COLOMBIA 
Colombia is the only country in the Western hemisphere suffering a major internal armed conflict. The Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) and, especially, the much stronger Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), have engaged in armed struggle with the Colombian Government since 1965. 

Right-wing paramilitaries and a number of extremely violent criminal gangs complete a web of illegal armed groups, which occasionally have operated in collusion with state security forces. Drug trafficking has become a major financial fuel for violence among all armed actors.

Colombia ranks as a mid-income country, but also as one of the countries with the highest inequality in the world.

BRAZIL 

The Brazilian military government was the authoritarian military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from April 1, 1964, to March 15, 1985. It began with the 1964 coup d'état led by the Armed Forces against the administration of President João Goulart—who, having been vice-president, had assumed the office of president upon the resignation of the democratically elected president Jânio Quadros—and ended when José Sarney took office on March 15, 1985 as President. The military revolt was fomented by Magalhães Pinto, Adhemar de Barros, and Carlos Lacerda (who had already participated in the conspiracy to depose Getúlio Vargas in 1945), Governors of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Guanabara. The coup was also supported by the Embassy and State Department of the United States.

The military dictatorship lasted for almost twenty-one years; despite initial pledges to the contrary, the military government, in 1967, enacted a new, restrictive Constitution, and stifled freedom of speech and political opposition. The regime adopted nationalism, economic development, and anti-communism as its guidelines.

MOROCCO 

Shortly before Mariano Fortuny concluded the second year of the pension he had received from the Regional Government of Barcelona in 1858 to complete his studies in Rome, that same institution commissioned him, on January 10, 1860, to travel to Morocco as a graphic reporter of the African War. There, Spanish troops were fighting in the northern Maghreb -especially the battalion of Catalan volunteers recruited by their Regional Government and commanded by General Juan Prim y Prats (1814-1870). That commission’s final objective was a series of large paintings to decorate the Boardroom at the Palacio de la Diputación, but it also led Fortuny to discover Africa and the Arab world, which would