Word: marquetalia
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Dates: during 1964-1964
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...orders read like the work of a bored general trying to inject a little life into a standard peacetime troop maneuver: the Colombian army and air force were to invade, conquer and hold the "Independent Republic of Marquetalia," a 1,400-sq.-mi. enemy enclave deep in the Andean highlands 170 miles southwest of Bogotá. But this war is real, and so is Marquetalia. Colombians know it as the stronghold of Pedro Antonio Marín, 34, alias "Tiro Fijo" (Sure Shot), last of the country's bigtime bandit chieftains...
Busy with outbreaks of banditry elsewhere, the federal government let the remote coffee-growing land slip away by default. Marquetalia paid no taxes, and death awaited any police or military force rash enough to cross its borders. Last December Tiro Fijo and his men ambushed an army patrol, killing six soldiers. All told, the army credits him with 200 murders...
...organized teams, given extensive training in anti-guerrilla warfare. To backstop the military campaign, new roads, schools and other civic-action projects were planned to draw the peasants closer to the government. The offensive began four weeks ago as units of five battalions-totaling 3,500 men-poured into Marquetalia...
...Operation Marquetalia" was virtually complete. The yellow-blue-and-red Colombian flag now flew over the area for the first time in its history. Tiro Fijo himself was holed up with 50 to 80 men in a narrow canyon six miles from his old base, and at week's end two army pincer columns were closing in for the kill...
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