Word: bogota
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...make way for the first freely elected mayor in the city's history. Some 12 million Colombians went to the polls on March 13 to elect the mayors of nearly 1,000 cities and towns. The exercise in democracy -- until now the country's mayors have been appointed by Bogota -- is designed in part to give cities like Medellin new powers to fight such menaces as organized crime and drugs. Some feel that an administration with a direct mandate to govern will find it easier to face these challenges than an outside appointee with no popular support. Yet many fear...
...include U.S.-made AR-15 automatic rifles and Israeli-made Uzis with silencers and infrared sights for shooting at night. Says Jaramillo, pointing out of his office window to the hills: "They could be taking aim at me from two miles away over there." A U.S. embassy official in Bogota is more specific. "They will know you are there and what you are up to the minute you arrive," he warns a visitor...
With all its wealth, the cartel need not stoop to violence to get its way. Up to 80% of the police force in Medellin is suspected of working for the Mafia. Last December the cartel was able to secure the release from a Bogota jail of Jorge Luis, a brother of Jorge Ochoa Vasquez's, a reputed drug billionaire whose sudden release from a Colombian prison last January infuriated the Reagan Administration...
Andres Pastrana Arango, a mayoral candidate in Bogota, also ran afoul of the cartel. Two months ago, he was kidnaped from his office and taken, blindfolded, to a hideout near Medellin. After seven days he was released. Police raided the house where he had been held and uncovered a cache of weapons that included more than a dozen U.S.-made AR-15 rifles as well as Austrian-manufactured assault weapons and Israeli Uzi submachine guns. Also found were assorted 9-mm pistols, infrared night-vision scopes and a sniper rifle. "They have the kind of arms you only...
With the drug merchants increasingly brazen, Colombia is slipping into the kind of lawlessness that may someday risk comparison with Lebanon's. Last year most of the 3,000 murders in Medellin had to do with drugs. "Our way of life is being threatened," Bogota Prosecutor Francisco Bernal Castillo told TIME last month. Bernal, still reeling from the shock of the assassination of Hoyos, who had been his superior, was carrying a pistol in his waistband and was accompanied by a bodyguard. Last week Bernal fled to the U.S. after receiving death threats from the Medellin cartel...