Word: colombian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...truth be told, the tradition of the fatigue-clad Latin American guerrilla, striking and vanishing through mountainous jungle terrain with a raised fist and a Marxist slogan, died years before Pedro Antonio Marin - known by his nom de guerre, Manuel Marulanda - passed away two months ago in a remote Colombian forest. But Marulanda's death by heart attack, confirmed over the weekend by the rebels he commanded for 44 years, makes it official: the Che Guevara era, like that of the hemisphere's military dictatorships, is over. And so, for all intents and purposes, is Marulanda's once feared...
...Marulanda, who was believed to be between 78 and 80 years old, was the most powerful and resilient guerrilla leader the world had never heard of. In contrast to the flamboyant lives of rebel colleagues like former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Marulanda's was as thickly veiled as the Colombian jungle he occupied for half a century. But he built what was, at its apex a decade ago, one of the world's largest and fiercest insurrection forces. At the turn of the century, the Marxist-inspired FARC numbered some 20,000 fighters and controlled so much territory that...
...FARC's overwhelming strength sprang from sources as mafioso as they were military. After the demise of Colombian drug cartel bosses like Pedro Escobar, the FARC stepped into the vacuum and earned hundreds of millions of dollars each year protecting traffickers as well as the growers of coca, cocaine's raw material. The guerrillas earned just as much via ransom kidnapping - they're estimated to hold more than 700 Colombian army, police and civilian hostages today, including three U.S. defense contractors whom the FARC abducted...
...computers "came from a FARC terrorist camp." But technically, all that Interpol did in its examination of the computers was to confirm that they had not been messed with post-March 1; it wasn't asked to investigate Chavez's allegations that the computers had been planted by the Colombian military in the first place. "The intelligence is mistaken," Venezuelan Ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez insisted to TIME. "The evidence is a patrana - a tall tale - more anti-Venezuela propaganda from Colombia and the U.S." And the computer data itself, though certainly incriminating if true, is still open...
...Another incentive against raising the stakes with Venezuela is the three U.S. defense contractors who have been held hostage by the FARC since 2003. Chavez has, this year, mediated the release of a handful of high-profile Colombian hostages held by the guerrillas, and sources familiar with the case of the U.S. captives acknowledge that the Venezuelan firebrand could play a similar role in their freedom. It's an admittedly slim hope, but one the U.S. probably won't want to jeopardize at this point...