Plan Colombia

Malcolm Deas

In memoriam, Jesús Antonio Bejarano, murdered by unknown assassins on his way to class, 1999.

Many more people continue to die in Colombia than in the Middle Eastern troubles between Israelis and Palestinians, and it’s high time more attention was paid to it internationally. It’s a country in the Northern Hemisphere and its capital city is within easy commuting distance of Miami. It is large and populous – with a population of more than forty million, the third most populous country in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico; but also dauntingly complicated: geographically, racially, economically, politically, militarily and diplomatically; and newspaper editors have little time and less and less money or space to spend on setting the scene, or dealing in nuance. So they leave Colombia alone, apart from the occasional bit of colour provided by drugs and guerrillas.