One thing I don't see mentioned in a lot of these conversations about Colombia and narco-conflicts in general is how it's often preceded by a significant regression in living standards.

Colombia itself suffered a significant stagnation after 2013, and during the pandemic, it's developmental indicators regressed by a decade. Colombia always had issues with narco-politics, but ignoring how economic players basically shifted from the white market to the black market is doing a disservice. A similar thing happened in Mexico in the aftermath of the Peso crisis and Brazil after Lava Jato.

Basically, relatively developed and industrialized countries seeing that capacity being applied into illicit goods.