Word: 18th
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Still, the FARC has few of its own victories to show these days. The secret to its survival from here on out, according to many FARC-watchers, is not military muscle but drug money. Life in the Cordillera Occidental, where TIME recently spent three days with the 18th Front, revolves around cattle ranching and coca cultivation. The FARC collects what it calls "revolutionary" taxes from coca farmers and drug traffickers, both of whom pay a $90-per-kg duty on every sale and purchase of unrefined cocaine in that area. Similar tariffs nationwide - and ransoms earned from kidnapping - are said...
...area's coca crop, the raw material of cocaine. That rare permiso allowed TIME to take an eight-hour mule ride through the mountains, rivers, jungles and dozens of coca plantations to the encampment of German Silva Hernandez, alias Comandante Alberto, one of the commanders of the FARC's 18th Front. He carries a bullet scar on his stomach and a $36,000 government bounty on his head. But unlike so many FARC members these days - especially in the wake of this week's astonishing army rescue of high-profile FARC hostages - he has no intention of coming down from...
...struggle or who have let themselves be influenced by state propaganda," he says. "We have to study the situation so this doesn't keep happening." But he insists that in his rebel bailiwick, retention is still high, despite the fact that any guerrilla who wanted to bolt the 18th Front could be free and clear in a nearby town within a couple of hours...
...result, despite the government's gains in recent years, the comandante is confident in his front's abilities to defend its own turf. As soon as the military enters the 18th Front's territory, the FARC usually hears about it from its large network of civilian informants. Many of them rely on FARC-protected coca cultivation for their livelihoods, but others are simply poor rural residents who have been beaten down for decades by the military and still believe in the FARC's original social-justice crusade. The guerrillas dress in civilian clothes and can be hard to distinguish from...
...attribution have been around for more than a decade, but voicing them has proven difficult. "At a certain point, an artist becomes a mythic national hero, and a painting takes on a life of it's own - it becomes sacred," says Manuela Mena, the Prado's chief curator of 18th-century painting and of Goya's work. "When you challenge that, you might as well be challenging religion - you're seen as a heretic, and you fall into the hands of the inquisition...