Word: su
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...Suárez made his way past his colleagues in search of some privacy. Adding to the indignity of the moment, he'd run out of toilet paper, so he tore off the sleeves of a tattered T-shirt in his backpack. He squatted behind a tree and, to help balance himself, used both hands to drive his machete into the ground...
...something didn't feel right. As the blade pierced the soil, the metal struck something hard that gave off a hollow thud. Intrigued, Suárez finished his business, hitched up his pants, and began rooting around with his hands. After burrowing down about one foot, he discovered the top of a blue plastic five- gallon container. Suárez pried off the lid. Like foam in a beer stein, a white substance topped the 30-inch-tall barrel. Was it cocaine? Suárez plunged his hands into the powder, which turned out to be ant poison, then pulled...
...Suárez's heart raced. Each plastic- wrapped packet contained a thousand banknotes, or 20 million Colombian pesos - the equivalent of nearly $7,000. His wallet had never held more than petty cash, but now he was stuffing his uniform pockets with thick wads of currency. It wasn't easy because his whole body quaked with the snap realization that he, Walter Suárez, a $44-a-week anonymous soldier condemned to a mission impossible, had just won a kind of ad hoc lottery...
...drug deals, extortion rackets, and ransom payments made by the desperate relatives of hostages. By some estimates, such scams earned the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - the country's largest guerrilla army known as the FARC - $500 million annually. But knowing that these riches were tainted didn't stop Suárez. "I was so happy. I'd never seen so much money," he said. "It was like the Virgin had appeared before...
...rules of the market economy suddenly kicked in. And the explosive growth in the money supply, combined with pent-up demand, led to another economic phenomenon: hyperinflation. Cigarettes sold for as much as one million pesos a pack. A roll of toilet paper cost 100,000 pesos, or $34. Suárez recalled a bidding war that broke out over a transistor radio that finally sold for the equivalent of $12,000. Some of the troops, intent on spending every waking hour looking for money, bought their way out of KP by paying colleagues up to 10 million pesos...