Word: cauca
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Properly governed, Columbia could develop in a relatively short time into one of the richest nations in South America. Irrigation and cheap electric power are all that would be needed to enable the marvelously fertile Cauca valley to supply food for at least the entire country. Then, once mechanization of agriculture has been achieved, largely untapped sources of oil, coal, and iron are sufficient to support the conversion of Colombia into a modern industrial state. Her greatest tragedy is that the capital she desperately needs for economic development is instead being used to support an oppressive dictatorship...
Breaking the 430-mile journey from the port of Buenaventura to Bogotá, six government trucks braked to a stop one afternoon last week beside the old Pacific railroad station in Cali, the palm-shaded heart city of the rich Cauca River Valley. In a district jammed with factories, warehouses and slums, the drivers bedded down for the night with their cargo-more than 30 tons of high explosives. At 1:07 a.m., like 30 blockbusters, the cargo blew up, in a tower of red flame and seething of black smoke...
...Cauca River rises in the mountains of southern Colombia, foams furiously down their steep slopes, then runs placidly northward through a balmy (average temperature 78°), verdant valley. The Cauca Valley, twelve miles wide and 125 miles long, is the country's most bounteous food producer-bananas, sugar, potatoes, coffee, rice, beef, milk. Its center is the warmhearted city of Cali, whose 500.000 inhabitants manage to combine plenty of industrial zip (in tires, leather, drugs, textiles) with a pleasant, semitropical way of life that still reserves the time from noon to 2:30 for lunch and siesta...
...Cali industrialists persuaded the government to invite David Lilienthal, onetime chairman of TVA, down for a look, and frankly tapped their guest for advice and know-how. Serving willingly (and without fee), Lilienthal briefly studied the valley and recommended the creation of a developmental agency. Since then, the Cauca Valley Corp., working closely with a mission from the World Bank, has been gathering the engineering data needed to fix its own goal and methods. The objective, as finally visualized, became nothing less than a quick and dramatic boost in the standard of living of the valley...
...mission was a hint that the bank would lend a reported $20 million to $27 million for imported equipment and machinery. As for the rest. Finance Minister Carlos Villaveces has promised that "the government will see this through, come what may." To help raise funds, the government recently doubled Cauca Valley land taxes, without a murmur of complaint from the hopeful landholders...