Impact of The Armed Conflict and Drug Trade On Civilians
Valle del Cauca has long been considered one of the epicenters of the Colombian armed conflict. It was here and in Tolima that Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, better known by the acronym FARC-EP, were founded in 1964, following the aftermath of La Violencia. Valle del Cauca is considered part of the guerrillas' traditional "heartland", which stretches across southern Colombia to Vichada in the east. In the 1970s the cultivation of illegal crops like coca (and the subsequent production of Cocaine) led to the rise of the Cali Cartel and the financial strengthening of the right-wing paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. In the 1980s the FARC became indirectly engaged in the drug trade through taxation of farmers, which quickly led to an escalation of the conflict between all parts involved. In the 1990s the department saw a number of displacement crises as tens of thousands of civilians, the majority of them of afro-Colombian and indigenous descent, were forced to flee the fighting between guerrillas, the army, paramilitaries and drug traffickers. The gradual downfall of the Cali Cartel and the demobilization of AUC between 2004 and 2006 led to a shift in the fighting in Valle del Cauca. Drug traffickers reorganized into smaller, more numerous and more effective "micro-cartels", while certain paramilitaries re-organized into "neo-paramilitary" groups, referred to as "BACRIM", or emergent criminal bands, by the government. The fracturing of the former paramilitary enemy allowed FARC and Ejército de Liberación Nacional to reclaim lost territory in the valley.
Read more about this topic: Valle Del Cauca Department
Famous quotes containing the words impact of, impact, armed, conflict, drug and/or trade:
“The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.”
—Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“it pleaseth me when I see through the meadows
The tents and pavilions set up, and great joy have I
When I see o’er the campana knights armed and horses arrayed.
And it pleaseth me when the scouts set in flight the folk with
their goods;
And it pleaseth me when I see coming together after them an host of
armed men.”
—Bertrans De Born (fl. 12th century)
“Managing a tantrum involves nothing less than the formation of character. Even the parent’s capacity to cope well with conflict can improve with this experience. When a parent knows he is right and does not give in for the sake of temporary peace, everybody wins. The parent learns that denying some pleasure does not create a neurotic child and the child learns that she can survive momentary frustration.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)