Today’s long, front-page Washington Post article "Sustaining the Medellin Miracle" does a great job of presenting Colombia’s turnaround in an accurate (and positive) fashion.  It also explains how uncertainty about the trade agreement poses a real danger.  "Why turn us away?" it concludes, quoting a Colombian businessman.  Below are some selections from the article.

MEDELLIN, Colombia -- This labyrinthine metropolis transformed over the course of a decade from a battlefield of drug lords, paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas into one of the safest, most dynamic cities in Latin America. Visionary inner-city renewal projects and a push to take back the lawless hillside slums by force deserve credit, but many here hail an unsung hero in Medellin's urban miracle -- globalization.

Exports surged in the 1990s as the United States granted temporary trade preferences to Colombia, allowing many of its products to enter the world's largest market duty-free. They really took off after 2002, when Washington expanded that agreement to include Colombia's all-important textile sector. Humming assembly lines making Ralph Lauren socks and Levi's jeans sprang up across this picturesque Andean valley, creating tens of thousands of jobs and turning Medellin into a model of the curative power of liberalized trade.
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Colombia is also up against a resurgent global backlash to free trade -- including in the United States, the country that had spent the past two decades cajoling Latin America to open its markets. An election-year debate has politicians in Washington blaming globalization for the loss of U.S. jobs, holding up a vote in Congress on a free trade agreement with Colombia. That bill would make the current trade preferences permanent while allowing most U.S. products to enter Colombia duty-free.
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Companies say doubts about Colombia's future trading relationship with the United States have been a factor in a recent flow of jobs from Medellin into Central America, where a bloc of nations sealed a free trade agreement with the United States in 2006.
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An agreement would make permanent the duty-free access for most Colombian exports to the United States, while also granting U.S. products reciprocal status in Colombia for the first time. The current preference agreement is subject to regular reviews and renewals by Congress. A vote in March approved those preferences through December, when a new vote will be required to extend them. The uncertainty, officials here say, is costing jobs and money.
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"We are afraid of losing what we have built, afraid of what is starting to be a crisis of confidence in Colombia that is leading our clients to move elsewhere," said Luis Fernando González Usuga, Medellin head of the National Export Association. "The U.S. has always talked about why Latin America needs free trade. Well, now we're true believers in Colombia. Why turn us away?"

The Post has also created this great video.  In it a Medellin resident says: "When the employment goes up, the quality of life in the city goes up".  In that statement is beauty, truth, and all ye need to know.  Take a minute and tell Congress that you support the U.S. Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.