Word: colombianization
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...shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday, and Pilot Manuel Cervero was nearly home. Cervero was flying a DC-8 cargo jet from Miami to the Colombian capital, Bogotá, a sprawling city of 5 million in the Andes. The plane was cruising at 24,000 ft., 110 miles or ten minutes from El Dorado International Airport. Then, without warning, Cervero and his aircraft ran afoul of one of nature's most destructive phenomena...
...dormant volcano known as Nevado del Ruiz at the exact moment when it came thunderously alive. Within hours, that rebirth had left upwards of 20,000 people dead or missing in a steaming, mile-wide avalanche of gray ash and mud. Thousands more were injured, orphaned and homeless. The Colombian town of Armero (pop. about 22,500) had virtually disappeared. At week's end a huge cloud of ash, rising as high as 45,000 ft., hung dramatically over the area. The pall obscured the sun and caused the normal afternoon temperature of 77° F to drop to about 55?...
...some estimates, up to 150,000 homeless. Colombia's volcanic catastrophe seemed especially poignant in a country that has been plagued since World War II by a seemingly endless series of man-made travails: civil war, leftist terrorism and battles with a powerful and entrenched drug mafia. Said Colombian President Belisario Betancur Cuartas as he personally directed rescue operations last week: "Time and time again we are visited by tragedy. But with the help of God we will overcome...
...disaster, he had been under heavy political attack for his Nov. 6 decision to send army troops against M-19 guerrillas who had taken over Bogotá's Palace of Justice. The spectacular and bloody assault horrified television viewers around the world and left nearly 100 dead, including eleven Colombian Supreme Court Justices...
Some 30 miles from Nevado del Ruiz, in the Lagunilla River canyon, lay Armero. A thriving agricultural center of whitewashed, tile-roofed homes and pastel colonial churches, the town had taken little part in the more turbulent eras of modern Colombian history. The region's wealth is based on cotton and rice farming. The surrounding Lagunilla River canyon contains some of the country's finest agricultural land...