Violence In Colombia

consumers of illegal drug in the world. Bolivia also borders the world 's producers of cocaine. According to Bogotá 's Security Secretary Daniel criminal operations in the Bronx

Written and published in 2008 by Paul Gootenberg, History professor and Latin American studies at University of New York at Stony Brook, “Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global drug” retraces the pivotal stages of the illicit cocaine trafficking, starting from the boundless coca fields in Latin America to the chemistry laboratories in Europe up until the streets of U.S. cities. The aim of this book review is to provide the reader with a short but detailed insight of what is the main content of the book, by paying particular attention to its structure, objectivity and style.

There is a saying in Colombia that God made the land so beautiful it was unfair to the rest of the world, so to be fair, God populated Colombia with a race of evil men. Violence in Colombia has been prevalent since the country’s bloody struggle for independence. Since then, violence has sprouted from a variety of sources, serving multiple interests and agendas. These different waves of violence shook the country and left countless dead. One of the most recent occurrences was the violence that developed during the late twentieth century, and continued into the twenty-first century, in Bogotá and Medellín. During this era, Pablo Escobar and the other cartels terrorized Colombia’s urban centers with their bombing campaigns and assassinations.

Back in the 1980’s, the drug cartels of Colombia were the cause of chaos all over the world – especially in the United States. In fact, at the height of their power, the Bogotá cartel supplied ninety per cent of Uncle Sam’s cocaine. The cartel was barbaric; assassinating anyone who stood in their way. To add to this, they also had the majority of the law enforcement system on their payroll. And, of course, at the heart of all of this was drug lord Carlos Ruiz and his loyal vice, Pablo Álvarez. The only hope for stopping them was newly elected president, Horacio Ibáñez.

Death occurring in Mexico has quickly raised over the years. Ashley Fantz in “The Mexico drug war: Bodies for billions” reported that five years until 2011 “nearly 48,000 people have been killed in suspected drug-related violence in Mexico.” I believe drugs violence will continue to increase and will lead into many more deaths in the future. However, there are a lot of rules and restrictions that can be put in place to lower death

The problem developed as a result of the fortyfive year long conflict between guerrilla groups, paramilitary organizations and government forces. The cause of fortyfive year long Colombian conflict is rooted within the civil war known as La Violencia, which was caused by the assassination of populist political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948. This motivated both the political leaders and rural town police to enrage the conservative supporting peasants to take over the agricultural lands of liberal supporting peasants, which later developed into a widespread civil war throughout Colombia. Since the conflict is still going on and civilians are the main component between the

When people look at the 1980’s, the question often times asked is, “what was even going on”. Known for its characteristically bright neons, crazy hair dos, and high school coming of age films, this decade definitely made a mark on history. Oftentimes stereotyped with these aspects, the reality of the decade was revolt against the social, financial, and political turmoil of the 1960’s and 70’s.

Spanish imperial rule defined much of Colombia’s social and economic development. As a colony, Colombia was an exporter of raw materials such as metals to its mother country. Colombia’s modern economy based on coffee and other agricultural exports did not emerge until liberalization began under President Gaviria. However, the economy did not take off the same way as the policies of the Washington consensus due to the uncertainty created by violence and illegal drugs. 1845 was an era of stagnation where economic change was happening at a fast rate. Until 1885, it was considered a period of Radical Liberal reform due to all the chaos and economic consequences. The chaos engendered a lack of stable effective leadership. The people were against each other and the government. The Epoch of Civil Wars occurred where the liberal party achieved political ascendancy over the Conservative party. The terms liberal and conservative in the Latin American context differs from that of the United States. In Colombia, the Liberal Party is referred to continuous support towards religion toleration and a positive response to the social and economic demands of society. On the other hand, the Conservative Party has a close tie and cooperates with the Roman Catholic Church, and has a lack of tolerance towards non-Catholic religious beliefs and high centralized

The financial costs of illicit drug use can be roughly measured by how much the government spend on law enforcement and the loss of human productivity. Globally the world spends $100 billion annually on law enforcement aimed in an effort to enforce, prevent, treat, and reduce harm caused by illegal drugs. Despite all the money spent on the interdiction of illegal drugs, drug markets continue to rise and expand. Law enforcement provides very poor value for money that should instead be allocated for education, public infrastructure or in the form of lower taxes. Additionally, drug use causes loss in human productivity which is bad for the economy. In 2008 the cost of lost human productivity in Australia was $425m. Although drug users in general tend to be unproductive, the accrue in opportunity cost is significant, and would have been beneficial for a country’s economy. These two economic factors inflicted because of illicit drug use, are amounted to greatly impact society, as they are paying for largely unnecessary law enforcement, and are at loss because of lost human

Culture is defined as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization. This definition of culture is very true in the country of Colombia. In this paper, I will be going over the three major topics that I believe to be the most important about the Colombian culture: religion, language, and food and customs. Also, while covering these main topics, I will overview terrain, infrastructure, and military conflicts.

For example, agencies have been established with the sole intent to manage drug use and distribution and technology has been exclusively developed to detect the presence of drugs. Yet, evidence has indicated that such exhaustive efforts have been relatively unsuccessful. First, it has been assumed that drugs have perpetuated violence in society and based on this rationale, it was believed that by the suppressing the pervasiveness of drugs that incidents of violence would simultaneously diminish. However, reality has failed to align with the expectations that had initially been anticipated. Research findings have suggested that the decriminalization of drugs would result in a less adversarial drug market in which conflicts have tended to arise among dealers as well as between dealers and buyers (Common Sense for Drug Policy, 2007, p. 21). Essentially, although drugs have been held accountable for gang violence and other acts of violence that have occurred within communities, the illegality of drugs indeed may have aggravated the situation.

The United States government is one such agent. The US government has taken over many aspects of Colombia, with the goal of eliminating the production of cocaine, thus halting the growing drug endemic. They have intruded in Colombia, exerting their power over the Colombian government in many cases, in hopes of providing much needed aid to a country that is in the midst of such plights. Monsanto is also a key agent at the international level. As a known agri-business corporation specializing in the production of chemicals such as pesticides, Monsanto has been critical to the fumigation procedures used to eliminate coca plants throughout many areas of the Colombian countryside. Finally, the paramilitary also serves as an influential international agent in regards to Plan Colombia. This group, appointed by the United States, has been vital in the elimination and control of the FARC guerilla members. They strive to eradicate social and political organizations that contradict their own right-wing beliefs, and have been influential in conflicts with not only the FARC, but also with opposing political parties, unions, and leftist organizations. Plan Colombia is highly influenced through international agents such as

Most Colombians are being forced out of their homes and forced to live on the streets. Some are threatened and harmed and are pulled and have to live on the streets. Paramilitaries will enter a region and start to execute local community leaders. This right is being broken by small armies destroying the civilians and also harming them and sometimes killing them. Other problems currently in Colombia are deforestation and the environmental issues. They are cutting down the trees for timber and mining which are illegal. About one third of the country's forest has been cut down because of deforestation.The government has tried to protect some of the areas to prevent them from cutting down the trees. In Colombia the army also takes children and uses them to join the army and they must obey. Today Civilians

However, despite the reliance on the food and agriculture sector, Colombia’s drug trade makes up 1 percent of the country’s GDP, and the cartels are estimated to export $10 billion annually. To put this into perspective, this means that the illegal drug trade roughly makes up a quarter of Colombia’s legal exports. Out of the $10 billion annually exported by the drug cartels, $4.6 billion of the profits were exports sent to the United States. According to a report released by Business Insider, about 90 percent of the cocaine used by American’s originate from Colombia. In addition, Colombian groups control the distribution of cocaine and heroin in the United States across 40 different cities, primarily located in the

The serious effects of drug trafficking are initially seen in the 1980s, as the cocaine craze, engulfed the United States’ populace, creating a huge market demand. The mighty drug syndicates in Colombia filled this demand and according José Hemando Gomez, “the value of cocaine trafficking peaked in 1982 at US$2,191million” (HARTLYN, 1993, p. 10) Colombia has often been branded a failed state, as a result of the sovereign government’s inability to have effective control over the nation (Peter Hough, 2015, p. 227). Weakened state structures allowed the rise of transnational drug syndicates to influence Colombia and create a misconception that drug