Word: colombianization
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...poem, "The Grapes of Time," by Andres Eloy Blanco, an expatriate in Madrid weepily laments that he's not toasting midnight back in Caracas with his mother. That made it all the more emotional last week when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in his new role as mediator between the Colombian government and Colombia's fierce Marxist guerrillas, raised hopes that three of the rebels' hundreds of civilian hostages would be reunited with their families on New Year...
...hostage release collapsed as 2007 ticked away. Many had hoped it would not only revive peace talks to end Colombia's bloody, four-decade-old civil war, but also be a precursor to freeing three Americans held by the guerrillas. The debacle has now left Chavez looking humiliated, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe looking churlish and the leftist rebels, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces - known by their Spanish acronym, the FARC - looking more than ever like the deceitful thugs their critics insist they've become over the years...
Worse, it left the Colombian peace process looking as tangled as the jungle where waiting Venezuelan helicopters were supposed to retrieve the hostages. Nearby in Villavicencio, Colombia, south of Bogota, observers from France, Switzerland and six Latin American countries, as well as celebrity onlookers like American film director Oliver Stone, packed their bags and left shaking their heads. As he departed, Stone, who has a penchant for things guerrilla, said, "Shame on Colombia," referring to what was widely seen as meddling by President Uribe that may have helped sink the release operation...
There's enough blame to go around. In principle, the FARC agreed earlier this month to release former Colombian Congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez and politician Clara Rojas, who were kidnapped six years ago. The third hostage was Rojas' 3-year-old son, Emmanuel, whose father is said to be one of the FARC captors. They were to be freed days before New Year's Eve. But when nothing happened last weekend, and when the FARC kept failing to provide Venezuelan officials with geographical coordinates for the release site, doubts began to rise...
...There are very real security concerns that are being neglected," says Martin Joyce, the South America defense analyst for Jane's. "One is the Amazon region where drug traffickers are operating with impunity. Secondly, we are also seeing an increased presence of Colombian guerrillas and that requires mobility and that is whey we see helicopters and military airlift high on the priority list. Then there is the new oil reserves and part of the reason for the procurement of a nuclear submarine is because they said they need to protect those resources...