In foreign affairs, folly is the privilege of great powers, for they alone can be certain to survive it. Last month Americans embarked on a policy of exquisite folly: funding both sides of Colombia's civil war. For more than a decade now, Americans have contributed to the financial support of Colombia's guerrillas. Each and every day in America, in New York and Los Angeles and other cities across the land, men and women carefully extract dollars from their wallets and purses and exchange them for plastic bags filled with cocaine and heroin. [continues 1911 words]
1. On July 2, Mexico will elect a new president, and the race is expected to be one of the closest in Mexican history. One of the two leading candidates is Francisco Labastida of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). An economist by training, Labastida is a longtime party functionary who has served as the governor of the state of Sinaloa and, most recently, as the minister of gobernacion, or government, the country's second most powerful post. The gobernacion minister is responsible, among other things, for internal security and intelligence, and Labastida--gray-haired, poker-faced, reserved in manner--seems to fit the part. [continues 5859 words]
San Vicente del Caguan is a small town on the edge of the jungle that runs from the Andean foothills of Colombia down to the Amazon river basin. It has a sunstricken central square--a patch of dust and a few mango trees--with a graceless modern church on one end and a nondescript municipal building on the other, and around it a grid of narrow streets laid out in Spanish style. The layout is traditional, but San Vicente has the look and feel of the kind of frontier town where people have been lured overnight by the promise of money. [continues 6064 words]
1. The war in Colombia between the army and an irregular paramilitary force, on one side, and various armed left-wing organizations on the other has claimed thousands of lives, and sown terror in the countryside for decades. During the last couple of years, however, the guerrillas have sought to have a greater impact by interrupting daily life in the cities. In Bogota, for example, a few days before the end of December, a group of Colombian friends considered their holiday options--a trip to the countryside or a long drive to the coast for a few days of sunshine--and decided that the choice would depend on the road conditions. The country's largest guerrilla organization, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, had declared a holiday truce as a gesture of commitment to the peace talks that have been fitfully underway since President Andres Pastrana took office a year and a half ago. This meant, one friend said, that there would be no combat activity, and so the beach might not be a bad idea. But other members of the group were doubtful: the guerrillas had said that there would be no combat, but had they said anything about kidnappings? [continues 5177 words]
The Clinton administration is proposing an escalation in United States foreign aid to Colombia so large that it will predictably alter the course of domestic politics and internal violence in that country. Colombia is already the third-largest recipient of US foreign aid, after Israel and Egypt, having received $289 million in 1999. As the current aid bill now stands before Congress, the government of President Andrés Pastrana would receive $1.574 billion in direct economic assistance during the next three years. About one fifth of the funds ($274 million) would be spent on assistance in economic development and general improvements in the country's legal and human rights situation. The rest of the money would arrive in Colombia in the form of military training funds and equipment. [continues 7366 words]
