Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War

Rating:
Summary: A balanced and probing journalistic essay
Review: Grace Livingstone has authored a balanced and probing journalistic essay of the Republic of Colombia. "Inside Colombia; Drugs, Deomocracy and War," is a powerful presentation of human rights, history, the economy, the war on drugs and Colombian - American relations. Moreover, the text includes dynamic fundamental statistics that adds an important dimension to understanding the complexities of Colombia's democracy. An added bonus is a straightforward and compelling foreword by Jenny Pearce...a highly regarded author/journalist.

To this end, Livingstone does not hesitate to inform the reader in the opening pages of this text that Colombia has the highest homicide rate in the Americas. "More trade unionists, journalists and mayors are killed here than anywhere else...Most notoriously, it has the highest kidnapping rate in the world... More than fifty thousand people have died in political violence since 1980 and the death rate is rising," according to the author. Livingstone goes on to explain that the armed forces and illegal paramilitaries are waging a brutal counterinsurgency war in the countryside. She adds that the paramilitaries terrorize civilians in order to undercut support for leftwing guerrillas, who have been fighting the State since the 1960's. To her credit, the author does not fail to objectively point out the recent human rights abuses by guerrillas.

However, this book does more than document the human rights abuses inside the borders of Colombia. Livingstone also provides a tier one study of the Colombian economy. The examination of clientelism, income inequality and the coffee & oil sectors are outstanding. A piece of the puzzle in understanding the economy is in the foreword where Jenny Pearce states, "Colombia's political & economic elite have failed to govern in the interest of all Colombians. They have not constructed a state capable of building a nation which in turn would provide the cultural context for the political activation of ciizens and democratization of the state."

Livingstone goes one step further and adds that, "the harmony between politicians, technocrats, businessmen, newspaper editors, is due, by and large, to the fact that they all come from the same class, were born in the same parts of the country, went to the same universities and moved in the same circles or belonged to the same families." Obviously, the glaring absence of significant social and land reforms in Colombia is a direct result of the fact that the middle and lower class in Colombia has a tiny voice in promoting change. Nevertheless, the keystone to understanding why Colombia is what it is today is clearly articulated by Livingstone in the chapter on Colombian history, "In Colombia, it would be accurate to say there were a variety of regional elites to whom local power was more important than the abstract concept of a nation." In completing this book one will likely conclude that Colombia will never find peace on earth until leaders in Bogota create authentic political inclusion and a fair administration of justice for all Colombians. Recommended.

Bert Ruiz