Word: colombian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Some time later, a man appeared at Rodriguez's side with a briefcase. Inside were copies of the Colombian penal code and a letter detailing his surrender proposal, which he suggested Quinn read over...
...nearly a year, the Rodriguez brothers have been trying to cut a deal with the Colombian government in exchange for slap-on-the-wrist punishment. For just as long, impatient drug fighters in Washington have been pressing Bogota to make the narcobosses pay a stiff penalty for their crimes. When Ernesto Samper Pizano was elected President nearly five months ago, the Clinton Administration thought it had assurances that the Rodriguez brothers would not get the deal they wanted...
This week, two months after Quinn's luncheon interview, the Colombian government appears to be willing to reopen discussions of surrender. In a written statement to TIME, Samper said he had concluded that merely chasing after traffickers was not effective. "It is no good to have the cartel bosses in jail if they continue narcotrafficking," he wrote. "We know from experience that it is more important to dismantle the cartels than to incarcerate their leaders. Jailing them is necessary, but it is just not enough." An aide amplified that "the door is open on the surrender program again...
Such debates have their roots in the tenure of the previous Colombian President, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo. His credentials as a drug fighter are undisputed: he ordered the bloody and ultimately successful 17-month campaign against the Medellin cartel. Yet few would deny the vast, perhaps controlling influence of surviving drug lords. While the Medellin cowboys attempted reign by Uzi, shooting four presidential candidates in 1989, the Rodriguezes and fellow members of their cartel are known as the gentle dons. They rely on the quiet clout that a profit estimated by DEA at $7 billion a year can buy. The money...
Some U.S. analysts claim they have purchased at least as big a chunk of the government. Recently retired Bogota DEA chief Joe Toft says narcodollars have influenced "from 50% to 75% of the Colombian Congress." The traffickers have also bought an unknown number of prosecutors, policemen and soldiers. But "their most significant victory," claims a U.S. diplomat, was the surrender program for retiring dons. "The Cali cartel dictated the penal-code reform," he says. Under the 1993 code revisions, drug traffickers who turn themselves in can have their sentences reduced by as much as two-thirds at the discretion...