Word: colombianizing
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...drug bosses, after he dismissed two judges and ordered the investigation of five other government officials. He had acted after a local judge released Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, one of the cartel's five leaders, from a Bogota prison. Hoyos was the latest victim in a long list of Colombian officials and prominent citizens killed by the drug brigades. The roster includes a Justice Minister, 21 judges, scores of policemen and soldiers, a newspaper editor and more than a dozen other journalists...
...home and abroad when he suggested that the only way to fight cocaine trafficking was to legalize the drug and possibly negotiate with the cartel. "The fight against drug dealing is useless," Gutierrez asserted. "It's time we stopped playing the fool." Gutierrez's proposal reflects the desperation Colombian officials feel as the drug lords gain strength. More and more Colombian lawyers refuse judicial appointments, fearing they will become marked...
...Colombian imprint deepened when Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a Honduran drug dealer, returned from Colombia in 1986 and settled in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. Matta, who has been described as a chief contact between the Medellin suppliers and Mexican smugglers, is wanted by the DEA in connection with the 1985 murder in Mexico of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena Salazar. In Honduras, which does not allow extradition, Matta is living the good life, flamboyantly dispensing money to the poor who line up outside his palatial estate. His assets are said to amount to more than $1 billion; he reportedly paid...
Some Latin American officials go further, laying the entire blame for their drug problems on the U.S. "If there wasn't any demand in the U.S.," says Colombian Justice Minister Enrique Low Murtra, "it wouldn't be grown and produced here." U.S. officials counter that it is illegal production that gives rise to consumption. But such finger pointing, satisfying as it might be, is increasingly hollow. While the U.S. is without question the world's biggest market for narcotics, some of the drug-exporting countries are developing a taste for the goods. In Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, consumption of basuco...
...Extradition appears to be one weapon that the narcotraficantes truly fear. A cartel-sponsored group calling itself the Extraditables has waged a campaign of intimidation against law- enforcement officials, taking as its motto "We prefer a grave in Colombia to a jail in the United States." Although a frightened Colombian Supreme Court struck down the country's extradition treaty with the U.S. last June, even talk of extradition sends the cartel into a fury. On Jan. 24, Colombia's drug lords declared "total war" on anyone who favors extradition. The next day Attorney General Hoyos was assassinated...