A Twisted Sort of Miracle

'Pilar Molano, a miracle amidst terrorism.' From Semana magazine.

For me, this headline captures what is either infuriatingly close-minded or touchingly naive about religious faith.

Pilar Molano in happier times.

I should be clear that I'm not against faith, which can provide comfort in times of crisis, like this one. And that I'm happy that Pilar Molano survived the bombing at the Andino shopping mall and hope that she recovers completely.

But calling a close call with death like this one a 'miracle' is a bizarre distortion of the world. Explicitly understood, a miracle is a supernatural intervention by a God to aid someone. If I could somehow suddenly jump 100 feet high or write like Shakespeare, then that would be a miracle.

But if God exists and he or she wanted to help Pilar Molano, then the about the worst way to do it would be to make her the victim of a near-fatal terrorist attack and then let her narrowly survive it, albeit with a terribly mutilated leg.

If God really wanted to perform a miracle for Pilar, he or she might have helped Pilar to achieve her life's dream, whatever it may be: playing music professionally, living in Hawaii, or flying an airplane. Or whatever.

But submitting Pilar to a incomprehensible terror attack and letting her barely survive it, seems like a twisted sort of miracle.

As for the bombing itself, authorities appear to still be at a loss as to the culprits. Fingers have pointed at three different groups, however:

The ELN guerrillas, who in February planted a bomb in a sidewalk above Bogotá's bullfighting stadium, killing two police officers and injuring about 20. But the ELN have denied being behind this bombing.

The Úsuga Clan, also known as the Urabeños or Clan del Golfo. The clan is into narcotrafficking, and illegal mining, which it protects with mass murder. But the clan doesn't appear to operate in Bogotá, and random, unclaimed terror attacks don't seem to be its style or in its interests.

The shadowy Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo (MRP), a group with links to public university students, which has planted bombs in Bogotá public restrooms and other sites over the last several years. But if the MRP did commit this terror attack, then why doesn't it claim it?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Pure and Simple Terrorism

Memorials to the three women killed hang in the Centro Andino shopping mall.
(Photo: El Espectador) 

The bomb which exploded in a shopping mall bathroom yesterday killing three people and injuring at least eight caused far fewer human victims than many other Colombian attacks, but in its own way was much more terrifying.

Pablo Escobar's bombing of the DAS headquarters in 1989 killed 70 people (including the grandmother of a friend of mine) and injured many more. The Feb. 2003 FARC bombing of the exclusive El Nogal Club in north Bogota killed 36 people and injured more than 200. In November of that same year, FARC guerrillas threw hand grenades into a Bogotá Beer Company bar and neighboring restaurant, which North American Plan Colombia workers frequented, killing one Colombian woman and injuring 73 other people, including three Americans. This February, a bomb exploded on the sidewalk above Bogotá's bullfighting stadium, killing two police officers and injuring 20 more people.

As terrible as those attacks were, at least they were directed at some recognizable target: the DAS (Colombia's FBI), the business elite, U.S. government employees, the police, etc. But yesterday's bombing in the Centro Andino shopping mall had no rhyme or reason we've learned of, and nobody has claimed responsibility for it. The victims were common people, if likely wealthy ones, and the bombers could have had no way to know who would be inside that women's bathroom at that moment. One of those killed, Julie Huynh, a 23-year-old Frenchwoman doing social work in Colombia, was a friend of friends of mine.

That gives this bombing a special sort of horror, like a vehicle mowing down an anonymous crowd of pedestrians: the feeling that fatal violence could occur anywhere, with no reason, and that there's no way to avoid the risk - besides perhaps staying at home in bed.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A City Under Siege?

A soldier, automatic rifle in hand, stands watch on Calle 26 today.

 If Bogotá feels as tho it's under siege these days, there's a reason for that. Two small bombs, called 'petardos' exploded last week, injuring more than a dozen people. The bombings may have been intended to mark the 50th anniversary of the ELN, who are Colombia's second guerrilla group. Other small bombs set off on central Bogotá plazas injured nobody but scattered ELN literature.

In fact, today authorities arrested some 15 people suspected of participation in the explosions. Many of the arrestees turned out to be leftist activists, including some who had contracts with the city of Bogotá (whose mayor Gustavo Petro happens to be an ex-M19 Guerrilla leader). The fingering of leftists will produce accusations that a witch hunt is going on. Authorities say they identified the suspects via information in cellphones used as triggers in other petardos which did not explode. Let's hope they make the evidence public so that others, including the media, can examine its veracity.

Whenever dramatic, violent events like this one make headlines and turn out the high security, it's impossible not to observe that mundane dangers, such as air pollution, malnutrition and traffic accidents, kill and injure many more Bogotanos, but never generate such an official response or public concern.

Soldiers on guard in Teusaquillo.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

How to Get Away With Financing Terrorism

A mural in Bogotá shows bananas and victims of violence. 

Between 1989 and 2004 the Chiquita banana company paid millions of dollars to Colombian guerrillas and paramilitary groups.

The organizations are or were classified as terrorists by the U.S., Colombian and European governments. And, while Chiquita was paying terrorists millions, the organizations were violating human rights in all kinds of horrific ways: torturing, massacring, kidnapping and driving peasants off of their lands and out of their homes. While Chiquita was paying off the paramilitaries, they murdered 4,000 people in Uraba province and drove 60,000 off of their land, according to the leftist organization COHA.

Chiquita claims that it had no choice but to make these payments in order to protect its workers from murder

and kidnapping. But the companies' critics charge that Chiquita also paid the paramilitaries, at least, in return for the far-right organization's repressing unions and peasants - sometimes with violence.

Read horrific accounts of paramilitary violence here.

The paramilitaries also smuggled at least one shipment of weapons - and perhaps several more - into Colombia thru a port controlled by Chiquita's subsidiary Banadex.

And Chiquita clearly did have an alternative to funding terrorists: it could have pulled out of Colombia.

In 2007, Chiquita, whose annual revenues are in the billions, paid a $25 million fine to the U.S. government for funding terrorists. (If you or I funded terrorists, we'd probably go to prison. But Chiquita's ex-lawyer is U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.)

The Colombian victims of the terrorist groups which Chiquita was funding received nothing.

However, 4,000 relatives of those victims sued Chiquita in U.S. courts - and yesterday their lawsuit got nixed.

The court didn't reject the lawsuit based on the facts of what happened. Chiquita confessed that it paid off the terrorists, and the terror groups' actions are public record. However, the court ruled that the plaintiffs couldn't sue Chiquita in the U.S. because the crimes were committed in Colombia.

But the plaintiffs' lawyers argue that the decisions to fund the terrorists were made in Chiquita's U.S. corporate offices. According to the Associated Press and Wikipedia, a Chiquita executive wrote a note saying the payments were the "cost of doing business in Colombia" and pointed out the "need to keep this very confidential - people can get killed." Chiquita's outside attorneys had also advised the company that the payments violated U.S. anti-terror laws, but the company continued paying until it sold its Colombian interests in 2004.

The plaintiffs' attorneys say they'll appeal.

Perhaps the victims can now sue Chiquita in Colombia - except that the company sold its Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, in 2004, and no longer has assets here the plaintiffs could sue for.

The lesson: If you're going to finance terrorists, it helps to be a rich, well-connected multinational.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

'If the media didn't exist, then there wouldn't be terrorism.'

'If the media didn't exist, then there wouldn't be terrorism.'

That was a surprising and disturbing comment from Pres. Santos, reminiscent of some of ex-Pres. Uribe's ideas. Santos was speaking in Cartagena, when he made the very true observation that terrorists live off of the attention they receive, mostly from the media. But Santos then went on suggest that some journalists arrived at the scenes of guerrilla terrorist attacks suspiciously quickly - suggesting that they had foreknowledge of the crimes.

It may certainly be true that some media organizations here - most prominently Venezuelan-run Telesur - may sympathize or even support the guerrillas, the president shouldn't toss out such grave accusations without offering evidence. It's particularly surprising coming from Santos, whose family is the historical owner of the El Tiempo newspaper, which of course reports fully on terrorist attacks.

While it is true that such groups would probably lose much of their motive for causing terror if nobody heard about it, that's only possible in a dictatorship. Santos has his own motive for wanting coverage limited - the attention is hurting his popularity and his chances for a second term. The real solution to this violence is addressing its sources: poverty and the illegal drug trade. For that, the world should give serious consideration to another of Santos' proposals: drug decriminalization.

Santos must be particularly and understandably frustrated by recent guerrilla attacks near the Pacific Coast town of Tumaco, which have left the area without electricity for a week. In fact, several workers sent to repair power poles bombed by the FARC were killed by land mines apparently laid by the guerrillas.

Tumaco is a small, most Afro-Colombian town, whose humble residents are exactly the sort of people whom the guerrillas say they are defending, not terrorizing. But the region is also a valuable cocaine-exporting region, and guerrillas, narcos and paramilitaries all want to wrest its control away from each other and the state.

The region's long-suffering residents, who also include many indigenous people, are caught in the middle.

"We don't understand why our region has been hit so hard by violence," Tumaco Mayor Victor Gallo Ortiz, "we don't know what to do."

Everybody should sympathize with Mr. Ortiz and the people of Tumaco. But intimidating the press is not the solution.



By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Pablo Escobar's Bloody Trail in Bogotá

The tomb of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in Bogotá's Central Cemetery. One of Escobar's assassins shot him while campaigning in south Bogotá in 1989.

Escobar, lord of evil.

Cocaine king Pablo Escobar is back in the news, thanks to a TV miniseries about his life called 'Pablo Escobar, Lord of Evil.'

Escobar was born and lived in Medellin, where he built a narco empire and wrought havoc - altho he also made himself a folk hero by distributing jobs and money to the city's poor.

Here in Bogotá, Escobar, who had no qualms about committing mass-murder, also left a trail of tragedy and terror.

1985: The Justice Palace on Plaza Bolivar in flames. 

In 1985, the M-19 guerrillas invaded the Justice Palace on Plaza Bolivar and took the magistrates hostage. The attack and ensuing military counter-attack ended with more than 100 people dead, including 11 of the 12 justices, and the building in flames. According to lots of evidence, Escobar helped finance the attack because he shared the M-19's opposition to the practice of extraditing Colombian drug traffickers to the U.S. for trial, and in order to destroy the documentary evidence inside the Justice Palace building.

The Congress building on Plaza Bolivar,
where Escobar briefly held a seat.

Ironically, just three years before, Escobar, who had been elected an alternative congressman, had taken a seat in the Congress building on the plaza's south side. Reportedly, people rushed to get out of his way in the passageways.

In 1986, Escobar's assassins shot and killed Guillermo Cano, publisher of the El Espectador newspaper, which had bravely editorialized against the drug lords. But that wasn't enough for Escobar. Three years later, he bombed the newspaper's printing plant. El Espectador has never since recovered completely . For two decades after, it published only as a weekly.

Aftermath of the DAS bombing. 

That same year, Escobar car bombed the DAS, or secret police, headquarters in Bogotá, destroying the building and killing 60 people and injuring 600.

Just a sample of the Lord of Evil's doings in Bogotá.

Escobar finally gets his own medicine:
Dead on a Medellin rooftop.

For the record, Canal Capital is doing its own series, about Escobar's victims.

Residencias Tequendema, in Bogotá's Centro Internacional, was used by the government to hold Escobar's wife and children during the final phase of the hunt for the cartel leader in 1993. Escobar's son was here during the cellphone conversation which enabled the hit squad to locate Escobar in Medellin and shoot him down on a rooftop.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Risks of Reporting

Londoño's bombed car - it's amazing more people weren't killed.

Theirs were very different histories, styles and viewpoints - but both show why it's still risky to be a journalist in Colombia.

Romeo Langlois is a youngish French journalist held by the FARC guerrillas, who siezed him after he fled during a firefight while accompanying Colombian soldiers.

Fernando Londoño and ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe

Fernando Londoño was interior minister for Pres. Alvaro Uribe and continues being a fervent defender of all things Uribista - as well as of the military, Catholicism, business interests and everything conservative. I've sometimes listened to his morning radio show, which is egoistically named 'The Hour of Truth,' and read his newspaper columns, and I disagree with most of what he says, including most of his political opinions as well as his addiction to automobiles and love for golf - an elitist, environmentally-destructive excuse for a sport. Nevertheless, Londoño has every right to express his opinions, and those undoubtedly were part of the reason that a would-be assassin jumped from a motorcycle and attached a bomb to Londoño's car the other day. The bomb killed two of Londoño's bodyguards and injured dozens of people on the street, but only lightly wounded Londoño himself.

Romeo Langlois at work. 

Agree with him or not, Londoño had every right to express his views, which contributed to public debate.

Colombia is much less dangerous for journalists than someplace like Mexico, where drug violence is raging. And, Colombia has become much safer than it was in decades past, when Pablo Escobar and other narcos intimidated and murdered journalists who didn't write what they were told to.

Langlois' and Londoño's travails are reminders of why we should be grateful to the people take risks to provide us with news, analyze it and opinionate on it, in newspapers, radio, television and on the 'net.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The FTA's Explosive Arrival

The scene in north Bogotá after today's car bomb.

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement arrived with a bang today, as a deadly bomb went off in north Bogotá while protesters denounced the treaty in central Bogotá.

In the evening in La Candelaria:
'The people provide the dead.'
Which dead and which people
do they mean?

The bomb went off in wealthy north Bogotá, which is how the presumably leftist bombers likely justified it to themselves - but on the street there were likely rich and poor, young and old, lawyers, maids, students and street cleaners; supporters and opponents of the FTA. And the target, ex-Minister Fernando Londoño himself was only lightly injured. Two people were killed and dozens injured. 

The attack caused Pres. Juan Manuel Santos to cancel a trip to Cartagena, where he was to inaugurate the Free Trade Agreement. But that's no more than a formality - the agreement, good or bad, will be implemented anyway. 

A group, who I suspect would call themselves
anarco-communists, walk toward the protest. 

'Señores: This nation is not for sale or rent.'

Satire: 'For Sale: Colombia. Great savings!
For info, see Juan Manuel Santos.'

If the attack was directed at Londoño personally rather than the government generally, then it'll likely accomplish the opposite of what they want. Londoño was already barred from holding public office for 15 years, of which eight remain, for alledgedly favoring a private company for which he had worked. Now, Londoño will will become the object of sympathy and a sort of hero, and his influence will rebound. 

Uncle Sam carries a hammer labeled 'TLC.'

Coffee icon Juan Valdez orders Yankees to go home. 

I agree that the FTA will likely harm Colombia overall. Some industries, such as flowers and exotic fruit will benefit. But it'll open the country to a flood of cheap, sometimes subsidized, agricultural goods. (A report issued yesterday by non-governmental human rights organizations concluded that the FTA will harm 70% of the country's peasants.) The government insists that the FTA will benefit Colombia macroeconomically. That might be true, if the GDP grows as a result as Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Natural Resources scoop more material out of the ground and ship it overseas. But isn't a nation supposed to worry first about its poorest, like those peasants who will be overwhelmed by foreign agri-business? And, how about the country's quality of life, as more foreign cars and motorcycles clog the streets and poison the air, while Colombia's domestic car assembly plants go idle?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Chiquita: Victim or Victimizer?

A judge in Antioquia has decided to drop an investigation against executives of the Chiquita banana company, concluding that the millions of dollars the company paid to Colombia's leftist guerrillas and later to paramilitary groups were extortion, not voluntary protection payments. 

The distinction is fundamental for the lawsuits and other cases the company faces: Did Chiquita pay off these violent groups voluntarily, to gain benefits, or because it feared attacks and felt it had no choice. 

Some beg to differ. A Bogotá court has ordered that Chiquita's Colombia properties be used to pay off the paramilitaries' victims (a mostly symbolic move, since the company sold its plantations in 2004). And Colombian high officials have expressed a desire to extradite Chiquita's executives, altho Colombia apparently never filed such a request. (Probably, Colombian officials realized that such a futile request would only show Colombia's toothlessness. Chiquita, an emblematic U.S. company, is well-connected in Washington: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was Chiquita's attorney.) The company also faces lawsuits in the U.S. by families of alleged victims of paramilitary groups which received money from Chiquita.

Chiquita can also point out that it came forward and voluntarily told U.S. officials about the payments, and paid a $25 million fine to the U.S. government for financing terrorists. Undoubtedly, Chiquita was only one of many companies which made such payments, and likely still pay off violent outlaw groups in Colombia. Chiquita can also point out that the Colombian military supposedly even encouraged Chiquita to make the payments. 

While Chiquita undoubtedly faced threats, and likely could not have done business in Colombia without paying off the outlaw organizations which controlled the area around their banana plantations. But it's also likely that Chiquita had more in mind than just protecting its workers, as the company claims. After all, Chiquita is also in the business of making money - lots of it. The company could have stopped making these payments at any time by selling its plantations and pulling out of Colombia. Instead, it stayed and continuing doing business until 2004. Imprisoned paramilitary leaders have also reportedly said that they imported weapons using Chiquita's port.

It's difficult to understand how any company could make payments to an organization which is at the same time terrorizing civilians and claim it was an ethical, moral decision. Just imagine if the case had instead happened in the U.S., and a company had for years paid off a terrorist group which was murdering civilians and driving them out of their homes. Would any justificiation have been conceivable?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Protesting Police Brutality

A poster for memorializing a student alleged killed by police nearby on Seventh Ave. in 2006,

A group of young people protested alleged police brutality this afternoon on Seventh Ave.

A plaque on Seventh Ave.
commemorates a youth
during a demonstration.

While police brutality has certainly occurred, I've also seen many examples of police being rather restained in the face of threatening and even violent protesters. (Protest scenes here, here and see what they did to the police here.) However, those incidents happened here in Bogotá, where lots of eyes are watching.

The protesters deserve respect and admiration. However, their focus on the official state forces also troubles me. Colombia's government has committed crimes - and acknowledged them. But, for the nation's left-wing guerrillas, commit crimes against humanity is often their modus operandi, and leftist groups turn a blind eye to that.

The government allowed this group to protest on Seventh Ave., just a few blocks from the capitol. That doesn't sound like a terrorist state to me.

Protesters making posters on Seventh Ave. They asked me to hide their faces. 

'The state is the terrorist.' Well, Colombia's government certainly has committed human rights crimes - and acknowledged them, at least sometimes, and paid compensation to victims. But the country's violent leftist guerrilla groups the FARC and ELN make violence their way of life, and almost never apologize for it. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Bloody Trail Connecting Bogotá to Beirut?

Beirut, Lebanon. Allegedly, Colombian cocaine money flows thru here. 

'Outlaw it and outlaws will profit from it.' That oft-proven rule is why yesterday's New York Times story about the Lebanese organization Hezbollah profiting from Colombian cocaine is no surprise.

Money launderer?
Photo: Page Lebanon

After all, in recent years Colombian traffickers have smuggled lots of their product into Europe via Africa. And you can bet that multinational consumer giants like Cargill aren't doing the shipping. That's why the illegal drug trade seems like a logical revenue opportunity for outlawed groups like Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Washington recently blacklisted and shut down the Lebanese-Canadian Bank for allegedly hosting accounts used by Hezbollah money launderers. But this Lebanese blogger points out that several of Lebanon's much larger and notoriously secretive banks are also suspected of money laundering.

So, it's likely that the closing of this single bank affects only a sliver of the region's money laundering - and the Times article even reports that many suspicious accounts were simply transferred to other banks.

Decriminalizing drugs would deprive Hezbollah of much of its cocaine income. (But Washington should also recognize that it needs to engage Hezbollah, not demonize it. Hezbollah is a state-within-a-state, with its own army and health services and a big role in Lebanon's government. Hezbollah  clearly plays an important role in Lebanese society, and it won't go away anytime soon.)

Hunting down dirty money. 

I saw aspects of Hezbollah's South American connection 2002, when I interviewed Lebanese businessmen in Paraguay's Ciudad del Este, a border city infamous for smuggling of drugs, weapons and people. Many of the Lebanese traders there expressed support for Hezbollah and told me that they sent money to the organization - altho only to support its charitable works, of course. A few years after my visit, one of the men I'd inteviewed on the Brazilian side was arrested on terrorism financing charges. The story I was working on was hooked to suspicions that the 9-11 Al Qaeda attacks in New York might have been planned in the region - but no evidence for that ever appeared.

Yesterday's New York Times story also reported that Hezbollah is in the African diamond smuggling business. Diamonds are great for smuggling, because they're so small, valuable and difficult to trace. Slip a few dozen diamonds into a toothpaste tube and you've got thousands of dollars hidden in your bathroom kit. Many African diamonds are known as 'blood diamonds' because their sale finances civil wars and insurgencies.

Certifiied diamonds and emeralds for sale in central Bogota. 

Here in Bogotá, I've met many traders in emeralds, one of Colombia's most characteristic exports. But stores here also sell diamonds - altho no diamonds are mined in Colombia. Dealers tell me that most diamonds are smuggled into Colombia, probably from Africa. While diamonds are legal, many African diamonds are not, because they finance violence. On the other hand, cocaine, because it's always illegal, is by nature 'blood cocaine.'

Paid for by cocaine and diamonds? An African child soldier.

It seems inevitable that, when you've got two black market products heading in different directions, they'll be exchanged for each other. So, Colombian cocaine, which finances so much violence here, appears to also finance violence in Africa.

Decriminalizing drugs would reduce violence in Latin America and in Africa as well.

Some might say there's a contradiction here, since diamonds, a legal product, also finance violence. But only a small proportion of the world's diamonds finance violence, while the great majority of cocaine does.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

And Then There Was Only the FARC

Maybe not flower powr yet, but ETA, the Basque terror group, has promised to lay down its arms. 

Yesterday, the Basque terrorist group ETA declared the end of their armed struggle for independence from Spain after 52 years and more than 800 killings.

Madrid train bombing by ETA.

In 2009, Sri Lanka's military defeated the Tamal Tigers, ending 33 years of vicious civil war on the island.

In 1998, the Belfast Agreement incorporated the various armed groups into government, leading to the end of most sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

During the '80s and '90s, various leftist rebel organizations throughout Latin America either seized power (in Cuba), laid down their arms or integrated into their nations' elected governments.

Only in Colombia (and to a small degree in Peru) have armed groups continued a futile insurgency against their governments.

Lost in the past? FARC guerrilla leaders.

To any reasonable observer it's obvious that the age of guerrilla insurgencies is over - at least in the relatively developed, democratic world. Remember that Afghanistan is a tribal state, the Taliban ruled the country for years and the 'elected' government never had much legitimacy. Back when the United States and Soviet Union bankrolled client organizations around the world, guerrilla group had a real chance, and managed to sieze power in Africa and the Middle East.

This isn't to argue that these various groups' causes aren't legit: the Basques, the Tamils and the Kurds (who fight on futilely), certainly deserve autonomous territories, if not states. Colombia, like many developing nations, suffers huge social injustices. But the terrorism committed by these insurgencies has done more damage to their causes than advanced them.

But by integrating themselves into the democratic process, as ETA will likely aim to do, rebel organizations have accomplished more. Take the IRA and the Nepalese communists, who now share power in their respective governments. Here in Colombia, the M-19 demobilized in ----, played an important role in writing Colombia's 1991 Constitution and several ex-M-19ers now sit in Colombia's Congress. Bogotá's next mayor may very well be ex-M-19 leader Gustavo Petro.

A FARC bombing. Still fighting, but for what? 

In contrast, the FARC and ELN guerrilla groups have only succeeded in scarring the image of the left in Colombia. Why else is Colombia one of the very few Latin nations with a conservative government? It was because Colombians got fed up with having to live under seige from chronic violence and turned to a president who led a no-holds-barred military campaign against the guerrillas, with only limited concern for human rights. It's why only a tiny proportion of Colombians still sympathize with the guerrillas.

Why do the FARC and ELN still insist on armed struggle, when they've gotten nowhere and are further than ever from victory? It's in part because of the guerrillas' obsolete mindset about Communism, Revolution and Che Guevara's 'New Man.' But it's also because they've got a huge, guaranteed income from the outlawed drug trade. It's been documented that insurgencies survive longer when they have such a black market income.

As long as drugs are illegal, illegal groups like Colombia's guerrillas (and other outlaws) will enjoy huge incomes and likely continue fighting and killing.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A FARC Resurgence?

Aftermath of the attack in the town of Toribio (Photo: El Tiempo)

The FARC guerrillas attacked six different towns in Cauca Department on Friday, killing four people and injuring 63, most of them civilians, according to El Tiempo.

The attacks included several bombs detonated near public markets. Pres. Juan Manuel Santos called the attacks the guerrilla attacks "cowardly," which is certainly a fair description of using bombs against unarmed, defenseless civilians.

But the FARC long ago lost their idealistic credentials. The deeper issue here is whether this signals a resurgence of the guerrillas, who only ten years ago had the Colombian capital under siege and made much of Colombia no-go territory for both Colombians and foreigners.

Also, at the end of June FARC guerrillas attacked the highway between Medellin and the Caribbean coast, setting off several bombs, burning buses and killing the department's chief of highway police. Another savage, senseless, pointless guerrilla attack - but it was the sort of thing which hadn't happened for a long time.

Colombians elected Santos overwhelmingly last year, to a great degree because they believed that he could continue his predecessor Pres. Alvaro Uribe's success against the guerrillas. Santos had been Uribe's minister of defense. Aware of the recent doubts, Santos called the guerrilla attacks "desperation."

But, desperate or not, the guerrillas showed that they can still rally forces and coordinate attacks while hiding their plans from the government.

Alfonso Cano. Surrounded?

This surge of guerrilla attacks may be linked to the military's claim that they have FARC leader Alfonso Cano surrounded in the mountains along the border between Huila and Cauca departments, in southeastern Colombia near the Ecuadorean border.

Whether they get Cano or not, the recent attacks show that the FARC can still sting. And, even if they kill or capture Cano, the guerrillas will just replace him, as they have others. As long as the guerrillas enjoy huge income from the illegal drug economy, it's not likely that they'll be defeated completely.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Goodbye for Santa Fe's Bombed Building

The bombed building, as it stood for years.

After five years in ruins, city workers are preparing to demolish the bombed building in Bogotá's Santa Fe neighborhood. For most of the neighbors, the ruins are a reminder of a tragedy which might also have killed them.

The day of the explosion (Photo: Flickr)

At 12:15 p.m. on April 15, 2006, a second floor room of an apartment building in the middle of Santa Fe, a gritty neighborhood known as the site of Bogotá's principal red light district, exploded. The explosion killed five people and wounded ten and devastated the building. The first reports said that cooking gas cannisters had ignited. However, investigators then reported finding traces of bomb-making chemicals. They concluded that several university students working with the FARC guerrillas had been building a bomb, or practicing bomb-making, when something went very wrong for them and the neighbors.

People living in blocks around heard the explosion. A woman walking by during the memorial told us that on that day in 2006 she'd walked past the building with a friend on their way to church. The explosion happened during the mass. Thank God, she said, that she hadn't been walking past when the explosion happened. In fact, the explosion did kill a woman walking past that day.

A neighbor who heard the explosion while in church.

Luis Alejandro: Victim or bomber?

Government policy here is to rebuild things destroyed by terrorism. However, I understood that when authorities investigated further they discovered that the building's owners had bought the building with drug money . and so it remained in ruins, a reminder.


That was the official version. When I passed by today, a group was holding a commemoration for Luis Alejandro Concha, a philosophy student killed in the explosion. Those at the event, who included members of Movice, the National Movement of Victims of Crimes by the State, and the young man's parents, claimed that the government had planted the bomb in order to kill the young man.

The parents tell their story. 

Colombia's government and its institutions have certainly been responsible for many illegal killings, as Colombian and international courts have ruled repeatedly. However, I strongly doubt that this was one of them. After all, if the government had considered this philosophy student some sort of threat and wanted him out of the way and been willing to commit murder, they could have found easier ways to do it than blowing up a whole building with occupants inside. Also, such sorts of government crimes do tend to come to light, and I've heard of no evidence that the government was behind this one.

A new mural, vowing that there will be neither pardon nor forgetfullness. 

The scene after demolition: an empty lot and graffiti warnings: don't piss here!

For scenes of kids scavenging from the building and perhaps living in it, look here.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours