Bogota Blogger

Today there was a march downtown and in the central business district of Bogota to protest kidnapping. Though kidnapping’s not nearly as prevalent as it used to be, last week the FARC killed eleven politicians they had been holding hostage, and said it was because a military unit had tried to free them. The president denies that the military was involved, but he’s not such a trustworthy guy either, so everyboy’s motives are suspect. People are sick of it, though.

Sometimes I look at conditions in the country and think that a revolution could really do some good. Then I remember: supposedly, there’s a revolution going on already. The problem is that the revolutionaries have strayed far, far, far from their cause, and are now basically just money- and power-hungry, no different from the ones they are supposedly revolting against. And the drug trade has made the money so much easier to come by. So, the only people who suppor the revolution are the FARC members themselves, so their cause is going nowhere. Maybe many years ago they actually had the people’s benefit in mind, but those days are long gone.

There are tons of kidnapped Combian people still being held for political reasons (not for money), and the hard-line president isn’t negotiating. People are happy with him, even though he’s maybe two shades away from fascist, because he’s created a lot of safety (relatively speaking) in the country. He lies a lot, is my impression (from people who should know, mostly), but what politician doesn’t?

I have a friend whose family has suffered a great deal due to kidnapping, and continues to suffer, and I’m thinking of writing a post about that situation. I probably will, but want to be careful about what I say, since it’s hard to trust anybody when it comes to this issue.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.