Word: andean
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela have avoided war, but now two other Andean nations are gearing up for battle. This time the foe is the United Nations, and the cause is the right to chew coca, the raw material of cocaine. It may not sound as important as the diplomatic row that shook the region earlier this month. But the dispute is momentous for millions of people in Bolivia and Peru - where the coca leaf is sacred to indigenous culture and a tonic of modern life - and for anti-drug officials in the U.S. and other countries who are desperate...
...Bolivians say they don't care. "My grandfather and my grandmother sold coca and I've been doing it for 48 years," says Josefina Rojas, another La Paz coca seller. "We aren't going to let them take coca away from us no matter what." Such is the latest Andean conundrum. One that might be harder to solve than a potential...
...escalating crisis between Colombia and its neighbors is more than just a case of Andean road rage. It exposes volatile political fault lines not seen in the Americas in a generation. On one side stand President Bush and regional allies led by conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whose army is accused of invading Ecuador last weekend to kill a Marxist guerrilla boss. Against them stand Venezuela's left-wing President Hugo Chavez, whom Uribe accuses of sponsoring those rebels, and friends such as Ecuador's President Rafael Correa...
...secret the FARC often hides out in Ecuador as well as Venezuela; but Correa insists his military has driven 47 guerrilla camps out of the country - and aides ask why, if Ecuador is really aiding the FARC, did Washington just extend the country's eligibility in the Andean Trade Preference Act, which requires a commitment to drug interdiction. Either way, if the hemisphere excuses the Colombian raid, it would set a precedent that "endangers any one of our countries," said Correa while meeting in Brazil with President Lula before going to Caracas Wednesday to huddle with Chavez...
...hadn't imposed its 'war on drugs' in Bolivia, Morales might have been just another coca farmer," says Kathryn Ledebur, Director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivia-based NGO that advocates a change in U.S. anti-drug policy. "He rose to national prominence resisting U.S.-supervised military drug control operations...