"At first you don't notice their age, you just see guerrillas," said Sgt. Jairo Herrera.
The military had a much wider target than just the guerrilla groups, which by 1976 were already in disarray.
Ethan Vogt, producer of the Bring to Light: Nuit Blanche New York festival in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, says that this medium can play a critical role in the evolution of public art: "It is too important to exist in just a guerrilla way".
"The guerrillas just have to stay in the hills until the invaders lose their will to fight".
The Burnhams, of Rose Hill, Kan., were seized by the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas just over a year ago, while celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary at a resort on Palawan Island.
They have yet to resolve the thornier issues of just how the guerrillas are to be demobilised and how the FARC will be punished for atrocities it has committed throughout its violent history.
At another juncture, he said, "I'm an extortionist, just like the guerrillas, but with more delicacy" and warned, "If an enemy has to be killed, then I say kill him".
The money, while helpful, won't turn the country around until its government makes a hard decision: to engage in a difficult and sustained battle against powerful, drug-financed guerrillas, just as Peru successfully did nearly a decade ago.
At the same time, a separate migration pressed deep into the sparsely populated jungles and grassland plains that had been effectively ceded to the guerrillas, just as plague and international crackdowns were pushing coca production up the spine of the Andes.
I tried to reassure my companion that McElroen was just making participatory guerrilla theatre, but understanding the aim didn't decrease my panic.
