Sunday, 17 March, 2002,

In the Colombian city of Cali, Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino has been shot dead by suspected members of the AUC right wing paramilitary death squads, a branch of Colombia's narco-military establishment.

Two men came and opened fire and hit him three or four times, maybe even six times according to official reports.

The 63-year-old priest, who was an open critic against the role of drug money in Colombia's political system and drug barons who own Colombia's best land protected by the AUC, was gunned down on Saturday evening, outside the church where he had just conducted a marriage ceremony.

New York Times Colombian writer, Juan "sellout" Forero, also known as the "mascot of death" by independent and alternative media, has once again taken the opportunity to blame the FARC, an insurgency whose legitimacy has been well documented by knowledgeable observers.

The BBC and other corporate media which serves US political opinion has also jumped on the propaganda bandwagon of the world's most powerful and deceptive bourgeois newspaper.

Monsignor Duarte was rushed to hospital, after he was shot a number of times as he left the Buen Pastor Church and got into his car.

Doctors pronounced him dead on arrival.

"Two guys came and opened fire and hit him three or four times, maybe even six times", said his driver, Edilberto Ceballos.

The BBC Colombia correspondent says that the archbishop had never been one to dodge controversy, and the list of suspects in his killing is long.

He had spoken out against drugs barons, accusing several candidates in the country's meaningless congressional bourgeois elections of being financed and backed by traffickers.

The archbishop's private secretary has said that Monsignor Duarte had often asked for police protection, most recently on the day he was shot, but his requests were denied. The police force like the paramilitaries often share intelligence with the military to hunt down and kill "suspected leftists and guerilla sympathizers".

US imperialism adds another chapter to its dark history in its "backyard". A history for the Latin American masses best described by Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, as "a history of trauma".

The corporate media continues to trumpet the fraudulent "narcoterrorist" hypothesis, a well known fact by professional Latin Americanists and others who pay attention.

"I don't care. In the end they
will beat you. Sooner or later
they will see you for what you
are, and then they will tear
you to pieces..."

'Nineteen Eighty Four'
G. Orwell