Word: farcing
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...unofficial name of this Tennessee-sized swath of jungle officially controlled by the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) evokes a sinister amusement park, and that impression was certainly underscored on my first night there: In the town of San Vicente de Caguan, alongside the FARC's House of Culture - a mostly empty building in which camouflage-clad teenage guerrilla boys and girls flirted - there was an actual carnival. A Ferris wheel spun at dangerous speed above a merry-go-round, while a long, glowing worm on wheels carried people around the town, blaring its police siren...
...sound like a bizarre theme park, but Farclandia is no fun for many Colombians. The government surrendered it to the guerrillas in 1999 in an effort to start peace talks, but that simply legitimized a safe haven in which the FARC could hide the thousands of kidnap victims it holds at any one time, as well as rustle cattle, collect hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes from the cocaine mafias it allows to operate freely in the territory and launch vicious attacks on army and police outposts across its "borders." Still, says FARC ideologue Alfonso Cano, a bearded former...
...Aside from their ice cream expeditions, the FARC guerrillas maintain a discreet profile in San Vicente. Everyone is so scared of them, anyway, that they don't need to bully the townsfolk. Locals whisper that when the guerrillas ask for anything - a cow, free gasoline, a ranch - it's not advisable to refuse. "Up until yesterday, these commanders had spent their lives in the jungle, walking around in mud," says one shopkeeper. "Now they have the best houses, the prettiest girls...
...they're not exactly open to criticism, either. Last January, FARC guerrillas waited until an anti-Marxist priest finished saying mass in the Putumayo district, then walked up to the pulpit and shot him dead in front of his congregation. Local justice is meted out by guerrilla "people's courts" whose judges seldom have a high school diploma. And while the FARC may earn most of its revenue from taxing the cocaine trade, any guerrilla caught sampling the product is executed by his comrades...
...sinister funhouse ambience extends to FARC headquarters, some eight miles up a dirt road in Los Pozos, where I found jungle-hardened guerrillas hunched over computers, rifles hanging off the backs of chairs as they answered their e-mail. (FARC's commanders maintain their own Hotmail accounts.) I was introduced to several FARC commanders, but none was as colorful as Julian Conrado, a balladeer with a goofy mustache who manages to rhyme "Americano" with "imperio romano." He's lost three guitars in battle, he says proudly. "One of my guitars was held up by a Colombian general...