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EL ESPECTADOR

Cali Murder Inc, A Colombian Drug Cartel War May Be Back

Expected to return to Cali after serving prison time, some old gangsters will find a 'new generation' of criminals running businesses in town. Will that mean trouble,

Packing marijuana in Toribio, Valle del Cauca, in the Cali region, Colombia
Packing marijuana in Toribio, Valle del Cauca, in the Cali region, Colombia
Boris Salazar

CALI — Does a recent spike in murders in the western Colombian city of Cali — 19 in one April weekend alone — mean the return of organized crime and drug trafficking to this city with a troubled past? Colombian Vice President Óscar Naranjo, a former police general, warned there could be an increase in murders in certain parts of Colombia, as 25 drug lords move home after a decade or more in prison in the United States.

Will Cali's new and old criminal gangs work together or initiate an even bloodier turf war?

This is a necessary warning as criminals do often return home and finish, well, unfinished business. Cali has an epicenter of drug trafficking in South America and has been home to organizations like the Cali Cartel dating back to the 1970s. The fall of the big cartels around the turn of the century paved the way for successor gangs who engage in both criminal and "respectable" activities: peddling drugs, as well as buying real-estate selling high-end cars, and loaning money.

Woman cutting buds of marijuana in order to prepare it for consumption — Photo: Nicolas Enriquez/ZUMA

It's believed this expansion of industry is reflected in the wider age range of recent victims. Before, crime victims were usually impoverished youths, but recently they have included professionals in their 30s or even older. Even still, much of the trouble is still centered around youth, sparking an effort from the city to place "vulnerable" youngsters into jobs or school and dismember gangs through its Strength Plan (Plan Fortaleza), which boosts police personnel, training and equipment. A big challenge remains in breaking the links between criminals' legal and illegal activities.

Meanwhile, as the authorities brace for a recurrence of killing sprees, the question remains: will Cali's new and old criminal gangs work together or initiate an even bloodier turf war?

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France, Portrait Of A Nation In Denial — In Our World In Denial

The continuous increase of public debt and a tone-deaf president in France, the rise of authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world, the blindness to global warming: realities that we do not want to see and that will end up destroying us if we do not act.

Photo of ​police forces in riot gear clashing with demonstrators as piles of garbage burn in Paris on March 23

Police forces clashing with demonstrators as piles of garbage burn in Paris on March 23

Les Echos

-Analysis-

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The parliamentary opposition groups refuse to see that they do not constitute a political majority, since they would be incapable of governing together and that they have in common, for too many of them, on both sides of the political spectrum, left and right, only the hatred of money, the mistrust of success, and the contempt for excellence.

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