Word: colombia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That relationship is especially intense in Latin America, where it seems Correspondent Bernard Diederich has been spending much of the past few months waving to diplomatic acquaintances imprisoned in one foreign embassy or another. "It has reached an epidemic stage," Diederich cabled from Bogotá, Colombia, where he was covering the seizure of the Dominican Republic's embassy. "In El Salvador, I stood vigil outside the French, Venezuelan, Costa Rican, Panamanian and Spanish embassies. I reported on the burning of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City. Once it was skyjacking. Now it's the seizure of a foreign...
...diplomatic theater of the absurd, nothing could quite compare with the continuing siege in Colombia. The stage was the broad Avenida de Carrera in central Bogotá, cordoned off around the three-story embassy of the Dominican Republic; the handmade red-white-and-blue flag flying outside the building was that of a Colombian revolutionary group called M-19, for April 19 Movement. More than a dozen of their masked and armed guerrillas, including at least four women, remained in full control of the compound they seized almost two weeks ago in a gunfight during an Independence Day reception given...
Clad in green sweatsuits and clutching gym bags, a group of young men and women nonchalantly kicked a soccer ball outside the gates of the Dominican Republic's embassy in Bogota, Colombia. Inside the compound, Ambassador Diogenes Mallol was entertaining fellow members of the diplomatic corps in celebration of his country's independence day. Around noon, U.S. Ambassador Diego C. Asencio, 48, a Spanish-born career diplomat, said his farewells. Just as he was moving toward his armored Chrysler Imperial limousine, the soccer players pulled automatic weapons from their gym bags and blasted their way through the embassy...
Among the estimated 50 hostages were Asencio and 14 other ambassadors, including those of Uruguay, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, Egypt, Mexico, Haiti, Brazil and the Vatican. The terrorists identified themselves as members of the April 19 Movement, or M-19, one of the most active of Colombia's half-dozen guerrilla groups. Their demands: a $50 million ransom, publication of their revolutionary manifestoes and the release of all political prisoners, many of whom are M-19 members facing trial by court-martial on charges ranging from armed robbery to kidnaping and murder...
Even by the peculiar standards of contemporary terrorism, M-19 stands out as a bizarre and incoherent group. It began in 1970 as a rightist movement supporting former Military Dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who ruled Colombia from 1953 to 1957. The strongly nationalist organization gradually incorporated leftists; its current ranks, according to a U.S. intelligence report, include Castroite, Guevarist, Maoist and Trotskyite revolutionaries...