Global Issues IRE Resources '11-'12

Adolescents from poor neighborhoods were recruited as sicarios

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The root cause has to do with impunity, because for many years, these police was used to control the population, mainly, and not to prosecute criminals. Therefore, in order for them to be the blind instruments of power, they were given autonomy. They were given impunity.

The judicial police, though, are not only rogues acting on their own. The force is also frequently used by politicians from the ruling party to intimidate opponents

In June, when drug baron Hector Palma crash landed in a Lear jet, the government had to use the army to capture him. Judicial police in the drug lord's pay had whisked him away to a safe house belonging to the regional judicial police commander. Experts here estimate that Palma, who often traveled wearing a judicial police uniform, and other drug kingpins, have been paying judicial police and other authorities as much as $200 million a month for protection.

Most crimes never come to trial, judges receive death threats, and the army itself is accused of human rights violations.

"the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico."

Commandos from the Mexican army deserted and set up a cartel, known as Los Zetas.

but also in the society that continues to produce them. Before juvenile violence became so widespread, many dramatic changes had occurred in Colombia. First of all, there are historical factors. The gangs emerged in areas characterized by massive rural migration. By and large, the state had completely forgotten these areas by the 1970s. Residents were condemned to the world of "informality"--a world in which the rights and obligations of citizenship were lacking. The sons of these migrants from the Colombian countryside grew up on the edge of legality. They were treated as second-class citizens, to be dealt with only by the police.

In a poll conducted last year in the schools of the Northeastern District, students were asked whom they considered the most important person in the country. Pablo Escobar was named by 21 percent of those surveyed; 19.6 percent chose President César Gaviria; and 12.6 percent named the goalkeeper of the national soccer team, René Higuita.

She was the presidential candidate of the Green Oxygen Party - a group that she had created after leaving the Liberal Party in 1998

San Vicente de Caguan was also one of the most dangerous areas in Colombia, as it was considered one of the strongholds of the guerrillas protected, forming part of the demilitarized zone of the army.

political kidnapping for extortion that are used purely as a means of financing at this stage of the life of the guerrillas

During the 1980s, the FARCcollected most of its revenues through kidnappingand extortion.

The FARCattempted to extract taxes from the new landlords using techniques it had successfully used with the existing landed elite: threatening retribution if those elites refused to pay, or kidnappingfor ransom

Testifying for the prosecution in a Federal drug conspiracy and money laundering trial, Mr. Mermelstein said that from 1981 to 1985 he was one of the cartel's main representatives in the United States. He said that for four years he supervised the distribution of 56 tons of cocaine brought into the country and that he was responsible for transferring about $300 million from drug sales back to Colombia.

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Its primary stated objective was to end drug trafficking in Colombia. Later on, it was discovered that the plan had the further objective of defeating the guerrilla movement,

it reaches $7.7 billion. But despite this investment, the U.S.-supported government of Alvaro Uribe has defeated neither the drug traffickers nor the guerrilla movement. To the contrary, the plan's only success has been to guarantee a majority to the parties that supported Uribe in the Congressional elections of March 2006, and to guarantee Uribe's own re-election last May.

The U.N.'s refugee agency (UNHCR) has increased the figure of officially recognized internally displaced people in Colombia from 3.4 to 3.67 million, maintaining its undesired position as the first in the world, Caracol Radio reported Monday. UNHCR explains that in 2010 there were 57 "massive displacements," up from 42 the year before, while indigenous communities and Afro-Colombians continue to be the most prominently victimized by forced displacements, who tend to be concentrated in the areas that have witnessed intensified conflict in recent years such as the Pacific coastal regions. The latest U.N. report claimed that ethnic groups have been further affected by the development of illegal mining as a source of finance for illegal armed groups in the country, while inter-city displacement continues to rise, particularly in the Antioquian capital of Medellin. The U.N. agency noted concern for the situation of young people affected by the country's ongoing armed conflict and the emergence of criminal organizations following the 2006 demobilization process that have largely continued the narco-trafficking work of the paramilitaries. The figure of 3.6 million internally displaced people contrasts strikingly with that of Colombian non-governmental organization CODHES, which released a report earlier this year citing 5.2 million displaced Colombians, over 11% of the population, evidently using different criteria with which to classify what constitutes a "forcibly displaced" person. The government's figure by the close of 2010 rested closer to that of the U.N. with around 3.6 million people. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), however, indicates that "the rates of under-registration are substantially high."

"The national-survey by the Civil Society Follow-up Commission showed that 65,7% of IDPs [Internally Displaced Persons] are registered," the IDMC explains, while the remaining 34.3% are not. The Colombian government puts the percentage of unregistered IDPs at 21%. The IDMC notes that many people remain outside of the government's official registry "as IDPs did not come forward out of fear or ignorance of procedures, and because many who requested it were denied registration."