Word: putumayo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...they were outfitted from the back pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine, number 8,000. They operate in 25% of Colombian territory, mainly in the north, along the Venezuelan border and in the central Magdalena River valley. But in the past month, AUC forces pushed deep into the southern Putumayo zone, challenging the FARC's dominance over 150,000 acres of coca plantations--which produce more than half the U.S.'s annual intake of cocaine from Colombia...
...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...
Makeba's new CD, Homeland (Putumayo), her first album of new material in more than six years, is a musical love letter to African culture (one song is titled Africa Is Where My Heart Lies). From the beginning of her career, she has been fearless in singing and speaking about Africa. In 1960, because of her outspokenness about political repression in South Africa, the apartheid regime invalidated her passport. "When I came out [to the U.S.], I wasn't even aware that people would think I was a politician or I was talking or singing politics," says Makeba...