Colombia's coffee industry introduces a new Juan Valdez

30/06/06

Colombia's coffee industry introduces a new Juan Valdez
Reuters

A new Colombian coffee farmer has been chosen to play Juan Valdez, the mustachioed, poncho-clad icon who, with his mule Conchita, has promoted one of Colombia's biggest exports for decades.

The National Federation of Coffee Growers said yesterday that 39-year-old Carlos Castaneda, a father of three accustomed to getting up before dawn to work on his family's coffee farm in a small town south of Medellin, will serve as its ambassador.

Like Carlos Sanchez, the 71-year-old actor who has appeared as the avuncular Mr. Valdez for 37 years and is now retiring, Mr. Castaneda will travel the world extolling the virtues of handpicked Colombian coffee.

The federation interviewed more than 400 candidates as part of a painstaking two-year selection process aimed at preserving one of the positive symbols of this Andean country, which, in the grip of a four-decade-old guerrilla war, has long been associated with cocaine smuggling and kidnapping.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060630.RTICKERJUAN30/TPStory/Business

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Associated Press
Correction: Colombia's Silenced Press Story
By JOSHUA GOODMAN , 06.28.2006, 05:02 PM

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - It was the sort of scoop any ambitious journalist would jump on. But reporting it could have cost Jorge Quintero his life.

With the help of local officials, a bank manager in the small southwestern Colombian town of Florencia allegedly funneled $11 million in public funds into the foreign bank account of a convicted drug trafficker.

Despite sitting on a pile of incriminating documents, Quintero wrote nothing.
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Journalists across Colombia share Quintero's dilemma. The biggest gag on the country's media often comes from journalists who fear for their lives, especially in far-flung provinces, where the government presence is weak.

Exposing outlaws - be they drug traffickers, leftist rebels or right-wing militias - risks assassination.

Over the past decade, 28 journalists have been killed in Colombia, making it the second-most dangerous country to report from after Iraq, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of the crimes against Colombian journalists, committed by all sides of the country's civil conflict, are never solved.
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http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/06/28/ap2847467.html

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Friday, 30 June 2006
Colombian ex-minister on trial for murder

ISN SECURITY WATCH (Thursday, 29 June 2006: 13.20 CET) – The trial of former justice minister Alberto Santofimio, accused of orchestrating the death of a presidential candidate in 1989, has opened in Colombia.

Presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan was gunned down in 1989 at an election rally in what is viewed as Colombia's most notorious political murder.

Drug lord Pablo Escobar and one of his associates initially were convicted for the assassination, but prosecutors later charged Santofimio with having ordered Escobar to kill Galan.

Escobar's former head of security, John Jairo Velazquez Vazquez, who is serving a sentence in a maximum security jail for his role in the politician's murder, is serving as the main witness for the prosecution, according to local media reports.

Vazquez alleges that Santofimio urged Escobar to assassinate Galan.
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http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=16309

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Colombian artist Fernando Botero's painting, "The Death of Pablo Escobar."