Colombian Quotes

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

I was discovering that the most precious gift someone can give us is time, because what gives time its value is death.

The joke Colombians told was that God had made their land so beautiful, so rich in every natural way, that it was unfair to the rest of the world; He had evened the score by populating it with the most evil race of men.

Let's play Russian roulette. If you win, I give you a Colombian necktie.

How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, "Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much.

I told myself that I'd had life too easy, conditioned by an upbringing where fear of change was disguised as caution.

I clarified that I myself was Colombian. "What is 'being Colombian'?" "I'm not sure," I replied. "It's an act of faith." "Like being Norwegian," she said, nodding. I can recall nothing further of what was said that night.

I knew of no instruction manual for reaching a higher level of humanity and a greater wisdom. But I felt intuitively that laughter was the beginning of wisdom, as is was indispensable for survival.

He looked at the world from above. Where I saw threatening waves, he saw tranquil water.

If you believe what you say, words become reality.

Twenty-five, six-foot-something Colombian-American. Unshaven jaw, windswept brown hair, and a never-ending gruff expression. Like the universe just took a giant shit on his head.

Down the Peninsula at Cypress Lawn Cemetery, a woman in a paisley turban climbed out of a battered automobile and trudged up the hillside to a new grave. She stood there for a moment, humming to herself, then removed a joint from a tortoise-shell cigarette case and laid it gently on the grave. "Have fun," she smiled. "It's Colombian.

I had not suffered enough to find the rage in my guts I needed to struggle to death for my freedom.

I was beginning to think that in life there might be some suffering that was worth enduring.

I no longer knew whether it was raindrops or my own tears that were flowing down my cheeks, and I hated to have to drag along this relic of a sniveling child.

I already knew that I had the ability to free myself from hatred, and I viewed this as my most significant conquest.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

In this condition of the most devastating humiliation, I still possessed the most precious of liberties, that no-one could take away from me: that of deciding who I wanted to be.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. if my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken. The crowning touch, the one thing that really puts true world-class badmotherfuckerdom totally out of reach, of course, is the hydrogen bomb. If it wasn't for the hydrogen bomb, a man could still aspire. Maybe find Raven's Achilles' heel. Sneak up, get a drop, slip a mickey, pull a fast one. But Raven's nuclear umbrella kind of puts the world title out of reach. Which is okay. Sometimes it's all right just to be a little bad. To know your limitations. Make do with what you've got.

Colombians might live in one of best places in the world to grow coffee beans, yet their cups of coffee come from dehydrated granules in tiny plastic packages. This is the definition of tragedy.

ALBINOS DEMAND ACTION ON MOVIE SLUR The albino community demanded action yesterday to stop their unfair depiction as yet another movie featured an albino as a deranged hitman. “We’ve had enough,” said Mr. Silas yesterday at a small rally of albinos at London’s Pinewood Studios. “Just because of an unusual genetic abnormality, Hollywood thinks it can portray us as dysfunctional social pariahs. Ask yourself this: Have you ever been, or know anyone who has ever been, a victim of albino crime?” The protest follows hot on the heels of last week’s demonstrations when Colombians and men with ponytails complained of being unrelentingly portrayed as drug dealers. —Extract from The Mole, July 31, 2003

I often think about her. One thing she said stayed with me, a dagger in my heart: "You know for me the most horrible thing of all is knowing that he will forget me." I lacked the presence of mind to tell her that it was impossible; she was simply unforgettable.

I am alone. I am here. No one is watching me. In these hours of silence that I cherish, I talk to myself and reflect. That past, entrenched in time, motionless and infinite, has vanished onto thin air. None of it remains. Why, therefore, am I hurting so much? Why did I bring back with me this nameless pain? I followed the path I set for myself, and I have forgiven. I do not want to be chained to hatred or resentment. I want to have the right to live in peace.

A mí me quedó para siempre la honda sensación, la horrible desconfianza de que tal vez, si la vida me pone en una circunstancia donde yo deba demostrar lo que soy, seré un cobarde.

Now I realized that life supplies us with everything we need for the journey. Everything I had acquired either actively or passively, everything I had learned either voluntarily or by osmosis, was coming back to me as the real riches of my life, even though I had lost everything.

Six centuries ago, the pre-Colombian natives who settled here named this region with a word that in their language translates to, 'The Mouth of the Shadow.' Later, the Iroquois who showed up and inexplicably slaughtered every man, woman, and child in those first tribes renamed it a word that literally translates to, 'Seriously, Fuck this Place.

On an impulse he cannot explain, he buys himself a one-way ticket - and the evening of that very same day finds him wandering the streets of the old colonial quarter of the Colombian town. Girls in love with boys on scooters, screeching birds, tropical flowers on winding vines, saudade, and solitude, One Hundred Years of it; and then, as the tropical dusk darkens the corners of the Plaza de la Adana, he sees a woman, her fingers toying with a necklace of lapis lazuli, and they stand still as the world eddies about them.

Most of us take for granted the ease with which we can fill up our cars, buy a new smartphone or order a cup of Colombian coffee. But underpinning almost all of our consumption is a frenetic international trade in natural resources. And underpinning that trade, from their offices in sleepy towns in Switzerland or New England, are the commodity traders.

Do you want it hard, baby? Or slow? Just tell me how to give it to you and it's yours. --Victor Ramirez

I am the happily ever after in your twisted tormented tale of your Cinder-fuckin-rella dreams.

There are things that are more important than life.

He had to be okay. We had no choice.

But the Indians gesture touched me. It was nothing, but it was everthing. It took so little to mane a difference.

He who could hear my heart knew that I was crying out for help.

He wasn't alive because he feared death. He was alive because he loved life.

Oh, how I love you, mi amor. You are the light that shines in the blackness of my night. You are my North star, always leading me home. --Victor Ramirez

A colombian writer committed suicide because he didn't believe in life after 26 and that's okay for me because what's the point to live in a place whit no sense to you

We were supposed to be businessmen coming off the train after a long day in Manhattan, but Alf looked like he was ready to seize cocaine from a Colombian drug lord.

A Colombian Enterprise to Endeavor for the Discovery of Atlantis... and all Challengers shall be destroyed.

No, wait, I drink any more java, I’m gonna start pissing Colombians.

Debía seguir caminando, seguir en movimiento, alejarme. Al amanecer volverían a iniciar la persecución. Mas en el calor de la acción me repetía «soy libre», y mi voz me hacía compañía

It is said that the compensation for the effort courage, tenacity, and endurance displayed during the journey was not happiness. Nor glory. What God offered as a reward was only rest.

Comprendía, entonces, que la vida nos da montones de provisiones para nuestras travesías por el desierto. Todo lo que había adquirido de manera activa o pasiva, todo lo que había aprendido voluntariamente o por osmosis, volvía a mí como las verdaderas riquezas de mi existencia, cuando lo había perdido todo.

The fisherman of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, or ‘feeling-thinking’ to define language that speaks the truth. Eduardo Galeano

You listen to me and you listen good, girl. I am a dark, twisted, and very fucked up man. Do you know what a sadist is? I don’t give her time to answer. “I enjoy inflicting pain on women. Now granted, I have access to women that enjoy that side of my dark psyche but you, little girl, are treading on very dangerous ground. You are awakening a monster. If you feed that monster, there will be no possibility of caging the beast.

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old. They grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. —GABRIEL “GABITO” GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Colombian novelist and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature

He’d heard Nïx had been actively steering this Accession. For her to take such an interest meant this one could be apocalyptic. Otherwise, Nïx the Ever-Knowing would likely be out shopping, as Valkyries fancied doing. She said, “So far on our team, we have the Lykae, the Forbearers, the Furiae, the Wraiths, the noble fey, myriad demonarchies, the House of Witches, possibly the CIA, and probably a Colombian drug lord. The nymphs are straddling the fence.” Regin opened her mouth, but Nïx cut her off. “That one’s too easy, Reege.

Escobar, my ex-lover, was shot to death on December 2, 1993. To bring him down after a hunt that lasted nearly a year and a half, it was necessary to offer a reward of twenty-five million dollars and to employ a Colombian police commando unit specially trained for the purpose.

We, who work every day just to survive, swear on the blood of our ancestors that we will never allow dams across our rivers. We are simple Indians and mestizos, but we would rather die than stand by as our land is flooded. We warn our Colombian brothers: stop working for the construction companies.

Ancient Spanish ranching techniques were adopted—and adapted—all over the American continent and took slightly different forms, spawning different vocabulary, from place to place. Argentines call cowboys gauchos; Peruvians, chaláns; Ecuadorians, chagras; Venezuelans and Colombians, llaneros; and Chileans, huasos.

Mientras terminaba la correa que me había ayudado a comenzar,perdida en mis meditaciones, le agradecí en silencio por el tiempo que había dedicado a hablar conmigo, más que por el arte que me había transmitido, pues descubría que lo más valioso que tienen los demás para darnos es su tiempo. El tiempo al cual la muerte le da su valor.

That first year in L.A., Richard became addicted to cocaine. It was 1978, and coke was the “in” drug, selling for $100 per gram. This was prior to the Colombian cartels applying modern corporate techniques to the importation and distribution of cocaine in the States, which brought the price of a gram down to thirty-five dollars by the mid-eighties.

Aquella tarde, bajo la maldita lluvia, acurrucada sobre mi infortunio, entendí que sin duda podía ser como ellos.

Sweetheart, when it comes to money, I'm always serious. When it comes to you, I'm fucking deadly. You can count on it.

The circle of life never ceases thus change is inevitable.

And then comes the realization. That although a house was taken from you, you can still build a home in a wine jar.

Victor,” she gasped... “can’t you see I’ve always been yours?” He almost believed her. Almost.

Deep calls to deep, dark calls to dark, and secrets call to secrets.

I am your knight in dark, shining, and wickedly laden armor.

When your mouth overloads your ass, put on your big girl panties and apologize! ©2017 Suzanne Steele

I kissed the sky until every character in my head came alive. ©2018 Suzanne Steele

In their moment of joining he couldn't remember his own name, but King's brain was able to conjure a single word, a benediction that tumbled from his lips as he began to move. "Mine...

The book in my hands became my trusted companion. What was written there had so much power that it forced me to stop avoiding myself, to make my own choices as well. And through some sort of vital intuition, I understood that I had a long way to go, that it would bring about a profound transformation within me, even though I could not determine it's essence, or its scope. In that book there was a voice, and behind that voice threw was an intelligence that sought to establish contact with me. It was not merely the company of written words that distiller my boredom. It was a living voice, speaking. To me.

There's evil in this world; I've seen it and I will devote my life to protecting you from it. But baby, my head's so fucked up and you're the only thing that keeps me thinking straight. Stay here and be mine.

I looked at the huge charlatan with respect. Nicotine, dope, hash, barbiturates, speed, acid, smack, Colombian marching powder, ecstasy, alcohol in every form, all had entered the massive frame by some route and in quantities guaranteed to lay waste to the collected brains of three Melbourne universities or eight in Queensland. In theory, a scan of this man’s skull should reveal a place as grey and still as Kerguelen Island in winter. Yet from time to time there were clear signs of electrical activity.

Drugs flow as effortlessly through the harbour as through los esteros, but the government and the DEA view drug trafficking as more of a hazard to society when it moves through the poor area, with its dirty waters and seeming chaos, than when it has to do with corporate boardrooms and the main harbour. And for the FARC, it is becoming easier and easier to convince the city’s Afro-Colombian majority that the focus of the war on drugs is not primarily on the flow of drugs, but on what kind of people are involved in it.

Young and beautiful crowds filled the myriad bars and clubs in El Poblado, in the heart of Medellín. Amid the hypnotic sound of Latin music, vibrant colors swayed back and forth across a tiny dance floor as I walked into the Iguana Roja, or Red Iguana, salsa club.

La sopa de tortilla, aromatizada con yerbas frescas de la huerta, el frito de plátanos, carne desmenuzada y roscas de harina de maiz, el excelente chocolate de la tierra, el queso de piedra, el pan de leche, y el agua servida en antiguos y grandes jarros de plata, no dejaron que desear.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

Fruit of the Drunken Tree is a novel inspired by personal experience. Kidnapping was a reality for many Colombians until 2005 when the practice really began to decline. If they had not been kidnapped themselves, every Colombian knew someone who had experienced it: a friend, a family member, someone at work. There was once a girl like Petrona who worked as a live-in maid in my childhood house in Bogotá. Like Petrona she was forced into aiding in a kidnapping attempt against my sister and me, and like Petrona in the face of this impossible choice, she did not comply. I have thought of her throughout the years, along with all the women I have met who are stuck in hopeless situations in Colombia.

I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.

En poco tiempo, me volví adicta al diccionario. Me pasaba la mañana sentada en mi mesa de trabajo, con una vista inmejorable sobre el río, y viajaba en el tiempo y el espacio pasando cada hoja. Al principio, me dejaba llevar por el capricho del momento. Poco a poco, fui estableciendo una metodología que me permitía hacer investigaciones sobre un tema preestablecido con la lógica de un juego de pistas. No podía creer tanta felicidad. Ya no sentía el paso del tiempo.

When you go back to Pablo Ecobar, this guy blew up a passenger plane, police headquarters, funded guerrillas to kill Supreme Court justices, and had the number one Colombian presidential candidate assassinated. Now there is no organization in Colombia that can go toe-to-toe with the government, that can threaten the national security of Colombia. In each successive generation of traffickers there has been a dilution of their power. “Pablo Escobar lasted fifteen years. The average kingpin here now lasts fifteen months. If you are named as a kingpin here, you are gone. The government of Colombia and the government of the United States will not allow a trafficker to exist long enough to become a viable threat.” In this analysis, drug enforcement can be seen as a giant hammer that keeps on falling. Any gangster that gets too big gets smashed by the hammer. This is known as cartel decapitation, taking out the heads of the gang. The villains are kept in check. But the drug trade does go on, and so does the war.

Encadenada del cuello a un árbol, desposeída de toda libertad, la de mo-verse, sentarse o pararse, hablar o callar, la de comer o beber, y aún la más elemental de todas, la de aliviarse del cuerpo, Entendí —pero me tomó muchos años hacerlo— que uno guarda la más valiosa de las libertades, la que nadie le puede arrebatar a uno: aquella de decidir quién unoq uiere ser. Ahí, en ese momento y como si fuera evidente, decidí que no sería más una víctima. Tenía la libertad de elegir entre odiar a Enrique o disolver ese odio en la fuerza de ser quien yo quería. Podía morir, claro está, pero yo ya estaba en otra parte. Era una sobreviviente.

Antes de que me secuestraran yo vivía esclava del reloj. Trataba de organizar mi tiempo de la mejor manera posible, incluso leía libros sobre ello. Mi vida estaba programada al segundo. Al final de cada día, cuando regresaba a mi casa agotada tras un día intenso, me acostaba con la sensación de que el tiempo no me alcanzaba para hacer todo lo que quería. Siempre sentía que me quedaba algo por concluir... ... En el secuestro, sin embargo, de repente me encontré con que tenía todo el tiempo del mundo para mí, pero aparentemente no había nada que pudiera hacer para aprovecharlo. Nunca antes en mi vida había sentido tan intensamente esa sensación de pérdida de tiempo que experimenté en los primeros meses de cautiverio. Para mí fue un conflicto existencial atroz, pues tenía la sensación de que la vida se me estaba escapando ante los ojos. Era como si estuviera enterrando mi juventud en aquellas selvas.

Between 2003 and 2008, Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, borrowed over $140 billion, a figure equal to ten times the country’s GDP, dwarfing its central bank’s $2.5 billion reserves. A handful of entrepreneurs, egged on by their then government, embarked on an unprecedented international spending binge, buying everything from Danish department stores to West Ham Football Club, while a sizeable proportion of the rest of the adult population enthusiastically embraced the kind of cockamamie financial strategies usually only mooted in Nigerian spam emails – taking out loans in Japanese Yen, for example, or mortgaging their houses in Swiss francs. One minute the Icelanders were up to their waists in fish guts, the next they they were weighing up the options lists on their new Porsche Cayennes. The tales of un-Nordic excess are legion: Elton John was flown in to sing one song at a birthday party; private jets were booked like they were taxis; people thought nothing of spending £5,000 on bottles of single malt whisky, or £100,000 on hunting weekends in the English countryside. The chief executive of the London arm of Kaupthing hired the Natural History Museum for a party, with Tom Jones providing the entertainment, and, by all accounts, Reykjavik’s actual snow was augmented by a blizzard of the Colombian variety. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008 exposed Iceland’s debts which, at one point, were said to be around 850 per cent of GDP (compared with the US’s 350 per cent), and set off a chain reaction which resulted in the krona plummeting to almost half its value. By this stage Iceland’s banks were lending money to their own shareholders so that they could buy shares in . . . those very same Icelandic banks. I am no Paul Krugman, but even I can see that this was hardly a sustainable business model. The government didn’t have the money to cover its banks’ debts. It was forced to withdraw the krona from currency markets and accept loans totalling £4 billion from the IMF, and from other countries. Even the little Faroe Islands forked out £33 million, which must have been especially humiliating for the Icelanders. Interest rates peaked at 18 per cent. The stock market dropped 77 per cent; inflation hit 20 per cent; and the krona dropped 80 per cent. Depending who you listen to, the country’s total debt ended up somewhere between £13 billion and £63 billion, or, to put it another way, anything from £38,000 to £210,000 for each and every Icelander.

A few years back, I had a long session with a psychiatrist who was conducting a study on post-traumatic stress disorder and its effects on reporters working in war zones. At one point, he asked me: “How many bodies have you seen in your lifetime?” Without thinking for too long, I replied: “I’m not sure exactly. I've seen quite a few mass graves in Africa and Bosnia, and I saw a well crammed full of corpses in East Timor, oh and then there was Rwanda and Goma...” After a short pause, he said to me calmly: “Do you think that's a normal response to that question?” He was right. It wasn't a normal response. Over the course of their lifetime, most people see the bodies of their parents, maybe their grandparents at a push. Nobody else would have responded to that question like I did. Apart from my fellow war reporters, of course. When I met Marco Lupis nearly twenty years ago, in September 1999, we were stood watching (fighting the natural urge to divert our gaze) as pale, maggot-ridden corpses, decomposed beyond recognition, were being dragged out of the well in East Timor. Naked bodies shorn of all dignity. When Marco wrote to ask me to write the foreword to this book and relive the experiences we shared together in Dili, I agreed without giving it a second thought because I understood that he too was struggling for normal responses. That he was hoping he would find some by writing this book. While reading it, I could see that Marco shares my obsession with understanding the world, my compulsion to recount the horrors I have seen and witnessed, and my need to overcome them and leave them behind. He wants to bring sense to the apparently senseless. Books like this are important. Books written by people who have done jobs like ours. It's not just about conveying - be it in the papers, on TV or on the radio - the atrocities committed by the very worst of humankind as they are happening; it’s about ensuring these atrocities are never forgotten. Because all too often, unforgivably, the people responsible go unpunished. And the thing they rely on most for their impunity is that, with the passing of time, people simply forget. There is a steady flow of information as we are bombarded every day with news of the latest massacre, terrorist attack or humanitarian crisis. The things that moved or outraged us yesterday are soon forgotten, washed away by today's tidal wave of fresh events. Instead they become a part of history, and as such should not be forgotten so quickly. When I read Marco's book, I discovered that the people who murdered our colleague Sander Thoenes in Dili, while he was simply doing his job like the rest of us, are still at large to this day. I read the thoughts and hopes of Ingrid Betancourt just twenty-four hours before she was abducted and taken to the depths of the Colombian jungle, where she would remain captive for six long years. I read that we know little or nothing about those responsible for the Cambodian genocide, whose millions of victims remain to this day without peace or justice. I learned these things because the written word cannot be destroyed. A written account of abuse, terror, violence or murder can be used to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice, even though this can be an extremely drawn-out process during and after times of war. It still torments me, for example, that so many Bosnian women who were raped have never got justice and every day face the prospect of their assailants passing them on the street. But if I follow in Marco's footsteps and write down the things I have witnessed in a book, people will no longer be able to plead ignorance. That is why we need books like this one.

Just because of an unusual genetic abnormality, Hollywood thinks it can portray us as dysfunctional social pariahs. Ask yourself this: Have you ever been, or know anyone who has ever been, a victim of albino crime?” The protest follows hot on the heels of last week’s demonstrations when Colombians and men with ponytails complained of being unrelentingly portrayed as drug dealers. —Extract from The Mole, July 31, 2003

This pattern became particularly apparent in the 2000s. In 2002 the presidential election was won by Álvaro Uribe. Uribe had something in common with the Castaño brothers: his father had been killed by the FARC. Uribe ran a campaign repudiating the attempts of the previous administration to try to make peace with the FARC. In 2002 his vote share was 3 percentage points higher in areas with paramilitaries than without them. In 2006, when he was reelected, his vote share was 11 percentage points higher in such areas. If Mancuso and his partners could deliver the vote for Congress and the Senate, they could do so in presidential elections as well, particularly for a president strongly aligned with their worldview and likely to be lenient on them. As Jairo Angarita, Salvatore Mancuso’s deputy and the former leader of the AUC’s Sinú and San Jorge blocs, declared in September 2005, he was proud to work for the “reelection of the best president we have ever had.” Once elected, the paramilitary senators and congressmen voted for what Uribe wanted, in particular changing the constitution so that he could be reelected in 2006, which had not been allowed at the time of his first election, in 2002. In exchange, President Uribe delivered a highly lenient law that allowed the paramilitaries to demobilize. Demobilization did not mean the end of paramilitarism, simply its institutionalization in large parts of Colombia and the Colombian state, which the paramilitaries had taken over and were allowed to keep.

Imagine this scenario: the Medellin cocaine cartel of Colombia mounts a successful military offensive against the United States, then forces the U.S. to legalize cocaine and allow the cartel to import the drug into five major American cities, unsupervised and untaxed by the U.S. The American government also agrees to let the drug lords govern all Colombian citizens who operate in these cities, plus the U.S. has

Every single person on the Colombian force was on his payroll. That’s how untouchable he was.

suggested to him that it was working. He was sure that Sanders’s rise was destined to end in crashing disappointment. Having thrilled to his populist purity, his supporters would never reconcile themselves to Clinton, because the donors featured in Clinton Cash violated just about every ideal liberals hold dear. “You look at what they’ve done in the Colombian rain forest, look at the arms merchants, the war lords, the human trafficking—if you take anything that the left professes to be a cornerstone value, the Clintons have basically played them for fools,” Bannon said. “They’ve enriched themselves while playing up the worst cast of characters in the world. Bill

When he turned round with the cup to his mouth, nostrils titillated by the aroma of a sun that had once shone on a Colombian coffee farmer's fields, Klavs Jeppensen's chair was empty.

In Saudi Arabia in 2010, there was “public outrage” when a Romanian soccer player kissed the tattoo of a cross he had on his arm after scoring a goal. In October of the next year, a Colombian soccer-player “was arrested by the Saudi moral police after customers in a Riyadh shopping mall expressed outrage over the sports player’s religious tattoos, which included the face of Jesus of Nazareth on his arm.”233

Best Budget Travel Destinations Ever Are you looking for a cheap flight this year? Travel + Leisure received a list of the most affordable locations this year from one of the top travel search engines in the world, Kayak. Kayak then considered the top 100 locations with the most affordable average flight prices, excluding outliers due to things like travel restrictions and security issues. To save a lot of money, go against the grain. Mexico Unsurprisingly, Mexico is at the top of the list of the cheapest places to travel in 2022. The United States has long been seen as an accessible and affordable vacation destination; low-cost direct flights are common. San José del Cabo (in Baja California Sur), Puerto Vallarta, and Cancun are the three destinations within Mexico with the least expensive flights, with January being the most economical month to visit each. Fortunately, January is a glorious month in each of these beachside locales, with warm, balmy weather and an abundance of vibrant hues, textures, and flavors to chase away the winter blues. Looking for a city vacation rather than a beach vacation? Mexico City, which boasts a diverse collection of museums and a rich Aztec heritage, is another accessible option in the country. May is the cheapest month to travel there. Chicago, Illinois Who wants to go to Chicago in the winter? Once you learn about all the things to do in this Midwest winter wonderland and the savings you can get in January, you'll be convinced. At Maggie Daley Park, spend the afternoon ice skating before warming up with some deep-dish pizza. Colombia Colombia's fascinating history, vibrant culture, and mouthwatering cuisine make it a popular travel destination. It is also inexpensive compared to what many Americans are used to paying for items like a fresh arepa and a cup of Colombian coffee. The cheapest month of the year to fly to Bogotá, the capital city, is February. The Bogota Botanical Garden, founded in 1955 and home to almost 20,000 plants, is meticulously maintained, and despite the region's chilly climate, strolling through it is not difficult. The entrance fee is just over $1 USD. In January, travel to the port city of Cartagena on the country's Caribbean coast. The majority of visitors discover that exploring the charming streets on foot is sufficient to make their stay enjoyable. Tennessee's Music City There's a reason why bachelorette parties and reunions of all kinds are so popular in Music City: it's easy to have fun without spending a fortune. There is no fee to visit a mural, hot chicken costs only a few dollars, and Honky Tonk Highway is lined with free live music venues. The cheapest month to book is January. New York City, New York Even though New York City isn't known for being a cheap vacation destination, you'll find the best deals if you go in January. Even though the city never sleeps, the cold winter months are the best time for you to visit and take advantage of the lower demand for flights and hotel rooms. In addition, New York City offers a wide variety of free activities. Canada Not only does our neighbor Mexico provide excellent deals, but the majority of Americans can easily fly to Canada for an affordable getaway. In Montréal, Quebec, you must try the steamé, which is the city's interpretation of a hot dog and is served steamed in a side-loading bun (which is also steamed). It's the perfect meal to eat in the middle of February when travel costs are at their lowest. Best of all, hot dogs are inexpensive and delicious as well as filling. The most affordable month to visit Toronto, Ontario is February. Even though the weather may make you wary, the annual Toronto Light Festival, which is completely free, is held in February in the charming and historic Distillery District. Another excellent choice at this time is the $5 Bentway Skate Trail under the Gardiner Expressway overpass.

Si no llevo la contraria no puedo vivir contenta

At those airfields, cocaine was reportedly loaded onto planes to be later dropped near an “Atlantic coast port,” where it was concealed on shrimp boats and ultimately unloaded in Miami. U.S. officials who monitored drug traffic from Colombia to the United States through Central America told the AP that they began receiving “reliable” reports of the operation as early as November 1984 after a Contra leader named Sebastian Gonzalez Mendiola was arrested and indicted in Costa Rica for drug trafficking. Another Contra leader, unnamed in the AP’s investigation, reportedly informed U.S. authorities that he had been approached by Colombian traffickers and offered $50,000 to guard a one-hundred-kilo cocaine shipment. In exchange for turning in the Colombian smugglers, he asked for $50,000 from the U.S. Embassy. When the request was rejected, he reportedly went forward with the smuggling arrangement and faced no consequences from U.S. authorities.

To be sure, “Dark Alliance” was far from a perfect piece of journalism. In his eagerness to break the story of the CIA, the Contras, and crack, Webb overstated some key claims. It was not true, for example, that Blandón’s drug ring “opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles.” The piece also suggested in several passages that the CIA actively participated in Blandón’s operation. As much as testimony points in that direction, Webb never presented a smoking gun. What Webb could say with authority was exactly what the Kerry Committee had: that federal law-enforcement agencies, including the CIA, knew that Contra members were involved with the Colombian cartels and trafficking large shipments of cocaine to the United States. They also knew that a number of major U.S. drug rings controlled by Nicaraguan expats were helping to fund the Contras. Webb could have also said with authority that one of the Contra-cocaine connections known to the feds was Danilo Blandón, a trafficker who, it turned out, supplied Ricky Ross, the L.A. dealer who catalyzed the crack epidemic. Those were and are the facts.

armoured

But we’re not the only gangsters in Chicago. We found ourselves in conflict with the Colombians, the Russians, the Italians, and the Irish.

We crushed the Colombians, taking over their drug-running pipeline.

Former slaves and natives. Eskimos and Hiroshima people, Amazonian Indians and Chiapas Indians and Chilean Indians and American Indians and Indian Indians. Australian aborigines, Guatemalans and Colombians and Brazilians and Argentineans, Nigerians, Burmese, Angolans, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Bolivians, Afghans, Cambodians, Rwan-dans, Filipinos, Indonesians, Liberians, Borneoans, Papua New Guineans, South Africans, Iraqis, Iranians, Turks, Armenians, Palestinians, French Guyanese, Dutch Guyanese, Surinamese, Sierra Leonese, Malagasys, Senegalese, Maldivians, Sri Lankans, Malaysians, Kenyans, Panamanians, Mexicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Costa Ricans, Congoans, Mauritanians, Marshall Islanders, Tahitians, Gabonese, Beninese, Malians, Jamaicans, Botswanans, Burundians, Sudanese, Eritreans, Uruguayans, Nicaraguans, Ugandans, Ivory Coastians, Zambians, Guinea-Bissauans, Cameroonians, Laotians, Zaireans coming at you screaming colonialism, screaming slavery, screaming mining companies screaming banana companies oil companies screaming CIA spy among the missionaries screaming it was Kissinger who killed their father and why don’t you forgive third-world debt; Lumumba, they shouted, and Allende; on the other side, Pinochet, they said, Mobutu; contaminated milk from Nestle, they said; Agent Orange; dirty dealings by Xerox. World Bank, UN, IMF, everything run by white people. Every day in the papers another thing! Nestle and Xerox were fine upstanding companies, the backbone of the economy, and Kissinger was at least a patriot. The United States was a young country built on the finest principles, and how could it possibly owe so many bills? Enough was enough. Business was business. Your bread might as well be left unbuttered were the butter to be spread so thin. The fittest one wins and gets the butter.

We are educated Colombo Tamils. We must be careful and not attract attention. You understand, no?’ You think of the lottery of birth and how everything else is mythology, stories the ego tells itself to justify fortune or explain away injustice. You wonder if you should hold your tongue. ‘Uncle, this country was inherited by arrack-swillers who sent their children to British schools. Mostly Sinhala – but not all. What they all were was Colombians. And being an English-speaking Colombian exempts us from the rest of this country’s sufferings.’ ‘I didn’t know there were Marxists left in this country,’ says Stanley, giving you the fakest of smiles as he rises to leave.

What Webb could say with authority was exactly what the Kerry Committee had: that federal law-enforcement agencies, including the CIA, knew that Contra members were involved with the Colombian cartels and trafficking large shipments of cocaine to the United States. They also knew that a number of major U.S. drug rings controlled by Nicaraguan expats were helping to fund the Contras. Webb could have also said with authority that one of the Contra-cocaine connections known to the feds was Danilo Blandón, a trafficker who, it turned out, supplied Ricky Ross, the L.A. dealer who catalyzed the crack epidemic. Those were and are the facts.

The Global Texan Being a Texan today is about driving your Japanese Toyota Tacoma pickup truck to an Irish bar to have a Mexican Corona and snort a line Colombian coke. Then grab some some Italian pizza for the kids after getting a call from your wife on your Swedish Nokia phone. You pull into the garage next to your daughter's German Mini Cooper, kick back on pleather Chinese recliner and watch a soccer match match between Brazil and Argentina on your 65 inch Korean Samsung TV.

Finally, the continuing war in Colombia offers a glimpse of the postmodern network scenario, where all sides in the conflict have linked up with privatized military help. While the government and multinational corporations have hired PMFs, the opposition as well has contracted out much of its intelligence and military functions. Flush with resources, Colombian political insurgents, drug cartels, international mafias, hired advisors, and other affiliates have also made their own alliances. Thus, they are able to limit the exposure of their core, while making use of the latest technology.

The Colombian from Caramanta sees Jorge Negrete with his guitar, his big sombrero, his pistols, and reacts to the hero in the same way as the little Indian from Tlaxcala, the cholo from Cuzco, the Juan Bimba from Merida. He too longs to have a girlfriend with bottomless eyes and black braids, a spirited horse, a noble guitar full of songs, and a wonderful manly voice to sing them. Jorge Negrete was, in the movies as in life, what millions of American men, poor and sad, alone, without a woman, a horse or songs wished to be.

Virgin Food Orgy A rich friend of mine, Richard Branson, sent me an invitation to his book launch party. The invite read, 'Come to our Virgin Food Orgy. Treat yourself to our $100,000 buffet of exotic and erotic treats.' I came to the party, stuffed $1000 of caviar into a dozen condoms and swallowed them like a Colombian drug mule. Great fucking party!

Delgado Beauchamp has ties to the Colombian cartel.

Psychologists have been quick to attribute to Luis the three characteristics that define most sexually driven serial killers: acceptance seeking, repressed hostility, and incompatibility amongst peers--or narcissism, sadism, and loneliness. While