Word: farce
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...Despite a promise not to sabotage the presidential elections, the country's most powerful rebel group, known as the FARC, have made their presence felt in the run-up to the vote. Rebels have blockaded highways with burnt-out buses, bombed an oil pipeline and cut power to the country's most important port city. They are urging voters to cast their ballots for the candidate who has the most "coherent proposal for peace," implying anyone but the hardline Uribe...
...smaller ELN rebel group is in preliminary peace talks with the government, but the FARC have refused to negotiate with Uribe, calling his government "illegitimate and fascist." Most recently, they rejected his overture for talks on an exchange of jailed rebels for dozens of high-profile hostages being held in rebel jungle camps. Perhaps they know that it's never good to sit down at the bargaining table with someone, like Uribe, who is negotiating from such a position of strength...
...grow coca because of basic Smithian economics: the market equilibrium price is far higher than other crops like coffee or soy. Washington’s “Apocalypse Now”-like burning of fields might work in areas with violent seditious guerrillas like Colombia’s FARC, but in Bolivia, aerial spraying destroys peoples’ opportunities to feed their families. Burning crops in distant Inca lands only prevents politicians from facing the real problem of demand, whether it is in Amsterdam’s dark alleys or Los Angeles’ celebrity pubs...
...apparent elimination, says U.S. ambassador to Colombia William Wood, AUC members have "lost their disguise. Their character as narcoterrorists has been revealed." The AUC started out two decades ago as a right-wing counter to Colombia's Marxist guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But after the 1993 death of Medellín boss Pablo Escobar, Colombia's drug cartels broke up into less powerful organizations. That created the opportunity for the AUC and the FARC to become more deeply involved in Colombia's cocaine trade. Both claim they only "tax" coca cultivation and cocaine traffic...
...group is split between those (including Guzmán) who eventually want to turn the organization into a political force, and a smaller faction that still favors military apocalypse. Still, the new Shining Path's role model - and partner, say analysts - is the 18,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces (farc) in neighboring Colombia, whose gratuitous violence and narco-wealth have made them a mafia in rebel fatigues. A farc-Shining Path merger is the last thing South America's economically beleaguered Andes region needs. In the Lima shantytown of Raucana - the only community Shining Path ever built in its bloody...