The FARC will ring in 2009 with a bang: hopefully

FARC Offers to Free Six

Colombia's FARC guerrillas have offered to free a former governor, a former lawmaker and four other hostages to help jump-start talks on a prisoner swap, local news media reported Sunday.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia said in a statement that three unidentified police officers and a soldier would be freed first "as an irrefutable demonstration of our good will and as a gesture aimed at creating conditions favorable to a humanitarian exchange."

They would be followed by Alan Jara, the former governor of southern Meta state, who was kidnapped in July 2001; and Valle del Cauca regional lawmaker Sigifredo Lopez, held since April 2002.

The FARC did not give a date for the releases, Radio Caracol reported. The guerrillas released six politicians in January and February. In July, a military operation freed 15 high-profile hostages, including three U.S. contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

santa marta: must see

Violence in Colombian culture: very much in fashion

People that mattered: 2008, Time.com

She was held for six years by her captives, the rebels who call themselves the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The 47-year-old Colombian-French citizen had been campaigning for president of Colombia when FARC soldiers took her in 2002. Her imprisonment eventually became a cause célèbre in Europe, and after a Colombian government operation freed her and 14 other hostages in July, Paris rejoiced. Later in the year, Betancourt toured South America to call attention to the plight of the 700-plus hostages that FARC still holds. It remains to be seen whether she can convert her own celebrity into freedom for others held victim to Colombia's dysfunctional politics.

Pablo Escobar refuses to go away

Painting by Fernando Botero of Pablo Escobar.

Fifteen years have passed since Pablo Escobar’s death on the rooftop of a house in Los Pinos, a neighborhood in the west of Medellín. Yet nobody agrees about the true breadth of his legacy - nor about the impact of his image - now mythicized because of a death that is increasingly distant and blurry.

It’s not easy to define a person’s true legacy. Escobar came to be (and in some countries still is) an immediate reference when mentioning Colombia: a reference for terror and violence. How present is that brand in a country that has witnessed successive waves of violence following Escobar’s death? How much has he made a mark on the country’s ethics and esthetics?

To begin with, the name Escobar holds a powerful appeal on people, whether they hate or love him. The artist Fernando Botero expressed in oils the moment in which the mafia capo fell in defeat to his pursuers. On the silver screen, the list of documentary films and dramas revolving around the character or his legend is endless. At the moment, Hollywood is preparing the mega production “Killing Pablo.” Examples of successful television productions include documentaries based on a book by that name, or on Pablo Escobar’s family archives. Books about his life are still coming out. Last year Virginia Vallejo, Escobar’s former lover, generated controversy with her work “Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar,” a well narrated apology of the mafia head.

In addition, one of the greatest successes of Colombian television in recent years (since “Ugly Betty”) has been “El Cartel,” a series based on the confessions of the drug trafficker Andrés López, alias “Florecita.” In this series, Colombians could see, in one way or another, the point of view of drug traffickers following the death of Pablo Escobar. It was also proof that the world of drug trafficking and the stories of people who are born in the gutter but reach the peak of mafia power continue to fascinate the public.

But the ghost of Escobar also lingers in places far from journalism and the dramatization of his life. Some tourists to Medellín, almost all of them foreigners, ask about Escobar’s tomb and visit Montesacro cemetery in the south of the city, where the epitaph “here lies Pablo Escobar Gaviria, a king without a crown” is carved in the marble tombstone – similar to the pilgrimage made by thousands of tourists in Paris to the tomb of Jim Morrison, at the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Some travel agencies in Medellín have started tours that visit emblematic buildings related to Pablo Escobar (buildings such as the Mónaco, and two examples of so-called “thug architecture” or “narco-deco,” the Dallas and the Ovni), the La Catedral prison in the rural area of the neighboring Envigado municipality, where he was confined and from where he escaped; phone stalls in the city center from where, legend goes, he communicated with his family; the house where he was gunned down in Los Pinos, and of course his tomb. During the tour the operator plays music from the group Los Tigres del Norte and Bob Marley as background music, and there are always some who offer a little marijuana. Some tours also offer the option of a three hour trip to Hacienda Nápoles, Escobar’s ranch.

If there ever were an icon of “Pablo Escobar-ness” it would be Hacienda Nápoles in Doradal, a Magdalena Medio town in Antioquia, with an entrance that features the Piper Club plane that delivered Escobar’s first shipment of cocaine to the United States. There, the trafficker built a zoo and had a collection of antique cars that was a must see for those traveling between Bogotá and Medellín by car. When he died, the zoo was abandoned and, according to hearsay, just over a year ago some hippopotamuses escaped as they looked for females in the Magdalena River.

Escobar’s ghost has lived on in the lives of some fishermen in the Cimitarra area of Santander, whose unexpected meetings with hippos resembled experiences of those exploring the Zambezi River in the heart of Africa.

Escobar also endures as an esthetic icon. His image, stripped of its incalculable evil, or perhaps as a challenge to new generations, adorns t-shirts, like Che Guevara. As what happened with the symbol of the best of the Cuban Revolution; those who wear the shirts don’t profess Escobar’s ideology. People wearing Escobar t-shirts in Europe might just as well use a Homer Simpson or Rolling Stones t-shirt, for they lack knowledge of the interminable trail of blood that he left in Colombia.

Another noteworthy factor is to see how, while the real drug traffickers learned lessons from the past and now keep low profiles, wide swaths of society have been infected with the thug culture of ostentation. It is a trend that some see in decline, like the publicist Ángel Beccassino, a student of the meaning of popular images, who says that “that rabid kitsch culture has also come and gone. With the new trend of local drug traffickers to lay low, the exaggerated kitsch aspect is now seen in Mexico’s drug cartels.”

The same thuggish or “narco-deco” architecture has left a profound mark, not only in cities such as Medellin or Cali, both known for drug cartels that bear their names, but also elsewhere in the country.

Escobar has a more profound meaning among residents of Medellín. For the elites, Escobar was a stigma to be erased from the new Medellín of public libraries in parks, the metro and the Metrocable; but among the poor many continue to see him as a paisa (one from Antioquia) version of Robin Hood, who challenged the establishment, made himself rich, but unlike the traditional rich, shared some of his wealth building homes for the poor or mini-soccer fields. What they don’t see is his diabolical side, and his criminal past of placing bombs on commercial airlines or in a shopping center on Mother’s Day. At Escobar’s burial, some 25,000 people came to mourn the death of a Robin Hood who, they think, stole from the rich to give to the poor.

Different authors consider Escobar to be something like the revenge of the dispossessed. In a country where social mobility is almost nonexistent, characters such as Pablo Escobar (or singer Diomedes Díaz, soccer player Tino Asprilla and now pyramid king David Murcia) claim the resentment of those born without anything and condemned to poverty regardless of their merits.

Lastly, there are those who think that Escobar has not died – like those who think Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison are still alive. But generally speaking, how much do people still retain of Escobar’s presence? Many anthropologists and students of culture believe that Escobar’s image has become watered down in the midst of the country’s whirlpool of characters and problems.

Alive or dead, present or withering, what is certain is that Pablo Escobar, one way or another, will continue to hold his own in a country that suffered the criminal horror of his megalomania. Yet the country must recognize that the great mafia boss was a product “made in Colombia.”

The making of a magician

Bill Clinton and Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Fidel Castro and Gabriel Garcia Marquez

His father was a philandering telegraphist, his mother bore 11 children, and he was left in the care of his eccentric grandparents. Though always prodigiously talented, he was so poor as a young man that he resorted to living in the attic of a whorehouse (apparently a purely economic decision).

And yet, by the age of 40, García Márquez had written a book, One Hundred Years of Solitude, that caught the imagination first of Latin America, and then the world. As Gerald Martin argues in this official biography, it became the "first truly global novel". Nor was it a one-off: a string of critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling books followed. García Márquez became the best-known practitioner of "magical realism", the style with which successive generations of authors have recalibrated the relationship between developing countries and their former colonisers. Martin argues, indeed, that he is the only indisputably great author of the late 20th century. He has won many accolades, including the Nobel Prize, and men of influence - Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro - have sought his friendship and confidence.

Colombian Rocker Juanes Sweeps Latin Grammys

Colombian rock star Juanes was crowned the new king of the Latin Grammys Thursday night, sweeping the five awards for which he was nominated and becoming the new record holder – with 17 to his name overall.

"It really has been an amazing night," Juanes said when his hit, "La Vida ... Es Un Ratico," was named Record of the Year.

Prior to Juanes's new benchmark, Spanish balladeer Alejandro Sanz had won the most Latin Grammys, 14.

Colombia paid money: So what?

During his current visit in Mexico, Colombian president Alvaro Uribe said that the government paid more than 3 million dollars for information about the Farc camp of guerrilla leader Raul Reyes in Ecuador that was bombed by Colombian military on the 1st of March of this year. He said this campaign was part of the rewards program created by the government and insisted on how important this measure has been for the military triumphs in Colombia.

The action in which Reyes was killed lead to a serious rupture in diplomatic relations between Ecuador and Colombia.

I support this, do you?

Shakira doesn't lie

Pop superstar SHAKIRA will take her fight for funds to improve children's health and education in Latin America to the continent's leaders at a political summit in El Salvador this week.The Hips Don't Lie singer has her own successful charitable foundation in her native Colombia, Pies Descalzos, to help the nation's poorest children. She also recently launched the organisation Fundacion ALAS (Latin America in Solidarity Action).

But she wants South American heads of state to do more, and will lobby Ibero-American leaders to start a regional project to pump money into the two areas of greatest need.She says, "There are difficult times coming in Latin America. Thousands and thousands of children will die if governments do not organise ways to distribute food during this crisis."I grew up in the developing world and I have witnessed the lack of opportunities that children have to live with. In a country like mine, when a child is born poor, people die poor. But I'm fascinated by the fact that through education you can transform lives, you can end this cycle of poverty."

And Shakira has vowed to continue in her charity efforts for as long as possible.She adds, "My heart is committed to this cause and it has been there for a long time, since I was 18. I like to think that I can use my public profile to bring attention to more important issues than my own."

free at last: thank god

Óscar is free at last. After eight years of being held hostage [eight years!], this ex-congressman is out of the FARC's power and into the free world. My heart goes out to you and your family.

Colombia's brilliant successors to García Márquez

A long-awaited authorised biography of Gabriel García Márquez, A Life by Gerald Martin, is out next week. Yet, more than a quarter-century after his Nobel prize, ensuing generations of Colombian writers have adapted their styles to a changed reality. Their voices too should be heard.

When García Márquez began writing in the 1950s, Colombia waslargely rural. But Macondo's banana plantations are worlds from the downtown skyscrapers and sprawling shanty towns of the capital Bogotá. Jorge Franco, in his 40s, is among writers embraced by the 1990s urban movement known as "McCondo" (as in McDonald's, Apple Macintoshes and condos). As the Medellín-born Franco told me recently in the cafe of the new Gabriel García Márquez Cultural Centre in Bogotá's colonial quarter of La Candelaria, his generation respectfully threw off the magic realist mantle of "Gabo".

Franco's bestselling novel Rosario Tijeras (1999) bracketed himas a "narco-realist" - though a highly lyrical one - and was made into a film. Looking back to the most violent period in Medellín, before the drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993, its focus was a teenage "sicaria", a hit woman for a cartel. His next novel, Paraíso Travel (2001) - the film version of which has been this year's box-office hit in Colombia - traced an illegal immigrant's journey to New York.

The turmoil of war and drug-trafficking, displacement and emigration, has remapped the country since Gabo's heyday. Evelio Rosero is among writers taking part this weekend in a Colombian cross-arts festival, Colombiage, at London's Riverside Studios. His haunting novel The Armies (2007), published by MacLehose press on November 6 in a translation by Anne McLean, is about the war still being fought in the countryside, despite the record of President Álvaro Uribe in making cities safer. It was based on news bulletins and tales from some of the country's 3.8 million "desplazados". In a high-rise Bogotá hotel, Rosero told me he was spurred on by the rise of paramilitaries and private armies, and "the unarmed being gunned down by the armed". His elderly protagonist is the "memory of a time that's vanished - the shock of an older person horrified by the world a new generation is creating."

That new world is another reason to pay heed to these writers.Reflecting on decades of conflict and extremity can lead to profound truths. Juan Carlos Botero is the son of South America's most famous artist, Fernando Botero. His mother was kidnapped (then freed) in 1973, and since 2000 he has lived in Miami, where we met. One of his interests is the imperceptible step into bloodshed: "It's very easy for the line to be crossed - it begins casually. Then it's too late." In a short story, two teenagers stumble on a police torture chamber, growing fascinated, then bored. Botero says, "if you're bombarded with violence, you become numb to it, and finally a participant. People try to solve domestic issues that way. It becomes a culture. Yet as a writer, you have to add something more than the anecdote - a deeper truth."

That culture is also questioned by Mario Mendoza, whose psychological thriller novel Satanás (2002) became a hit film last year. It was based on the Pozzetto massacre of 1986 in Bogotá, when a Vietnam veteran murdered 29 people, mostly strangers, before committing suicide. For Mendoza, whom I met in a bar in La Candelaria, the novel was an exorcism. As a friend of the killer (a fellow student whose thesis was on Jekyll and Hyde), he was beset by guilt at the thought that he might have averted the massacre. Driven to writing urban, apocalyptic fiction about the "dark side of Bogota", Mendoza sees political violence as reflecting "domestic violence, joblessness, what happens in streets, buses, in your house".

Not all these writers are yet translated. But that, as we paydue homage to Gabo, is all the more reason to lend them an ear.

Herbin Hoyos has spent 15 years fulfilling a promise. On the morning of Sunday, March 13, 1994, while he was broadcasting his radio program “Amanecer en América” (Morning in America), two FARC guerrillas, posing as winners of an on-the-air contest, arrived at the Caracol studios in Bogota and kidnapped him. “That was when guerrillas would take journalists in order to later free them and send messages with them to the government,” he remembers.

After a long trip in an SUV and another on foot through the jungles of Colombia, he arrived at a camp the following afternoon. “What impacted me most was seeing a man whose right arm was chained to a tree. His name was Nacianceno Murcia Correa and he was 62 years old". With his free hand, he showed me a radio he had, taking it out from underneath a plastic tarp which covered his body. The radio had been his only companion in the oblivion of his two years in captivity. “Hey, aren’t you the one from that program? What happened to you on Sunday when you didn’t finish your show?” he asked. Herbin, who couldn’t believe that he had a listener in such a remote place, explained to him what had happened. “You journalists should do something for us. Could you imagine that through this device I could hear messages sent to me from someone? From my wife, my kids?” said Murcia. Herbin promised him that when he was freed he would do just that.

The first broadcast of “Las voces del secuestro,” (the voices of kidnapping), took place on April 10th, 12 days after the journalist was rescued by the Army during combat with the Farc. “Those who are kidnapped hear us, and from now on we are going to be with them,” were his words. That is the way it has been ever since. The first day he received 40 calls and in that month he had a list of 200 people in captivity that he would reach out to on a regular basis. The program has had more than 16,000 cases and every weekend morning, no matter whether from Iraq or Chechnya, his voice continues to alleviate the loneliness and desperation of those in captivity. The program has never been interrupted although he has covered eleven international conflicts since it first began. “The idea is to create goals for those in captivity - dreams to fulfill when they return- so that they don’t give up.” For this work, Herbin Hoyos just recently earned two important recognitions: the Simon Bolivar journalist of the year award and the National Peace Prize, which he shares with freed soldier William Perez. Perez helped save Ingrid Betancourt’s life when she was in captivity.

Hoyos’ program has helped family members of kidnapping victims feel closer to their loved ones. Not long ago Herbin invited Jenny Mendieta to work with him at Las Voces del Secuestro. Mendieta is a young woman who hopes that her most devoted listener is her father, Lt. Col. Luis Mendieta, who has been held in captivity for more than ten years. “I have direct communication with him, and in each broadcast I feel like I am right next to him, there in the jungle,” she says.
But perhaps nobody can describe the program’s effects better than that audience being held captive. That is the case of former congresswoman Gloria Polanco, who called Herbin her guardian angel, after she as freed in February of this year. “It was my sustenance, my life and I anxiously awaited Saturdays at midnight. It moved me when he reported that my kids, who had been kidnapped with me, were free. I cried when he painfully informed me of the assassination of my husband, Jaime Losada, and he sent me a hug of solidarity from afar.” Herbin hasn’t forgotten how difficult it was to find the appropriate words to transmit that terrible news. “Gloria, you have to be calm, because from heaven your husband will be there with you. That is the way it will be when you are free and from then on forever”.

Herbin witnessed all of the dramas that kidnapping generates. Like when the then wife of former minister Fernando Araújo (who escaped from the Farc in early 2007), not knowing whether or not he was still alive, sent him the message asking for him to understand why she had decided to start a new life, as the uncertainty was killing her. Or when a four-year-old boy asked his father to come back soon because “the ‘raton Pérez’ (the tooth fairy) had taken away his teeth and he wouldn’t bring him a present if his father didn’t return”.

He painfully thinks of Chikao Muramatsu, the kidnapped Japanese businessman who was killed by the Farc. After news of his kidnapping came out, his family began to send a cassette every two months with messages to the program. One time, Herbin asked some visiting Japanese journalists to translate , with correct pronunciation, some of the words that he had written for Murmatsu. “I learned a repertoire in Japanese that included phrases such as ´keep faith and hope´ to tell him every week. I dreamed about one day meeting him, but they killed him. I later spoke with the guerrilla who was responsible for his death who cynically told me that he was such a noble man that he voluntarily cooked for his kidnappers”.

According to Herbin, he has given some 11,000 “freedom hugs”, a phrase coined by him to describe his meetings with the freed hostages. “At that time I tell them that I will forever be their brother.” He still recalls the day a man came to the studio in rags. His name was Vicente Arroyave, and had just escaped the jungle. The first thing he did was go to the studio in order to claim his hug. “You saved my life,” he said. During his captivity he had tried to kill himself on three occasions because his captors told him that his wife had left him and that his children were headed on the wrong track. “Like a miracle, one day they gave him a radio and when he turned it on, he heard the voices of his family telling him that they were waiting for him,” says Hoyos.

After the happiness that freedom produces, the freed hostage begins one of the most difficult stages. “Many times they cannot reconstruct their lives. Psychological rehabilitation can’t happen without the economic means to be able to start again,” he says. That is why he recently created a fund for their return to freedom, to open up an account of $1,500 USD for each of the 26 police and military members who were kidnapped, as well as civilians of limited resources, with the support of the producers of the film La Milagrosa (The Miracle Worker), who donated a part of the film’s box office earnings.

When he’s not working on the program or at his television production business, it’s possible that Herbin is flying his ultra-light plane along with a newly freed friend. As he is not only a journalist but also sociologist and pilot, it occurred to him that the best way to help the released hostage is to give them the chance to see the jungle from above. “It looks small and non-threatening”, he adds.

Herbin says that he has received several threats. Nevertheless he doesn´t plan on retracting his promise that he made to Nacianceno, who died ten years ago, two years after being freed. Each time he gives a “freedom hug” Herbin is reminded of the words that Nacianceno said to him when they first met. “Thank you very much for never abandoning me”.

obama makes it up: repeating union distortions

In Wednesday night's debate with John McCain, Barack Obama defended his opposition to the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement this way: "The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination, on a fairly consistent basis, and there have not been any prosecutions." Among the many falsehoods in this Presidential campaign, this is one of the worst.

It is true that Colombia has a history of violence. But since President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002, that violence has been substantially reduced. The homicide rate through the end of 2007 was down by 40.4% and the rate among union members was down almost 87%. There is nothing "consistent" about a drop to 26 union member murders in 2007 from 155 in 2000.

As for prosecutions: In union-member killings, there were zero convictions from 1991-2000 and one in 2001. But from 2002-2007, there were 80. According to the Colombian attorney general's office, 29% of those murders were "found to have been results of theft, petty crime and random violence unrelated to union activity." Mr. Uribe has nonetheless created a special investigative unit for crimes against union members, and he expanded a special government protection program for unions.

More broadly, in 2004 Mr. Uribe pushed through congress a judicial reform that has reduced the average time needed to issue an indictment for a homicide to 50 days from 493. He also increased the budget for the attorney general's office to $598 million in 2008, from $346 million in 2002 -- a 73% increase.

If Colombia hopes to keep spending on judicial improvements and better law enforcement, it needs an expanding economy. In addition to misrepresenting the country's progress on reducing violence, Mr. Obama has never explained how denying Colombians the FTA will help the country reduce violence. Maybe this is because he knows he's merely repeating union distortions.

updates from economy to culture

Ecopetrol Makes Wall Street Debut

Colombia's state Ecopetrol has made its US stock market debut at what looks like a most inopportune time, with oil prices weakening and financial market turmoil turning investors away from risky emerging market equities.

The Latins are Coming

A wave of Latin American film festivals, including a Colombian one, are sweeping into London in time to take the chill off the long, grey winter.

obama says no: trade agreement

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is against scheduling a congressional vote after next month's election on a free-trade agreement with Colombia, a campaign adviser said.
Concerns about violence against labor leaders and low worker organizing rates in that nation haven't been resolved, and labor rights must ''be addressed in a meaningful way'' before a vote, said Lael Brainard, who represented the Obama campaign at the Washington International Trade Association today. ``This is the moment the U.S. has leverage.''

Democrats in Congress earlier this year delayed a vote on the trade accord, and lobbyists have sought a vote after the Nov. 4 election in a so-called lame-duck session of Congress. President Bush made approval of the Colombia free-trade agreement a priority for his last year in office.
Philip Levy, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and an adviser to John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, said he doubts Congress will vote on Colombia this year.

my favorite book goes to the movies: News of a Kidnapping

Gabriel García Márquez’s book “News of a Kidnapping” will be adapted for the big screen by Mexican director Pedro Pablo Ibarra, who directed some episodes for latin HBO series “Capadocia”. The movie will begin shooting in 2009 and is being produced by Argos Producciones from Mexico and Caracol Films from Colombia. The film will reach theaters in 2010. “News of a Kidnapping” is a non fiction book, published in 1996, that tells the story of many people who were kidnapped by drug traffic kingpin Pablo Escobar, leader of the Cartel de Medellín

operation Jaque: more details

Two Israeli advisors came to a military base in Colombia to train special forces for the rescue operation. They also gave training in interpersonal skills, panic management, stress management and they trained them in Krav Maga, a self-defense technique developed in Israel, with which they were able to overcome ‘César’ and ‘Gafas’ in the helicopter which would ultimately bring the hostages to safety. Krava Maga is the official combat and personal defense system used by Israeli defense forces, the Israeli police and security services. It is also used by many forces in the U.S. military. What is not sure is how ‘César’ got his black eye in the helicopter when he was overtaken by the Colombian military, because the Krav Maga avoids physical injury. The Colombian special agent told us that it was a “knock out” that was delivered out of a vengeful rage by American Keith Stansell.

Palin's Foreign-Policy Chops

Based on their treatment of President Alvaro Uribe, who is here to plead for a free trade pact, it's almost as if Democrats don't want the U.S. to have allies. Uribe made a rare visit to Washington, and shamefully few Democrats agreed to meet him.
Uribe didn't come asking for much — only that Congress keep its word on an agreement that will drop tariffs on American goods sold in Colombia and help his country develop and prosper as a bulwark of democracy in a battered region.
"We consider that in the coming years if the free-trade agreement were approved... the main economic result could be the increase in investments in our country," Uribe told the Brookings Institution.
"And the more we increase legal investments in our country, the less difficult our task to defeat terrorist groups, to defeat illegal drugs."
Uribe also heads a country that last July put its own men in harm's way to free three innocent Americans held hostage by FARC Marxist terrorists. The rescue came off without a hitch or a shot being fired.
For that alone, Uribe should get his trade pact — with maybe a ticker tape parade thrown in for good measure.
But what he's getting from the Washington establishment is a lot less. President Bush did extend a warm welcome on Saturday, and Uribe also met with Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and some CEOs in Atlanta.
But Democrats did all they could to slight him, generally hiding and making lame excuses for doing so.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who arbitrarily iced Colombia's free trade deal last April, refused to meet Uribe and didn't acknowledge a White House invitation to an event in his honor. Later, her staff regally complained that Uribe didn't call her.
This is part of a pattern. For years, Pelosi has insulted, slighted, road blocked and now ignored Uribe, the most valuable ally the U.S. has ever had in Latin America. Her motives are constantly shifting.
One minute she's complaining about human rights abuses in Colombia, despite an 86% drop in the murder rate of union activists. Then she says it's all about passing stimulus packages first. The common thread is serving Big Labor special interests at election time.
This is what passes for Democratic leadership these days. Uribe urged nonpartisanship in considering Colombia's case for free trade, but lesser Democrats were just as craven and irresponsible as Pelosi.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama only grudgingly permitted Uribe to talk with him by telephone, afterward disclosing no news about why he still opposes cutting tariffs on American goods to Colombia as the free trade pact provides. Nor did he make any public statements, seemingly to make the call go unnoticed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who's fond of junketing to the luxury locales in South America, had no time to repay the hospitality to Uribe. And two Democrats held out as Latin experts, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, couldn't give Uribe the time of day.
Some pro-free-trade Democrats, including Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, were notable exceptions and did welcome Uribe. But none of the Democrats billed as foreign-policy heavy hitters could see that the implications of snubbing Colombia send a message to the region that it pays more to be America's enemy than its friend.
Into the vacuum, however, has stepped in Gov. Sarah Palin. The supposedly foreign-policy-challenged vice presidential candidate asked to meet with Uribe on Tuesday in New York to support our ally.
As chief executive of Alaska, Palin knows what it's like to deal with a Congress that dismisses her state as distant, lectures it on ecological virtue and then denies its citizens development. She understands perfectly how it must feel to be Uribe, who's gotten the exact same treatment from a Washington establishment.
Palin's reception of Uribe is a far more serious statement than Obama's visits to the tourist spots of Europe that he chalked up as foreign policy experience.
Palin's meeting with Uribe shows a commitment to American interests over Washington politics. Thank goodness Palin knows how to act when an important leader and true friend comes calling.

Source: Investor's daily

Uribe and Palin: my favorite duo

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe met with republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in New York today. The meeting took place in New York City, where Uribe is attending the United Nations General Summit. He and Palin spoke for about 30 minutes in what Uribe called ‘fruitful’ reunion. One of the main subjects they talked about was the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the United States.
Palin has been in New York these days trying to broaden her international credentials, and it has been said that her meeting with Uribe is a way of showing that she is indeed prepared for dealing with foreign policy issues.
President Uribe on the other hand has been in the United States since Saturday, day he met with president George W. Bush. They also mainly discussed the FTA, which has always had Bush’s support, but has not been as well received in Congress.
President Uribe also took time to meet privately with French president Nicolas Sarkozy during the UN Summit.

church in the mountains

Honestly, I don't know where this is inside Colombia. I just found it absolutely stunning and hope that you will too.

remembering

President Uribe met with the three liberated Americans [Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes, and Marc Gonsalves] at the Colombian Embassy in Washington D.C.

uribe and obama: pure politics

It looks like President Uribe isn't betting everything on a republican win this November. El Tiempo, Colombia's main newspaper, is reporting that Uribe spoke to Presidential Candidate, Barack Obama, before heading off to the U.S. to promote the free trade agreement that Congress has stalled indefinitely.
Maintaining good relations with the democrats is key for President Uribe because they are the main opponents to the passage of the free trade agreement with Colombia. Throughout his campaign, Obama has strongly opposed free trade agreements, claiming them to be a loss of jobs for Americans. The majority of the democrats in congress have opposed the agreement with Colombia because they claim that there are still too many murders there.
While President Uribe's trip was initially intended to lobby Congress for the passage of the trade agreement, he has cancelled all of his meetings with Congress due to the impending elections and the disaster on Wall Street. He is scheduled to meet with President Bush briefly, before heading to New York to attend the United Nations general assembly.
Links Below:
Obama reiteró a Uribe oposición al TLC porque las condiciones para los sindicalistas no han mejorado
Uribe Habló Con Obama Y Se Fue A E.U.

cartagena: the basics

Cartagena has become the new it place of Latin America. If you're interested in taking a trip to a beautiful, culture-filled place, below are some helpful tips.

• Air Travel: Spirit Air has started a new service to Cartagena from La Guardia, connecting in Fort Lauderdale, with fares starting at $513. Avianca Airlines flies from Kennedy Airport to Cartagena, with a connection in Bogotá, starting at about $530.
• Hotels: The old city is bookended by a pair of medieval convents that have been turned into luxury hotels. Their monk architects knew how to design for comfort.
• The Sofitel Santa Clara has 119 rooms, a spa and pool built around a colonial courtyard with tropical gardens. Rooms start at 555,000 pesos. Check Oanda to get your most updated exchange rate prices.
• The Charleston Santa Teresa was once a home to a Carmelite order. The hotel occupies a full city block and is built around a large courtyard with gardens of royal palms and tropical foliage. There is also a rooftop pool with spectacular views. Rooms start at 689,000 pesos.
• For more modest budgets, the Casa La Fe on the Fernández Madrid Park has 14 comfortable rooms equipped with Wi-Fi, starting at 200,000 pesos. A breakfast of freshly squeezed tropical juice and eggs is included.
• Nature activities: Slip back into nature at La Ciénega, a mangrove forest that teems with wildlife. Tours on a wooden canoe are available through Turinco. They cost approximately $30,000 pesos. You’ll see kingfishers, herons and pelicans on one side of your boat.
• Storm the walls: Cartagena is a city for walking, and its historic walled district feels like a Moroccan medina, with 300-year-old Spanish colonial buildings huddled along brick streets. The palette is saturated with deep blue, dusty rose, burnt orange and ochre. Cool sea breezes and plenty of shade make the old city feel quite comfortable even in the 90-degree heat. To get your bearings, wave down one of the horse-powered taxis. The 15-minute ride across the old city, a Unesco World Heritage site, costs 30,000 pesos (about $17 at 1,800 pesos to the dollar). The coachman will point out sites as you clip-clop along and, at sunset, will light the candles in the headlamps.
• Must see: Native crafts like hammocks, clay figurines and colorfully painted wooden masks are available everywhere. For more unusual items, head to the stores along Calle Santo Domingo and Calle San Juan de Dios. Even if you’re not female and size 4, check out Colombia's leading fashion designer, Silvia Tcherassi .The Abaco bookstore stocks photography books featuring local architecture and artisans. And the Galería Cano sells high-quality reproductions of pre-Columbian jewelry.

• Juicy Fruit: Take a fruit break. Palenque women peddle a rainbow of ripe fruit along the streets of El Centro, nearly all of it in nature’s protective wrappers: bananas, mangos, papayas, guamas, ciruelas, coconuts and guayabas. Try a níspero, a kiwi-shaped fruit with the texture of pear and the heavenly taste of chocolate, caramelized sugar and blackberry.

hard times: politics and paramilitaries

Venezuela is starting to cooperate with its neighbor, Colombia, again. The New York Times is reporting that Venezuelan National Guard troops have captured Álvaro Araújo Noguera, a former Colombian senator and agriculture minister who fled Colombia after being accused of conspiring with paramilitary operatives to kidnap a regional political leader. The soldiers took Mr. Araújo into custody Thursday at a checkpoint in the western city of Maracaibo, Venezuela’s official news agency reported. He was flown to Caracas to await his return to Colombia. Mr. Araújo’s daughter, María Consuelo Araújo, resigned last year as Colombia’s foreign minister after accusations surfaced of ties between paramilitaries and her father and brother.

ingrid and the pope.

The picture above is of Pope Benedict blessing Ingrid Betancourt and her family. The blessing took place in Castelgandolfo. Ingrid has always been a devout Catholic.

President Uribe: a third term?

Most Colombians aren't opposed to President Uribe running for office for a third term. My position doesn't matter. Uribe should groom a potential President-to-be and leave the country running as successfully as it has been. I don't want to equate Colombia to Russia, but look at how over-involved Ex-President Putin is in Russia's affairs. President Uribe could step aside and continue to influence Colombia without endangering Colombia's already fragile democratic institutions.

Mr. Uribe's Choice

President of Colombia Seeks Replay of ’06 Vote

'Uribe debería decir a sus amigos que no desea un tercer período', dice 'The New York Times'

travel: parque nacional tayrona

Looking for an exotic destination to travel? Tayrona National Park in Colombia is the place to be.



Tayrona National Park in Colombia has always been known as one of the wildest corners of South America. Its swimming beaches are reached by a trail that dips and climbs through the forest over mounds of giant white boulders.

Who wouldn't want to swim in these beautiful waters? They are the fabled beaches of El Cabo San Juan del Guía.

Below, tourists make their way to a beach along a trail through the jungle. For years the park were a battleground between guerrilla and paramilitary groups, both of whom coveted the region as a base for cocaine processing and smuggling.

Below, a Kogui Indian boy in the park. The area is studded with archaeological sites left by Tayrona’s indigenous tribes — the Koguis and the Arhuacos — who settled the region in pre-Columbian times.

Below, a view from one of a dozen Ecohab rooms. Although these are luxury cabins, they are meant to resemble traditional Kogui dwellings.

In late 2003, the Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe, cracked down on crime. With the Sierra Nevada now largely safe, the government has set about promoting Tayrona as a tourist paradise. For $245 a night visitors today can stay in the Ecohabs resort, a complex of secluded huts built into the side of a jungled cliff overlooking the Caribbean.

Below, tourists dining in a restaurant inside the park, which is decorated with a mural depicting the Arhuaco Indians.

Below, Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, the butterscotch yellow hacienda where Simón Bolívar, desperately ill with tuberculosis, died on Dec. 17, 1830.

Below is a picture of the inside of the hacienda — a modest adobe villa set around an ocher-tiled courtyard. It still has the canopied wooden bed where Bolívar drew his last breaths.

To read the entire article from the New York times, reviewing parque nacional tayrona as a must-go-to place, click here.

gringos in Colombia: lauren davis

In the beautiful port city of Cartagena, with helicopters buzzing overhead and nine designers for as many bridesmaids, Lauren Davis wore mini, maxi and everything in between for her spectacular wedding. Lauren Davis is a socialite turned Contributing Fashion Editor for Vogue US. Her husband is billionaire Andrés Santo Domingo . They got married on January 8 in Cartagena, Colombia, the home country of her now husband.

wordless calm: las islas del rosario

cartagena: the colorful city

Click here to the read the article that Anthony Bourdain wrote about his travels to Colombia.

Below, an excerpt.
I can't think of another country where the No Reservations crew has been welcomed so enthusiastically everywhere we went. Absolutely everybody we met seemed delighted and proud that we'd come to point our cameras at them. And we were allowed and enabled, I should point out, to point them any damn where we pleased. Someone less...forgiving in temperament, less zen-like than me might feel tempted to point out to some other tourist boards the wisdom of letting us go and do whatever we want--no matter how uncomfortable the official organs might be about some of our interests--compared to the result when officialdom tries to "manage" what we see and don't see. . As it turned out, it was the uncontrollable elements, the poor fishermen, the inner city market workers, the residents of the neighborhood in Medellin with the very worst reputation who did their country most proud.

the lost city: santa marta

colombia: trade deal, a positive for both america and colombia

“Someone’s going to lose a job, but many more will gain one so, in the aggregate, the world is economically better off.” — Professor Kevin C. Kennedy

Free trade is a system in which the trade of goods and services between or within countries flows unhindered by government-imposed restrictions. Such government interventions generally increase costs of goods and services to both consumers and producers. Interventions include taxes and tariffs, non-tariff barriers, such as regulatory legislation and quotas.

The Colombian trade deal with the United States is at a stalemate. Even though it would benefit Americans more than Colombians, it will not be passed anytime soon due to silly politics and to the simple fact that politicians are doing anything they can to win over voters.

Below are some facts

• In the recent months, nearly 100 newspapers in the U.S. have endorsed the Colombian trade agreement. So have many top democrats, including Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago.


• At least 55 members of Congress, including two Democrats from the Senate and 25 from the House, have traveled to Colombia, in trips usually led by an indefatigable cheerleader for the trade pact, either Ms. Schwab or the commerce secretary, Carlos M. Gutierrez.


• The White House says Mr. Bush has called for passage of the deal 40 times, and Ms. Schwab and other cabinet members have given 145 speeches on it.


• The administration has lined up the support of Democratic mayors and members of the Clinton administration, and obtained endorsements from trade associations with ties to Democrats, including those for the movie, music and consumer electronics industries.


• By itself, trade with Colombia represents barely 1 percent of total United States trade volume. Imports from Colombia totaled $9.4 billion in 2007, mostly oil, spices, coffee and tea. Exports, of machinery, chemicals, plastics, corn and other goods, were $8.6 billion.

Some important links

• Cheap Shots over free trade


• McCain: Colombia FTA benefits U.S.


• U.S.-Colombia Trade Agreement Good for American Jobs

colombian life

colombian beauty

independence day

Today is Colombian's independence day. People around the world celebrated the birth of our nation with concerts, marches, and a united cry for freedom. I couldn't be prouder of how far my beautiful country has come.

President Uribe was accompanied by the President of Peru and Brazil during Colombian's celebration. The three of them united with Shakira and Carlos Vives in Leticia to ask the FARC for the liberty of all the Colombians that remain in the jungle. Leticia is the capital of of the department of Amazonas, Colombia's southernmost town. Click here to watch.

In Paris, Ingrid Betancourt, Miguel Bose, and Juanes asked for the liberty of the remaining hostages. Click here to watch.

World rallies for FARC hostages' freedom

Colombians Cry ‘Libertad’ From Rebels

shakira and ingrid: in paris

Shakira and Ingrid met in Paris to prepare for the march of freedom. It will take place on July 20th in Paris, France.

source: El Tiempo