http://colombiareports.com/opinion/117-cantonese-arepas/7307-washington-rethinks-its-relations-with-colombia-its-about-time.html

http://elespectador.com/noticias/judicial/articulo176848-hallan-fosa-comun-2000-cuerpos-macarena

Didn’t Adam recently do a report on this region?

Perhaps even more tragic than the story itself; is that El Espectador had it tucked away in the “Judicial” section. El Tiempo did not even carry the story (though in all fairness, the story may just be breaking).

That said, if the numbers are taken at face value, what transpires is that after eight years of “democratic security” we are basically back to the 90s. You see, what happened was that 2002, the year Uribe came into office, was an off-the-charts year, an abrupt escalation in the activity of the FARC. So, what the chart says is that Uribe managed to roll that back, but that we end up in levels comparable to what was going on before that huge spike. (I will qualify this later.)

In fact, one little detail that the uribista rewriting of history wants to sweep under the rug is that the previous governments were already getting the army in gear to fight the FARC’s offensive. I’ve said it often: I’m not fan of Pastrana and could fill endless blogs criticizing him. But when the story of the current war is written, it will be clear that the biggest military defeat the FARC faced on the ground was the Battle of Mitu, one of the great conflagrations in Colombia’s history, and this happened early in the Pastrana Administration, with American air support and beefed up equipment bought under the Samper Administration. That battle pretty much broke the trend.

Now to the qualifier. Overall, I don’t get the perception that we’re back to the late 90s although the data may suggest so. The attacks of the late 90s were horrific, probably the biggest victories the FARC (or, for that matter, any other insurgent group) had scored on the ground. But, from what I’m picking in the news, the early 90s are a better parallel. And, if you are old enough, you will remember that back then nobody thought that Colombia was a haven of peace and stability. Back then the FARC were a serious concern. Not an existential threat, to be sure. But they’ve never been one unless you drink the uribista Kool-Aid.

Bottom line, eight years later, after the destruction of several institutions, after all the excesses, after all the legitimation of paramilitary power, after all the handling of social and territorial control to the warlords, the Uribe Administration is bringing the security situation back to what was then regarded as unacceptable. Heckuvajob!