Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
My Colombian War
Download My Colombian War full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online My Colombian War ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis My Colombian War by : Silvana Paternostro
Download or read book My Colombian War written by Silvana Paternostro and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely, evocative account of a reporter's reckoning with her homeland's volatile past Growing up in the coastal city of Barranquilla, Colombia, Silvana Paternostro indulged in the typical concerns of a privileged young girl: friendships and parties, school and family. But soon it became apparent that life in Colombia would not go on as usual. Strange planes appeared overhead, the harbingers of the marijuana drug trade that would explode into cocaine wars over the next decade, and soon after, a disputed election would lead to demonstrations and kidnappings targeting the affluent landed elite—including Paternostro's family. A revolution was brewing, and the social inequalities reflected in her life would boil over into the most violent, most protracted, and most misunderstood civil war of our time. In My Colombian War, Paternostro journeys back to the place where her family and her closest friends still live, weaving authentic experience into a history of this ongoing conflict. Through interviews she allows us to witness the treacherous war zone that Colombia has become, projected on the daily lives of its citizens. Paternostro's book is a stunning, comprehensive narrative of Colombia's past and present.
Book Synopsis My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary by : María Eugenia Vásquez Perdomo
Download or read book My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary written by María Eugenia Vásquez Perdomo and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary, María Eugenia Vásquez Perdomo presents a gripping account of her experiences as a member of M-19, one of the most successful guerrilla movements in Colombia's tumultuous modern history. Vásquez's remarkable story opens with her happy childhood in a middle-class provincial household in which she was encouraged to be adventurous and inquisitive. As an eighteen-year-old university student in Bogotá, María Eugenia embraced radical politics and committed herself to militant action to rid her country of an abusive government. Dedicated and daring, Vásquez took part in some of the M-19's boldest operations in the 1970s and 1980s and became one of its leaders. She was able to avoid detection for nearly twenty years in the movement because she was both clever and considered too attractive to be a guerrillera. Her vivid narrative brings to life the men and women who were her comrades and conveys their anxiety and exhilaration as they carried out their actions. When she tells of her love affairs with some of M-19's top leaders, she cannot separate romance from camaraderie or escape a sense of impending tragedy. If Vásquez gave us only a rare insider's account of youth culture and a guerrilla movement in a Latin American country, this would be a book well worth reading. But she also gives us an unsparing analysis of what it meant to be a woman in the movement and how much her commitment to radical politics cost her. Author note: María Eugenia Vásquez Perdomo is Director, Fundación Mujer y Futuro (NGO: Woman and Future Foundation), working in coordination with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the project "Mujer y Derechos" (Women and Rights), which serves women forcibly displaced by the armed conflict. The Spanish-language edition of this book, published as Escrito para no morir, was awarded the Colombian National Prize for Testimonial Literature in 1998. Lorena Terando is Assistant Professor of Translation at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Book Synopsis A Gringa in Bogotá by : June Carolyn Erlick
Download or read book A Gringa in Bogotá written by June Carolyn Erlick and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To many foreigners, Colombia is a nightmare of drugs and violence. Yet normal life goes on there, and, in Bogotá, it's even possible to forget that war still ravages the countryside. This paradox of perceptions—outsiders' fears versus insiders' realities—drew June Carolyn Erlick back to Bogotá for a year's stay in 2005. She wanted to understand how the city she first came to love in 1975 has made such strides toward building a peaceful civil society in the midst of ongoing violence. The complex reality she found comes to life in this compelling memoir. Erlick creates her portrait of Bogotá through a series of vivid vignettes that cover many aspects of city life. As an experienced journalist, she lets the things she observes lead her to larger conclusions. The courtesy of people on buses, the absence of packs of stray dogs and street trash, and the willingness of strangers to help her cross an overpass when vertigo overwhelms her all become signs of convivencia—the desire of Bogotanos to live together in harmony despite decades of war. But as Erlick settles further into city life, she finds that "war in the city is invisible, but constantly present in subtle ways, almost like the constant mist that used to drip down from the Bogotá skies so many years ago." Shattering stereotypes with its lively reporting, A Gringa in Bogotá is must-reading for going beyond the headlines about the drug war and bloody conflict.
Download or read book Beyond Bogotá written by Garry M. Leech and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A firsthand account of Colombia's turmoil by a journalist who was held captive by rebel guerrillasIndependent journalist Garry Leech has spent the last eight years working in the most remote and dangerous regions of Colombia, uncovering the unofficial stories of people living in conflict zones. Unlike other Western journalists, most of whom rarely leave Bogotá, Leech learns the truth about conflicts and the U.S. war on drugs directly from the source: farmers, male and female guerrillas, union organizers, indigenous communities, and many others.Beyond Bogotá is built around the eleven hours that Leech was held captive by the FARC, Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla group, in August of 2006. Drawing on unprecedented access to soldiers, guerrillas, paramilitaries and peasants in conflict zones and cocaine-producing areas, Leech's documentary memoir is an epic tale of a journalist's search for meaning in the midst of violence and poverty. This compelling account provides fresh insights into U.S. foreign policy, the role of the media, and the plight of everyday Colombians caught in the middle of a brutal war."In this remarkable saga, Garry Leech conveys brilliantly and with vivid insight the magical qualities of this rich and tortured land, and the struggles and torment of its people." -Noam Chomsky"An extraordinary portrait of grace under pressure-not only of the author himself, but of ordinary Colombians fighting for social justice." -Forrest Hylton, author of Evil Hour in Colombia
Book Synopsis Even Silence Has an End by : Ingrid Betancourt
Download or read book Even Silence Has an End written by Ingrid Betancourt and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-09-21 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Betancourt's riveting account...is an unforgettable epic of moral courage and human endurance." -Los Angeles Times In the midst of her campaign for the Colombian presidency in 2002, Ingrid Betancourt traveled into a military-controlled region, where she was abducted by the FARC, a brutal terrorist guerrilla organization in conflict with the government. She would spend the next six and a half years captive in the depths of the Colombian jungle. Even Silence Has an End is her deeply moving and personal account of that time. The facts of her story are astounding, but it is Betancourt's indomitable spirit that drives this very special narrative-an intensely intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate reflection on what it really means to be human.
Book Synopsis My Colombian Death by : Matthew Thompson
Download or read book My Colombian Death written by Matthew Thompson and published by Picador Australia. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kidnappings, car bombs, cocaine, paramilitaries, bullfights, the Amazon and madness. Welcome to Colombia, where life is cheap and so are the drugs. In 2006, Matt Thompson travelled to Colombia in search of the life he might have led. Born to American parents, Matt's father was offered a post which would have taken the family to Bogota, but he turned it down because it was too high risk. Instead they came to Australia - low-risk, even paradisaic - and the land that nearly drove Matt to a slow death from boredom. One day he quits his job, picks up his bag and decides to go experience life in the country that's not only the most dangerous in South America, but possibly the world. This is the story of what happened next. Part Heart of Darkness, part Marching Powder, My Colombian Death is a wild ride to the edge and beyond.
Download or read book Walking Ghosts written by Steven Dudley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Hostage Nation written by Victoria Bruce and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-08-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A blistering journalistic exposé: an account of government negligence, corporate malfeasance, familial struggle, drugs, politics, murder, and a daring rescue operation in the Colombian jungle. On July 2, 2008, when three American private contractors and Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt were rescued after being held for more than five years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the world was captivated by their personal narratives. But between the headlines a major story was lost: Who exactly are the FARC? How had a drug-funded revolutionary army managed to hold so many hostages for so long? Had our costly War on Drugs failed completely? Hostage Nation answers these questions by exploring the complex and corrupt political and socioeconomic situations that enabled the FARC to gain unprecedented strength, influence, and impunity. It takes us behind the news stories to profile a young revolutionary in the making, an elite Colombian banker-turned-guerrilla and the hard-driven American federal prosecutor determined to convict him on American soil, and a former FBI boss who worked tirelessly to end the hostage crisis while the U.S. government disregarded his most important tool—negotiation. With unprecedented access to the FARC’s hidden camps, exceptional research, and lucid and keen insight, the authors have produced a revelatory work of current history.
Book Synopsis Democracy and Displacement in Colombia's Civil War by : Abbey Steele
Download or read book Democracy and Displacement in Colombia's Civil War written by Abbey Steele and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy and Displacement in Colombia’s Civil War is one of few books available in English to provide an overview of the Colombian civil war and drug war. Abbey Steele draws on her own original field research as well as on Colombian scholars’ work in Spanish to provide an expansive view of the country’s political conflicts. Steele shows how political reforms in the context of Colombia’s ongoing civil war produced unexpected, dramatic consequences: democratic elections revealed Colombian citizens’ political loyalties and allowed counterinsurgent armed groups to implement political cleansing against civilians perceived as loyal to insurgents. Combining evidence collected from remote archives, more than two hundred interviews, and quantitative data from the government’s displacement registry, Steele connects Colombia’s political development and the course of its civil war to purposeful displacement. By introducing the concepts of collective targeting and political cleansing, Steele extends what we already know about patterns of ethnic cleansing to cases where expulsion of civilians from their communities is based on nonethnic traits.
Book Synopsis Violence in Colombia, 1990-2000 by : Charles W. Bergquist
Download or read book Violence in Colombia, 1990-2000 written by Charles W. Bergquist and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence In Colombia provides students with a deeper understanding of the crisis facing Colombia today. The book focuses on the 1990s, a decade that witnessed a strengthening of the oldest and largest guerrilla insurgency in the Americas and the emergence of a powerful paramilitary right. The decade also saw a dramatic rise in homicide, kidnapping, and human rights violations that made Colombia by far the most violent nation in the hemisphere. But the 1990s was also about negotiating peace. The decade began with negotiations between the government and some of the guerrilla groups that led to their demobilization and to the important reforms codified in the Constitution of 1991. It ended with another serious attempt at negotiating peace, a historic agreement between the government and the largest and most powerful of the guerrilla groups to put a range of social and economic reforms on the negotiating table. For many, the crisis in Colombia is understood in terms of the drug trade. To be sure, the drug trade is implicated in every aspect of the crisis. And despite (or because of?) escalating efforts by the Colombian and U.S. governments to curb the trade, Colombia's role as the leading supplier of cocaine, and increasingly of heroin, to the U.S. market continues to expand. But the drug trade, by itself, cannot explain the crisis. If it could, why have other Latin American drug-producing and trafficking nations not experienced a fate like Colombia's? To answer this question, the book presents some of the best recent work by Colombian scholars on the crisis facing the nation. Violence in Colombia also includes a large section devoted to primary documents, which enables students to get a feel for the views of the protagonists in the conflict and judge for themselves the meaning of what they say. Examples include the negotiating positions of the government, the guerrillas, and the paramilitary right; testimony by kidnap victims and human rights lawyers; and assessments by U.S. officials and Colo
Book Synopsis Law in a Lawless Land by : Michael Taussig
Download or read book Law in a Lawless Land written by Michael Taussig and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-11-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern nation in a state of total disorder, Colombia is an international flashpoint—wracked by more than half a century of civil war, political conflict, and drug-trade related violence—despite a multibillion dollar American commitment that makes it the third-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Law in a Lawless Land offers a rare and penetrating insight into the nature of Colombia's present peril. In a nuanced account of the human consequences of a disintegrating state, anthropologist Michael Taussig chronicles two weeks in a small town in Colombia's Cauca Valley taken over by paramilitaries that brazenly assassinate adolescent gang members. Armed with automatic weapons and computer-generated lists of names and photographs, the paramilitaries have the tacit support of the police and even many of the desperate townspeople, who are seeking any solution to the crushing uncertainty of violence in their lives. Concentrating on everyday experience, Taussig forces readers to confront a kind of terror to which they have become numb and complacent. "If you want to know what it is like to live in a country where the state has disintegrated, this moving book by an anthropologist well known for his writings on murderous Colombia will tell you."—Eric Hobsbawm
Book Synopsis Borderland Battles by : Annette Idler
Download or read book Borderland Battles written by Annette Idler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The post-cold war era has seen an unmistakable trend toward the proliferation of violent non-state groups-variously labeled terrorists, rebels, paramilitaries, gangs, and criminals-near borders in unstable regions especially. In Borderland Battles, Annette Idler examines the micro-dynamics among violent non-state groups and finds striking patterns: borderland spaces consistently intensify the security impacts of how these groups compete for territorial control, cooperate in illicit cross-border activities, and replace the state in exerting governance functions. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with more than 600 interviews in and on the shared borderlands of Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, where conflict is ripe and crime thriving, Idler reveals how dynamic interactions among violent non-state groups produce a complex security landscape with ramifications for order and governance, both locally and beyond. A deep examination of how violent non-state groups actually operate with and against one another on the ground, Borderland Battles will be essential reading for anyone involved in reducing organized crime and armed conflict-some of our era's most pressing and seemingly intractable problems.
Download or read book As War Ends written by James Meernik and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades a bitter civil war between the Colombia government and armed insurgent groups tore apart Colombian society. After protracted negotiations in Havana, a peace agreement was accepted by the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group in 2016. This volume will provide academics and practitioners throughout the world with critical analyses regarding what we know generally about the post-war peace building process and how this can be applied to the specifics of the Colombian case to assist in the design and implementation of post-war peace building programs and policies. This unique group of Colombian and international scholars comment on critical aspects of the peace process in Colombia, transitional justice mechanisms, the role of state and non-state actors at the national and local levels, and examine what the Colombian case reveals about traditional theories and approaches to peace and transitional justice.
Download or read book A Great Perhaps? written by Dickie Davis and published by Hurst & Company. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No country has managed as rapid and positive a turnaround in governance and security conditions this century as Colombia. In 1999, FARC and ELN rebels were literally at the gates of Bogotá, and Colombia was a country synonymous with the antics of Pablo Escobar, known primarily for rapacious corruption, weak government, drug smuggling and criminality. Fifteen years later the guerrillas, seriously weakened, have been persuaded to attend peace talks in Havana, and the Colombian economy had been a top performer in Latin America. [...] Based on field-work in Colombia’s regions, the study provides a history of the conflict, compares it to other historical and contemporary case-studies, examines the war from the perspectives of the government and the guerrillas, delves into the development of special Colombian capabilities (notably in intelligence and the use of airpower and special forces), and explains the economic dimension in terms both of historical exclusion and ongoing attempts at growth and inclusion. Finally, it concludes with an assessment of the country’s prospects: can the combination of improved security, a flourishing economy and the peace process offer an opportunity to finally translate Colombia from, in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s words, ‘a great perhaps’ into something more permanent? -- Publisher description.
Download or read book Rebelocracy written by Ana Arjona and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-07 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom portrays war zones as chaotic and anarchic. In reality, however, they are often orderly. This work introduces a new phenomenon in the study of civil war: wartime social order. It investigates theoretically and empirically the emergence and functioning of social order in conflict zones. By theorizing the interaction between combatants and civilians and how they impact wartime institutions, the study delves into rebel behavior, civilian agency and their impact on the conduct of war. Based on years of fieldwork in Colombia, the theory is tested with qualitative and quantitative evidence on communities, armed groups, and individuals in conflict zones. The study shows how armed groups strive to rule civilians, and how the latter influence the terms of that rule. The theory and empirical results illuminate our understanding of civil war, institutions, local governance, non-violent resistance, and the emergence of political order.
Download or read book Violentology written by Stephen Ferry and published by Umbrage Editions. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based upon two decades of in-depth investigative reporting in Colombia's conflict zones, this explosive volume integrates text, photography, and design to communicate the horrors that paramilitary groups, such as the "United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia" (as well as the other sides of the conflict in response to the violence), inflicted and continue to inflict on Colombia. An instant classic of journalism and South American political history.
Book Synopsis America's Other War by : Doug Stokes
Download or read book America's Other War written by Doug Stokes and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This controversial book maintains that in Colombia the US has long supported a pervasive campaign of state violence directed against both armed insurgents and a wide range of unarmed progressive social forces. While the context may change from one decade to the next, the basic policies remain the same: maintain the pro-US Colombian state, protect US economic interests and preserve strategic access to oil. Colombia is now the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world, and the largest by far in Latin America. Using extensive declassified documents, this book shows that the so-called "war on drugs", and now the new war on terror in Colombia are actually part of a long-term Colombian "war of state terror" that predates the end of the Cold War with US policy contributing directly to the human rights situation in Colombia today.
