Word: medellin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...city's history. Some 12 million Colombians went to the polls on March 13 to elect the mayors of nearly 1,000 cities and towns. The exercise in democracy -- until now the country's mayors have been appointed by Bogota -- is designed in part to give cities like Medellin new powers to fight such menaces as organized crime and drugs. Some feel that an administration with a direct mandate to govern will find it easier to face these challenges than an outside appointee with no popular support. Yet many fear that decentralization of power will make cities even less governable...
...dangerous is Medellin that the U.S. consulate was closed in 1981 mainly for security reasons. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration pulled its employees out in 1984, and two months ago the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory warning Americans not to visit Medellin. Those who do come find a city in which past and potential violence are quite visible. Guards outside apartment blocks carry shotguns, police shoulder automatic weapons, and occasionally a pistol is glimpsed tucked into a civilian's waistband. Some of the drug barons maintain armories that include U.S.-made AR-15 automatic rifles and Israeli-made...
Established in the 16th century by Spanish conquistadors looking for the fabled riches of El Dorado, Medellin has long been Colombia's main industrial center. On windless days, the skyline is smothered in smog, and a blue haze of pollution drifts upward into the Andes. Medellin-born Fernando Botero, probably Latin America's most renowned contemporary artist, captures the city's self-assuredness in his exaggerated canvases of local life, several of which hang in the Medellin museum. The pinched mouths and tiny noses of Botero's overfed men and women suggest the provincial smugness of an entrepreneurial society that...
...coca plant, from which the substance is derived, grows best not in Colombia but in Bolivia and Peru, where the leaves are made into a rough paste. But turning the paste into the white powder that foreigners consume in such prodigious quantities requires laboratory facilities and technical skills. Medellin had them, as well as convenient proximity to the huge U.S. market and a work force willing to take risks. "There has always been an entrepreneurial spirit in this city," says Jaramillo. "These people found a way of controlling a big business with a growing demand...
...first the arrival of the drug lords generated only mild concern. "They were getting rich off the gringos, an entirely respectable way for a Latin to accumulate wealth," says Maria Alves Osorio, a middle-class mother of three who is now alarmed at Medellin's lawlessness. "Our children weren't taking cocaine, so everything was fine." Many residents welcomed the money that drugs brought to the city and the jobs they created, however temporarily, in the construction and retail businesses. The old estates on the surrounding hills of El Poblado were replaced by luxurious red-brick apartment buildings topped with...