1.  Generally seen as Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Mexico although Colombia has had a remarkably strong economy considering the domestic turmoil.

2.  Chinese White Paper on Defense, 1998, "The International Security Situation" (internet edition), www.chinadaily.net/wpage/defense2.htm, p. 2.

3.  Chinese White Paper on Defense, 1998, "International Security Cooperation" (internet edition), www.chinadaily.net/wpage/defense2.htm, p. 1.

4.  FBIS, "Chinese State Councillor Meets Brazilian Visitors", FBIS-CHI-98-245, (internet edition), 2 Sept. 1998, 1 page, is a sole example of a growing series of exchanges that appear in the Chinese and Latin American press.

5.  A particularly interesting description of the lack of government sovereignty over its territory is "Colombia: Life in Coca Growing Region Described", Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), FBIS-TDD-96-032-L, (internet edition), 21 October 1996, 5 pages.

6.  "Panama: Immigration Director Says Wave of Colombians Declining", FBIS, LAT-98-062 (Internet edition), 3 March 1998, 1 page.

7.  Refugees are not the only people illegally crossing the Colombian borders into other states. Drug dealers escaping capture often cross the borders to escape Colombian justice. Additionally, guerrillas do the same thing to prevent the military from catching them. Finally, common criminals, bent on the same escape that others seek, use the borders as a protection against Colombian justice. These various migrants have gone into not only Panama and Venezuela but also Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. In hot pursuit of guerrillas, the Colombian and Venezuelan militaries almost went to war in 1994, because of border crossings and violations of sovereignty.

• Second, the efforts to stem narcotics production through environmental manipulation (spraying primarily) have detracted from arguments that the United States and other developed states have made on the need to protect the environment. This has been acutely the case in southwestern Colombia where the spraying has left the land unusable for other crops, thus presenting the Colombian peasants with a loss of known income and a less than optimistic argument for alternative sources of income.
• Third, the violence associated with lawlessness has spread. Guns flow easily across the border, particularly into Venezuela. Corruption of officials, already a long-standing Latin American tradition, has only grown worse during the disintegration of Colombia and its associated spillover into other countries.
• Fourth, the drug production problem is a major and growing issue. Trafficking and production are different aspects to the drug industry but the new twist for some parts of Latin America is that the production has spread from traditional places (coca in Bolivia and Peru into Colombia; opium from Mexico Colombia and flourishing again in Mexico). The number of producers is spreading, indicating an increase in the lucrative nature of the industry. With it are the associated problems noted.
• The role of organized crime in this drug trafficking is a fifth significant problem facing Colombia and spreading throughout the region. While the problems in Colombia are often stated as drug dealing, the linkage activities of illegal banking and money-laundering are more easily facilitated by the increased trade and commerce that has been fueled by the freer trade and increased digital networking. These activities have spread through Colombia and compromise the banking system, the commercial system, and threaten the legal and police systems because they make illegal payments simpler.
• What caused all of this? Certainly the socio-economic maldistribution in Colombia over a fifty year period must be a major consideration. The inability of people to see their standard of living rise at any appreciable rate while other sectors of Colombian society evidence ostentatious wealth to parallel that any where else in the developed world. Additionally, the lack of regime legitimacy because it allows such a small participation in the true political system in Colombia is a major reason for these TNIs yet not a characteristic of Colombia alone.

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