COLOMBIA: Old Port, New Day

The battle of the ports was being fought with fresh vigor. Cartagena, 414 years old and long a sleeper behind ancient, 50-foot-thick walls, had roused itself and gone after business. Its parvenu competitors: Barranquilla and Buenaventura. Stake: the trade between Colombia's rich, highland interior and lands across the sea.

A bright lawyer named Manuel Ramon Navarro Patron had shown the way. Sent to Bogota to lobby for Cartagena (pop. 100,000), he had campaigned so well that by last week the Government had agreed to channel to Cartagena a big chunk of the Magdalena...

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