I made my wife stop reading about that last night. I haven't been able to read past the headlines. I have no desire to either.
I could not get past the headlines on that one either.
Believe it or lot, Colombia was a lot worse 50 years ago. That was just when a period of political turmoil known as La Violencia ended: from 1948 to 1954, 200,000 to 300,000 people were killed across the country. That's up to 50,000 victims a YEAR in a country with not even a seventh of the U.S.'s population. There were maybe 15,000 murder victims in the U.S. last year by contrast. I don't know if that death toll also counts victims of petty crime unrelated to La Violencia, but that's still way up there.
One of the frustrations with the mainstream Colombian government is that the two parties run on similar platforms. Liberals and Conservatives both have essentially the same agenda; it's difficult for people to differentiate. Unofficially, you then have the right-wing death squads and the left-wing paramilitary groups — vis a vis the FARC — duking it out in the countryside and outskirts of the larger cities. It's the instability of the civil war between right-wing and left-wing that provides the drug market an ample opportunity to thrive; both sides benefit from the profits.