Word: generality
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...growing coffee, corn or cotton. Despite the fact that the government has begun cracking down (it has burned more than 2,000 tons of marijuana since autumn), it is not inclined to be too harsh on the farmers. Says José Miguel Garavito, the swashbuckling operations officer of the Attorney General's antidrug unit: "It is hard to blame a farmer who is growing corn and earning a few pesos for switching when he seen his neighbors working no harder to grow marijuana and earning lots of pesos. The traffickers come in, give them the seeds and then collect the crop...
...Americans stupidly land here, and then they naively make up the same lies to explain their presence," according to General José Maria Villarreal Abarca, commander in the northern provinces. "They say they got lost." Shortly after he spoke, one of his deputies came in and reported that three Americans had been caught making an emergency landing. The general went to investigate...
Getting caught is not the only risk facing drug pilots. The peninsula is littered with planes that were overloaded with tons of marijuana and crashed while trying to take off. General Villarreal says he has found, within four months, eleven downed planes and the bodies of ten smugglers. Local fishermen tell tales of planes crashing into the sea and their crews being devoured by sharks...
...Guajira peninsula under military restrictions, and within two months, the government claims to have captured 15 planes, including a four-engine DC-6; seized 36 boats; confiscated 259 weapons, including an American M16; and arrested 318 people. More than 3,000 troops are taking part in the effort. Says General Villarreal: "There are so many fields under marijuana cultivation that we couldn't possibly destroy them all. So we are operating against the warehouse and loading areas, the beaches and airstrips. The traffickers have already suffered major injury because they can't move the marijuana out and it's losing...
...they have really prepared such fallback positions, the scattered Khmer Rouge could become bothersome bees for the Vietnamese. But that was small consolation; they had lost their country as a result of General Dung's brilliant offensive, and all indications were that there will be a Vietnamese presence in Cambodia for a long time to come...