Word: bogota
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...musical pioneers. Now, around the world, old traditions are being revived, remolded and returned to prominence by a new generation and new technology. In Tijuana, Mexico, young DJs are crossing traditional norteno (a polka-like music) with not-at-all-traditional techno to create a fresh genre, Nortec. In Bogota, Colombia, the rock duo Aterciopelados is mixing old-time accordion-driven vallenato with clubland drum-'n'-bass beats. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the great chanteuse Marisa Monte is smoothly blending samba...
Some of that same sorcery--minus the stomach-upsetting side effects--is present in the duo's terrific new CD Gozo Poderoso (BMG U.S. Latin). Aterciopelados (the name means the Velvety Ones and was borrowed from the writings of Simone de Beauvoir) formed in Bogota around 1990. Echeverri's parents were dentists; Buitrago's family ran a store in a market. The two dated, but soon their bond became a purely musical one. "That relationship is in the past," says Echeverri. "But we respect each other and we love each other...
...many reasons Bogota is not Saigon is that Congress has strictly limited how many U.S. troops can be on the ground. The 300 U.S. trainers in Colombia are handcuffed into training and escort missions only. U.S. drug warriors in the region have had to reach elsewhere, into the shadowy world of State Department contractors, to fill many jobs. It's an expensive decision. Chopper and crop-spraying contract pilots can make $100,000 a year. And because the U.S. doesn't want to send active-duty soldiers, the narcowars have come to serve as a retirement plan...
...Colombian strategy is to try to squeeze off the drug money as a way to strangle the FARC and the ELN. Under the $7.5 billion Plan Colombia--including $1.3 billion from Washington--the U.S. has been giving Bogota choppers, training and advice on eradication. Some of the money will arm three highly mobile, 1,000-member counternarcotics battalions able to apply pressure to many parts of the country at once. Growers who are tempted to move out from under spraying missions in the Putumayo region, for instance, will find there's nowhere...
...already come under gunfire from FARC units trying to protect crops from spraying. And the FARC might yet expand their counterattacks by trying to go after Americans directly, hoping that enough body bags will scare the U.S. out of the region. One question you will constantly hear debated in Bogota is whether or not the FARC has surface-to-air missiles. With a multibillion-dollar bank account, it can clearly afford them. For U.S. planners--and American contract pilots--it's a big worry. It exposes the U.S. to a basic problem of policy: while U.S.-supplied planes and their...