Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos appeared at his hospital window on Thursday announcing to the media that his operation “went very well”.

Santos, 61, underwent an operation on Wednesday after he made public that he was suffering from prostate cancer in a surprise announcement on Monday.

“Luckily I am recovering well” said Santos, who also took time to thank the numerous support messages he has received in the last few days. Among those who have contacted Santos to wish him a full recovery are Spanish Prime-Minister Mariano Rajoy and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

A statement released by the medical team treating Santos read “the patient is active and presents stable vital signals. In accordance with the recovery plan, he will remain in the hospital today”.

It is believed Santos will be discharged from the hospital in the next few days, and will finish his recovery at the presidential palace. He has not delegated his responsibilities to Vice-President Angelino Garzón as he only underwent local anaesthesia.

Garzón went to visit the president before undergoing a medical examination himself as he is recovering from mobility problems caused by a cerebrovascular accident.

Garzón’s examination was demanded by the Colombian Senate to see if he is able to fulfil his obligations as vice-president. His own health issues have taken on an added significance following Santos’ announcement.

Santos, whose mandate runs until 2014, adds to the surprisingly long list of Latin American leaders to be diagnosed with cancer in recent years joining Chávez and former presidents Lugo, from Paraguay, and Lula, from Brazil.

Yesterday President Juan Manuel Santos announced his intention to re-form Colombia’s national peace council. The decision came after a meeting with the Commissions for Peace of the Colombian Congress.

The president declared his desire “to revive and summon” the peace council and spoke of a need to “update its make-up and function”. With that in mind, official announcements are expected to follow shortly regarding a new process of selection for members of the council.

Santos wants to revive the peace council so it can be integrated into the proposed peace talks with the militant guerrilla organisation, FARC. A ceasefire was provisionally agreed on 28^th August but formal peace talks are not set to commence until 8^th October in the Norwegian capital of Oslo.

In the past, the role of the National Peace council has been to collect proposals from different sectors of Colombian society and ensure that they are voiced and accounted for during the negotiations between government and FARC representatives.

A member of the Peace Commission, Guillermo Rivera, told the newspaper El Tiempo that the aim of the peace council is to establish “the line between justice and peace”.

Rivera explained that “The current victims want justice and the potential victims want peace so you have to try to find a middle ground”.

After nearly half a century of conflict, the Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and the left-wing guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), signed an agreement to initiate peace talks in Havana, Cuba.

The peace talks will formally begin in October in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, before delegates will return to Havana to sit down and negotiate “with the aim of not leaving the table until a peace accord has been signed which will put an end to the nearly 50 years of conflict”, said Jorge Enrique Botero, of TeleSUR.

Botero confirmed that the peace process had begun in May when secret conversations began in Havana, coordinated by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba and Norway.

The conflict began in 1964, when FARC, a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organisation picked up arms against the government of the time. The organisation has forces numbering around 18,000. The on-going conflict has led to the displacement of over two million Colombians, one of the highest rates of internally displaced people in the world.

After a meeting yesterday with Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, the Cauca indigenous communities announced a dialogue had been opened up to reestablish peace in the region.

During the meeting, Santos apologised for the armed conflict that has taken place in the region, but stated that he would not withdraw forces from the zone. The communities responded by reiterating their demand for the demilitarization of the Cauca, presenting him with a document that demanded the army leave.

The area has become increasingly militarized in recent months with the escalation of the conflict between government forces and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In one area alone, more than 3,000 people have been displaced since July.

The dialogues, which are timetabled to last for the next four months, will also confront the territorial claims of the communities, as well the development of the economic, social and cultural rights of the indigenous populations in the region. But the government had suspended a similar dialogue on Sunday, the same day local spiritual leader Lizandro Tenorio was shot dead.

The round tables were due to start today, and will be composed of government delegates, ministers, and representatives of the indigenous people of the Cauca.

After Colombian soldiers were expelled by indigenous leaders from the Cauca region yesterday, President Juan Manuel Santos announced that he plans to investigate the occurrences and bring these leaders to trial. He called yesterday’s incidents “unacceptable” and asked the local community to cease all violent actions, according to Télam.

In protest of the violent conflict taking place between the Colombian military and members of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the area, the indigenous community in Cauca dismantled barricades built by both the army and the FARC. Members of the community also pushed out a few soldiers who were guarding antennas. Army and government officials believe such actions constitute a serious attack against the military and that indigenous leaders responsible should be brought to trial.

President Santos did acknowledge, on the other hand, that the real enemy of the Colombian forces is the FARC and that his administration respects indigenous communities, Military officials do not seem to agree – General Jorge Jerez stated that the “guerrillas of FARC and the indigenous are working together to remove troops,” as reported by Pulsar News Agency.

Indigenous authorities denied such accusations and submitted a public letter to the FARC asking them to remove their troops from the territory. The letter told FARC that “we do not need your presence because the guerrilla does not bring us peace; you attack our civilians, you disrespect our authority and our justice,” as quoted in Télam.

The 10 military and police officers released on Monday by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were examined by doctors Tuesday, awaiting return to their families after being held hostage for more than a decade.

Medical reports say the former hostages are in “good condition,” although most of them will remain hospitalised the next day to observe their mental and physical health, according to Caracas’ El Universal.

President Juan Manuel Santos visited the group in hospital Tuesday morning. He reported that all hostages had said “they felt good, in body and soul,” adding that some were “ready to continue fighting.”

The officers were kidnapped between 1998 and 1999. During that era, FARC kidnapped nearly 500 military and police personnel. In recent years, however, there has been a weakening in the organisation, brought about by the death of one of their top leaders.

FARC is Colombia’s main guerrilla group with a force estimated at of 9,000. The handover marks a crucial step towards the ending a civil war that has ravished the country for half a century.

El Universal also reported that the Colombian government is demanding more gestures from the guerrilla group regarding the dialogue that could put an end to almost half a century of armed conflict.

According to Univision Noticias, the president reiterated today that the release “is a step we value in a certain respect,” but insufficient.

“We want authentic examples of their true desire to end this conflict,” Santos said.

Released police officers include Forero, Carlos Duarte, César Lasso, Jorge Trujillo, Jorge Romero and Wilson Rojas. Military personnel who were released are Luis Beltrán, Luis Arcia, Robinson Salcedo and Luis Moreno.

Nearly 40 guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group were killed by Colombian armed forces in the last several hours, the nation’s defense minister told reporters today.

The attack is considered an act of retaliation after 11 soldiers were killed on Saturday in a FARC ambush. Reports of the exact number of fatalities vary by news outlet, with recent accounts quoting as many as 39 dead and 12 captured.

Associated Press sources said a bombing was responsible for the dozens of casualties in the early hours Wednesday morning.

Colombian officials consider the actions a major victory in a conflict that has spanned for decades with the rebel group. “Great blow to the FARC in Arauca, where our soldiers were killed,” announced president Juan Manuel Santos earlier on his Twitter account. “Congratulations to our forces.”

“At one o’clock (local time) we conducted a transaction with the Air Force and a descent of troops that resulted in 39 dead and three wounded,” said an area general to local news. There are estimated to be as many as 700 guerrillas in Colombia’s northeastern Aracua, and 9,000 in the nation as a whole, according to the Ministry of Defense.

Defense minister Juan Carlos Pinzón said one of the top leaders of FARC, Juan Vicente Carvajal, alias “Misael Rodríguez,” was among those captured in northern Arauca. According to Pinzón, a special task force had been created in December specifically for the area, and had since been planning various operations.

Pinzón said he hopes the attack sends a message to FARC guerrilleros, “especially to the younger ones that are out there”. The minister has also announced a “new call for the demobilisation” of the group.

Colombian authorities are preparing to fight back against the guerrilla group FARC, who are being blamed for three attacks that have left 18 people dead.

  “They cannot talk about peace and then carry out such barbaric acts,” an official dispatch from Colombian presidency states. “We need to respond to terrorism with strength and determination,” added Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón.

The three attacks, which began last Wednesday and took place over a 24-hour period, have left the country in a state of shock. The attacks killed 18 people and injured dozens more.

The first attack, a bombing outside a police station in Tumaco in the southwest of the country, killed eleven people. Forty per cent of the national cocaine trafficking takes places in the surrounding of Tumaco city.

The second attack killed a woman in a hotel in Cajamarca, west of Bogotá. In the third instance, six more people died when bomb went off in a police station in Villa Rica, western Colombia.

Two commandants from the FARC front Daniel Aldana, Gustavo González and Oscar Armando Sinisterra Sevillano (alias ‘Rambo’ and ’Oliver’) have been held responsible for this terrorist activity.

The government is offering a substantial award for any information leading to the capture of the two FARC militants. The pair is also accused of trafficking 90 tonnes of cocaine a year.

Recently, the FARC group, which was founded in 1964 and counts around 9,000 soldiers in its ranks, postponed the liberation of five police agents and one army official, as a response to a government-led military clampdown.

Early this week, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos responded by saying that “it’s getting harder and harder” to have a constructive dialogue with the guerrilla group. Around 11 police officers and an unknown number of civilians are still believed to be in FARC’s hands. The group uses hostage as a swap tool to free hundreds of militants held in state prisons. Last November, four prisoners were assassinated by guerrilleros following a police raid in a FARC camp.

Since 2009, FARC have been using an increasing number of bombs and explosives in their attacks. Even though six per cent of Colombian GDP is invested on the army and homeland security, around 1,500 people have died in attacks in the last two years.

The late FARC high commander, Alfonso Cano, was open to having peace talks with the Colombian government back in 2010. Timoleón Jimenez, who succeeded Cano, is said to share his predecessor’s position. President Santos, however, accuses the guerrilla group of “hypocrisy” for talking about peace on one hand and pursuing the violent strategy on the other.

Yesterday Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, launched a new environmental policy, declaring that the government will “no longer allow [the] environmental massacres” that the country has seen over the last 20 years, in which 10% of its forests have been destroyed.

The president called for an end to the deforestation of Colombia, an act that is ruining their “great treasure”. He stated that the total area of decimated forests equates roughly to the size of the entire Atlantico department. A proposed US$55 million investment will come from the government, aimed at a programme of reforestation.

The new environmental policy aims not only to restore the forests, but also to act as the country’s “great protector against future harsh winters” like the one Colombia has just experienced, which was plagued by 190 landslides between September and December, in which 185 people were killed and more than 900,000 were affected.

Santos blamed the extreme deforestation for the landslides, which occurred as often as three times a day in different areas of the country. He stated: “Deforestation holds a lot of the responsibility, because without trees, erosion occurs, and this erosion leads to fragile lands collapsing.”

Finally, Santos also launched a crusade against illegal logging and wood trafficking, which according to the World Bank, accounts for 42% of Colombia’s deforestation. He stated that his government aims to ensure that all wood extracted, commercialised and used comes from legal sources.

Put on your Sunday clothes, kids (even though it’s Friday again)!

Because as of today, we may be welcoming several members of the US Embassy staff who promised they would check out this column out of curiosity, which of course does not put me under an incredible amount of pressure at all.

Also, they may have totally forgotten about it, so I guess we’ll never know.

Well, whatever the case may be, please remember that everything I say here is meant to be funny first and informative second. Oh, and also incredibly offensive. So please don’t have me shipped to Guantanamo, it’s all in good spirit!

Here’s what you need to know:

• 

  You don’t know who this man is, even though you should. So I don’t care how bad you feel about your ignorance, I’m still not telling you. Figure it out yourself. (Photo/Wikipedia)

  Well, they finally happened. The presidential primary elections took place last week, and the result was mind blowing. I mean, first of all let me say that these were some atypical primaries, since each party presented only one candidate. This meant no one was running against anyone, a situation that turned this whole clusterfuck into one big unofficial poll to see how many people would vote for each candidate. The result was a jaw-dropping 50.06% support for the Fernández de Kirchner administration, a historic level since the return of democracy. The opposition, which clearly sucks, is now running scared since no miracle is going to help them change that result. Which means that the President has pretty much been reelected, even though she hasn’t really been reelected. Get it? I know, democracy is a complex thing.

• Speaking of miracle, remember when I told you last week about the Twitter campaign “#unmilagroparaaltamira”? Well, it happened! He got the necessary votes in order to run for president in October! Now let’s all crush him to death and humiliate him by not voting for him in two months.

• Fernández de Kirchner’s resounding victory, of course, prompted current Economy Minister and future Vice-President Amado Boudou (seen here looking vice-presidential and here looking like a douchebag) to celebrate the way he always does: by forgetting he’s almost 50 years old and jumping on top of a lot of young people who will carry him around. And the fact that I hate this guy has nothing to do with the fact that his girlfriend is super hot.

• For some mysterious motive that we may never come to fully understand, when everyone at the Fernández de Kirchner campaign headquarters heard that exit polls around 7 pm were predicting a landslide victory by the President, the Kennedy Choir, who was present there for some reason, decided to gift the crowd with their own version of Mary Poppins’ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It was a terrifying, off-key experience that probably branded several of those kids for life, and we should never mention it again. Ever.

• A long, long time ago, back when Argentina was still a country the first world didn’t give a shit about (the 90′s) there was a president here called Carlos Menem who many believe is in large part responsible for the 2001 economic debacle. Once he left office, he became a senator and people know he’s still out there somewhere, but no one really cares about him anymore. His name, however, has become synonym with bad luck, so whenever you name him or hear someone call his name you have you touch one of your testicles (if you’re a man) or one of your boobs (if you’re a woman or just a fat guy with boobs) in order to “break the curse.” So the media was having a blast this week after this photo, in which Menem is seen greeting the authorities at a polling station, and the man’s reaction is to “break the curse.” Haha! Old people are fun.

• President Fernandez de Kirchner welcomed Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos this week in his first official visit since he took office. Of course, all you care about Colombia is getting drunk on the beach and avoid getting kidnapped by the FARC. Things like the new bilateral agreements signed by both presidents in order to increase farming, trade and science developments… That… that you can live without.

• Just so you know, Mayor Macri has announced that he’s planning on raising taxes next year, and Domestic Trade Secretary Guillermo Moreno has cleared the meat and poultry industries to raise prices as well. Remember that time you were so desperate because you couldn’t get a work permit here that you began considering prostitution? Well, now would be a good time to start reconsidering.

• Haha. Aren’t you hating that it’s all politics so far? By now I’m usually talking about some new embarrassing video on the local version of Dancing with the Stars. Oh well. It’s been an election week, deal with it.

• Which reminds me: this week on Dancing with the Stars (heh!), the population was horrified by the lewd, disgusting and distasteful pole-dancing choreography performed by Mónica Farro, which many considered to be borderline porn. TV’s were turned off around the country as a sign of protest that night, and hours later, after everyone went to bed, millions of hormonal teenagers and unhappy, middle-aged men turned to You Tube to watch it again so they could protest in the morning once more.

• Remember Tano Pasman? That lovable football fan whose lack of anger
  

  Former President Carlos Menem. Oh! You read his name! You know what to do now. (Photo/Wikipedia)

  management sessions took him to a near-stroke situation in every game? Of course you do, this is the only kind of news you care about! Well, anyway. Not only he’s doing “twitcams” now every time he watches a game, but he also has a blog, he ‘s on every football-related TV show and even has a newspaper column. Is he overkilling it? According to The Simpsons, and that episode with the “I didn’t do it” skit, yes. He used to be funny, now it’s just sad.

• Now that gay people can get married here and the world didn’t end after all children automatically turned homosexual, like all conservatives predicted, there’s a new bill headed to Congress looking to grant identity rights to transgender people. So here’s a nice little campaign ad (with English subtitles) that’s certainly gonna make the heads of religious freaks explode.

• Remember last month when River Plate was relegated to the National B and hooligans pretty much burned down the City, so government officials and AFA directives assured the football club would be “severely punished” for what had happened? Well guess what! It’s been over a month and no one remembers about it anymore, so there’s no need to punish them. Yay, football!

• And here’s some piece of advice to all you stoners out there: if you’re going to be stupid enough to grow your own pot, or even worse, grow it and sell it, try to do it somewhere out of sight.