The real news behind South America's latest border fracas is Colombia's looming victory in its own narcotics-powered civil war.This is a victory Colombia's chief international antagonist, Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chavez, fears -- for several calculating reasons.
Let's start with Colombia's slow and grueling democratic accomplishment. On Feb. 5, hundreds of thousands of Colombian citizens marched in the capital, Bogota, in a mass protest against crime and terrorism. Their anger had an explicit political target: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym, FARC.
The jam-packed demonstrations impressed reporters and correspondents who have followed Colombia's brutal two decades of "The New Violence." The protests provided in-your-face media evidence that security in Bogota had indeed improved dramatically and that public confidence in local and national institutions had revived.