Blog Posts

In a decisive ruling for democracy, Colombia’s Constitutional Court determined February 26th that a law authorizing a referendum to change the constitution to permit a second consecutive reelection of President Álvaro Uribe would be unconstitutional. President Uribe immediately accepted the decision.

We thought you should hear this story from Lisa Bonds, with our partner Lutheran World Relief in Colombia.  See LWR’s blog on Colombia and other topics by clicking here.

“I joined my Lutheran World Relief colleagues and Rosario Montoya, the Director of Fundacion Infancia Feliz, in a visit to the ‘Finca la Alemania,’ the German farm… As we drove to the farm, Rosario briefed us on the farm's history and the people who had recently returned to the farm after having been displaced by one of the most feared paramilitary leaders, called ‘the Chain,’ in the state of Cordoba...

In every province of Colombia, women long to know what happened to their husbands, to their daughters, to their sons. Children want to know what happened to their fathers, to their mothers.

Even Colombia’s associations of families of the disappeared have long estimated that at most the disappeared totaled 15,000. And many did not believe the toll was so high.

But as forensic teams are conducting exhumations following the partial paramilitary demobilization, prosecutors are interviewing paramilitary leaders, Colombia’s National Search Commission is soliciting information from the victims, and victims are organizing to know the truth, the scale of the human catastrophe is slowly being unveiled.

On Friday, November 6th, the U.S. government finally released its estimate of how much coca was cultivated in Colombia in 2008. The result is the first reduction in coca-growing since 2002-2003, a significant drop from 167,000 hectares measured in 2007 to 119,000 hectares in 2008. (A hectare is equal to 2.47 acres.) This brings the U.S. government’s coca cultivation estimate to its lowest level since 2004. (The U.S. government has not yet released 2008 coca data for Peru and Bolivia.) This matches a downward 2007-2008 trend – though not the number of hectares – that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime announced (PDF) back in June.

A reduction in coca cultivation is good news. But what caused it?