Month: January 2002

A Snapshot of Colombia

There are stories that get into the news, and stories that don’t. Sometimes when stories do make the news, they’re provided without context. The recent near-breakdown of the peace process in Colombia is one example of a context-free story, reported in the major media. Worker’s and indigenous struggles that are happening right now, in places like Cali and Cauca, are examples of stories that don’t even make the news. Here we will provide some context first, and then three stories that you won’t hear in the news about Colombia today.

Context: The IMF, the FTAA, and the Crisis

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What are the rules?

Years ago I interviewed someone who had traveled all over Central and Eastern Europe and Central and South Asia studying states and civil wars and how and why states failed. ‘People ask me what’s worse, an authoritarian state or no state,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in both. No state is worse.’ I suppose he was saying when there are rules, no matter how cruel or arbitrary, one knows how to avoid punishment, but when there are no rules but only raw power, it makes you even more helpless.

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