Bogotá, Colombia, December, 2077, Tuesday… It was the fifth time in the last three years that the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela sat down together to discuss their differences. Luis German Palacios barely nodded as Hugo Mora strode pompously into the conference room.

Pedro Cardenas noted immediately the increase in tension. Both Palacios and Mora had attended Princeton University in the United States, but there was no love lost between the two.

Probably not back then, either. Mora, the brash young ex-general who had won the Venezuelan presidency ten years earlier at the age of thirty-two, sounded and looked very much like someone from the Caribbean. However, in contrast to those congenial people, who had done very well by catering to tourists from all over the world often while losing their best and brightest to the US and Europe, Mora was not known for his congeniality.

Moreover, he enjoyed being on the world stage too much. He had a special office whose personnel were charged with providing him with a daily video summary of his appearances in the world-wide newsnets. He smoked foul-smelling cigars, drank heavily, and cursed a lot in both Spanish and English. His election had been tainted with many claims of fraud. He had ruled the country as a virtual dictator ever since. A staunch Pentecostal, he was rumored to have many ties with Pentecostals and the Assemblies of God in the US as well as their radical offshoots, including the Christian Soldiers.

The religious tension along the Colombian-Venezuelan border, especially in the Colombian province of Arauca in the great plains region called the llanos, served as a useful distraction as both governments traveled down the highway of uncontrolled capitalism. In both religion and market share, the two countries had become bitter enemies. Historically it had not always been so, but latent animosity was always a key element for understanding the national psyches. Indeed, it had been created at the time of Bolivar, the great leader's dream of one great Andean country evaporating with the political bickering endemic to the region. His Gran Colombia had fractured into Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.

Now Hugo Mora was leading his country along paths that would have astounded that great general of another era, railing against the sinners across the border while secretly coveting Colombian oil. And Luis German Palacios was leading the radical Catholic response.

The real problem was oil, Cardenas knew. Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador sit on the Venezuela-Orinoco belt which became the biggest oil producing region in the world after the light crude in the Middle East all but disappeared. Venezuela had begun to exploit its natural resource early on in the twentieth century, but by 2005 Colombia was the third largest exporter of oil after Venezuela and Mexico and oil was its number one legal export.