Gustavo Petro (Photo: Agustin Fagua)

The Colombian capital of Bogota has a combative new mayor. Gustavo Petro, who was sworn-in this past Sunday, once belonged to a leftist guerrilla group. He also served as a crusading senator who exposed links between fellow lawmakers and rightwing death squads. Now Petro has to pivot from government antagonist to CEO of a city of eight million people.

Petro, who is 51, has spent most of his life opposing the powers that be. In the 1960s and 70s, leftists like Petro were frozen out of Colombian politics. That gave rise to several rebel insurgencies that tried to overthrow the government.

As a teenager, Petro joined one of these rebel groups, the M-19. Although he was arrested, imprisoned and tortured, Petro said he has no regrets.

“Societies always need rebels,” Petro said. “There was Washington, Bolivar, and Robespierre. Then came later generations of rebels. They changed the world.”

In 1989, the M-19 disbanded. Petro and other M-19 members received amnesties and formed a political party.

“He is the son of a peace process,” said Daniel Garcia-Peña, a former government peace negotiator, who met Petro soon after he laid down his weapons.

“He came to the conclusion that armed struggle had no possibility of successfully changing Colombia. He saw how the armed struggle led to the creation of many of the paramilitary groups and he was convinced that the moment for armed revolt in Colombia had passed.”

Petro eventually won a seat to the lower house of congress, and was then elected senator. In 2006, Petro stood up on the senate floor to denounce many of his fellow lawmakers, accusing them of collaborating with far-right paramilitaries who trafficked drugs and murdered thousands of Colombians.

“By cutting deals with the paramilitaries,” Petro said at the time, “these lawmakers turned over governing powers to the worst criminals this continent has seen in recent decades.”

Petro received a flurry of death threats. But one-third of Colombia’s legislators eventually ended up under investigation, on trial, or in prison.

Francisco Anzola, a Bogota politician and boyhood friend of Petro’s, said the senate speeches raised Petro’s stature and paved the way for his election as mayor, often seen as a launching pad to the presidency.

But critics question Petro’s moral authority given his membership in the M-19, which carried out targeted killings and occupied the Palace of Justice in a 1985 siege that left more than 100 dead. Petro has said he wasn’t involved in the violence. But former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has called Petro a guerrilla disguised as a politician.

Meanwhile, guerrilla groups that continue to fight against the Colombian government despise Petro. Former peace negotiator Garcia-Peña said that’s because Petro’s success proves that armed uprisings are no longer necessary.

“The triumph of Petro in Bogota is a sign that it’s possible through the democratic process for the left to achieve power,” Garcia-Peña said.

Petro takes over a city with crumbling streets, monster traffic jams, and a widening kickback scandal that landed the last Bogota mayor in jail.

In his inaugural speech, Petro’s biggest applause line was his plan to deal with rising crime. Instead of more police, he proposed a ban on carrying weapons in the city.

In some ways, it was a nod to his guerrilla past. As Petro reminded his audience, the M-19 laid down its weapons 23 years ago.

Bogota’s new mayor now stands as exhibit A that disarmament can work.

That means climbing 48 floors, a total of 980 steps. Most will make it to the top in 10 to 15 minutes.

The elite athletes, competing for the tower running World Cup, this year held in Colombia’s capital, go last. They run the course in about half that time.

Tower running, the sport of sprinting up the stairs of skyscrapers, may sound monotonous and a bit claustrophobic, but it just may be a sport for our times. In an increasingly urban world, running up stairwells is one way to get exercise while avoiding traffic jams, street crime and severe weather.

The first modern tower race was at the Empire State Building back in 1978. Since then, the sport has spread across the globe. Though short, the races are pure torture.

“For a lot of us elite climbers, it’s under the theory that if you’re not collapsing when you get to the top then you didn’t push yourself hard enough,” said Kristin Frey, who’s from suburban Chicago. Frey is ranked number 2 in the world among women tower runners. Still, she has to pay her own way to races because she can’t find a sponsor.

“A lot of companies are like: ‘Stairclimbing? You know, we don’t want to sponsor stairclimbing.’ Because they don’t know much about it,” Frey said. “They think it doesn’t really have a big audience. But some of the races get thousands of participants. But so far no one’s biting.”

Michael Reichetzeder, an Austrian tower runner who organized the sport’s World Cup, said there are certain tricks to winning, like using the railings to pull yourself up the stairs.

“Some athletes can make very good use of it. There are people even who spend hours before in the stairwell measuring out the steps to find the exact way to use the railing. Because if you do it right you can save a lot of energy,” Reichetzeder said.

The Colpatria tower is only half as high as the Empire State Building, which stretches up 102 floors. But Bogota’s building is especially tough due to the altitude; the city sits 8,600 feet high in the Andes Mountains.

“Obviously, altitude is a factor that helps Colombian runners and hurts the foreigners,” said Juan Pablo Rangel, a Colombian who’s won the Colpatria tower race twice.

And sure enough, when the elite runners start up the tower, the locals dominate. Angela Figueroa of Colombia wins the women’s division, clocking in at 6:32, about 45 seconds ahead of American Kristin Frey.

At the finish line, several runners collapse into the arms of first-aid workers, panting heavily.

Rangel wins the men’s race for the third time and sets a new course record of 4:42. Reichetzeder, the race organizer, straggles in several minutes later. But he says just finishing is a victory.

“I couldn’t do one extra step. I felt the altitude completely,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “So hard. But I did it.”

Anchor Marco Werman speaks to Holland about the record hunt and where the sounds of cumbia come from.

‘The Original Sound of Cumbia’ Medley by Soundway

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But when it comes to roller derby, it was a Hollywood film that inspired legions of Colombian women to lace up their skates. Watch a slideshow of the Bogota Rock and Roller Queens below.

María Paola Hernandez is founder and captain of the Bogota Rock and Roller Queens, Colombia’s first-ever roller derby team. She’s a graphic designer who roller skated in her spare time. She’d never heard of roller derby, though, until she saw “Whip It,” Drew Barrymore’s 2009 film about a Texas misfit who joins a Bad News Bears-like roller derby squad. (Watch the trailer here.)

The movie was a box-office flop. But Hernández was fascinated by the women hip-checking their way around the rink in wild costumes and old-fashioned four-wheel skates.

“I learned about roller derby from the movie,” Hernández said. “I had no idea what it was so my friends and I began to investigate.”

After downloading the rules from the Internet and watching roller derby online, Hernández began recruiting skaters via Facebook and teaching the sport.

Since then, nearly a dozen roller derby teams have sprung up here, with names like Bone Breakers and the Pain Dealers. Hernández’s husband, Diego Reyes, who coaches the Rock and Roller Queens, said most of the players like the action.

“Without fight, you know. I think that’s the principle attractive of the sport. The action,” Reyes said.

Roller derby is enjoying a renaissance in the US, where hundreds of teams have formed. It’s played with two five-member squads skating around a track. Players score by lapping members of the opposing team, checking and bumping to prevent enemy skaters from passing them.

It’s largely a women’s sport, and many find it liberating, especially in Colombia where there’s still the macho notion that they should stick to more ladylike endeavors, such as beauty pageants.

Francisca Perdomo, who skates for the Rock and Roller Queens, likes the combination of the aggressive play with the risqué spandex outfits and heavy makeup that the players wear.

“I think a girl could be tough and strong, but you can also be feminine and girly,” Perdomo said.

Still, Perdomo has paid a price. She hurt her knee and her foot, but that hasn’t stopped her.

“I came back because I love it. I really do.”

In some ways, it makes sense that roller derby caught on in Colombia. The country is a mecca for roller skaters. The national team has won the World Roller Speed Skating Championships 9 times in the past 12 years.

But national team coach Elías Del Valle said roller derby often seems more like a violent spectacle than a sport.

“It’s for athletes who are a little more aggressive and who may not be suited for speed skating, hockey or artistic skating,” Del Valle said.

Indeed, roller derby is still so strange and new to Colombians that players are constantly trying to convince people that they’re not just making it up.

Still, they did persuade the Colombian government to take them seriously. Last month, roller derby received official recognition from the Colombian Sports Federation, which could lead to more money to build rinks and train teams.

There’s a centuries-old tradition there of playing a game called Tejo. Here’s how Arturo Wallace of BBC Mundo describes it:

“Basically you’re standing 18 meters away from there is a big box with mud with little bags of powder and you have these very heavy weight that you have to throw to hit a target and make those bags of powder explode. That’s Tejo.”

So, can you name the Colombian state whose capital is Tunja and where the most popular pastime is Tejo?

The answer is the Colombian state of Boyacá. Arturo Wallace tells anchor Marco Werman that the 500 year old traditional pastime is getting a makeover in the form of a new phone app.

Colombia is home to one of Latin America’s oldest democracies. Still, its elections are not always clean and tidy. Facundo Castillo is running for governor of Arauca, an oil-rich state on the Venezuelan border. Castillo gets a warm reception going door-to-door. But his political rivals claim Castillo and his family have close connections to Marxist guerrillas, who control much of the surrounding countryside.

Castillo insists he has no links to the rebels. Serious questions have also been raised about Castillo’s main opponent in the race for governor, Carlos Pinilla. The leader of Pinilla’s own party has denounced him for his ties to a jailed politician who sponsored paramilitary death squads.

Part of the problem in policing local elections is the sheer volume of candidates. There are 130,000 candidates running in the October 30 elections for governor, mayor and local councils. More than 10 percent have criminal records, according to Colombia’s interior minister.

Candidates often campaign in remote areas controlled by guerrillas and drug traffickers. Armed groups have killed about two dozen candidates on the campaign trail over the past five months. In other cases, experts say, the groups are backing candidates with cash.

“It doesn’t sound like democracy,” said Andres Ceballos of the Electoral Observation Mission, an independent monitoring group based in Bogota. He said rebels and drug traffickers want to elect mayors and governors who will turn a blind eye to their criminal activities.

“That collusion between these actors is really what puts at risk the elections,” Ceballos said.

Violence and corruption have also marred recent local elections in Mexico and Central America.

“We’ve seen that in Guatemala, in the Honduran elections, Salvador,” said Nhelly Saleh-Ramirez, of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in Washington. She added that most outsiders focus on Latin America’s presidential elections, which have been mostly free and fair, but they pay scant attention to state and local races.

“For the most part, the international community feels that the Americas have ‘graduated,’” she said. “But we have definitely seen a backsliding of democracy in the region.”

Intimidation is not the only problem. Out in the sticks, it is easier for candidates to get away with wrongdoing.

In the city of Arauca, a reporter named Eduardo Cedeño recently discovered that one of the mayoral candidates has plagiarized the political platform of another politician. Cedeño said vote buying is also common.

“Gubernatorial candidates will pay up to $40 for people’s votes while mayoral candidates pay $10,” he said.
On the Arauca River, which forms the border with Venezuela, Jose Ceballos makes a living taking passengers across the river in a wooden motor boat. He is 48 and cannot read or write.

He said the Arauca government gets millions in oil revenue, but corruption has left his state mired in poverty.
“On election day, the politicians give you money to vote for them,” he said. “But look at the streets. They’re full of holes. Look at the public housing in Arauca. It’s horrible.”

Gubernatorial candidate Castillo promises a new era of honest government. Yet his campaign tactics have raised eyebrows. Castillo, a doctor, doesn’t buy people’s votes, but he does set up free mobile clinics in the slums of Arauca and personally attends to potential supporters. Castillo’s team also provides dental checkups, soft drinks and haircuts for the kids.

Just to make sure people remember who to vote for, loudspeakers play songs with lyrics extolling the virtues of Facundo Castillo.

That is because one of the world’s foremost designers of bulletproof clothing is based in the capital Bogota.

Host Marco Werman talks to David Owen, who wrote about the company Miguel Caballero in the latest issue of the New Yorker.

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Marco Werman: If you were a candidate for office in Columbia and looking for some extra protection, you’re in luck.  That’s because one of the world’s foremost designers of bulletproof clothing is based in the capital of Bogata.  David Owen wrote about the company, Miguel Caballero, in the latest issue of the New Yorker, where he’s a staff writer.  David, you must have had major faith in the Caballero clothing line because you tried on one of the garments and allowed Mr. Caballero to shoot you.  What was that like?

David Owen: It was sort of undramatic.  I felt a little thump in my stomach and then nothing.  It didn’t bruise my abdomen or it didn’t knock me onto the ground, two questions that friends of mine have asked me.  But it was really fun, I like it.  I had to put on ear protection because it was very loud, and then I got to keep my bullet.  It looks like a little mushroom cap.  It’s 38 caliber Columbian military ammunition.  And during the rest of my time in Bogata I carried my smooshed bullet around with me in my pocket as sort of a lucky charm.

Werman: Now when you got back you spoke with scientists and researchers at Dupont, which makes the material Kevlar, which is kind of the bread and butter of any bulletproof clothing.  Dupont calls Kevlar bullet resistant, and not bulletproof; in fact, they were kind of surprised that you allowed yourself to be shot in it.  How strong is Kevlar really and is Dupont just trying to avoid liability?

Owen: It’s the thing that we like America for, for being cautious and not over-hyping technology in this way, but they do, they just call it bullet resistant rather than bulletproof, and the engineers were quite surprised when I said that I had allowed myself to be shot.  They said that they don’t test their product on human beings, not even on reporters.  But I was glad that I had waited until I got home to talk to them because I really enjoyed being shot.

Werman: And apparently Mr. Caballero has shot almost all of his 200 employees wearing his garments just to make sure they work and they’re all fine.

Owen: Including his fiance.  He has also shot his fiance who is his director.  And incidentally, he doesn’t just Kevlar.  He uses a similar material that’s of his own invention, which is designed or referred to as the Coca Cola of formula, the company.

Werman: Well, tell us about the variety of designs you tried on and saw at the company there in Bogata.

Owen: There are a number of very utilitarian ones.  There’s a sort of safari jacket that was recommended to me specifically as a reporter, the kind of thing you might wear covering a sort of trouble spot in the world.  They also have very high fashion stuff like a white dinner jacket that they made for Diddy, sort of a moo-moo that they made for the actor Steven Seagal, who apparently worries about people shooting him, probably more in danger of being completely forgotten by people than being singled out as a target.

Werman: Now, apparently President Obama may have worn a Caballero suit as his inauguration.  Did you get that confirmed?

Owen: No, he wouldn’t say anything about that, but there are a number of heads of state around the world who wear Caballero products, including a sleeveless t-shirt which is useless because you can wear it under anything. They also make a bulletproof golf shirt, which you can buy at the Caballero shop at Harrod’s in London.  All these things are on Caballero’s website.  The website is kind of fascinating.  It makes you wish that you were maybe more threatened than you actually are so you could buy some of these things and wear them around.

Werman: Well, we’ll certainly link to that website at theworld.org.  Apparently, there’s also Ecclesiastical vestments that Carolina Ballasteros, his wife, has designed, which men of the cloth are worried about getting shot.

Owen: Well, I think all through Latin America you’re in danger if you speak out against things like drug dealers and random murders.  And so clergymen will often wear bulletproof vestments when they preach.  Caballero also makes a large bulletproof Bible that a priest can use as a screen, he can lift it up and use it as a bulletproof screen. They also make sort of a bulletproof blanket that you can throw over someone who’s being shot at.

Werman: Wow, they’re thinking about everything.  Your article gives a nice little potted history of bulletproof clothing.  And it seems that it evolves, constantly evolves.  Are we getting to a time when bulletproof material, Kevlar or whatever, becomes so strong that it’ll actually be hard to kill anyone with bullets?

Owen: Well, the people at Dupont talked about this.  There’s kind of a global arms race between people who want to hurt people and people who want to protect them.  So the better that bulletproof materials get, unfortunately, also the better bullets get.  For example, in Russia bad guys tend to use a form of ammunition that you can’t stop with Kevlar or any other flexible material.  It’s basically armor-piercing bullets that are hard to stop even with solid metal plates.   Soldiers face the same difficulty.  Many years ago they thought you know, why not have soldiers wear bulletproof clothing?  And well, it turns out the answer is first, they do, sort of, and the second is that most of the bullets that get shot at soldiers are very hard to stop with any kind of clothing.

Werman: David Owen wrote the story Survival of the Fitted in the latest issue of the New Yorker about bulletproof clothing designer, Miguel Caballero, in Columbia.  David, thank you so much.

Owen: Thank you!

Werman: We’ve got a slideshow of the Miguel Caballero factory in Bogata.  You can also see Mr. Owen getting shot, and we’ve got a link to the company’s online catalog too in case you’re feeling anxious of later.  Both are at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The former presidential candidate has been under house arrest since February.

Recently, Mousavi was allowed to meet briefly with his daughters and according to news reports, he told them that if they wanted to know what his detention is like, they should read a book called “News of a Kidnapping.”

The news caused a run on Tehran’s bookstores as opposition supporters rushed to buy their own copies.

“News of a Kidnapping” is not an Iranian book. It was written in Spanish in 1996 by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The English translation of the book was released in 1997. It describes the abduction of politicians in the author’s native country, Colombia.

Anchor Lisa Mullins talks to Ilan Stavans, professor of Latin American Culture at Amherst College, Massachusetts, about why Iranians are seeking out the Colombian author.

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Mullins: There is no release in store for the leader of Iran’s opposition, former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. He has been under house arrest since February. Recently, Mousavi was allowed to meet briefly with his daughters and, according to news reports, he told them that if they want to know what his detention is like they should read a book called “News of a Kidnapping.” That caused a run on Tehran bookstores as Iranians rushed to buy their own copies. “News of a Kidnapping” is not an Iranian book though. It was written in 1996 by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Columbia. Ilan Stavans is a professor of Latin American Culture at Amherst College in Massachusetts. The book, “News of a Kidnapping”, he says, describes the abduction of politicians in Columbia.

Ilan Stavans: This is the story of a friend of Garcia Marquez, Maruja Pachon and her husband Alberto Villamizar, who in the late ’90s were kidnapped by drug cartels. These two abductions were actually part of a larger orchestrated effort by the drug cartel to kidnap major celebrities in order to be able to put the government in a difficult position and give in to what the drug cartel needed at that time. Garcia Marquez enters the world of these two individuals, Maruja and Alberto, and through them the world of many more that at that time felt vulnerable to this paramilitary entity, the drug cartel, that was actually doing what it wanted without any control from the government. It is a very different context from what is happening in Iran today. But the fact that this can be taken as a metaphor for a larger picture, the larger picture being that if you are going to speak to your mind against the government you are going to end up being pushed aside and silenced, is one that they clearly is speaking very loudly in Iran today.

Mullins: Is the…was the speaking very loudly in Iran today…is there something about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing that is particularly universal or is it just the circumstances he’s talking about in terms of political persecution in Iran, or those who go up against the drug cartels in Colombia that has a resonance?

Stavans: Not too long ago we read another important book that came from Iran “Reading Lolita in Tehran”, a book about finding good literature and trying to use it as a way to understand a world that was being declothed by the religious fanaticism at that time. That [??] can be embraced in a society like Iran is, in many ways, something similar that is happening to Garcia Marquez. Garcia Marquez is a writer that becomes universal precisely by focusing on the particulars of his country; on the reality in Bogota, in [??], and other parts of his country. I love the fact that a good literature when it is able to transcend its own borders, it proves that it is not only written for the immediate readers of that particular country; that literature has no nationality but it becomes something global. On the other hand, I wonder what it means to become a bestseller in Tehran? A bestseller in Colombia can be 3,000 copies, 5,000 copies. Perhaps it really doesn’t matter how many copies in the end are circulating. What matters is that a book is being used as a message to show that the paradime of a politician in one country is very similar to the one in another country regardless of the differences those two countries have.

Mullins: Ilan Stavans is a professor of Latin American Culture at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Colombian police pursued Escobar for years, finally hunting him down in 1993. The rooftop where he was shot to death is on the tour. Escobar’s brutal cocaine trafficking business once defined this city to the outside world.

Since then, people there have moved on. Colombia’s second largest city is now better known for its vibrant fashion industry.

So what’s the name of this city?

The answer is Medellin where tourists can now go on a controversial “Pablo Escobar Is History Tour”. Anchor Lisa Mullins gets details about the from Marcela Mariscal who manages “See Colombia Travel.”

The group plays a fiery kind of music called “music llanera.”

It is traditionally played by cattle herders of the vast plains of Colombia.

Plains that stretch out to the Orinoco river and western Venezuela.

The cattle herders and farm workers in that region continue an old tradition.

After a day’s work, they would get together and play joropo, the local traditional music and dance.

Marco Werman introduces us to the traditionally rooted music of the plains.

Cimarrón performs “Joropo Quitapesares” at 2011 Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Grupo Cimarrón discusses Llanero (Plains) Music

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Fifteen thousand feet up in the Colombian Andes, Jorge Ceballos climbs the windswept edge of Nevado Santa Isabel, one of country’s few remaining glaciers. He’s found his way back to an 18-foot-long measuring stick that was buried in the ice here a little more than two years ago. Since then, so much of the glacier has melted that all but three feet of the stick are now exposed.

“If you come back next year,” Ceballos says, “the entire thing will be exposed. Isn’t that incredible?”

Ceballos works for the government’s Hydrology and Meteorology Institute. He is the country’s top expert on glaciers, and a big part of his job is monitoring their disappearance.

In the 1800s, there were 19 glaciers in Colombia. Today, there are only six, and Ceballos says they’re losing three to five percent of their ice every year. At this rate, he says, they’ll be gone by mid-century.

Santa Isabel is one of three glaciers here in Nevados National Park – “Nevados” is Spanish for glacier – and Ceballos says it’s likely to be the next to go, due to its relatively low altitude and small size of just three square miles. The slopes of Santa Isabel are already alive with the gurgle of melt water rushing in dozens of rivulets down the mountain.

With Global Warming, Rain Replaces Snow

Ceballos says there are several reasons for what’s happening here. One culprit is dark ash from a nearby active volcano, which settles on the ice and accelerates melting. But he says the main problem is global warming. Fifty years ago, he says, the park’s glaciers began at 13,500 feet. But now, he says, due to rising temperatures it rains at that altitude, and researchers have to climb farther and farther up the mountains to find snow and ice.

Glacial retreat receives more attention in neighboring Peru, where the massive ice cap is critical for the water supply. By contrast, Colombia has plenty of water but very little ice and snow. Here, people’s attachment to glaciers is more emotional.

Park guide Juan Pablo Gomez says the glaciers provide a rare chance for Colombians to touch natural ice and play in the snow and that they come away awestruck.

“It’s like the first time you see the ocean,” Gomez says. “Many people cry. Others hug me and say: ‘Thank you so much. You’ve made my dream come true.’”

An Emotional Loss

For returning visitors to the Park, the shrinkage of the glaciers has been shocking.

Colombian oil worker Johnny Reyes remembers exploring the park’s vast network of ice caves a decade ago. But when he came back recently, guides told him they’ve melted.

Reyes says his first question when he got to the park was, “Have you still got the caves?” He says a ranger told him, “No, not the caves, not any more.

“So I got really sad that day,” Reyes says. “So I said, ‘I got my pictures.’ He was like, ‘keep your pictures with you, because that’s the best you’re gonna have.’”

Reyes is among 60,000 visitors a year to Nevados Park. But ranger Gabriel Echeverry wonders whether tourists will still come to a glacier park with no glaciers. He laughs while suggesting a rather desperate alternative.

“We could stock the park with deer so tourists would have a reason to come.”

In reality, there might not be much else that Colombia can do. It can’t stop the glaciers’ demise, since the warming temperatures are largely the responsibility of the US, China and other industrial giants. That leaves Jorge Ceballos focused on the sad task of documenting the glaciers’ disappearance.

Brief Respite from Retreat

He and a team of assistants climb Santa Isabel every other month to dig into the snow and collect samples. Colombia has just gone through 18 months of cold temperatures and extraordinary precipitation, provoked by the recent La Niña weather phenomenon. Ceballos says that thanks to La Niña, the top of Santa Isabel, at 16,000 feet, has actually accumulated five more feet of snow in that time. Even better, his samples indicate the snow is turning into longer-lasting ice.

Still, La Niña is over. Warmer weather is on the way and Ceballos suspects the build-up won’t last.

In fact, he’s so concerned about protecting what little ice remains that his exhausted team spends its last hour on the summit carefully shoveling snow back into all the test holes they’ve dug before heading back down Santa Isabel.

“Our children and grandchildren will look at photos of glaciers,” Ceballos laments, “and (they’ll) ask, ‘what happened? Why did they melt?’”

What would you call Nevados National Park … or Glacier National Park in Montana … when the glaciers are gone? Post your thoughts below.

Twenty-four teams, including Mali, North Korea and Brazil will play in the three-week tournament. The United States didn’t qualify.

Compared to the main World Cup, the U-20 is small potatoes. There’s no bidding war to host the event, which is played every two years. There is also no media frenzy. At the Colombian team practice for its opening match against France, I’m confined to a large holding pen for journalists. But for most of the session I’m the only one there.

Still, it’s a chance for Colombia to show off. The matches will be played in Bogota and seven other cities. 500 million people around the world will watch them on TV. They’ll learn about Colombia’s natural beauty, booming economy and improved security, even as a drug-fuelled guerrilla war grinds on. Cristian Bonilla, the Colombian team’s goalkeeper, said they’re proud that so many countries are participating and so many tourists are coming.

“Perhaps they will come away with a different image from what foreigners normally think about Colombia,” he said.
Bonilla and his teammates will be playing for more than national pride. The U-20 is a showcase for young talent, according to Johanna Palacios, a reporter who covers soccer for Colombian TV.

“Messi of Argentina and Kaka and Ronaldinho of Brazil all burnished their credentials in U-20 games,” Palacios said.
The U-20 can also serve as a dress rehearsal. Successful tournaments in Japan, the former Soviet Union and Qatar helped persuade soccer’s governing body, FIFA, to award the main World Cup to those nations.

In Colombia, it was the other way around.

Juan Felipe Mejia, press officer for the Colombian Soccer Federation, said that FIFA selected Colombia to host the main World Cup in 1986, but due to economic problems and the huge cost of building new stadiums, Colombia embarrassed itself by backing out of its commitment.

“By a decision of the government, they finally decided not to play it here. So it went to Mexico,” Mejia said.

FIFA was not pleased. It took 25 years for the organization to give Colombia a second chance with the Under-20 World Cup.

“It was like a big challenge because FIFA didn’t trust at the beginning in us. These guys are crazy. Why are they demanding a World Cup when they rejected one in 1986?’,” Mejia said.

This time around, Colombia seems prepared to host its biggest-ever international sports event. Most of the tickets have been sold. The government and private sector have spent $100 million to upgrade soccer stadiums. Thousands of fans showed up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at Bogota’s renovated El Campin stadium, where the championship game will be played on August 20th.

Colombia expects 35,000 foreign visitors. They will be snapping up t-shirts and souvenirs stamped with the U-20 logo featuring, what else? – a cup of coffee. At the opening ceremony, Colombian vallenato singer Jorge Celedon will perform the U-20 theme song.

The song is called Nuestra Fiesta, Spanish for “Our Party.” It’s an apt title, Mejia said, because the U-20 is Colombia’s coming-out party.

“People are gonna see ‘Oh, this is Colombia. These are people that are really nice. The stadiums are packed.’ It’s fantastic for nations like us,” Mejia said. “We really want to show the world that we can do good things here.”

Colombia is the answer to the quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Olivia Cadaval, who is a curator at the Smithsonian Museum.

(Photo: John Otis)

To produce a kilo of 90 percent pure cocaine, you need more than just coca leaves, the raw material for the narcotic. You also need a long list of chemicals, such as sulfuric acid, caustic soda, and acetone.

In fact, chemicals are the most expensive part of making cocaine, according to Jay Berman, chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Andean division.

“It’s not the coca leaf, it’s not the workers, and it’s not the cost of building the cocaine laboratory,” Bergman said. “The number one cost is the chemicals.”

So authorities are engaged in a campaign against “precursor chemicals” that can be used in the production of methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine.

Bergman said that cutting the chemical supply line to meth labs in Mexico and cocaine labs in Colombia can have a huge impact.

“A cocaine HCL lab will shut down for a period of time not because of lack of access to the coca leaf but to the actual chemicals that they need to refine it into hydrochloride, cocaine HCL.”

Legitimate Uses

Yet the task is daunting because these chemicals also have legitimate uses, and they’re everywhere. Potassium permanganate, for example, can purify cocaine. But it’s also used to treat wastewater, disinfect animal skins and prevent bananas from ripening too fast.

Acetone is a key ingredient in both cocaine and house paint.

And many consumer goods can be used to make cocaine, according to Major Carlos Oviedo of Colombia’s anti-narcotics police. That includes motor oil, gasoline, kerosene, lime, cement and baking soda.

Sales of these items are strictly controlled in southern Colombian towns located near cocaine labs, Oviedo said. Gas stations are banned from selling more than 55 gallons per day to a single customer. The personal limit on baking soda is 11 pounds a month.

Colombia has some of the strictest regulations in the world on the amount of precursor chemicals that firms are allowed to buy, sell and consume. But traffickers can bribe company employees or steal the chemicals.

In one infamous case, four guards were killed in Mexico during the theft of a ton of ephedrine, which is used in the production of methamphetamine. It’s also easy for shady companies to order more than they need and then sell the excess to drug cartels.

Monitoring Chemicals

That’s where Luis Saavedra comes in. He’s part of a Colombian police unit that monitors chemical use at hundreds of industrial firms.

On this day, Saavedra is inspecting the Hartung cosmetic company, which uses 24 tons of precursor chemicals every month.

As workers pluck bottles of nail polish remover from a conveyer belt, Saavedra checks the plant’s tanks. They’re full of butyl and ethyl acetate, powerful solvents used in nail polish remover but which can also be used in cocaine.

Saavedra finds nothing suspicious. But the crackdown has forced Colombian traffickers to relocate some of their drug labs to Central America, said General Cesar Pinzon, chief of Colombia’s anti-narcotics police. He said that in March, police in Honduras raided a huge drug lab stocked with acetic acid, calcium chloride and acetone. It was the first major cocaine lab ever discovered in Honduras.

“The traffickers are sending unrefined cocaine to countries where there are no controls over precursor chemicals,” he said.

Once the drugs are processed, the toxic waste is simply dumped into the jungle where the chemicals find their way into rivers and groundwater. In fact, police were tipped off to the cocaine lab in Honduras after farmers complained about contamination of their water supply.

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