Colombia Quotes

We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain social stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru. Increasingly the role our nation has taken is the role of those who refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

Colombia is a different country today. The state is now present in every single corner, the drug lords are in jail or dead. So we have the means to guarantee the security of FARC politicians.

Colombia is applauded for the efforts that we continue to make to combat drug trafficking.

If you analyze the production of coca in Colombia, you will realize that it is like economic cycles. It goes up and down, it goes up and down depending on the circumstances.

For many years, they said the drug lords in Colombia were unbeatable, but all the same, we've eliminated all the big capos (as the drug lords are called in Colombia). The homicide rate is as low as it was 40 years ago and the kidnapping rate has dropped to the level of 1964. Now we'll be able to bring down the street criminals specializing in extortion and robbery.

Colombia has a big market that is growing because we are elevating people out of poverty and into the middle class.

It was shameful that, after Haiti, Colombia was the second most unequal country in Latin America. But we've achieved some things; the inequality is coming down, and coming down fast. The growing economy has provided us with the funds to finance a very progressive social policy that has reduced extreme poverty. We have the lowest inflation rate of all Latin-America countries and the highest growth rate.

I've not lived one single day of peace in Colombia, and 90 percent of people here say the same thing. We have gotten used to living in a war - we don't even react to massacres.

Every night I get many letters, and after every talk I get many questions from people who say, "I want to change things. What can I do?" I never hear these questions from peasants in southern Colombia or Kurds in southeastern Turkey under miserable repression or anybody who is suffering. They don't ask what they can do; they tell you what they're doing.

To be quite honest my country [Colombia] still shows that it can be intolerant.

Stability means you do what we say, and what we say is that Colombia and the resources of the Andean region shall be freely available to the rich and powerful of the world, particularly US-based multinational corporations.

Yes, of course my father harmed and caused a lot of damage but both stories are true. He did things to help and destroy Colombia, both are true.

The international community has to overcome its differences and find solutions to the conflicts of today in South Sudan, Syria, Central African Republic and elsewhere. Non-traditional donors need to step up alongside traditional donors. As many people are forcibly displaced today as the entire populations of medium-to-large countries such as Colombia or Spain, South Africa or South Korea.

Suppose that the US really is trying to get rid of drugs in Colombia. Does Colombia then have the right to fumigate tobacco farms in Kentucky? They are producing a lethal substance far more dangerous than cocaine. More Colombians die from tobacco-related illnesses than Americans die from cocaine. Of course, Colombia has no right to do that.

I've been following what's happening in Colombia because it's the country of my childhood.

I grew up in Barranquila, Colombia, and I spent most of my childhood dreaming about becoming a singer.

The government is shutting down the coal industry, they say it's cheaper to draw nuclear power off the French grid and cheaper to buy coal from Colombia.

I prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States.

Suppose that, say, China established military bases in Colombia to carry out chemical warfare in Kentucky and North Carolina to destroy this lethal crop [tobacco] that is killing huge numbers of Chinese.

Bye, bye! I'm from Colombia! I'm Sofia Vergara!

The problem was that Panama technically belonged to Colombia, which refused to sign a treaty leasing it to the United States. So Roosevelt sent a gunboat filled with marines down to Panama, just on the off chance that a revolution might suddenly break out, and darned if one didn't, two days later. Not only that, but the leaders of the new nation of Panama-talk about lucky breaks!-were absolutely thrilled to have the United States build a canal there. 'Really, it's our pleasure,' they told the marines, adding, 'Don't shoot.'

By the way, I hope you all know about the worldwide boycott of Coca Cola company for things like murdering union organizers in Colombia. See the site killercoke.org.

What right does the US have to do anything in Colombia? Does Colombia have the right to bomb North Carolina? There are more Colombians dying from tobacco than Americans dying from heroin.

Plan Colombia was supposed to reduce Colombia's cultivation and distribution of drugs by 50 percent, but 6 years and $4.7 billion later, the drug control results are meager at best.

I realized that I hated politics. I mean that is you know... I realized being in the jungle that what I had thought I could do, I mean changing the way politics were being done in Colombia, was not possible the way I wanted to do it - by confronting, by denouncing.

I remember in 2000, when President Clinton came to Cartagena just before Plan Colombia started, the country was on the verge of becoming a failed state. Today, we are one of the most solid democracies, where institutions are working, where the scandals such as false positives have come to light because of those functioning institutions.

May God fill this beautiful land of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador with his peace and love.

Well, in Colombia everybody's very voluptuous, and you're supposed to be. You don't want to be skinny when all of your cousins are mermaids. You grow up thinking that's how beauty is.

Europe is a very different place from my native country of Colombia and my children are growing up in a very urban setting which is nothing like when I was growing up and would be able to play barefoot in the street. But we have a very good life.

Chávez inadvertently made the US drug war tactics look good. Quite a feat, given the disaster which is the drug war. After expelling the DEA (not necessarily a bad thing, given its record in Colombia and elsewhere), he failed to devise a credible strategy for Venezuela.

There's so much more to Colombia than drug trafficking, you have no idea. They're a bit worn out by the association.

The whole basis for the US intervention in Colombia is outrageously racist and arrogant.

The rich and powerful countries are trying to wreck as much as possible. You know, go off the cliff as soon as you can. Extract every drop of hydrocarbons off the ground and destroy the environment. At the opposite extreme are countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, indigenous people around the world, and first nations in Canada and tribal people in India, campesinos in Colombia... They're trying to save the commons.

Between 1831 and 1891, US armed forces - usually the Marines - invaded Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Brazil, Haiti, Argentina, and Chile a total of thirty-one times, a fact not many of us are informed about in school. The Marines intermittently occupied Nicaragua form 1909 to 1933, Mexico from 1914 to 1919, and Panama from 1903 to 1914. To 'restore order' the Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, killing over two thousand Haitians who resisted 'pacification.'

We have had this happen in the past, right in Colombia: there were amnesties for everybody, guerrilla members were elected mayors, senators. Today there are senators who are - who were previously guerrillas.

I would argue with my father [Pablo Escobar] about his violent attitude and I would tell him to stop his violent ways and to think about peace as an alternative, especially given the many problems he was having. However, he would reply almost immediately by telling me "you are forgetting that the first bomb that exploded in Colombia was an attempt against you, your sister, and your mother - I did not invent narcoterrorism, narcoterrorism was first used against my family.

Today, aid to Colombia is given under the pretext of a drug war. That's pretty hard to take seriously. Ten years ago, Amnesty International flatly called it a myth.

During the 1990's, Colombia was the leading recipient of US military aid and training in the hemisphere. Approximately half of all US aid in the hemisphere went to Colombia. Colombia was also far and away the leading human rights violator in the hemisphere.

If you liked El Salvador, you're going to love Colombia. It's the same death squads, the same military aid, and the same whitewash from Washington.

Colombia was a big wheat producer in the 1950's. That was eliminated by what sounds like a nice plan, called "Food for Peace. " It's a plan by which US taxpayers subsidized US agribusiness to send food to poor countries. This, of course, destroyed the domestic agricultural markets of these countries, opening these markets to US agribusiness.

As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved.

I returned to Kabul after a 27-year absence. I came away with some optimism but not as much as I had hoped for. The two major issues in Afghanistan are a lack of security outside Kabul (particularly in the south and east) and the powerful warlords ruling over the provinces with little or no allegiance to the central government. The other rapidly rising concern is the narcotic trade which, if not dealt with, may turn Afghanistan into another Bolivia or Colombia.

Since the advent of the atomic bomb, the United States has always needed two kinds of enemies. On one level, it has needed a tactical enemy that it can go out and fight in the field in a shooting war. Since 1945, these enemies have been created and appeared as North Korea, North Vietnam, Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq and now Colombia. On another level, however, the US needs a strategic enemy that will justify outrageous expenditures of capital for strategic weapon systems like ICBMs, Trident submarines and "Star Wars" missile defence systems.

Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it.

I think [Pablo Escobar] wasted an incredibly opportunity which was when he stayed at the prison he made, La Catedral. It was the one chance that the government and the people of Colombia gave him to confess his illicit activities and to remain in one place with very favorable conditions.

For decades, Colombia has been accused of being the world's principal provider of cocaine. If this comes to an end, it would be a dramatic change for our country - which has been suffering more than any other from the consequences of drug-trafficking.

Colombia has a huge variety of plant and animal species, and we have enormous potential. Small and mid-sized companies should come to Colombia. From here, they have access to the entire Latin American market.

When I was growing up, Forest Park was full of integrated families. It was amazing. One my best friends was Vietnamese. Another one was half-Mexican, half-black. Another one was from Colombia. Another one was born in the U.S., but his mom was from Germany and spoke with a German accent. So we all had multiple identities.

I am trying to make my accent so it won't bother anyone, but I am not going to drive myself crazy trying to pretend I am an American girl when I am from Colombia.

And the art was in every corner and wall... a Mural of the Century of Progress in Colombia South America is rich in detail, painted by a student of the Fine Arts Academy of Chicago named Santiago Martinez; a name to remember.