Word: colombianization
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Lopez, 45, was finally freed on Thursday, almost seven years after his abduction. All told, the guerrillas, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), got nothing out of the Cali operation - and they finally seem to have come to the conclusion that their decade-long orgy of political hostage-taking has gotten them nowhere. (See pictures of FARC guerrillas in their jungle stronghold...
...FARC, then one of the world's largest and fiercest insurgencies, started targeting Colombian senators, governors and other power brokers, hoping to swap them for imprisoned guerrillas. The rebels also demanded a demilitarized zone to negotiate prisoner exchanges with government envoys. But conservative President Alvaro Uribe, who took office in 2002, refused to play along. With strong U.S. backing, he beefed up Colombia's once dysfunctional military and started delivering body blows to the FARC. Last year was the guerrillas' most disastrous year ever. The rebels lost three of their top seven commanders (two were killed, one died...
...prisoners to be liberated, and the FARC by most accounts has sworn off taking any others. That doesn't necessarily mean the rebels will stop nabbing military and police prisoners, as well as non-political civilian hostages, of which they still have hundreds in their clutches. But war-weary Colombians are cautiously hoping that their long national kidnapping nightmare is in its final throes. "In the best case," the Colombian newsmagazine Semana wrote this week, "the liberations could be the first step toward negotiations to bring...
Vatican insiders know Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos well. The steely-eyed Colombian Cardinal, 79, served for nine years as head of the Congregation for Clergy, where in 2002 he drew the wrath of victims of American-priest sex abuse for denying that the Catholic Church had any particular problem with pedophiles in its ranks. But most of all, Castrillón is a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist. He was named by Pope John Paul II as the go-between in relations with fringe traditionalist groups like the Lefebvrites, whose official name is the Society...
According to the Vatican official, Castrillón was bound to forge ahead as he pleased. Born in Medellín, Colombia, he has displayed courage, tenacity and a willingness - even an eagerness - to mix church and state. He has gone deep into Colombian jungles to mediate between leftist guerrillas and right-wing death squads, and once, while still a bishop, he showed up at the house of cocaine king Pablo Escobar disguised as a milkman. Revealing himself, Castrillón implored Escobar to confess his sins, which, presumably at some considerable length, the vicious gangster did. "Anyone who's had interaction...