Imagine That! The FARC and Al Qaeda!

A report that the FARC guerrillas are collaborating with al Qaeda to smuggle their drug shipments

The report was published in Morroco's
al Massae newspaper.

across the Sahel region in north Africa on its way to Europe made headlines today - but should be no surprise.

According to the report, the FARC pay a tax of 15% of the cocaine's value to al Qaeda of the Magreb in return for free passage across the Sahel region of north Africa. The story was published today in Morroco's al Massae newspaper, based on local police reports. Al Massae is not a leader in world journalism, and the Morrocan police are not Scotland Yard. However, it'd be difficult to believe that a FARC-al Qaeda link did not exist.

The huge and barely governed Sahel region in north Africa.

After all, profits seek and find the shortest route, and narcotraffickers' goal is to get their product to market. Does anybody believe that the FARC, who kidnap, massacre civilians, recruit children and plant car bombs would shy away from working with al Qaeda just because the fundamentalist Islamic group kidnaps, massacres civilians, recruits children and plants car bombs?

In the past, the FARC have cooperated with terrorist organizations such as the Irish Republican Army and ETA, the Basque separatist group. Why would they avoid al Qaeda?

The FARC will cooperate with anybody - and I suspect that nearly anybody, including legal International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity details how the minerals coltan and tungsten mined and trafficked by the FARC were allegedly sold to legitimate businesses, which used them to manufacture cellphones, computers and other electronics we all use every day.

al Qaeda in the Magreb militants
show off their weapons in the desert. 

corporations, will do business with the FARC, just as long as they expect to profit from it and not suffer bad p.r. or lawsuits. This report by the

Barring effective law enforcement - a rarity in much of Africa and Latin America - illicit goods will flow to where they generate the most profit. For example, I've heard that Colombian cocaine trafficked thru Africa on its way to Europe is traded for blood diamonds, which are then smuggled back to South America.

The European Union's 'security strategy in the Sahel' calls the area "a crisis-shaken region where frontiers blur. Poverty and the fragility of state infrastructures have given free rein to parallel powers, militias, arms-runners and drug dealers."

In a situation like that, there's only one way to stop the FARC, al Qaeda and other outlaw groups from profiting from Colombian cocaine, and that is decriminalizing the drug so that instead legal (if not always law-abiding), tax paying companies buy and sell it.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Maim, Kill and Go Home to Rest

Police examine cars after crash which killed four. The driver of the other vehicle was sent to his home today by a judge.
(Photo: El Tiempo)

The peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas are generating controversy because of the impunity sure to be given to guerrillas and soldiers guilty of murder, displacement and other severe human rights violations.

But impunity's critics could look right here in Bogotá, where killers routinely go home to rest: just because they killed using cars and while drunk.

A drunk driver in a Venezuelan embassy car left this disaster
scene in early November. A judge sent him to his home,
and I've heard nohing more about the case.
(Photo: El Tiempo)

The latest example is that of 24-year-old Ernesto Manzanera, who, in the early morning of Dec. 2, while speeding along the Autopista Norte, smashed into a car containing four members of the Moreno family, killing them all. Manzanera fled the scene, and only turned himself in to police 15 hours later, at which time an alcohol test came out negative.

This morning, in a closed hearing, Manzanera, who is a co-pilot for Avianca, was charged with 'culpable homicide,' which in the United States would roughly translate to involuntary murder. Despite protests of the victims' relatives, the judge sent Manzanera to his home to await trial. Manzanera's father, Ernesto Manzanera Jiménez, now apparently retired, was a prominent politician in Cundinamarca.

In the first days of November, Aníbal Enrique Tapia, drunk and driving a luxury BMW with injured 11 people and killed one in north Bogotá. A judge charged him with homicide and sent him home to rest. The Venezuelan Embassy said in a statement that Tapia was a Colombian citizen and had used the car without permission. It did not explain why an irresponsible person with an alcohol problem had access to an embassy vehicle. I've searched the Internet and found no more recent information abut Tapia's case.

The posters, critical of the peace
negotiations, say 'Colombia without impunity.'

diplomatic license plates from the Venezuelan embassy,

Altho these killers go home after their first audience, one would hope that they would eventually be tried, convicted and imprisoned.

However, that doesn't seem to happen, either.

Recent prominent include one in which the scion of a wealthy Cali family killed three members of a motorcycle club on the outskirts of Bogotá and another in which a young man rear-ended a taxi, killing its two passengers and leaving the driver paralyzed. The second driver, Fabio Salamanca, was initially sent to rest in a hospital because of the stress he suffered from the accident he caused. Salamanca did spend a short time in prison before a judge sent him to his comfortable home to pay his debt to society.

In both those cases, as will likely happen in the more recent ones, the drunk drivers apparently paid

Fabio Salamanca killed two and left third paralyzed
and is serving out his sentence at home. (Photo: El Espectador)

off the victims' families to drop charges. Such a 'punishment' may bring some compensation to the families, but it does little for the rest of us, who continue to be at the mercy of drunks, who know that they can kill and go home, just as long as they have money in their pockets.

In a dramatic piece of evidence of this, Hollman Cangrejo, the taxi driver who was left quadriplegic, bought another taxi with the compensation money he received from Salamanca. This may, that taxi, with someone else at the wheel, was hit by a drunk driver who fled the scene. Fortunately, this drunk was chased down and caught by other taxi drives. No word on whether or not he went to prison.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

High Times for Colombian Coffee

Coffee farmers offer a thumbs up. (Image: Colombian National Federation of Coffee Farmers)

While petroleum prices tumble, threatening to take Colombia's economy down with them, a more

Colombian coffee farmers are
benefiting from high world prices
and big harvests.

traditional product is enjoying a banner year.

Only a few years ago, Colombian coffee suffered a crisis: A fungus infested the crop, forcing farmers to tear out their bushes and replant them with a resistant variety specially developed by Colombian agronomists.

Today, those new plants have are producing big time - and at just the right moment. This year, the Brazilian and Indonesian crops have been hit by drought, while a fungus has attacked Central American crops.

At the same time, coffee consumption is rising, especially in Asia, removing more coffee from the world market.

The global coffee shortage means that, just as Colombia's production is peaking, so are world prices. Last November, coffee cost 107 cents per pound on world markets, according to the International Coffee Organization; this past November, the same pound sold for 162 cents.

Minister of Finance and Credit Mauricio Cardenas addresses
the recent National Coffee Farmers Congress.

Good times, however, have not prevented Colombian coffee farmers from fighting amongst themselves. At the recent national Congress of Coffee Producers, some regional associations called for the ouster of the head of the National Federation of Coffee Growers. Also at the congress, growers and exporters debated over whether the federation should continue its role as buyer of last resort across the country. Now, the federation offers to buy farmers' harvests, creating a floor for bean prices. Private buyers and exporters, naturally, would prefer to not have to compete with the troublesome Federation and be able to offer whatever price they like to the often-vulnerable small farmers.

"Eliminating the price guarantee would for the exporters be like touching heaven," a coffee farmer leader said during the congress.

Despite its good times, Colombia's coffee industry is also experiencing some troubling trends. One is the exodus of young people from rural areas to the cities. At the same time, paradoxically, coffee farms have become smaller and smaller as a family's land gets divided among several children.

Thru the 1950s and later coffee was a mainstay of Colombia's economy. Today, coffee continues to form an important part of Colombia's economy, but other exports, especially oil and coal, generate far more export income.

Coffee is farmed throughout Colombia's mountains.
(Image: Colombian National Federation of Coffee Farmers)

But, despite coffee's much smaller place in Colombia's economy today, it has much more importance than hydrocarbons in at least one sense: employment. While raw materials exports produce lots of royalties, they generate few jobs, damage the environment and often feed corruption.

Coffee farming, in contrast, employs more than a half a million Colombian families, according to the Federation of Coffee Growers. If those families average five members each, we're talking some 2.5 million people, or 5% of the Colombian people.

By putting money directly into the pockets of working families, coffee continues contributing greatly to Colombia's national well-being, another reason why high world coffee prices are a good thing.

Drink up, coffee snobs.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Night of the Little Candles

My annual photo essay on La Noche de las Velitas, 'The Night of the Little Candles,' in La Candelaria. This is the symbolic beginning of the Christmas season.

Lighting a candle on La Plaza del Chorro de Quevedo.

A colorful evening for El Callejon del Embudo.

Richard, 78, has lived in this house on Calle 12b for 35 years, during which he's seen the La Candelaria neighborhood become much safer. 

Candles on a balcony.

Dancing on Calle 10.

Candle lighting on La Plaza del Chorro de Quevedo, where Bogotá was founded.

A replica of an old streetcar descends Carrera 2, past La Salle University.

A replica of an old streetcar descends Carrera 2, past La Salle University.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The N.N.s

During a bike tour this week, on the National University campus we came upon this art installation portraying a tragic and haunting chapter in Colombia's armed conflict. The artist told us that the figures, laid out to suggest a river's current, represent the corpses of murder victims which washed up along the shores of the Cauca and Magdalena rivers 'during the 1980s.'

However, from what I know, these corpses continue floating down the rivers and washing up on shore today, albeit in much smaller numbers.

In some Magdalena River towns these unidentified corpses, labeled N.N.s (ningun nombre/no name) have woven a culture of faith and belief around themselves. The people of these small towns retrieve the bodies, bury them and care for their graves, sometimes renaming them. In some cases, the idea is to give the drowned new lives. In others, the rescuers believe that by caring for the dead, the dead will repay the favor by caring for their caretakers.

Colombian-American photographer Juan Manuel Echavarría created a photography exhibit about the NNs which appeared in Colombia, the United States and Europe.

Exhibition of photos of NNs' tombs, by Juan Manuel Echavarría.

Exhibition of photos of NNs' tombs, by Juan Manuel Echavarría.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Narcotrafficking: A Political Act?

Pablo Escobar: Political actor?

Pablo Escobar would have loved it: Narcotrafficking, one of the world's greediest, most violent industries, may be designated a 'political crime' in Colombia - labeling it, in a sense, an altruistic act.

Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez has, predictably - and accurately - condemned the idea as a gift to criminals. "It's intended to legally protect the FARC's cocaine capos," he said, and would allow the guerrillas to legalize their drug wealth.

But Pres. Santos will push forward with it, as another maneuver to motivate the FARC to continue with the peace negotiations in Havana. The rub with the peace talks, of course, is that few guerrillas will be willing to sign a treaty if it means trading comfortable lives in Havana for a prison cell.

The United States government, which has publicly backed the negotiations, won't support this sort of

Escobar cuonts his loot in a Caracol TV miniseries.

impunity, since it considers narcotrafficking an international crime committed within U.S. borders. But Colombia has given monsters, such as paramilitary leaders who have confessed to thousands of murders, short prison sentences. So, why exclude drug trafficking guerrillas, who, after all, were supposedly financing a political agenda?

The impunity for drug traffickers is only the latest political gymnastics intended to keep the peace talks moving. Santos also seems to be forgiving the FARC in record time for the kidnapping of Gen. Alzate, and he barely blinked a few weeks ago at the guerrillas' murders of two NASA indigenous people. To keep the military in his camp, he wants to broaden the jurisdiction of military courts - even tho many human rights organizations warn that this could mean impunity for atrocities committed by soldiers.

A political act? Wreckage of the 1989 Avianca
bombing planned by Escobar.

Pablo Escobar himself tried to disguise his narcotrafficking empire up as a principled enterprise opposed to U.S. 'imperialism' and in favor of humble Colombians. And Escobar was briefly elected to Congress. In fact, Escobar's aims were to enrich himself at the cost of massacres and tearing apart Colombian government and society.

The political cover given to the FARC guerrillas is mostly a charade, but perhaps a necessary one if Colombians want them to turn in their arms and sign a peace treaty.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

1989, a Fatal Year

Wreckage of the bombed Avianca flight.

On the morning of Nov. 27, 1989, a teenager nicknamed 'El Suizo' disguised as a businessman boarded an Avianca flight from Bogotá to Cali. The youth carried a suitcase which his handlers had told him contained a device to record conversations of enemies of the Medellin drug cartel.

Five minutes into the flight 25 years ago, the young man, whose family survived by picking thru trash for things to sell, obediently pressed the 'record' button. But the suitcase contained explosives, which blew the Boeing 727 out of the sky, killing 107 people on board, including the young man. The wreckage fell on a rural area of Soacha, in south Bogotá, killing three people on the ground.

But the bomb's apparent target, presidential candidate Cesar Gaviria, had not taken the flight.

Aftermath of bombing of the DAS building in Bogotá.

The Avianca bombing was only the most deadly of the terrorist attacks and assassinations which took place in 1989, a quarter century ago. Only nine days later, a truck bomb containing about 500 kg of dynamite exploded beside the Bogotá headquarters of the DAS, Colombia's FBI, killing 52 people and injuring about 1,000.

The bomb was apparently planted by the Medellin Cartel to kill DAS director Miguel Maza Márquez, but he escaped unharmed.

In August of that same year, presidential candidates Luis Carlos Galán was assassinated, by a conspiracy also led by Escobar. Two newspapers, including Bogotá's El Espectador, were attacked with car bombs. And in Antioquia, both the governor and chief of police were assassinated.

Guards react to presidential candidate Galán's shooting.

Perhaps the most perverse crime of 1989 was the massacre of Rochela, Santander, when 12 court experts investigating the disappearance and murder of 19 businessmen were themselves massacred by paramilitaries.

And the most absurd episode may have been the drug-financed murder of a football referee, which forced the cancellation of a national championship game.

And, the next year, leftist presidential candidates Carlos Pizarro and Bernardo Jaramillo would be assassinated by right-wing forces.

Many of these crimes are still under investigation, including the Avianca bombing. Only one person,

'Colombia With Memory.' Relatives of victims
of Pablo Escobar.

one of Escobar's hit men, has been convicted for the bombing. Dandenis Muñoz, nicknamed 'La Quica,' is doing multiple life sentences in the United States because two U.S. citizens were on board the plane. Muñoz denies any part in the plane bombing, and several news reports support his case. But Muñoz unquestionably committed many atrocities during his years as one of Escobar's hit men. Popeye, another Escobar hit man, who was recently released from a Colombian prison, has acknowledged helping plan the bombing. Investigators today are particularly interested in whether public officials collaborated in the bombing.

The Avianca case is just one of many from that era which never seem to die. A few days ago, investigators disinterred the remains of M-19 presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro to test, among other things, whether one of his bodyguards may have killed him.

Escobar hit-man Jhon Jairo Velásquez, alias Popeye.

But, while the late '80s was one of the bloodiest periods in Colombia's history, the victims have not received the same government compensation as have some of those persecuted by leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and government forces. That's because narcotraffickers' crimes are not considered political, even tho their victims may suffer just as much and be just as dead. (The Avianca case, however, has been officially declared to be a 'crime against humanity.')

Today, in an attempt to restart the peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas, the government broached the idea of categorizing narcotrafficking as a 'political crime.' The idea is absurd on its face, but would enable a new level of impunity to the guerrillas, making possible a peace treaty which the FARC leaders could sign.





By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours