Boletín de Prensa Internacional 30/11/11
Colombia no es una lección para Mexico
In Sight (EE.UU-Colombia) Colombia is no Lesson For Mexico
Since Mexico's crackdown on organized crime was launched in December 2006, it has become popular to compare the fight with Colombia's own drug war between the 1980s and early 2000s. But the comparisons are both risky and wrong.
Mexico's model for combating organized crime cannot be the same as the one that brought down Colombia's Medellin and Cali cartels and pushed guerrilla movements like the FARC and ELN into a foxhole.
Consider the circumstances in which these two wars started. Colombia in the 1980s was already in the midst of a violent conflict. Two guerrilla groups, the FARC and the ELN, comprised thousands of trained fighters. These guerrillas were driven by a Marxist ideology, and had ambitions to take over the state -- or at the very least create their own independent territories within Colombia.
Venezuela arresta a lìder de cartel colombiano, Maximiliano Bonilla alias 'Valenciano'
The Christian Science Monitor (EE.UU.) Venezuela nabs Colombian cartel leader Maximiliano Bonilla, a.k.a. 'Valenciano'
On the eve of a meeting of the Venezuelan and Colombian presidents, police seized Maximiliano Bonilla and plan to extradite him to the US, where there is a $5 million reward for his capture.
Venezuela has captured one of Colombia's top drug traffickers, just as President Juan Manuel Santos visited his Venezuelan counterpart in Caracas, an arrest that may have profound implications for the Colombian underworld.
Maximiliano Bonilla, alias 'Valenciano,' was one of Colombia's most powerful and prolific drug traffickers, running a criminal empire in the city of Medellin and along the Caribbean Coast. He headed a series of criminal organizations, including factions of the 'Oficina de Envigado' in Medellin and the 'Paisas' along the coast, from their operating base in the city of Barranquilla.
It was not a coincidence that he was arrested on the eve of the meeting in Venezuela between Presidents Juan Manuel Santos and Hugo Chavez. An intelligence source told InSight Crime that the Colombian police intelligence, DIPOL, had been following members of Mr. Bonilla's family for two years, and had pinpointed his movements, feeding the information to the Venezuelan authorities to secure the arrest on Sunday night to highlight the increasing cooperation between the two nations. Despite having a security detail of 15 triggermen, all with Venezuelan IDs like himself, Bonilla came without a fight in the Venezuelan city of Maracay in Aragua state on the Caribbean Coast.
Éxitos y retos del presidente de Colombia
El País (España) Éxitos y retos del presidente de Colombia
Un año después de su elección, Santos está cerca de acabar con la guerrilla más vieja de Latinoamérica
Colombia y su presidente, Juan Manuel Santos, van en caballo de hacienda. Hace un par de semanas, la Policía Nacional y el Ejército arrinconaron y ejecutaron a Alfonso Cano, el entonces jefe de las FARC, una narcoguerrilla que gracias al apoyo internacional y al financiamiento procedente del tráfico de drogas ha estado combatiendo al Gobierno colombiano desde hace 40 años. La muerte de Cano (este es su nombre de guerra) fue la cuarta de una serie de comandantes de alto nivel eliminados a lo largo de los últimos años: Raúl Reyes en Ecuador, Manuel Marulanda, Tirofijo, el jefe fundador de las FARC que murió de causas naturales agudizadas por la persecución, y Jorge Briceño o Mono Jojoy, el segundo de abordo y principal jefe militar de las FARC. Para todos fines prácticos, estos golpes han descabezado a las FARC; los dos principales sobrevivientes del secretariado de siete miembros, Iván Márquez y Timoshenko, se encuentran en Venezuela y carecen de la autoridad necesaria para comandar realmente a los 6.000 o 7.000 combatientes aún presentes en las filas narcoguerrilleras. La desmovilización a la que llamó Santos, junto con una negociación con todas las FARC o frente por frente (a la que no ha llamado Santos, y con razón por ahora), puede llegar a desvanecer a la guerrilla más vieja de América Latina en los próximos meses.