The conviction of Colombia’s ex-president is a sign of hope amid autocracy’s rise | Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

The conviction of Colombia’s ex-president is a sign of hope amid autocracy’s rise | Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

Álvaro Uribe was convicted of bribery in a development that would have seemed inconceivable a decade agoOn 25 October 1997, paramilitary groups descended upon the remote 300-person farming town of El Aro, in the Colombian state of Antioquia. Over the next five days, the drug-running paramilitaries slaughtered 17 people, raped multiple women and burned the town down, forcing the remaining townspeople to flee.The attorney Jesus Maria Valle had bee…