La Política Colombiana

Via the LAT:Major drug suspect seized in Colombia

The capture of Herrera was one of the most important drug trafficking arrests in Colombia in recent years, a U.S. law enforcement official said Tuesday. Herrera is thought to have worked for various Colombian and Mexican cartels, he said.

[…]

A 2024 indictment in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleges that Herrera annually managed the shipment of several multi-ton loads of Colombian cocaine, ferrying it by air, land or sea to U.S. markets via Central America and Mexico.

After escaping from the Mexico City jail, Herrera allegedly did anything but retire. Authorities say he became instrumental in repatriating hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profit from Colombian drug traffickers.

Sources said that Herrera was seized while arranging for a single-engine aircraft to carry $25 million from Central America to Colombia.

The piece starts with a story about how he tried to bribe the cops with $5 million. Apparently he can afford it:

After Herrera’s arrest in Mexico in April 2024, police searching his house in Guatemala found $14 million in cash. Herrera has “many properties” in Colombia and was heavily involved in laundering the drug profits he helped bring back here, DAS detectives said.

Via El Tiempo we see that in the latest round of polling, María Emma Mejía leads Samuel Moreno 59% to 26% amongst likely primary voters for the contest to represent the Polo Democrático Alternativo in the upcoming race for the mayor of Bogotá.

The results track with a poll from May.

The primary will be held on July 8.

If anything, you can click on the “Esta ed nuestra gente” graphic to hear the Polo theme song.

Shockingly, the AP reports that the number of hectares of coca under cultivation has risen, despite the increased eradication effort: Colombia’s president says White House survey shows 8 percent rise in coca

Despite record drug eradication efforts, a White House survey found production of coca in Colombia rose for the third consecutive year in 2024, President Alvaro Uribe said.

Uribe, who travels to Washington on Wednesday to secure the continued flow of U.S. anti-drug aid, revealed the findings of the still unreleased report at the end of a long speech Friday. A transcript was posted Sunday on the president’s Web site.

Uribe said the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy survey, which is based on satellite imagery, found that production rose 8 percent last year, to 156,000 hectares (385,484 acres) — an area twice the size of New York City.

I mean, really, who could’ve seen that coming?

This also contradicts statements from the US government from about a month ago.

Certainly when compared to the stated goals, the current policy is an abject failure:

One of Plan Colombia’s main goals was to halve production of coca within five years, but the latest estimate indicates 27 percent more coca is being produced than in 1999, the year before the anti-drug effort went into effect. A recent dip in the U.S. street price of cocaine, and rise in purity, also points to abundant supply.

Despite this: the response is predictable: there will be a call for more money to be spent to try and eradicate more hectares and yet regardless of how much money we spend we are going to be in the same place a few years from now, looking back and saying “well, we just need a few more million, and then we’ll get ‘em”–and meanwhile the cultivation of the coca plant with continue as will the consumption of the drug.

One wonders at what point we stop and actually reassess if this is a smart way to spend the taxpayers’ money.

Adam Isacson at Plan Colombia and Beyond offers 4 possible explanations for Uribe’s guerrilla-release proposal.

IDEA (the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has an ecopy of the book Regulación juridica de los partidos politicos en América Latina available for download and it includes a chapter on Colombia [PDF].

Via the BBC: Colombia releases top Farc rebel

The Colombian government has released a jailed guerrilla leader in the hope he will encourage the rebels to release the 56 hostages they hold.

Rodrigo Granda, known as the Farc rebel group’s “foreign minister”, was freed as the authorities prepare to release up to 200 guerrillas from prison.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said French President Nicolas Sarkozy had pushed for Mr Granda’s release.

Among the hostages is French-Colombian politician, Ingrid Betancourt.

While it may well be that Uribe has chosen now to engage in this prisoner release as a way to deflect attention from the para-politics scandal, the bottom line is that ny including Granda, this cannot be characterized as a release of only scrubs.

Via the BBC: Colombian rebels spurn jail deal

Colombia’s biggest rebel group insists it will not release any hostages even though the government has announced plans to free some 200 jailed rebels.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, said the gesture by President Alvaro Uribe was a “farce”.

A Farc statement said the government must first create a safe haven for talks - a move Mr Uribe has ruled out.

Of course, the problem is that the last time the Colombian government granted the FARC a safe haven for the purpose of negotiations (back in the administration of Andres Pastrana (1998-2002)) it didn’t lead to anything aside from a handful of symbolic meetings and a nice place to keep hostages. Indeed, it was the kidnapping of several prominent politicians, including then-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt (who was seeking a meeting with the FARC in the demilitarized zone) that lead to Pastrana sending in the military and ending the zone.

As such, the idea that the FARC is going to get another demilitarized zone strikes me as sheer fantasy–especially from the Uribe administration. Of course, they likely know this and may be making such demands simply so that they can try and blame the government on the lack of peace talks when, in fact, they are the ones who don’t want to talk.

I will say that the FARC may have a point when they say that Uribe has decided to engage in the prisoner release at this time to generate positive press in the face of the para-politics scandal:

The plan was merely an attempt by the president to divert attention from a scandal linking some of his political allies to illegal paramilitary groups, the statement said.

LAT’s La Plaza has a few tidbits on Garcia Marquez’s return home: It’s the time of Gabriel Garcia Marquez