Books about Colombia from Amazon.com

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again..
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Readers of Black Hawk Down know Mark Bowden can tell an exciting story about as well as any writer at work today. Killing Pablo is further proof. It describes the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, a notorious Colombian drug lord who became one of the narcotic trade's first billionaires Pablo--Bowden refers to him by his first name throughout the book--started out as a petty thief and wound up running a massive smuggling empire. At his height in the 1980s, he owned fleets of boats and planes, plus 19 separate residences in Medellin, each with its own helipad. Violence marked everything he did: "He wasn't an entrepreneur, and he wasn't even an especially talented businessman. He was just ruthless." He bought off police, politicians, and judges throughout his country, and killed many others who wouldn't cooperate. The Colombian government tried to capture him, but without much luck; he evaded them time after time. "Now and then the police achieved enough surprise to catch him, literally, with his pants down. In [1988], about one thousand national police raided one of his mansions," writes Bowden. "Pablo fled in his underwear, avoiding the police cordon on foot." He got away, again, but his days were numbered. He was making powerful enemies in both Colombia and the United States. The final straw probably came when Pablo's men murdered a popular politician and, three months later, planted a bomb on a plane, killing 110 people, including two Americans.

The bulk of Killing Pablo describes what happened when the U.S. government put its resources behind the hunt for Pablo. Bowden describes the search in gripping detail, from the massive electronic-surveillance effort to bureaucratic infighting between rival U.S. agencies. This is an outstanding work of reportorial journalism, too: in the epilogue, Bowden drops tantalizing hints that it was an American--not a Colombian--who delivered the killing shot to Pablo in 1993. Readers looking for a real-life thriller--or any kind of thriller, for that matter--won't do much better than Killing Pablo. .
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Thousands of fans agree-Cosmic Banditos has been out of print for way too long. So here it is, back by popular demand: A.C. Weisbecker's rollicking novel of high times and hard times-in which he hilariously chronicles the adventures of a group of pot-smoking, number-crunching banditos-in-hiding..
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Discover the best kept secret in South America Colombia is safer than ever, affordable and still blissfully uncrowded - an independent traveler's dream. Laze on palm-fringed Caribbean beaches. Canoe slient rivers through lush rainforest. Stroll Cartagena's colonial old town. Salsa all night in Cali. Packed with practical advice and valuable tips for trouble-free travel, our peerless guide enables you to explore with confidence.

The Basics - detailed maps, tailored itineraries and easy-to-use directory help make the most of your trip.

Adrenaline Rushes - the best spots for diving, rafting, hiking, rock-climbing and other thrills.

Straight Talk - honest advice on where to go - and still risky spots to avoid.

Discerning Reviews - opinionated authors give the lowdown on where to sleep, eat and pain the town.

Colombia 101 - in-depth background chapters provide insight into the country and its people.
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En julio de 2006 un avión de la DEA sacó a Virginia Vallejo de Colombia Su vida estaba en peligro por haberse convertido en el testigo clave de los dos procesos criminales más importantes de la segunda mitad del siglo XX en su país: el asesinato de un candidato presidencial y el holocausto del Palacio de Justicia.

Veinticinco años antes, Virginia Vallejo era la presentadora de televisión más importante de Colombia y la belleza profesional que aparecía en las portadas de las principales revistas. Cortejada por multimillonarios tradicionales, conoció en 1982 a Pablo Escobar, un misterioso político de treinta y tres años que en realidad manejaba los hilos de un mundo de riqueza inigualable en el que gran parte del incesante flujo de dinero procedente del tráfico de cocaína se canalizaba a proyectos de caridad y a las campañas de candidatos presidenciales de su elección.

Este libro, una apasionada historia de amor convertida en crónica del horror y la vergüenza, describe la evolución de una de las mentes criminales más siniestras de nuestro tiempo: su capacidad de infundir terror y generar corrupción, los vínculos entre sus negocios ilícitos y varios jefes de estado, los asesinatos de candidatos presidenciales y la guerra en que sumió a su país. Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar es también la única visión íntima posible del legendario barón del narcotráfico, plena de glamour y espíritu de supervivencia y no exenta de humor. Virginia Vallejo narra esta historia descarnada como nadie más podría haberlo hecho..
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The eastern savannas of war-ravaged Colombia, known as the llanos, are among the most brutal environments on Earth, an unlikely setting for one of the most hopeful environmental stories ever told. Here, more than twenty-five years ago, an intrepid visionary named Paolo Lugari set out to create a village that could sustain itself agriculturally, economically, and artistically. He reasoned that if a community could survive in the Colombian llanos, it would be possible to live anywhere. The new village was named after the graceful river terns common in the area, los gaviotas.
The early inhabitants of Gaviotas soon realized that if they wanted even basic necessities, they would need to be very resourceful. So they invented wind turbines that convert mild breezes into energy, super-efficient pumps that tap previously inaccessible sources of water, and solar kettles that sterilize drinking water using the furious heat of the tropical sun.
They even invented a rain forest! Two million pine trees planted as a renewable crop have unexpectedly allowed the rain forest to re-establish itself. Paolo Lugari and the Gaviotans, in their quest to create a model human habitat, serendipitously renewed an entire ecosystem. This is why Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez has called Lugari as “The Inventor of the World.".
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For 20 years, the Cali drug cartel, a vast criminal conspiracy, pumped thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States, laundered billions of dollars in profits and was responsible for endemic political corruption and an untold number of murders and assassinations. It ultimately controlled 70 percent of the world's cocaine market, flooding towns and cities with the addictive white powder dubbed the "champagne of drugs."

Through organized violence, terrorist strategies, intimidation and bribery, the cartel became a major threat to Colombia's fragile stability. It also brought an unprecedented degree of strategy and planning to the drugs trade. It would take more than two decades and a global effort to bring it down.

In this first-ever account of the cartel's rise and fall, author Ron Chepesiuk provides a compelling insight into the history of international drug trafficking, organized crime and US drug policy. He draws vivid pictures of the gang's founders-Jose "the Chess Player" Londono and brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela-and reveals how they built their empire, carving up the massive US market with their rival Medellin Cartel: New York going to Cali, Miami to Medellin.

Unlike Medellin, headed by the vicious Pablo Escobar, the men from Cali kept their complex operation in the shadows. It grew quickly and came to operate like a multinational corporation. In time, they became too big to share their spoils and fought an indescribably bloody war with the Medellin mob, a war they ultimately won.

Written with the pace and vividness of a thriller, Drug Lords also illustrates the similarities between global traffickers and international terrorists and compares the current war on terror with the war on drugs.

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During the 1980s, the government of Colombia signed a treaty with the United States allowing for the extradition of Colombian citizens. This caused a great deal of distress among the kingpins of the Medellín drug cartel. Why? Traffickers like Pablo Escobar had spent the decade exporting billions of dollars' worth of cocaine. They weren't likely to be arrested at home, but if extradited and tried in America, they would spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Escobar and his colleagues tried to a cut a deal with the government. Then Escobar decided that a little extralegal pressure--i.e., terrorism--could do no harm. In short order he had 10 prominent Colombians kidnapped; most were journalists, and all had professional or personal ties to the pro-extradition movement. Ultimately two of the hostages were shot. The remaining eight were released in a trickle, as the drug traffickers began to break ranks and surrender. So ended at least one episode in what Gabriel García Márquez calls "the biblical holocaust that has been consuming Colombia for more than twenty years."

García Márquez was originally invited to write about the kidnapping by Maruja Pachon, who spent six months in captivity. As he began to write, however, he realized that her story was inseparable from that of the other nine victims. The result is a meticulous, sobering, and suspenseful book. It is, of course, a work of reportage, which puts a lid on the author's penchant for magic realism. But in the hands of a writer like García Márquez, truth makes fiction look paltry indeed..
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