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 the, 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)
“Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“It is a life-and-death conflict between all those grand, universal, man-respecting principles which we call by the comprehensive term democracy, and all those partial, person-respecting, class-favoring elements which we group together under that silver-slippered word aristocracy. If this war does not mean that, it means nothing.”
—Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921)
“Most people aren’t appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn’t take the drug money, or the daughter who held her tongue again and again. All this anonymous heroism.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)
“My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him order the architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man’s knowledge, not according to his own.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)