Respond to Sarah's Blog

For this week's post, I decided to write a respond to a blog. I was looking for a blog to respond to and I saw one that really grabed my attention. It was Sarah's blog. She wrote about poverty, terrorism and stress/pressure. Well, I am mostly interested in poverty and terrorism but in this post I want to focus on terrorism, which is very serious in Colombia.

In Colombia, we have several terrorist groups that make our lives almost impossible. They want to change they way of governing Colombia. Several people that thought this way began forming groups that later ended in a real terrorist group. More and more people began to enter the group so they had more power. They wanted money to take over the government so they started kidnapping people, putting bombs on places, killing people, etc. Practically, terrorist groups are doing such things for fun.

In Cartagena, a counselor was kidnapped for six years while he was jogging on the street in front of his building. He escaped during an attack between the military forces from Colombia and the terrorist groups. He classified himself as someone lucky because he would have probably been killed during the attack and he survived 5 days without food, running in high grasslands where many terrorist camps are. In fact, that man is part of my family.

Now, the biggest preoccupation is that this terrorist group called the "FARC" would take revenge against the man's family and against the country, especially, the military forces, the police, or the government. An attack occurred in a place near Cali, Colombia, called Buenaventura in a police station. This attack was made bu the "FARC" because they wanted revenge. During the attack several polices were killed and also other people.

I don't only know stories about terrorism in Colombia but also in other countries such as the United States and Venezuela. Venezuela is one of Colombia's bordering countries. Right now, Venezuela is in a crisis because they have the worst president in history. His name is Hugo Chavez, and he wants to ally with Latin American countries to fight against the United States. He is spending all the money gained by petroleum on buying weapons and he is giving money to all the people that vote for him and like him. Instead, all the people that don't like him are poor.

My grandfather was once kidnapped in Venezuela. Him, my grandmother, my uncle, and my mom, were coming from vacations in the United States. They were leaving my other uncle in his school in Florida. My grandfather worked in Nelson Rockefeller's farm and they lived in a huge house there. Someone knocked at the door, it was a captain. My grandpa went to open the door and my uncle went after him. The "captain" was not any captain, he was the ELN captain. The ELN is a terrorist group from Venezuela. The captain took my grandpa but my uncle heard everything he told what had happened to my grandma. The captain wanted money but my grandpa didn't have so they said that they wanted Nelson's money.My grandpa was took to the house of the man that fixes the garden and he asked the man for the keys of his jeep. The captain and the rest of the group took the jeep. My grandpa and the accountant, which was also kidnapped, sat in the back of the jeep. Both of them were took to where the safety box was but neither the accountant nor my grandpa knew the code to open it.They had a shotgun in their stomach and they were very scared. My grandpa told the captain that the only person that knew the code was the secretary so they went to find the secretary. The secretary was so scared that she gave the wrong code and the ELN couldn't open the safety box. Finally, my grandpa and the accountant were left free. Fortunately they were only kidnapped for four hours. This kind of things can leave marks on people as they did to my uncle who was about seven years old. Every night he went crying to my grandma's bed because he was scared.

I also know another terrorist story that happened in the USA. A boy was with a friend in a car and they stopped in a groceries store to buy something. There was another girl which the boy already knew so he went to talk with her. She was in a van with some other guys. The van's door opened and someone took the boy inside. The van left. The boy´s friend thought that the boy had gone with the girl and that he would come again. The boy´s friend was preoccupied so he went to the boy´s house and told the boy´s family about the situation. The boy´s family decided to separate and look for the boy. One of the boy´s brothers received a call from the kidnappers and they told him that they wanted 30 thousand dollars for the boy. The boy's family contact the FBI event though the kidnappers told them not to. The FBI had organized everything with the boy´s family to capture the kidnappers. The boy´s brother would leave the money in a empty parking lot and then the FBI will capture the kidnappers or at least some of them. That was what happened but the boy didn't appear. The boy was in an apartment with the rest of the kidnappers and he was shot. The FBI and some detectives couldn't fin the boy. One day the boy was found laying on a street and badly hurt. The ambulance came for him and took him to the hospital but he was so hurt that he died. Later, the FBI could capture some of the other kidnappers but there was one missing. The FBI is still looking for him on present day.

Now that you have read my post, you know how serious could terrorism be.