeal of the 18th amendment in a letter published in the New York Times. Rockefeller had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for the constitutional prohibition on alcohol. But his letter did more than admit the error of his investment. Because of his moral authority on the matter, it effectively ended the conservative taboo against admitting that the whole experiment had failed. [continues 746 words]
U.S. Ambassador To Mexico Carlos Pascual Loses His Job For Telling The Truth. It took Mexican President Felipe Calderon more than three months, but on March 19 he finally got his man. That's when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she had accepted the resignation of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual. Mr. Pascual had earned the ire of Mr. Calderon for his critical accounts of Mexico's prosecution of the war on drugs, sent to Washington in 2009 and 2010. Those dispatches were supposed to be confidential. When they were made public by Wikileaks in December, they infuriated the Mexican president, who reportedly requested that Mr. Pascual be removed. [continues 765 words]
Rounding Up The Killers Of U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement Officer Jaime Zapata Will Not Curtail Americans' Voracious Appetite For Mind-Altering Substances. Mexico City The murder of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jaime Zapata in the state of San Luis Potosi on Feb. 15 shocked and outraged the American law-enforcement community. For Mexican law enforcement it was just another day at the office. Early indications are that Zapata was killed by members of the Mexican drug cartel known as the Zetas. If so, his death adds to a shocking statistic. The latest data available from the Mexican government show that 87 members of the Mexican military and 867 law-enforcement officers were killed by drug gangs between December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon took office, and March 2009. Undoubtedly the number is higher now. [continues 752 words]
The Mayor of Juarez - the Border Town at the Center of the Drug Wars - Says He's Not Getting Enough Help From His Capital, or Washington Either. Cuidad Juarez, Mexico - 'I can't imagine how the U.S. can be so worried about Iraq and Pakistan while we don't sense that it is worried about the border here. We are together whether we like it or not." So says Hector "Teto" Murguia, the mayor of this city that is plagued by drug-war disorder. In the 35 months since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his war against his country's drug cartels, more than 7,100 people have been killed in this border city. Over 2,700 have died since January-in other words, the rate of the killing has increased. [continues 1495 words]
Competition in the Narcotics Trade Is Preferable to Monopolistic Syndicates. Mexico City - President Felipe Calderon still has two years left in office. But he is already on track to go down in history as having presided over the bloodiest Mexican sexenio since the revolution of 1910. By December, when Mr. Calderon completes his fourth year as president, the national death toll from his war on the drug cartels could reach 30,000. Statistically speaking, Mexico is a relatively safe place with 12 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009. The trouble is that the violence is concentrated, and according to one economist I talked with here, that's because the drug-trafficking business is structured much like Colombia's was in the 1980s and '90s. [continues 759 words]
The Resolutions Offered by El Paso's City Council to End Prohibition Are Quashed by Fear of Retaliation by Washington. El Paso, Texas - In the national debate about the efficacy and morality of the U.S. war on drugs, it is not uncommon for prohibitionists to accuse their opponents of harboring libertine motives. But as opposition to current policy increases in places like this culturally conservative and predominantly Catholic border city, that charge isn't sticking. The growing tendency here to question U.S. drug policy has nothing whatsoever to do with ideology or an affinity for drugs. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that while the "war on drugs" has done nothing to curb the U.S. appetite for mind-altering substances, its unintended consequence has been to empower organized crime networks. These gangs, which aggressively target children as customers and low-level employees on both sides of the border, are undermining the economy and the quality of life in the binational El Paso-Juarez metropolitan region. [continues 719 words]
Dramatic Evidence Presented By Colombia At Last Thursday's Oas Meeting In Washington Puts Hugo ChaVez On The Hot Seat. When Colombia launched a strike in March 2008 against a terrorist camp just over its border with Ecuador, the loudest protestation came not from Quito but from Caracas. Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez mourned the death of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander Raul Reyes, whom he called "a good revolutionary." He also shrieked about the violation of Ecuadoran sovereignty and called for 10 Venezuelan tank battalions to be sent to his country's Colombian border. "Don't think about doing that over here," he warned Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, "because it would be very serious, it would be cause for war." [continues 758 words]
The Vicious Violence the Border States Are Experiencing Is Not Committed by Migrant Laborers. The organized-crime epidemic in Latin America, spawned by a U.S. drug policy more than four decades in the making, seems to be leeching into American cities. Powerful underworld networks supplying gringo drug users are becoming increasingly bold about expanding their businesses. In 2008, U.S. officials said that Mexican drug cartels were serving their customers in 195 American cities. The violence is only a fraction of what Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia live with everyday. Yet it is notable. Kidnapping rates in Phoenix, for example, are through the roof and some spectacular murders targeting law enforcement have also grabbed headlines. [continues 747 words]
Strong Demand and the High Profits That Are the Result of Prohibition Make Illegal Trafficking Unstoppable. They say that the first step in dealing with a problem is acknowledging that you have one. It is therefore good news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation to Mexico tomorrow to talk with officials there about efforts to fight the mob violence that is being generated in Mexico by the war on drugs. U.S. recognition of this shared problem is healthy. [continues 804 words]
Elections Scheduled for December 6 Will Mark the Official End of the Bolivian Democracy. A dictatorship that fosters the production and distribution of cocaine is not apt to enjoy a positive international image. But when that same government cloaks itself in the language of social justice, with a special emphasis on the enfranchisement of indigenous people, it wins world-wide acclaim. This is Bolivia, which in two weeks will hold elections for president and both houses of congress. The government of President Evo Morales will spin the event as a great moment in South American democracy. In fact, it will mark the official end of what's left of Bolivian liberty after four years of Morales rule. [continues 781 words]
The Former Secretary of State Has Long Doubted the Wisdom of Interdiction. When George P. Shultz took office as Ronald Reagan's secretary of state in 1982, his first trip out of the country was to Canada. His second was to Mexico. "Foreign policy starts with your neighborhood," he told me in an interview here in the Canadian capital last week. "I have always believed that and Ronald Reagan believed that very firmly. In many ways he had [the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement] in his mind. He paid a lot of attention to both Mexico and Canada, as I did." [continues 775 words]
Mexico's Decriminalization Is an Admission That Things Aren't Getting Better. Mexico announced recently that it will decriminalize the possession of "small amounts of drugs"--marijuana, cocaine, LSD, methamphetamines, heroin and opium--"for personal use." Individuals who are caught by law enforcement with quantities below established thresholds will no longer face criminal prosecution. A person apprehended three times with amounts below the minimum, though, will face mandatory treatment. For the government of President Felipe Calderon, which has spent the last three years locked in mortal combat with narcotrafficking cartels, this seems counterproductive. Is the government effectively surrendering to the realities of the market for mind-altering substances? Or could it be that the new policy is only a tactical shift by drug warriors still wedded to the quixotic belief that they can take out suppliers? [continues 695 words]
Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Help Hugo Chavez? Hugo Chavez took a break last week from lobbying Washington on behalf of deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to travel to Quito, Ecuador, for a meeting of South American heads of state. There he launched a virulent assault on the U.S. military, reiterated his commitment to spreading revolution in the region, and threatened the continent with war. Mr. Zelaya was by his side. The Venezuelan's tirade against the U.S. and its ally Colombia raised the question yet again of what the U.S. could possibly be thinking in pushing Honduras to reinstate Mr. Zelaya. He was removed from office by the Honduran Congress in June because he violated the country's constitution and willfully incited mob violence. [continues 765 words]
Obama's Promise Not To Crack Down On Medical-Marijuana Use Raises The Stakes For Traffickers. Mexico City Just when you thought the effects of U.S. drug policy couldn't get more pernicious, guess what? That's where we're headed. Mexico's young democracy is already paying a high price for the lethal combination of prohibition and strong gringo demand for mind-altering substances. Drug violence has escalated as Mexican suppliers intent on satisfying appetites across the border have tangled with each other and law enforcement. Now the U.S. is getting ready to raise the incentives for gangsters. At a press conference last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder indicated that President Obama would keep a campaign promise by ending federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries. This means that the weed will remain illegal to transport and sell -- and thus highly profitable for criminals -- but there will be fewer repercussions for those who use it in states with liberal marijuana laws. The administration says it wants to end federal infringement on the rights of states. [continues 654 words]
Law Enforcement South Of The Border Is Badly Outgunned. A murder in the Mexican state of Chihuahua last week horrified even hardened crime stoppers. Police Commander Martin Castro's head was severed and left in an ice cooler in front of the police station in the town of Praxedis with a calling card from the Sinoloa drug cartel. According to Mexico's attorney general, 6,616 people died in drug-trafficking violence in Mexico last year. A high percentage of those killed were themselves criminals, but many law enforcement agents battling organized crime were also murdered. The carnage continues. For the first 22 days of this year the body count is 354. [continues 658 words]
Of all the casualties claimed by the U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America, perhaps none so fully captures its senselessness and injustice as the 2001 CIA-directed killing of Christian missionary Veronica Bowers and her daughter Charity in Peru. No one is suggesting that the CIA intentionally killed Mrs. Bowers and her baby. It was an accident. But according to Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R., Mich.), it was an accident waiting to happen because of the way in which the CIA operated the drug interdiction plan in Peru known as the Airbridge Denial Program. Mr. Hoekstra says the goods to prove his charge are in a classified report from the CIA Inspector General that he received in October. Under the program, initiated by President Clinton, the CIA was charged with identifying small civilian aircraft suspected of carrying cocaine over Peru on a path to Colombia, and directing the Peruvian military to force them down. [continues 667 words]
With the world fixated on Vladimir Putin's expansionist exploits in Georgia, a different sort of assault against a democracy south of the U.S. border is getting scant attention. But it is equally alarming. Mexico is engaged in a life-or-death struggle against organized crime. Last week six more law enforcement officials were killed in the line of duty battling the country's drug cartels. This brings the death toll in President Felipe Calderon's blitz against organized crime to 4,909 since Dec. 1, 2006. A number of the dead have been gangsters but they also include journalists, politicians, judges, police and military, and civilians. For perspective on how violent Mexico has become, consider that the total number of Americans killed in Iraq since March 2003 is 4,142. [continues 700 words]
Stories of campus drug use in the U.S. are so common that last week's arrest of 75 alleged dealers at San Diego State University was shocking chiefly due to the number netted. The occasional big bust aside, the long running drug war has become almost background noise. At least in this country. American nonchalance about drug use stands in sharp contrast to what is happening across the border in Mexico. There lawmen are taking heavy casualties in a showdown with drug-running crime syndicates. On Thursday the chief of the Mexican federal police, Edgar Millan Gomez, was assassinated by men waiting for him when he came home, becoming the latest and most prominent victim of the syndicates. [continues 717 words]
Perhaps it is a sign of a maturing electorate that Barack Obama's past drug use has not become a disqualifying factor in his bid for the presidency. It may signify that Americans are beginning to view the intake of mind-altering substances as a private decision. For those who embrace the notion of personal responsibility, such a change in public attitudes might be considered progress. But in Mexico, what suggests an increase in tolerance of illegal drug use in the U.S. has a tragic flipside: the gut-wrenching violence that arises when demand meets prohibition. This country is paying dearly for that contradiction. Under prohibition, only criminals can serve the market for illegal narcotics. And they have a lot of incentive to do so since prohibition pushes prices up. These market dynamics have given rise to transnational crime networks -- modern, savvy businesses run by ruthless killers bent on preserving their income. Anyone who tries to get in the way risks becoming a statistic. Last year in Mexico there were 2,713 homicides attributable to organized crime, up from 2,120 in 2006 -- according to the intelligence arm of the country's attorney general. [continues 860 words]
In the five years between the 2002 kidnapping of 12 state legislators by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the rebels' recent announcement that 11 of those hostages have been killed, much has changed for the better in Colombia. The lawmakers were taken at a time when the state was very weak. Their murders, on the other hand, appear to be a desperate act by a frustrated band of thugs who have failed to achieve their desired results with terror. [continues 995 words]
Al Gore may not have known that he was taking the side of a former terrorist and ally of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez when he waded into Colombian politics 10 days ago. But that's not much consolation to 45 million Colombians who watched their country's already fragile international image suffer another unjust blow, this time at the hands of a former U.S. vice president. The event was a climate-change conference in Miami, where Mr. Gore and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe were set to share the stage. [continues 1016 words]
MEXICO CITY -- If political will and courage were enough to win the war on drugs, Mexico would be well on the way to victory. That's the conclusion I draw after an hour with Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora at his high-rise office on Avenida Reforma here in the capital last week. Since taking office on Dec. 1, President Felipe Calderon has made the defeat of the drug-trafficking cartels and the return of public security his No. 1 priority. To head the fight he called on Mr. Medina-Mora, the country's former chief of public security. [continues 1013 words]
Evo Morales is an anti-American extremist who wants to turn Bolivia into another Venezuela. That naturally alarms Washington, but not enough to halt its war on drugs, which is aiding the president -- and leader of Bolivia's coca-growing peasant movement -- in his bid to become a dictator. In a recent interview with the Bolivian Catholic radio station Fides, Mr. Morales explained that in 2003, when he was at a conference in Havana, Fidel Castro told him "not to stage an armed uprising" but to "make transformations, democratic revolutions, what [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez is doing." [continues 877 words]
To get an idea of how long Afghanistan's war against narco-trafficking terrorists could last, the Colombian experience with criminals of a similar ilk might be instructive -- though not encouraging. That thought occurred to me after an interview with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in New York last week. Mr. Uribe may be the most clear-thinking, courageous ally in the war on terror that the U.S. has in Latin America, and Washington has spent billions of dollars trying to eradicate coca plants in his country. [continues 1037 words]
Fidel Castro is not far from death. That's one conclusion to draw from his failure to get out of bed for the summit of the non-aligned nations held in Havana last week. The other telling sign that the long-winded tyrant is not coming back, despite Cuban claims that he is on the mend, was Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's performance at the United Nations on Wednesday. Clearly the revolutionary baton has been passed to the kook from Caracas, Castro's wealthiest and keenest protege. [continues 962 words]
"It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism." [continues 986 words]
Sunday's election of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia is more bad news for liberty in Latin America. Winning on an anti-market, anti-trade and anti-investment platform, Mr. Morales' victory does not bode well for a nation already impoverished, backward, isolated and desperately in need of economic growth. The role of Fidel Castro and his apprentice, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in Bolivian politics is no less discouraging. There is some concern that Mr. Morales may be coached to attempt a Chavez redux in Bolivia, consolidating power in a constitutional assembly set for July and destroying his political competition under the guise of legality. [continues 960 words]
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe told me in New York last week that he will seek ways to help Colombian military personnel pay their lawyers when they are accused of human rights violations. "I will figure out how to help them," Mr. Uribe said, stressing that "every day in Colombia we receive fewer and fewer accusations against the army and the police" because of reforms to professionalize the forces. Mr. Uribe's pledge to provide legal assistance to accused soldiers -- as is the practice in the U.S. -- is only fair. But it is just part of what needs to be done to counteract one of the most effective tools used by the Colombian terrorists: judicial warfare. [continues 991 words]
MALACATAN, Guatemala -- Whoever said that the U.S. "war on drugs" is a complete waste of time and money never visited this sweltering little town where Guatemala's western highlands slope down to its southern Pacific coast -- spitting distance from the Mexican border. Here profitable consequences of the "drug war" are prominently displayed; it's just that they're not the ones that Richard Nixon had in mind when he declared the "war" more than 30 years ago. A fertile mix of incentives -- high demand for cocaine "up north," the prohibition against buying and using and U.S. insistence on interdiction -- has pushed lucrative trafficking operations off traditional routes and onto paths that pass through places like this. Locals here say that everybody and his uncle is getting into "transporting" and they're all getting rich. [continues 853 words]
On June 2, Nuevo Laredo police commander Enrique Cardenas was shot dead in front of his nine-year-old daughter. Two weeks later Alejandro Dominguez took the job as the city's top cop. "I'm not afraid of anyone, and I don't owe anybody anything," Dominguez said as he was sworn in. Six hours later the new police chief was also dead, riddled with bullets. Nuevo Laredo used to be a sleepy Mexican city popular with U.S. day-trippers from Laredo, Texas, who liked to pop over the border for a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, a stroll around the city square and a chicken mole dinner. Today, U.S. demand for illicit drugs and a battle for turf between drug cartels that want to serve those consumers have turned the town into a virtual war zone. [continues 962 words]
Congress did not repeal the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1933 because it had decided alcohol abuse was passe. It did so because it judged that the costs of Prohibition were higher than the benefits and that a regulated market would be a better way to manage a popular but sometimes harmful depressant drug. The unintended consequence of Prohibition was the rise of violent organized crime and the spike in official corruption that accompanied it. After 13 years of Prohibition, most Americans didn't like what Al Capone et al were doing in the streets and to the country's legal institutions. [continues 1008 words]
It happened sometime between that sunny September day in 2001 when George W. Bush offered his friendship to Mexico's President Vicente Fox and last month when the State Department blessed Venezuela's fishy recall vote count: Latin America faded from the White House radar screen. Most Americans probably haven't noticed. But Beijing has and it is inching into the void. U.S.-Latin America policy is now defined by a costly drug war of doubtful effectiveness, persistent and damaging International Monetary Fund meddling, harassment of Latin militaries at the behest of left-wing NGOs, an intelligence network that counts coca plants for a living and a naive attitude toward bullies like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. This has left Latins scratching their heads about Dubya. Of course, these are not Bush values. But they are the priorities of his State Department and other agencies and by default have become the U.S. agenda in the region. [continues 865 words]
Bogota, Colombia -- Plan Colombia, the U.S. effort to quash cocaine production here in the Andes, will cost American taxpayers about $3 billion over its three- year life ending in 2004. But that's only about 20% of what it will cost Colombia over the same period to fight its narco-funded rebels, flush with cash thanks to the toxic mix of high global demand and a limited curtailment of supply by "the war on drugs." Yet the cost of the war is only part of what's weighing down Colombia these days. As problematic -- in spending terms -- is the burden of unsustainable entitlement programs enshrined as "rights" in the 1991 constitution. With military spending, Colombians at least get improved security, but the return on "social" spending is nil. [continues 951 words]
"Are There Questions We Ought To Be Thinking About? Are There Things We Ought To Do Differently?" That invitation to think outside the box came from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld this week in connection with the U.S. war on terrorism. Horrified Senate Democrats, seeming to prefer reliance on bureaucratic inertia to set policy, denounced the suggestion. Yet in the week following the violent overthrow of Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the insightful question could well be addressed to U.S. policy makers responsible for Latin America. [continues 929 words]
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, Colombia -- On a sultry summer morning here two weeks ago, Colombian army sharpshooters dotted the ancient rampart once used to protect this city from British invaders. Under a cloudless sky and penetrating sun, the uniformed men in heavy boots gazed up and down the fortress wall looking for signs of trouble. Their mission was to defend visiting Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whom rebels have been trying to kill for years. Soon a heavily armed motorcade swept the presidential entourage along the highway by the sea to a hotel where Mr. Uribe attended a forum on local infrastructure issues. [continues 944 words]
Thirty-year-old Maria Gladys Quiroga migrated from Colombia's rural Santander province to Bogota more than a decade ago. Her most recent job was in the kitchen at the upscale Club Nogal with her income going to raise and educate her daughter. On Friday night a terrorist car bomb at the club took her life. Another victim in the attack was 23-year-old Yesid Castiblanco, a waiter in the club's restaurant. He loved his job, his family told Bogota's El Tiempo. "He said that besides learning about rare wines and food, he could also learn English," according to his aunt. [continues 963 words]
Bolivia's Socialist presidential candidate Evo Morales says that the U.S. ambassador in La Paz, Manuel Rocha, has been a marvelous "campaign manager." That's because Mr. Morales, who wants to toss the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency out of Bolivia and reestablish coca growing as a legal business, was a long shot in the polls until Mr. Rocha publicly denounced his candidacy. A Morales victory, Mr. Rocha warned Bolivians, could mean an end to U.S. aid. The electorate read that as Yankee bullying and responded with nationalist pride at the ballot box. Mr. Morales was the prime beneficiary. [continues 980 words]
The heavily armed, hooded men riding in two cars that followed Mario Andresol through the streets of Port-au-Prince one day last summer twice raised their weapons to shoot, according to Mr. Andresol. Only superior maneuvering by his driver thwarted them. When his car was finally cornered at a gas station he got out. It was then that he recognized one of the perpetrators as a fellow police officer and called him by name. The man removed his mask and implored Mr. Andresol to lie down, explaining that if he did not he would be gunned down. [continues 1039 words]
The municipality of Bojaya is carved out of rain-drenched jungle in Colombia's poorest state, Choco. The sky is often sealed off with low-hanging clouds and the Atrato River floods frequently, as does the nearby airport in Vigia del Fuerte. Poor and remote as it is though, the control of Bojaya has immense value. It lies in a main corridor for narcotics and arms trafficking. This is why, on May 1, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia attacked its archenemy, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. As bullets flew, locals ran for cover. Hundreds sought refuge in a church. On May 2, a FARC rocket bomb hit the sanctuary, killing 119 peasants and some 40 children. [continues 895 words]
In 1996, retired Colombian General Farouk Yanine worked at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C. His boss was two-star U.S. General John Thompson. "One day he walked into my office and requested time off," says General Thompson. "He said he wanted to return to Colombia to answer charges that he had violated human rights." The accusation was for crimes in a region that he had long since left when they supposedly occurred. General Yanine was a decorated soldier, confident of his innocence. Colombians widely recognize that he pacified the Magdalena Medio region, a hotbed of guerrilla activity. When he left his command there in 1985, the population feted him. In 1988, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces -- FARC -- tried to kill him with a car bomb. [continues 988 words]
Otto Reich, President Bush's new Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, sat down with me on Tuesday and talked about the administration's vision for Latin America and the Caribbean. What emerged was clear: after eight years of drift, serious policy makers are back in charge. "Dialoguing" with gun-toting power seekers and propping up corrupt regimes is out, which may help explain why the Reich nomination ran into so much political flak from the Senate left, forcing the president to put him in office through a recess appointment. [continues 1007 words]
Tuesday's hijacking of a Colombian airliner carrying 27 passengers from the town of San Vicente del Caguan to Bogota ended peacefully when the pilot and some passengers overpowered the hijacker, a disaffected guerrilla demanding to be taken to Europe. But even so, the drama underscored Colombian lawlessness and could not have come at a worse time for Colombian President Andres Pastrana. He has been sharply criticized for the withdrawal of the Colombian military from the Revolutionary Army of Colombia (FARC) stronghold in which San Vicente del Caguan is the largest population center. Nevertheless, the following day the president agreed to a four-day extension of his government's deadline for the rebels to either resume efforts toward peace or forfeit their current privilege of freely roaming a 42,000-square-kilometer demilitarized zone in the provinces of Caqueta and Meta. "I have decided to extend the demilitarized zone until the end of this week with the only purpose of meeting [FARC leader] Marulanda," the president told the nation in a televised speech. [continues 946 words]
Last week, in the small village of Pueblo Rico, Colombia, six children died in a barrage of army bullets. The victims, who were hiking, were apparently mistaken for a group of guerrillas that the army had been tracking. Witnesses said that some of the young soldiers wept openly when they realized their error and repeatedly cried out, "They were all children we killed; look, they were children." Other witnesses claim there were no guerrillas in the area. Colombian President Andres Pastrana has promised an investigation, but the left has already seized on the tragedy, denouncing the killings as an example of what they allege to be the army's human rights violations. The implication, of course, is that the military should withdraw its patrols, a decision that would be most convenient for the brutal guerrillas. [continues 967 words]
When former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, last week, throngs of fans turned out to honor him. That he was busted less than a year ago for a cocaine purchase was no barrier to his elevation to folk hero status. Sports columnists merely lamented his drug addiction and New York Giants owner Wellington Mara, who funded Mr. Taylor's rehab, referred to it as an "affliction." When a few critics called for keeping the cocaine abuser out of the Hall of Fame, Mr. Taylor dismissed them as "old phonies." [continues 1048 words]
