Cabinet ministers come and go in the government of President Guillermo Leon Valencia, 55, and Colombians generally pay little attention. Last week one minister who had been loyally with Valencia for 21 years was out of a job, and the country was agog.
He was Army General Alberto Ruiz Novoa, 48, Colombia's war minister and its most compelling public figure (TIME, Dec. 11). Commander of Colombia's small force in the Korean War, he established a reputation as a reformer in uniform after Valencia brought him into the Cabinet in 1962. At the time, the country was plagued by poverty-fed...
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