The Latin American Report # 578

Colombia. Things have never been easy in this South American country since an internal armed conflict erupted about 60 years ago, involving left-wing guerrillas—or groups that, initially, embodied leftist ideals, in the wake of the Cuban Revolution—, paramilitary groups, cartels, "self-defense" forces, and the regular Army. Kidnappings, murders, extortion, massive displacement, drug trafficking, and so on, are the classic problems of a nation plagued by insecurity, particularly in certain areas where the struggle for every inch of land, for every cultivated plot of coca, for every route, makes de facto law that of crime.

After a crisis that "subsided" without much fanfare in Catatumbo earlier this year, fueled by the fierce struggle between structures of dissidents of the extinct FARC-EP—that is, groups that never accepted the peace agreement signed during Juan Manuel Santos' government or took up arms again—and the National Liberation Army (ELN in Spanish), in recent hours a new peak of violence has been observed following a series of attacks against the Army that have so far today left at least 13 dead and dozens wounded.

A first attack, reportedly carried out with a drone, hit a helicopter, killing eight soldiers who were on a mission to eradicate illicit drug crops. In another attack, this on a military school for future aviators based in Cali, the capital of the violent Valle del Cauca department, five people were killed and about forty were wounded. "Colombia deserves to live in peace. What happened today in Cali at the Marco Fidel Suárez Air Base is a cowardly and criminal act that we absolutely reject," said Vice President Francia Márquez, who, incidentally, has a tense relationship with the man in charge of affairs at the Casa de Nariño (Nariño's House, i.e., the presidential palace). President Petro attributed both attacks to the so-called Central General Staff (EMC in Spanish), the main dissident force that split from the FARC-EP, the other being the so-called Second Marquetalia.

"I have made a decision: our investigations show that the so-called Gulf Clan, the Second Marquetalia, and the dissidents of alias 'Iván Mordisco' (known as EMC) are the board of directors of drug trafficking and must be considered terrorist organizations to be pursued anywhere on the planet, including Bogotá, [the capital,]" said Petro at an event in a city in the north of the country, for now leaving the ELN out of this designation.

"The car bomb attacks in Cali and the murder of eight police officers using drones loaded with explosives are unacceptable events that demonstrate the audacity of criminality," stressed the president of the Senate for his part. News of attacks against Army detachments resulting in the death of two or three soldiers is common, but this time the numbers are too significant. It has always seemed paradoxical to me that supposedly left-wing guerrilla forces are the ones that have caused the most headaches for Petro, who is already in the history books as the first president associated with that political tendency in the coffee-growing country.

The long arm of OFAC in action

I "love" OFAC and those complying with it. This 👇 ocurred to me Yesterday when trying to sign in on DexScreener.