Stuck in the Rough

To my dear Jerry Guo and Alaina Varvaloucas, I would definitely advice you to investigate a little more about what you write, maybe even take the effort to travel to Colombia an learn a little about it (because I really don't believe you have), maybe after that you could go to North Korea, Sierra Leone and Sudan and see if you're adventurous golfing has anything to do with the sad reputation you make any of these countries. Maybe you should focus yourself better on giving merit to the people that have fought for it, rather than place a name of a country that you don´t even know, under a headline of "stuck in the rough". Maybe you should understand that every word written by you and read by your viewers helps forge a very costly stereotype on the other 97% of Colombians who don´t have anything to do with drug trafficking or kidnapping.

I think it is very disappointing that such a prestigious magazine as newsweek, which I have been reading for years, would allow for the publication of such an article. The fact that Colombia is compared to totalitarian states like North Korea, or failed states such as Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Sudan or Afghanistan, is a sad reminder that many times the voices of the heard are ignorant and mischievous. I find ridiculous the fact that the Bogota Country Club is mentioned as a great adventure in a country which has a"precarious political situation as a democracy that has been immersed in a low-level civil war for years", not only because it demerits Colombia as a stable country, but because it also leaves aside the fact that second to the US it has had the longest democracy in the continent. I personally have been to the Bogota Country Club more than 20 times, in which like any country club, it is only necessary for a member to sign you in for lunch, but media sensationalism mixed with an ignorance brought about by Hollywood and the US news media, will of course prefer another story. The story of the great Colombian drug lords or of the powerful jungle scouting guerrilleros will of course turn the Colombian story into a low level civil war, when in fact the FARC, ELN and AUC are less than 5% of the total colombian population. It is a hard story when you have to live abroad with the chains of a drug lord stereotype, when you can actually see your country progressing and no one making mention of it. Colombia was in the early 1990's were Mexico is today, facing the menace of very powerful drug lords financed by narcotic seeking americans and europeans, who bored by their own perfect life consume these substances. Despite this, Colombia has steadily become one of the top foreign investment grounds of latin america, putting the dead of a non winnable war on drugs, whilst the americans and europeans put the party. It is sad that despite all the efforts made by ordinary Colombians and by a country that has suffered so much, that just when we are winning the battles against guerrillas and the kidnapping rates have dropped bellow that of many American cities, we are still getting this dump media, comparing us with other really troubled states.

z