Word: colombian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Antidrug Chief General Barry McCaffery jetted into a Colombian military base last week, he saw the makings of a nightmare outside his window. "It was astonishing," the former Army general told TIME. "In some southern districts of Colombia, about a third of the land is under coca cultivation." From the air, it seemed that every jungle clearing was inlaid with coca bushes. The view impressed upon McCaffery that despite the loss of five U.S. servicemen--whose reconnaissance aircraft slammed into a jungle mountain hidden by clouds days before his visit--the Clinton Administration's war against Colombian drug cartels...
McCaffery's mission aimed to do just that. At the Tres Esquinas military base, the general visited U.S. military instructors who are training a battalion of Colombian police commandos in antidrug warfare--combat skills that the Colombians use to battle the rebels across the board. Under U.S. law the advisers are forbidden to join the Colombian police on raids, but already their presence has rattled the leftist rebels known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). If the U.S. "intervenes further in Colombia," FARC leaders said last week, "its troops will go home dead or wounded...
Because Latin pop draws from different cultures, it also has the power to bring people together. "Latino people have a golden key in their hands, a common treasure," says Colombian-born pop-rocker Shakira, 22, who is working with Gloria Estefan to adapt her acclaimed 1998 Spanish-language CD Donde Estan los Ladrones? into English. "That treasure is fusion. The fusion of rhythms, the fusion of ideas. We Latinos are a race of fusion, and that is the music we make. And so at the dawn of a new millennium, when everything is said and done, what could possibly happen...
...when Estefan makes that kind of prediction, industry moguls listen. A former drummer and the husband of pop diva Gloria Estefan, he has emerged as the godfather of Latin pop. Estefan produced four songs on Ricky Martin's new album. He has also mentored and produced Jon Secada and Colombian superstar Shakira, whose first English-language album is scheduled to be released early next year. Some have dubbed Estefan the Berry Gordy of Latin music, a comparison he does not discourage. "I think what happened with R.-and-B. at Motown is what's happening with Latin music...
...Colombian rebels who once promised to execute those responsible for the slaying of three U.S. citizens near the Venezuelan border seem unlikely to punish the real killers. A spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) claimed at the time that the three U.S. humanitarian workers--Terence Freitas, 24, from California; Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, from Hawaii; and Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, from Wisconsin--were abducted and killed by a local squad leader acting without higher orders. Their bullet-riddled bodies were discovered March 4. But Colombian military intelligence intercepted a radio conversation between the squad leader...