I only have a couple of weeks left in Medellin, so I wanted to get some pictures of Moravia from a different angle as well as some pictures of San Lorenzo, a neighborhood near my house with cool wall art and a traditional Colombian cemetery.

I was a little hesitant from the start. I was driving with my grandmother in the passenger seat. I am just learning to drive stick shift and am not entirely familiar with certain areas of Medellin, so it was important to avoid sticky situations.

The angle I wanted of Moravia was from an avenue by the Medellin river, which was surprisingly hard to get to. Although the city has clearer road signs than most places in Colombia, getting around can still be very difficult. We ended up getting lost in Aranjuez and Manrique , lower-middle class neighborhoods with histories of violence. Admittedly, we did not go very far into either neighborhood and quickly found our way back onto familiar roads.

Nevertheless, my time in Aranjuez and Manrique was quite tense. People there are not used to seeing anyone from outside their neighborhood. We got hostile stares everywhere we went. Our aged Volkswagen Golf was by far the nicest car in the area. The streets were all narrow, one-way, and extremely steep. Somehow, I managed not to make any serious driving mistakes and weave through the area somewhat smoothly. Interestingly, the whole time I was in Aranjuez and Manrique, I was dying to get back to Moravia.

When we got back downtown, it was about noon. I thought I'd make a quick trip to San Lorenzo to take a few pictures. This time, I had to park in the neighborhood itself, which only made me more nervous. San Lorenzo is far more central and somewhat wealthier than Manrique , where I never would have thought of parking. I got off and started walking in and around the main park and cemetery, immediately across the street from a brand new library.

On my way out of the cemetery, the guard in charge of watching over it told me that I was making a mistake taking pictures there. Despite the fact that he was armed with a shotgun and I never wandered farther than 10 feet from his booth, he strongly advised me to leave as soon as possible because, sooner or later, someone would take my camera and he might not be able to do anything about it. I had left my grandmother watching over the car, so I was alone and, as the guard correctly pointed out, nearly everyone around me stared at my camera everywhere I went.

Elsewhere, the culture is far more territorial. When you wander into an unfamiliar neighborhood, you immediately feel unwanted. The city is composed of scores of individual neighborhoods where everybody knows each other and everyone can immediately identify strangers. Medellin is still a very divided city, and there is still a culture that treats strangers in the neighborhood either as threats or as targets for crime.

Moravia may be poor and crime-ridden, but its integration into the city as a whole has made it a far more inviting neighborhood than many others. The constant presence of city officials and visitors has truly transformed the local culture.

Their discoveries have been appalling. Among the families at Tercer Milenio, there are at least 131 potential AH1N1 cases as well as several AIDS patients and one man with tuberculosis. The poverty, cramped living spaces and horriblehygienic conditions in Bogotás tent cities make them fertile ground for health crises.

On a side note, it was recently discovered that six policemen raped a young displaced girl at the very same park.

Now, Bogotá officials are saying they expect another 1,200 displaced families to arrive very soon and the city simply cannot take any more refugees. There are already tens of thousands living in dire conditions in slums, parks, and public spaces around the city.

The capital is therefore calling on the national government to finally address the refugee crisis. Too often, they say, refugee tent cities are treated as invasions of public space. The country as a whole lacks an effective, coherent plan to begin to deal with internal displacement.

Meanwhile, unlike other countries with inefficient or indifferent governments, Colombia has little concrete support from the UN and generally receives very little international attention for its displacement crisis. Although there are, by some measures, almost 5 million Colombian refugees - 4 million of them still inside the country - nobody in power is focused on handling this huge social problem.

A representative of the UNHCHR is coming to Bogotá soon to serve as a mediator between the displaced people who have begun to protest at Tercer Milenio park and the national government. The refugees want attention and solutions from the neglectful national government.

There are a couple of obvious reasons why the government has so far refused to seriously tackle these issues.

The first is image. The FTA with the United States is pending congressional approval in Washington and Colombia desperately needs to improve its image in terms of human rights in order for the deal to pass. The government has already launched an aggressive English-language tourism campaign called 'Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay.' Now, it is placing large monuments, TV screens displaying modern Colombian buildings and tourist attractions, and free coffee stands in strategic locations in downtown Washington, DC in an apparent attempt to improve the country's image in influential political circles.

The second is cost. Committing to its millions of refugees the way other war-torn countries do would be very expensive. Including reparations, such a project could easily cost dozens of billions of dollars, quite a sum for a mid-sized country fighting a decades-old civil war in the midst of an economic crisis.

Chicho, the alleged 2nd in command of the criminal organization known as Los Triana, had died of cancer, and his footsoldiers ordered the shutdown of those neighborhoods as a massive act of solidarity. Los Triana is a gang that has operated in the Medellin area for many years, surviving a series of battles and alliances with drug cartels and paramilitary groups.

Although the police set up checkpoints, stores remained closed and not a single bus moved through the area. Meanwhile, a caravan of 400 people, including 30 motorcycles, 20 cars and about a dozen buses, moved slowly through the neighborhoods for two hours while police and local residents looked on.

The police were also present at a cemetery in the town of Copacabana, about fifteen minutes north of Medellin, where Chicho was to be buried. Nevertheless, as the caravan approached, armed men on motorcycles came in and out freely to say their last goodbye to their leader.Chicho was buried amidst applause from dozens of his subordinates, without any interruptions by the police.

This is a city where the authorities claim to be in control, but in a lot of areas, that is clearly not the case. In Medellin, everyone knows who the big criminals are. Their names and photographs are in major newspapers and their stories are told onstreet corners throughout the city. Despite all this, powerful crime lords live in the city in relative comfort. There is a deeply rooted culture of tolerance for organized crime as long as it does not cause excessive violence.

To give another example, Q'hubo, a local street newspaper released an extensive article about extortion in Medellin. According to Q’hubo’s investigation, in the downtown area and poor neighborhoods, nearly every store, house, bus, street vendor and drug dealer pays protection money to criminal groups and CONVIVIR . An official who was interviewed said part of the issue was cultural: people want to pay protection money because that is how they've maintained safety in their neighborhoods for decades. Today, extortion is a normal part of everyday life.

In Colombia, informal recyclers have been cleaning up cities for decades. They walk around trash dumps and city streets scavenging for recyclable items and then sell dozens of pounds of plastic, glass and paper for a few dollars. The international practice of organized recycling has slowly begun to make headway in Colombia and city administrations are eager to modernize recycling in their cities.

An obvious challenge, howerver, is to incorporate informal recyclers into the new system. To some, informal recyclers are nothing more than dirt-poor scavengers, but to those who have taken the time to understand their operations, they are innovative entrepreneurs who have helped clean up the city and may have some good ideas about the recycling process.

The Moravia recycling facility will seek to take advantage of the experience and knowledge of the dozens of recyclers who live in the area. In order to avoid displacing these symbols of the neighborhood, it will also incorporate them into the facility and provide them with employment.

Interestingly, one of the last articles about Colombia in the Economist (their coverage has lately been lacking) was about informal recyclers in Cali, Colombia's third largest city after Bogotá and Medellin. The article summarized efforts by Cali and other cities to handle the transition to formal recycling and criticized the attitude of many local politicians who treated them like mere scavengers, rather than entrepreneurs.

The Moravia project could not be more in tune with the Economist. In fact, they even want the recycling facility to honor (through art, cultural events, etc) the history of local informal recyclers.

However, judging from what you I hear on the streets of many Colombian cities, there are plenty of people view recyclers as social undesirables. Recently, two recyclers were killed in Cali when they opened a package containing a grenade, which they were told was a bag of food.

The recycling community and their neighbors were quick to call the attack an act of 'social cleansing'. Social cleansing, typically carried out by paramilitaries and drug cartels, has been common in many parts of Colombia. It consists of eliminating 'undesirables' such as drug addicts and street children through murder and intimidation.

As always, the police were quick to discredit the social cleansing hypothesis. Acts of social cleansing give people the idea that the police is not in control, that other armed groups are enforcing their own form of justice.

Nevertheless, fears of social cleansing have been growing in Colombia after alleged paramilitary pamphlets announcing social cleansing began to circulate in nearly every major city a few months ago. Those fears became national news again last week after the Cali grenade attack and a bloody 72 hours last week during which 17 people were murdered in South Bogota, including several drug addicts.

This is a country ravaged by intense and often violent social tensions and inequality. Fortunately, however, at least in Moravia, there is a commitment from above to recognize, celebrate, and take full advantage of largely untapped entrepreneurship and social capital in poor neighborhoods. While recyclers may be under attack in Cali, in Moravia, they are a central part of neighborhood's economic development plan.

First of all, it is pretty clear that the video was not falsified. There is little reason to believe that anyone would risk faking the video, which is already being analyzed by the OAS and Interpol. The images of Mono Jojoy are very clear.

Second, this is a revelation with huge international consequences. In essence, President Correa's campaign was partly funded by the hemisphere's most brutal terrorist organization (second only, perhaps, to Colombian paramilitaries), a guerrilla group that has murdered and kidnapped thousands of Colombians and has a huge role in international drug trafficking. It remains to be seen what political consequences the video will bring, but it comes at a horribly inopportune time for an already scandal-ridden Correa.

Third, there was absolutely no reason for Correa to collaborate with the FARC. He has generally been a very popular leader and it is simply idiotic not only to receive illegal campaign contributions, but to receive them from one of the most universally despised armed groups in the world.

I always thought that the Colombian government's accusations of FARC-Ecuador links were pure political theater. It is not unheard of for the current Colombian administration to use such accusations irresponsibly and dishonestly to politically discredit critics and rivals. in this case, I was wrong.

Will continue to update on this story...

In the mid-90s, Alvaro Uribe - then governor of Antioquia and now President of Colombia - encouraged and supported the creation of community defense groups known as CONVIVIR. These were essentially citizen militias authorized by the state to maintain order because, at the time, the state was overwhelmed by guerrilla and drug cartel violence.

Critics worried that these CONVIVIR would simply become absorbed into the broader Colombian paramilitary movement. At the time, paramilitary groups were joining forces throughout the country and growing in power. By the late 1990's, they were responsible for more violent crimes than all other actors in Colombia's armed conflict combined.

Critics' fears were soon confirmed. In downtown Medellin, the CONVIVIR became a powerful paramilitary mafia. Their main business was extortion, but they also collaborated in other criminal activities with the rest of the paramilitary forces. CONVIVIR have been known to demand protection money from nearly every business in scores of blocks in the center of Medellin. When people refuse to pay, they have been known to murder business owners and even detonate explosives in stores.

On the other hand, the CONVIVIR also provide protection. They are the main reason behind crime reductions in downtown shopping areas. Today, I can safely walk home from the office, which would have been impossible years ago.

On Thursday afternoon, while walking to a friend’s apartment, I saw a minor altercation between two people about a block from my house. As I walked by, one of the two men accused the other of trying to steal from him. Immediately, seemingly out of nowhere, about six or seven men rushed onto the street to handle the situation. They quickly dragged the alleged thief away, beating him up as they took him into a nearby building.

About an hour later, as I was walking back home, I saw alleged thief being taken away by the police, without handcuffs, on the back of one of their motorcycles. The men who had dragged him away were talking casually on a nearby street corner.

These men, presumably CONVIVIR or other local paramilitaries, are part of a broader phenomenon of informal justice in Colombia. What I assume happened is that they physically assaulted the alleged thief, warned him never to come back, and handed him to the police, who then gave him some form of minor punishment or even took a bribe.

Very few people denounce the existence of CONVIVIR to the authorities. Some of them are afraid, given their power and collaboration with the authorities. Most, however, are indifferent or tolerant of the phenomenon, either because they believe them to be an effective crime-fighting force or because they don't really see the CONVIVIR as abnormal in any way.

Informal justice is rampant in Colombia, and there is little evidence that it is going away. Decades of state absence or indifference has created deeply entrenched criminal organizations who enforce justice on their own terms. Many neighborhoods of Medellin are ruled not by the state, but by the law of 'survival of the fittest'. These days, the 'fittest' in some areas are indeed the police. In many other cases, however, they are armed gangs, paramilitary groups and CONVIVIR.

These tragic statistics indicate two things. First, they confirm recent reports that violence is increasing throughout Colombia. While actual homicide statistics may continue their gradual downward trend, the fact is that new paramilitary groups and drug organizations have begun to fill the territorial and criminal void left by the demobilized paramilitary fronts. Despite military gains against guerrillas and a peace agreement with paramilitary groups, the resilience of the drug trade keeps fueling conflict in Colombia.

It also shows a particular characteristic of Colombia's conflict. While Colombia's war does not claim nearly as many lives as it did years ago, it continues to drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in part due to the importance of territory for the drug trade. Drug production and trafficking are the engine of Colombia's conflict and armed groups are always conquering vast amounts of territory for drug production, processing and trafficking routes. Put together, all the land lost by Colombia's displaced population constitutes a territory about the size of Denmark.

One tragic displacement story is that of the Embera tribe. The Embera are an indigenous group from western Colombia who have for years been in the crossfire between guerrillas, paramilitaries and the Colombian military. Their ancestral lands are crucial drug trafficking routes and strategic military territory. They have been so devastated by war that, today, the Embera are an endangered tribe facing cultural and ethnic extinction.

To make matters worse, recent reports have suggested that many of the AH1N1 cases in Bogota are actually Embera refugees. Indeed, displaced people often live in terrible and unsanitary conditions, cramped in tent cities, shacks and crowded shelters.

Without proper attention from the state, the Embera refugee population has become the epicenter of Bogota's growing AH1N1 problem. Sadly, before flu fears became a reality, few people in Bogota or Colombia cared or did much about the living conditions of Embera refugees or hundreds of thousands of other displaced people in Bogota.

A particularly intense segment shows the demolition of a large housing project in St. Louis. The segment, I think, is supposed to show the failure of urban public housing in the 1960's and 1970's when, a few years after they were advertised as a solution to crime,unemployment and homelessness , public housing projects proved to simply exacerbate those problems. Since I started working on urban public housing in Medellin, I've had those images fromKoyaanisqatsi on my mind a lot.

The need for housing solutions in Medellin is pretty evident: shacks and slums surround the city and dozens of new ones sprout up every day. Unfortunately, however, the task of creating new neighborhoods for thousands of poor people is often quite difficult. During recent tours of public housing projects, I was reminded of the American stereotype of housing projects as crime-ridden and run-down.Unemployment , crime and drug addiction are evident everywhere. Within months, the buildings I'm monitoring go from looking like smaller versions of the red brick condos of wealthy Medellinneighborhoods to looking like the St. Louis projects right before demolition.

Part of this is our fault. Eager to meet project goals (and without proper inter-agency coordination), city workers have moved people from neighborhoods like Moravia into public housing without first equipping the new neighborhoods with schools, hospitals and employment opportunities. Often, the buildings themselves lack adequate construction and are falling apart. Residents have nowhere to send their kids to school, nowhere to seek medical help in the event of an emergency and nobody to help them get acquainted with their new living spaces and new neighbors.

There is an urgent need for social workers in these areas. The projects put together people from neighborhoods that used to be at war, making them fertile ground for more crime and violence. Without schools and public spaces, kids have just as much idle time as they did in the alleys of slums, which also exacerbates crime. Further, people who have never learned proper waste disposal throw their trash everywhere. Adding to the existing inadequacy of some buildings,unemployment and desperation has led some residents to break apart parts of the building to sell scrap metal.

Already, in some housing projects, armed groups, composed in part of demobilized paramilitaries, have begun to demand protection money from the buses that operate in the area. In some cases, they even control who comes in and out of theneighborhood. When the city fails to occupy all the apartments simultaneously , the empty apartments are turned into drug markets and brothels whose criminal bosses are literally the main local authority. In fact, in some areas I visited, there simply is no police presence.

This is all the more remarkable given the fact that the absence of the state in Medellin's slums has for a long time been identified as a major driving force behind crime, poverty and marginalization. The only state presence in some urban housing projects is a couple of police officers; in others there is no state presence at all. Some housing blocks, admittedly, have working public schools and childcare centers, but they do not meet even a small fraction of local demand. Meanwhile, there is still new housing underconstruction which, in a few weeks, will house hundreds of new residents who will also need schools and hospitals.

When I drive by these projects with friends I family, I've pointed them out with pride. After all, housing is one of this administration's main priorities and the sheer number of public housing buildings is impressive from a distance. Nevertheless, after my most recent visits, I realize that these areas are quickly entering the same cycles of crime, unemployment and poverty that plagued slums like Moravia. The pace of social decay is so fast that, within months, the situation may be irreparable.

Therefore, I will spend most of this week preparing an urgent report about the conditions in some of these housing projects. If urgent action is taken, there is a possibility that we can turn theneighborhoods around. If not, one of the mayor's most important projects may become just another failed public housing experiment and another nightmare for the city of Medellin.

Given the complexity of the assassination attempt, many attributed it to a different drug kingpin operating in the plains, El Loco Barrera. Barrera has long been considered one of the country's main druglords. He has strong business relations with the FARC, local drug gangs and organized crime groups in Mexico and Central America.

In contrast to many present-day drug kingpins, however, he has no private army of his own and instead hires the most expensive and effective 'sicario' offices to carry out his military operations. He has been linked to a number of high-profile murders: a mafia-style assassination that shook Argentina, the murder of a former Northern Valley cartel kingpin hiding in Venezuela, and the infamous recent assassination of a former Medellin cartel leader in a Madrid hospital.

However, recent investigations have uncovered that Cuchillo, who commands a private army of at least 500 men, was responsible for the attack. He has been expanding his empire in the plains and was trying to conquer some of Carranza's territory. Emeralds are a great way to launder money and it seems that Cuchillo saw Carranza as an obstacle to his expansion northward. Apparently, he had explicitly warned Carranza to be careful, as he was the new boss in the area.

Despite the fact that it failed to kill Carranza, or even all of his bodyguards, the assassination attempt was a sophisticated operation even for FARC guerrillas, much less a mid-size drug organization like Cuchillo's. The growing power and military capacities of emerging drug organizations has started to seriously worry the authorities.

Meanwhile, investigations into illegal wiretapping by Colombia's intelligence agency DAS have revealed widespread abuses. Apparently, DAS leaders created a secret group, separate from DAS but entirely capable of accessing DAS information by request, dedicated to monitoring opposition politicians, journalists and activists.

The private lives of leaders of the Democratic Pole party are covered extensively in DAS documents. Jose Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of the international NGO Human Rights watch, was also monitored closely. Vivanco was famously insulted by Presdient Uribe, who accused him and other human rights leaders of sympathizing with and even helping the FARC after Vivanco publicly criticized the President because of Colombia's human rights crisis.

This comes just weeks after it was revealed that in the 1980's, the Colombian government had a secret intelligence agency dedicated to monitoring, threatening and even torturing and killing people perceived as 'leftists', from union leaders to journalists.

Colombia is the world's most dangerous country for union leaders and one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. The fact that elements of the government continue to treat opposition leaders as threats to the state, without any real proof of criminal or violent activity, is certainly worrying, especially given the historical context.

Historically, when the government has described someone as a FARC collaborator, they have become military targets for paramilitary groups and elements of Colombian security forces. Indeed, as I mentioned in a previous post, many paramilitaries believe their central goal is to help the president preserve order, even though they spend most of their time participating in apolitical criminal activities. Therefore, President Uribe's tendency to publicly accuse human rights groups, opposition parties, foreign governments and journalists of helping the FARC is extremely irresponsible.

Check it out here: http://colombiareports.com/opinion/89-from-the-editor/4926-uribes-unexpected-change-of-mind-and-his-waning-political-capital.html

According to my dad, who grew up in Cali, the city used to be known for its culture of civility. Decades ago, it was the most livable city in Colombia with vibrant businesses and a relatively high degree of social cohesion. Its universities were active, its business leaders were committed to helping the city and its people were happy and proud to live in Cali, an ethnically and culturally diverse city in the beautiful Cauca valley of Southwestern Colombia.

Nevertheless, recent decades have eroded much of that tradition. Drug trafficking and the violence and cultural decay associated with it dramatically transformed the culture and behavior of local elites. Crime, corruption and social decay also destroyed the social fabric of poor neighborhoods. Displacement due to armed conflict and rural poverty created vast slums all around the city. Finally, the hugely important local sugar industry collapsed, and there was little to replace it other than drug trafficking. Meanwhile, corrupt and incompetent city administrations allowed Cali's cultural life, infrastructure and economy to crumble.

Today, even in wealthy neighborhoods, sidewalks are nonexistent in Cali. One of the most immediately noticeable things about the city is that where there used to be sidewalks there are now random chunks of concrete, broken glass, dust, and trash. Walking down some major streets in Cali is like walking through Moravia, the only difference being that residents of Moravia are more committed to cleaning and maintaining their own streets than Caleños.

I didn't see much pedestrian activity, either, despite the fact that most people in Cali cannot afford cars. The city simply doesn't have the public parks and plazas that make Medellin a relatively walkable city.

Cali also has no cultural life. There is little to do there at night but drink, dance salsa and, in some rich neighborhoods, listen to electronic music. In contrast, during my short stay in Medellin, there have been dozens of important cultural events, many of them organized by the city administration.

Despite all the problems I've encountered at my internship , my time in Cali reminded me of how much the past two Medellin mayors have transformed the city. There was a time, in the mid-90s, when my family was considering moving to Cali. In those days, we didn't give Medellin a chance. These days, the exact opposite is true.

On the other hand, it is my understanding that Cali has one of Colombia's most popular and well-respected mayors. He has created a new public transit system modelled after Bogota's highly praised Transmilenio and has started to turn the city around. I spent Saturday night at a relatively new bar and boutique area in a wealthy Cali neighborhood. This up-and-coming area is helping to diversify Cali's nightlife, although it caters almost exclusively to Cali's small upper class.

Cali's challenges are huge and the contrast with Medellin could not be greater. Despite significant problems with crime, unemployment and inequality, Medellin is active, dynamic and increasingly connected to the outside world. Cali, in contrast, is economically and culturally stagnant. Hopefully, Cali will follow in the footsteps of Medellin and re-create a public sense of optimism, belonging and commitment with regard to the city.

The meeting was about some commercial establishments built by the city around public housing projects in Moravia. The idea was for these stores to compensate local people for commercial space that was lost either because moving to public housing distanced them from the store they used to own or because the public housing was built on the space where they used to have their store.

In short, due to some bureaucratic delays, the commercial spaces were not given to their new owners, were not built with adequate equipment and were eventually stripped of whatever equipment they had by local thieves. Now, every window, shelf, door, electrical wiring, etc is gone.

The idea of the meeting was to define a clear gameplan to rebuild the commercial establishments and give them to the intended owners keeping in mind city budgets, a series of complex legal limitations and, of course, the needs of the community. We seem to be on our way to a solution, although we are starting literally from scratch.

As of now, there is no budget to rebuild the spaces, the spaces are totally empty, most of the spaces have no owner and nobody is really clear about what kind of small businesses could actually be put in those spaces due to legal issues. (public space laws, sanitation laws, etc)

Although I fear that my blog may be focusing increasingly on local paramilitarism, it is hard to avoid the topic: it came up yet again at this meeting. Given how little the topic is covered in the media, especially the international media, it is remarkable how frequently it comes in the most unlikely contexts, like this meeting.

Apparently, the city agency that owns 6 of the establishments is trying to solve some budgetary problem by trying to make some money by selling and renting the commercial spaces very carefully. The best plan they've come up with so far is to sell the spaces in a sort of auction system.

Upon hearing this suggestion, many people at the meeting brought up a couple of objections. First, the original plan was to sell the spaces to people who met a series of strict requirements: that they had a commercial space in Moravia prior to the start of the project in 2004, that they still live in the neighborhood, etc. The chaotic auction system may open up the spaces to people who don't meet all the requirements.

Second, there are fears that the system might attract paramilitary and organized criminal elements. Specifically, people fear that the auction system may allow paramilitary groups to prevent competitors from bidding through intimidation. Paramilitary and mafia groups are always eager for commercial control of crucial neighborhoods in order to launder drug money and become the backbone of local commerce, thereby deepening their authority.

Paramilitary gangs have begun to re-group in Moravia. I have already heard about paramilitaries taking control of public buildings and making aggressive appareances at local planning meetings. If we aren't careful with these commercial establishments, they may also stage a takeover of stores built and supported by the city administration.

For the Moravia project, paramilitarism is just one of the variables that we have to take into account as we move forward with projects. So far, budget issues are stressing us out much more than paramilitaries. For Colombia as a whole, however, paramilitary power is a growing menace that continues to deepen the influence of drugs and crime at all levels of socieety.

This year, private security firms earned about double what hotels earned. This is especially ironic given the fact that Colombia's improving reputation in terms of security has recently contributed to a boom in tourism, both domestic and international. Apparently, however, the number of people who feel the need for armed protection greatly exceeds the number of people who have risked traveling in Colombia. Private security was bigger business than even the traditional banana and flower sectors. (If you look at a Valentine's Day rose package, it is likely to come from Colombia)

Meanwhile, morgues in Antioquia (the department where Medellin is located) are also struggling to keep up with demand. The rise in violence not only in Medellin but also in other regions of Antioquia where drug mafias operate has made it difficult for hospitals to perform timely autopsies. Fourteen people were murdered in Medellin this past Sunday alone. According to analysts, other forms of violence such as death threats and forced displacement are on the rise in the area.

In other news, the former head of Colombia's Notary and Registry system has said that notary jobs were given to Congressmen who voted in favor of the 2006 constitutional amendment which allowed Uribe to run for a second term. Notary jobs are infamous in Colombia because they are relatively easy and very lucrative, which historically has made them useful for clientelism and political corruption.

The scandal surrounding corruption in the 2006 referendum vote is growing. President Uribe himself, who is accused of fully knowing about the operation, has yet to comment on the latest accusations.

Finally, an investigation by the prosecution in a prominent false positives case appears to prove that higher ranking members of the army knew about and facilitated the killings of civilians to present them as guerrillas killed in combat. In fact, it argues that there was even coordination with other army units and that the extrajudicial executions could not have been carried out without significant support from colonels in various different battalions.

At the time, the bombing was seen as a huge success. The FARC, who have been at war with the Colombian government for decades, were seemingly untouchable in the 1990's. Colombians saw guerrillas, previously confined to the countryside, establish a strong presence in large cities, not simply with large-scale bombings but with permanent militias in poor neighborhoods.

In the summer of 2008, after six years of gradual success in the fight against guerrillas, the Colombian military dealt a series of serious blows to the FARC. They killed the top two commanders and rescued several of their most prized political hostages, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three American military contractors. In Colombia, people were ecstatic. It seemed that President Uribe had, in the course of six years, come very close to ending a long national nightmare: FARC have, in the past three decades, become increasingly brutal and involved in the drug trade.

Ecuador, of course, protested that the bombing was a violation of their sovereignty. Colombia, meanwhile, did little to apologize for the episode and instead launched continuous accusations of sympathy for and even collaboration with the FARC not just at Ecuador, but also at Venezuela. The whole thing became a massive regional political crisis that resulted in some significant troop movements on both sides of the Colombia-Venezuela border.

The episode was a great example of Latin American political theater. Uribe, Chavez and Correa all benefited from spikes in nationalist sentiment. Name-calling and ridiculous accusations became the norm. On the Colombian side, local music stars held peace concerts in large cities and on the border with Venezuela.

Of course, the war between Colombia and Venezuela was never going to happen. The two countries are very interdependent in terms of trade and their aggressive presidents' insults and accusations were clearly baseless. There is no clear evidence that either Chavez or Correa is directly supporting the FARC. Otherwise, Uribe would never shake their hand has he often does (especially with Chavez during frequent conciliatory meetings). Nevertheless, there are people in Colombia who genuinely believe their government's accusations against Venezuela, which gives Uribe a significant nationalist/ideological political boost.

It is true, however, that both Ecuador and Venezuela are at least tolerant of FARC elements along their borders with Colombia. They have no political incentive to fight the FARC, which are still a powerful guerrilla group and, in the case of Ecuador, they probably don't have the military capacity to do so either. Given all the damage the FARC have done in Colombia, it would be unwise for Chavez or Correa to unleash such war and devastation on their own people when, for now, the guerrillas seem not to pose any significant threat to their security.

Moving along, while Colombia and Venezuela seem to go through cycles of insult and hand-shaking, relations with Ecuador have steadily deteriorated. The recent arrest warrant is a significant symbolic gesture, and has caused plenty of outrage in Colombia. President Uribe ordered the creation a special security team to protect former Minister Santos while several Colombian lawyers and politicians have been preparing not only Santos's legal defense, but an arrest warrant of their own against Ecuadorean officials for supposed collaboration with FARC guerrillas.

While there are very real sovereignty and security issues at the heart of the dispute, Ecuador and Colombia are clearly engaging in political theater on a large and possibly dangerous scale for domestic political benefit. Ecuador's President is currently dealing with a corruption scandal surrounding his family and Uribe, while still enjoying stable and high levels of popularity, could benefit from another spike in nationalist sentiment and a reminder of the good old days of the 2008 bombing, when Colombians believed they were close to the end of the world's longest running conflict.

This public dispute comes at an interesting time, as several governments throughout the region are engaged in a similarly strange combination of political theater and serious, urgent debate with regard to the political crisis in Honduras. Central America, like Northwest corner of South America, is going through a series of tense political processes and power struggles eerily reminiscent of the Cold War.

Nothing would be better for Latin America than to let go of Cold War-era rhetoric and ideology and their destructive by-products: violence, polarization and political stagnation. Unfortunately, as the challenges and debates of the Cold War drift away into total irrelevance and new, urgent challenges emerge, many regional governments on both the 'left' and the 'right' still resort to outdated rhetoric and ideology. Political incentives continue to create divisive leaders who generally miss the point.

Fortunately, there are a few presidents in Latin America, most notably Lula da Silva of Brazil, ready to lead the region into the 21st century. It is crucial, from a U.S. standpoint, that President Obama is also forward-looking and in tune with the region's new challenges and realities. The Honduras crisis is his first real opportunity to stand strongly for sustainable democracy and institution-building in the region.

So far, I think Obama has at least taken the right stance on the issue. In his first term, Obama should continue to do away with the inaction and polarizing Axis-of-Evil style rhetoric of the Bush era and collaborate with Latin American governments to tackle the hemisphere's most pressing issues: trade, inequality, the environment and the rule of law, among others.