Report

LAST AUGUST, FOLLOWING THE ASSASSI- nation of Colombia's front-running presidential can- didate Luis Carlos Galen, George Bush went on television to announce an emergency $65 million loan to help that nation fight the drug traffickers who took responsibility for the killing. Bush also sent stockpiled military equip- ment and a crew of military advisers.

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Jenny Pearce
"THE 1980S HAVE SEEN A REAL RESUR- gence of direct struggle. When the people decided to go on strike, to demonstrate, to mount barricades, to confront the power of the military, that's when they have won their demands.
AIDS in Brazil I was glad to see the article on the AIDS situation in Brazil in your Nov./ Dec.
Donna G. Ellaby
COCAINE IS NOT THE ONLY DRUG COLOMBIA exports. Its principal legal source of foreign exchange is coffee.
Jo Ann Kawell
"Our message to the drug cartels is this," George Bush told the nation last September when he unveiled his ad- ministration's drug control strategy. "The rules have changed.
Sara Miles & Bob Ostertag
On November 11, forces of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) launched their largest offensive of El Salvador's decade-long war, striking in all the country's princi- pal cities: San Salvador, San Miguel, Santa Ana, Usulutdn, and Zacateco- luca. Several fixed targets were hit, including President Alfredo Cristiani's residence and the capital's First Bri- gade barracks, but these were essen- tially for psychological effect.
Colombia Besieged: Political Violence and State Responsibility by The Washington Office on Latin America, 1989, 142 pp., $10 (paper).
Raúl Leis
I thought it was thunder. But the television set me straight.
THE PEOPLE HAD NEVER SEEN THEM LIKE THAT. With their heads shaved and their faces painted black, the soldiers began to come out of the Luciano D'Luyer barracks in San Vicente de Chucurf at 6 p.
MF
Sandinismo for the Nineties IS THE NICARAGUAN REVOLUTION NOW TO become like the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944? Will it be like Bolivia of 1952, Chile of 1970, Grenada of 1979? Nothing but a historical reference point, an ideal- ized remembrance never to be realized again? Or will the Sandinistas "govern from below," as they claim today? If the next few years show that the Revolution was indeed over in 1990, historians will likely trace the begin- ning of the end back to 1985. By then, the U.
Jenny Pearce
AT THE PASCUAL GUERRERO SPORTS STADI- um in Cali, a soccer game was abruptly suspended in December 1981 when thousands of leaflets were dropped from a small plane flying slowly overhead. They an- nounced the creation of a new organization: "Death to Kidnappers" (MAS), created to exterminate "kidnap- pers, guerrillas and communists.
Marc W Chernick
ALMOST MONTHLY, A FEELING OF COLLEC- tive anguish seizes the political elite of Bogota. Estamos tocandofondo, people say.
Jenny Pearce
POLITICS IN COLOMBIA IS VERY MUCH A FAM- ily business. Journalist and writer Apolinar Diaz Cal- lejo described it as "hereditary power without monarchy.
General Rafael Pena Rios retired fiom active military service at the end of 1987 at the age of 49. He had been fighting guerrillas since he was sixteen.
Marc W Chernick
IN 1982, THE NEWLY-ELECTED GOVERNMENT of Belisario Betancur set Colombian politics on an un- charted course. Although Colombian elites had always re- ferred to their political system as a democracy, the new president called for a democratic opening--borrowing the language then current in the Southern Cone-to incorporate the nation's armed opposition into the political process.
Jenny Pearce
ON AUGUST 18, 1989, LUIS CARLOS GALAN, front-runner for the Liberal Party presidential nomi- nation and likely winner in elections due in May, was shot dead while addressing a crowd in Soacha, on the outskirts of Bogota. The assassination took place in front of televi- sion cameras and in spite of the presence of Galin's 22 bodyguards.