Cali Colombia Quotes

And so, at a December 1981 meeting, Contra leaders, whom Reagan referred to as the “moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers,” floated the idea that trafficking cocaine into California would provide enough profits to arm and train the anti-Sandinista guerrillas.108 With most of the network already established, the plan was rather straightforward: There were the Medellín and Cali cartels in Colombia; the airports and money laundering in Panama run by President Manuel Noriega; the well-known lack of radar detection that made landing strips in Costa Rica prime transport depots; and weapons and drug warehouses at Ilopango air base outside San Salvador. The problem had been U.S. law enforcement guarding key entry points into a lucrative market. But with the CIA and the National Security Council now ready to run interference and keep the FBI, the U.S. Customs Service,

El cristianismo glorifica el sufrimiento. Lo llama virtud para alentar a las gentes a crear más vidas miserables. ¿Enfermedad? Santidad a la vista. ¿Pobreza? Gran favorita del Señor. Se exhorta al cristiano a ayudar al prójimo, pero son demasiados prójimos por ayudar. Se espera que el cristiano atenúe con pequeñas dádivas el desastre colosal causado por la propia religión.

What’s your favorite part of the trip?” “I don’t have one.” “C’mon, there must’ve been something.” “I took a weekend trip to Caño Cristales. I liked seeing the different colors of the river. It was like a liquid rainbow.” Many of the students had spent their time traveling around Colombia on the weekends. No one had a car, but we could hop on a plane for fairly cheap and fly into different areas such as Bogotá, the country’s official capital city, or Cali, the salsa-dancing capital of the world. Amanda had even convinced me to fly with her to the seductive, sizzling city of Cartagena. We climbed the fortified walls that had once protected the city from pirate attacks and watched the sunset. The entire city had a Miami-style skyline and, after the sun went down, infatuation seemed to bloom into fever and take hold of the city. At night we could hear the clink of rum bottles and mojito glasses in cafés on almost every street as moonlight picked out the silhouettes of softly swaying couples. We walked for hours along the coastal city streets. Candle flames beckoned from the dimness of nearby baroque churches.

Colombia era en 1986 dos países: un puñado de ciudades y el resto, fundamentalmente porque el poder político y el gasto público estaban brutalmente concentrados; para la muestra baste citar este botón: “En 1972 tres ciudades (Bogotá, Medellín y Cali) absorbían el 72 % de todos los gastos del Gobierno nacional, mientras que el 28 % restante era distribuido entre los 900 municipios que en ese entonces tenía el país” (Falleti, 2005).

The cartels rose out of the barrios and country clubs of Medellín and Cali, but the ultimate responsibility for Colombia’s agonies lies in good measure with every person who has ever bought street cocaine and every foreign nation that has made possible the illicit market by prohibiting the drug without curbing its use in any serious way.