The government of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe has been paralyzed by allegations that highly placed officials colluded with paramilitary groups implicated in assassinations and drug smuggling, even as Uribe presses the United States for a lucrative trade deal and to continue its massive flow of military and counter-narcotics aid.
El Charco, 7 July
Published July 16, 2007
Carlos Avila Gonzales and Phillip Robertson, for the Pulitzer Center
El Charco, Colombia
To get to El Charco, we headed for the coastal city of Tumaco and then caught a motorboat that would take three hours moving north along the Pacific coast into a vast delta and then finally into the Rio Tapaje. The first hour on the launch was on the open ocean, a rough ride, and a campesino next to me struggled to hang on to his pet ducks as the boat tossed around on the waves. A passenger commented, 'Well, if the ducks go overboard at least they are prepared for it."
When the trumpet sounded,
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah divided the world
among Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Grantee
Carlos Avila Gonzalez joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 1997 and has become a leader in the photography department's shift to multimedia reporting. A native of the San Francisco Bay...
Grantee
Since 2001, Phillip Robertson has been covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the American news and culture website, Salon.com. He has also reported for TIME magazine, BBC World...
