Though in recent months the Colombian insurgent group FARC, which recently had a peace deal promising an end to a fifty year conflict with the Colombian government shot down, has been the center of attention, the Colombians also face the threat of the group ELN, the National Liberation Army. This group, inspired by Cuba’s 1959 revolution, is relatively large in numbers and considered by the United States to be a terrorist group. While the FARC deal has been denied and is currently being salvaged and its engineer won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Colombian government has neglected to consider peace talks with their next largest rival. An original term of the Colombian government’s was that all ELN held captives be released, something which has now been done by the group, however, they are still not in consideration for peace talks. This ranked importance of insurgent groups mirrors the actions taken by the United States during the Rwandan genocide in that as it was found to be of less importance than other issues, it was neglected, yet this group does threaten the people of Colombia as it has killed thousands of them during the past 52 years. In addition, Colombia has been facing increasing numbers of cases of the Zika virus and is the subject of a new test for curing it with mosquitos. Despite these difficulties faced in Colombia, it is still ranked at the top of many travel lists for 2017 and is much more stable than many of its neighbors.
