Pence (who?) Comes to Colombia?

Yankee go home! Out with Trump/Pence!

United States Vice President Mike Pence visited Bogotá yesterday, causing little polemic - probably because nobody here's heard of him. In contrast to Pence's restraint, U.S. Pres. Trump was meanwhile busy threatening North Korea and Venezuela with military attacks and making news by failing to condemn neo Nazis and white supremecists who staged a violent protest demonstration in the state of Virginia.

Yankee Go Home! (Say the communists)

Pence reportedly talked with Colombian Pres. Santos about the boom in cocaine production and the economic and democratic  in Venezuela, whose violence might spill into Colombia. The U.S. government would like Colombia to resume using aircraft to spray Roundup on coca leaf plantations and to more strongly condemn Venezuela's authoritarian government, which is rewriting its Constitution to its pleasure.

Colombia said that it stopped using the glyphosate herbicide in mid-2015 because of concerns about it causing cancer, although many analysts considered it a conciliatory gesture to the FARC guerrillas, who make a lot of their money off of drug sales. The FARC recently signed a peace deal with the government and are in the process of demobilizing. Whatever the value of aerial spraying, the coca leaf boom was caused by more fundamental factors, such as supply and demand. As for Venezuela, its government is corrupt, incompetent and growing more and more authoritarian. But a military invasion could turn into another Vietnam and would generate tremendous sympathy for the Venezuelan government - and anger toward the U.S. Better to hope that the Maduro government collapses from its own incompetence.

About the only ones criticizing Pence's visit seem to be the communists, who plastered downtown poles with 'Yankee go home!' posters. But the communists are awkward defenders of democracy.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours