Why Bush’s Visit to Colombia Was So Brief

last updated 8 January 2015

That went well, said BogotÃ¡'s El Mundo in an editorial. President Bush's visit to Colombia last weekend may have been short, but it achieved its purpose. The seven-hour stopover during Bush's Latin America tour was 'œan affirmation of the friendship between our two countries, an alliance that dates back decades.' The very brevity of the visit was an indication that all is well: Bush had to budget 36 hours for Uruguay, a country still working on its relationship with the U.S. Here, though, Bush simply beamed with goodwill. 'œI'm proud to call you a personal friend,' he said to President Alvaro Uribe, 'œand I'm proud to call your country a strategic ally of the United States.' Protests were limited to a tiny scuffle between leftists and police far from the city center, and the whole affair went off without a hitch.

It's hardly surprising there was no security breach, said BogotÃ¡'s El Colombiano. 'œThe entire city was under lockdown.' Airspace in a 30-mile radius around BogotÃ¡ was closed to all but military aircraft. Helicopters hovered everywhere. An extra 22,000 police and soldiers blocked off all access to the airport, the presidential palace, and everywhere in between where Bush might tread.

This seems all too familiar, said Maria Jimena Duzan in BogotÃ¡'s El Tiempo. Flash back 25 years, the last time a U.S. president visited. When Ronald Reagan came to BogotÃ¡, security was so tight that even accredited Colombian journalists were kept far away. During Reagan's entire five-hour stay, we got a glimpse of him only once, when he showed his face outdoors for a five-minute flag-raising ceremony. The press' vantage point for that viewing was so distant that 'œif the visitor had been Tom Cruise instead of Reagan, we wouldn't have been able to tell.' How little has changed. Since the Reagan era, the United States has poured billions of dollars into 'œPlan Colombia,' the fight against militants and drug traffickers. Yet Colombia is still mired in drugs and violence. That explains why Colombia was the only country on Bush's Latin American tour 'œwhere he did not dare spend the night.'