A: Colombia. Colombia received billions of dollars from the Bush and Clinton administrations to fight drugs. The money was used in ways that dismayed the journalist and novelist Laura Restrepo.
M: I think that the war on drugs, supported by the United States government, ruins everything but drugs. I mean, the drug business keeps on growing and growing, while democracy keeps getting weaker and weaker.
: Laura Restrepo lives in a country that's more peaceful than it was a few years ago. Colombia's president has made progress against communist guerillas and other violent groups. What Restrepo worries about is the price. Over the years, the government relied on paramilitary forces that killed their suspected opponents.
M: Yes, we can use the roads to go from one end to the other in certain parts of the country. In other parts, we can't. But it's a pax paramilitaire. I mean, the peace that's going on now depends a whole deal on paramilitary forces, which cause a lot of deaths and that, of course, act outside the institutions. And that's a bankrupt for a nation that wants to be a democracy.
: Although it sounds like you are very dubious of the price that's been paid to make Colombia a little more peaceful, I know President Alvaro Uribe has been very popular in many circles. Is President Bush popular in Colombia?
M: I don't think so. Uribe is very popular. I know that my way of thinking corresponds to a minority here. Uribe practically had to destroy the constitution to get re-elected, which he did, with a huge amount of votes. I suppose President Uribe, in many ways, corresponds to the Bush age, where it was believed that military solutions were good solutions. Now, about President Bush, I do think a majority of Colombians - and let me say so, of Latin Americans - dislike him profoundly. I mean, many times we have been in a bad relationship with American governments, but this time, it has really gone off the limit. We have felt lonesome; we have felt hurt by military aggression; we have felt destroyed by this war that's going on. And it's not even an important war anymore, Steve. War on drugs is a forgotten war.
: Well, let's talk about the way that Colombia has watched the events of the last several months in the United States. I suppose, because there's so much U.S. aid to Colombia, people must have watched the presidential election in the U.S. with an entirely different eye than Americans did.
M: I don't know how much. I mean, there was big joy here, you know, over Obama's victory. And I suppose there is one first reason for this that's, in a way, behind any political consideration, and it has to do with race. We're sort of white, sort of black, not one or the other, but a mixture of bloods. If you would see my skin, it's whitish, but not so much. I mean, we have Indian blood; we have black blood. And then, there's, of course, plenty of people that have - that are black and that are Indian down here and anyway, would belong to this mestizo race that is part of the races that have been ill-treated and damaged over the centuries. And of course, we see each other very close to a black man like President Obama. We do feel that this is our victory.
: Well, do you expect President Obama to actually change the U.S. policies toward Colombia?
M: That I don't know, Steve. I do not trust very much the Democratic Party - neither the Republican, of course - but I feel that he's a man much more linked to an interest in human rights, and I don't see him as close as Bush to the belief that the military way out is really valid.
: Laura Restrepo is a writer, journalist and political activist in Bogota, Colombia. Thank you very much.
M: OK, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.