Colombia Cracks Up

I thought it was thunder. But the television set me straight. Channel 2, which belongs to the government, was announcing,

IN 1982, THE NEWLY-ELECTED GOVERNMENT of Belisario Betancur set Colombian politics on an un- charted course. Although Colombian elites had

LAST AUGUST, FOLLOWING THE ASSASSI- nation of Colombia's front-running presidential can- didate Luis Carlos Galen, George Bush went on television

On November 11, forces of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) launched their largest offensive of El Salvador's decade-long

POLITICS IN COLOMBIA IS VERY MUCH A FAM- ily business. Journalist and writer Apolinar Diaz Cal- lejo described it as

Sandinismo for the Nineties IS THE NICARAGUAN REVOLUTION NOW TO become like the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944? Will it be

THE PEOPLE HAD NEVER SEEN THEM LIKE THAT. With their heads shaved and their faces painted black, the soldiers began

"Our message to the drug cartels is this," George Bush told the nation last September when he unveiled his ad-

"THE 1980S HAVE SEEN A REAL RESUR- gence of direct struggle. When the people decided to go on strike, to

COCAINE IS NOT THE ONLY DRUG COLOMBIA exports. Its principal legal source of foreign exchange is coffee. More than 300,000

Colombia Besieged: Political Violence and State Responsibility by The Washington Office on Latin America, 1989, 142 pp., $10 (paper). A

General Rafael Pena Rios retired fiom active military service at the end of 1987 at the age of 49. He