Colombia: Failed, failing, or just weak?

Washington Quarterly

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 123-134

  McLean, Phillip ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0038891447     PISSN: 0163660X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/01636600260046280     Document Type: Review

References (15)

1. See Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El General en su Laberinto (Bogota: Editorial Oveja Negra, 1989) (novelized version of Bolivar's final days that closely parallels the historical record).
2. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 270-294;
3. David McCulloch, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1977), p. 385 (explaining the "take Panama" phrase).
4. See U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Survey of the Alliance for Progress: Colombia, a Case History, March 1969.
5. David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993).
6. This little-noted, chaotic hellhole was depicted in the 1954 adventure movie "Greenfire," starring Stewart Granger and Grace Kelly.
7. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, News of a Kidnapping (New York: Penguin, 1994). Marquez tells the story as if it were a mystery novel.
8. See Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo (New York: Penguin, 2000).
9. Charles Bergquist et al., Violence in Colombia, 1990-2000: Waging War and Negotiating Peace (Wilmington, N.C.: SR Books, 2001).
10. Fundacion Pais Libre, www.paislibre.org.co (accessed April 7, 2002).
11. During the three years of negotiation, Pastrana gave the PARC a 15,000-square-mile, scarcely peopled expanse east of the mountains as a safe haven. When Pastrana called an end to "peace" talks in February, he ordered the military to reoccupy the zone.
12. The quality of Colombian democracy can be and is debated. See, on alternation, Michael Coppedge, "Latin American Parties: Political Darwinism in the Lost Decade," in Political Parties and Democracy, eds. Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2001), p. 175. Note, however, Freedom House's ranking of Colombia as a "nonliberal democracy." Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1999), p. 280.
13. The quality of Colombian democracy can be and is debated. See, on alternation, Michael Coppedge, "Latin American Parties: Political Darwinism in the Lost Decade," in Political Parties and Democracy, eds. Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2001), p. 175. Note, however, Freedom House's ranking of Colombia as a "nonliberal democracy." Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1999), p. 280.
14. In 1995 the U.S. Department of State reported that 97 percent of all crimes in Colombia went unpunished. In 2001 Colombian authorities were holding almost half of all prisoners in pretrial detention. See www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/rppt (accessed April 7, 2002).
15. For a succinct but careful discussion of the economic impact of the narcotics trade, see Patrick Clawson and Rensselaer Lee, The Andean Cocaine Industry (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 200-205.