More Terrible Than Death: Drugs, Violence, And America’s War In Colombia [Hardcover ed.] 1586481045, 9781586481049

Citation preview

ROBIN KIRK

more

terrible

than death

"MASSACRE:

*

AMERI "N

m

«r

-

—

COLOMBIA

$2.'y,$ol$^x.^$

CAN.

decades, the United States government has spent

more than $7 poppy

prevent the

U.S.,

and prosecute those who

illegal

these drugs are cheaper

At tion

and hero-

drugs from arriving in the

in, to

The "war on

drugs"

is

them. Yet

plentiful than ever.

a spectacular failure.

on Colombia were mainly

lifestyles

traffic in

and more

the effects of America's drug

first,

consump-

visible in the lavish

of a few kingpins, an increasingly corrupt

political process,

and the many

lives

cut short as a

result

of the violence linked to drug trafficking.

Now,

illegal

are

and

billion a year to destroy the coca

plants used to manufacture cocaine

prime

armies from the political

beneficiaries,

left

and

right

and they use drug cash

equip thousands of troops to fight over the

to

spoils.

Massacres have become a daily horror, and no place in the

are

country

is

truly safe.

most Colombians, who

Caught

in the crossfire

are simply trying to

stay alive.

Violence in Colombia predates drug trafficking,

but

it

has intensified and spread as various factions

fight over

power and

a compelling

human

their share

and disturbing

rights investigator

of the wealth. In

narrative, writer

Robin Kirk

and

lays bare the

context for America's deepening involvement in

Colombia's war

as

we

use training and weapons

originally intended to fight illegal drugs for

armed

operations against the groups battling for control

of Colombia's future.

•ntinued

on back

flap)

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/moreterriblethanOOrobi

more terrible

than death

ALSO BY ROBIN KIRK The Monkey's Paw:

New

Chroniclesfrom Peru

The Peru Reader: History, Culture,

Politics (coeditor)

more terrible

than

death massacres, drugs, and America's war in Colombia Robin Kirk

PublicAffairs

New

York

Copyright

Map

©

2003 by Robin Kirk

©

copyright

2003 by Anita Karl

& Jim Kemp

The quote from General Giap Vo Nguyen

is

from Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, a

York: Viking Press, 1983) and Wisrawa Szymborska's quote Selected Poems. Translation

is

history

(New

from her View with a grain ofsand:

by Stanisraw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh (San Diego: Harcourt

Brace, 1995).

Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a

member of the

Perseus Books Group.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

No

part of this

except

in

book may be reproduced

in

any manner whatsoever without written permission

the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information,

address PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321,

books are available institutions,

Department

at special

New York, NY

10107. PublicAffairs

discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations,

and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets at

The

Perseus Books Group,

n

Cambridge Center, Cambridge,

MA 02142, or call

(617) 252-5298.

Book

design by Jane Raese

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kirk, Robin.

More

terrible

than death: massacres, drugs, and America's war

in

Colombia/ Robin Kirk.-ist

cm.

p.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 1-58648-104-5 1.

Drug

4.

Narcotics, Control of-Colombia.

2.

Cocaine industry-Colombia. 5.

Title.

HV5840.C7 K57

2003

36345'o986i-dc2i

2002036609

FIRST EDITION

10

987654321

3.

Human

rights-Colombia.

United States-Military relations-Colombia.

Colombia-Military relations-United

6. I.

traffic-Colombia.

States.

ed.

To Orin .

is

.

.

Hope

not reason or logic,

but tough as thefingerpads that draw the gut bow.

"In war, there are

two factors-human beings and weapons.

Ultimately, though,

Human

beings!

human

Human

beings are the decisive factor.

beings!" General Giap Vo Nguyen,

commander, People's Army of Vietnam

Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.

Retinues of reasons don't

trail

Anniversaries of revolutions

coronations alone.

may

roll

around,

but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay. Wisfawa Szymborska, "No

Title

Required"

CONTENTS

Map

XI

Chronology

XIII

Prologue

XV

Josue

i

2 Basilisco

r3

The Alchemist

35

The Hippopotamus

71

A Perfect Circle

99

1

3

4

5

The

Devil's Table

141

Lament

179

The Magic Kingdom

223

La Berraquera

2 59

Acknowledgments

289

Selected Sources

291

Index

295

6

7 Pataquiva's 8

9

IX

CHRONOLOGY

1525

Spain begins conquest of Colombia.

1819

Simon

Bolivar defeats the Spanish at Boyaca, Colombia.

Republic of Gran Colombia formed with Ecuador, Panama,

and Venezuela. 1849

Conservative and Liberal parties founded.

1928

FARC

1948

Jorge Eliecer Gaitan

leader Pedro Antonio Marin's stated year of birth.

Laureano 1953

Gomez

is

is

assassinated in Bogota.

elected president.

The

next year,

Liberal rebels join with

Communists

General Gustavo Rojas

Pinilla leads a military

is

deposed four years

later

One year

some

at El Davis.

coup

with the formation of a

military alliance that divides

later,

power between

d'etat

and

civilian-

Liberals

and

Conservatives.

1964

Attack on the "independent republic"

1965

The

the "independent republics"

1966

The FARC

is

declared a victory.

formally organized, with Pedro Marin as

is

leader. Carlos

1970

at Marquetalia.

ELN makes its first appearance. The campaign against

Castano

Misael Pastrana

is

is

elected president in a questioned election;

end of the National Front. Four years

Movement (M-19) announces election,

and

its

born.

steals the

itself,

later,

the April 19

formed to protest

this

sword of Simon Bolivar from a Bogota

museum. 1980

Jesus Castano

is

kidnapped and

killed,

followed the next year

by the kidnapping of the Alvarez children and Martha Nieves

Ochoa and the M-19.

1984

the formation of MAS.

O cnoa

The PARC

is

The

children are killed by

released in February 1982.

agrees to a cease-fire that lasts six years.

Xlll

CHRONOLOGY

xiv

1985

The M-19

seizes the Palace ofJustice.

dozens of others are

killed

building; the Patriotic

1989

when

the

Union Party

Presidential candidate Luis Carlos

becomes

is

Eleven justices and

army

retakes the

founded.

Galan

is

assassinated;

M-19

a legal party after reaching a peace agreement with

A judicial commission

the government.

massacred near La

is

Rochela, prompting the government to outlaw paramilitary groups.

1990

Presidential candidates

Bernardo Jaramillo

(Patriotic

Union)

and Carlos Pizarro (M-19) are murdered by Castanos. The

government-FARC

cease-fire

ends with the attack on Casa

Verde.

1991

Pablo Escobar negotiates his surrender. prison a year arrest

1994

later,

then

on December

Ernesto Samper

is

2,

leaves his luxury

1993.

elected president after a

by contributions from

traffickers.

The Mapiripan massacre

campaign tainted

Carlos Castano takes over

paramilitaries after his elder brother

1997

He

shot dead while trying to evade

is

killed

is

by

guerrillas.

dozen

takes over three

lives;

AUC. human rights

Castano forms a paramilitary alliance called the 1998

Andres Pastrana defenders,

is

elected.

among them Jesus

provokes the Machuca

1999

Three leading Valle, are

murdered. The

ELN

disaster.

New peace talks between

the government and

FARC

are

formally launched; drug czar General Barry McCaffrey (retired) declares

2000

the country in "near-emergency"; the

Clinton administration proposes millions in military

aid.

The United

mainly

States authorizes almost

military aid to fight

Paramilitaries

2002

drug

murder

USsi

trafficking in

at least thirty-six

President Pastrana ends peace talks.

billion in

Colombia. people

at El Salado.

The United

States orders

the extradition of guerrillas and paramilitary leader Carlos

Castano

for

drug

trafficking.

Alvaro Uribe

is

elected president.

PROLOGUE

I

SET OUT TO WRITE THIS BOOK BECAUSE

After working for a decade in

have notebooks

full

Colombia

of stories that

I

more than the occasional party. Even Colombia is just another one of those happen and there is no cure. These places run together Congo, Chechnya. One

many seem

to

loom

that

entertain.

I

satisfy

and

I

want

mean

where a

lot

of bad things

them the "vowel

Dili,

the

places," since so

to

tell lies,

tell.

If

my only purpose were to

my

schedule.

I

in the

want

conferences

do more than

to

these stories because for me, they are

whether

in

Colombia or

in

my

where

backyard.

By

truth not like a shiny coin, but as a fabric of perceptions

lived experience, disappointments

revelation, that

of life.

tell at

usually refrain. For most,

I

places

myself over cocktails or

clouds over

the truth of things that,

then,

our minds: Bosnia, Soweto,

in

friend calls

travels has stories to

could

like rain I

have never been able to

end that way.

who

Everyone entertain,

WANTED TO TELL STORIES. human rights advocate, I

I

as a

and moments of disgust and

wraps the heart of things and the unmistakable shiver

The human

rights reports

plified truth, a truth

I

have written are

true.

But

it is

a sim-

of dates and quotes and judicial decisions stripped

of emotion and complication. They are

how

to

because Colombia matters.

It

like

the directions on

assemble a bicycle, not a chronicle of the joy of riding. I

want

to

tell

more complex

matters to me, since thinking about

But

I

it

I

stories

have dedicated much of the past decade to

and trying to understand what

also believe that

it

should matter to anyone

is

happening

who

is

there.

American, for

way Americans think and live and do business in the world. This is why: Our pleasures are tearing Colombia apart. Our leisure funds terror. Our parties pull Colombia under, as surely as a stone sinks cloth in water. Our addictions and experimentareasons that are rooted in the

xv

PROLOGUE

i

tions ensnare not just ourselves

and our

families,

but a nation.

Most of

our unwillingness to acknowledge our behavior and examine

all,

real

its

consequences threatens to sink Colombia.

Perhaps more than ever, Americans are aware of the impact our ac-

have

tions

we have

havoc

we

are

still

largely deaf

created in Colombia.

It is

ironic,

in the world. Yet

The

flights).

given that Colombia

way

only a movie's-length from our border (the

and blind to the

I

measure airplane

Colombian pop star Shakira entertains

Colombians

us,

stock our Starbucks with coffee, adorn our weddings and fresh flowers,

our movie

and mine the emeralds that glow

is

homes with

in the belly

buttons of

stars.

Of course,

that

all

beside the point.

is

What Colombia

really

does

is

supply the cocaine and heroin that millions of Americans ingest.

Colombia United

is

the main producer of the cocaine and heroin used in the

States. Currently, the

roughly 6 million Americans considered

"chronic" or occasional users of cocaine and heroin spend at least $46 billion annually

on the

drugs.

we have

Meanwhile,

sought to suppress these drugs with bullets

and helicopters and herbicides and ads and prisons and patrols and

mandatory sentences. Over more than two decades, the United States has spent over $150 billion trying to wipe out the sources of illegal narcotics (the coca

poppy

bush used to manufacture cocaine and the opium

plant), to interdict illegal

identify

and jail the people

who

drugs on the traffic in

way

to U.S. shores

and

and buy cocaine and heroin.

But the drug war was never won. Today, cocaine and heroin are plentiful,

affordable,

and more pure than

ever.

The "war on

drugs"

is

one of

the most spectacularly failed government programs in the history of the United States.

To

give just

drug lab caine, a

much

in

one of many examples,

Colombia

in 1984, the authorities seized a

called Tranquilandia

huge amount

at

cocaine in one place.

quantities are routine.

and

its

fifteen tons

of co-

the time. Police had never before seen so

Two

decades

The amount

later,

seizures of similar

seized at Tranquilandia

is

but 2

percent of Colombia's current annual cocaine production, estimated in

2001

at

640 tons per

Drugs are

cool.

year.

No

havoc drug use creates

advertising is

campaign

will

change

that.

The

part of the attraction, built in like a whirling

PROLOGUE

xvii

Drugs are

light.

sexy, they are fashionable, they are

new

(and at the

same time as old as humankind). They will always attract youth and and the frankly bored. Our

risk takers

to avoid pointing

it

politicians point the finger south

squarely at the noses and veins and

mouths of their

constituents.

As long as people want illegal drugs, they will be able to get them. They will pay lots of money for them. As long as there is demand, there will be supply. As long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. It's

a truth that

is

so unquestioned, so obvious to

all,

so completely and

proven that it is neatly ignored. Or perhaps not ignored, but made invisible, like the force of gravity. The drug trade persists and is robust. That much is not news. Neither is the fact that it has corrupted much of Colombian life. In the

utterly

2002 Colombian elections, controversy surrounded dozens of congres-

and even presidential candidates, accused of tolerating or even

sional

profiting

from the trade

dent, Ernesto Samper,

campaign

in

cocaine and heroin.

had

staff knowingly

accepted contributions from

rent president Alvaro Uribe Velez

What

is

news

is this:

no longer the only healthy cars, left

profit.

The

Kingpins

and

still

rifles,

traffickers.

his

Cur-

himself shadowed by allegations.

Colombia.

Illegal

armies

now reap

a

spend their fortunes on costly jewelry,

parties.

price of a single kilo of cocaine in

matic

is

But their partners on the ideological

right invest their percentage in bullets

month's worth of

presi-

criminal drug networks of the 1980s are

beneficiaries in

and alcohol-soaked

One Colombian

term poisoned by evidence that

his

salaries for

and bombs. The

New York- roughly

250

fighters, or

or 120 satellite telephones, or

full

street

$no,ooo-buys a

180 AK-47 semiauto-

camouflage uniforms for

1,000 men.

The United

States extradited the

first

Colombian

guerrilla for al-

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said it found the guerrillas' stamp on blocks of purified cocaine leaving Colombia for American shores. Over the leged trafficking in 2002.

years, guerrillas

The

reason was that the

have climbed up the ladder of the business, advancing

from security guards and tax collectors to wholesalers.

The

enemies, the paramilitaries, have been at the top of

guerrillas'

the trade for over selves traffickers,

two decades.

A number

of the chieftains are them-

responsible for shipping hundreds of tons of cocaine

PROLOGUE

xviii

and heroin into the United States and Europe. In 2001, paramilitaries

began a novel auction. In exchange

Colombia under

for protection,

they sold blocks of

their military control to traffickers willing to

pay

fees

based on cocaine production. In September 2002, the United States filed extradition

and two It's

papers on Carlos Castano, the top paramilitary leader,

associates.

no surprise

been

that cocaine has

war

Colombia's five-decade-old

The country has narco-mayors,

society.

and

narco-hotels, narco-highways

as effective in penetrating

any other element of Colombian

as

narco-police, narco-malls and

narco-airlines, narco-universities,

narco-nuns and narco-NGOs, narco-parks, narco-beauty pageants, narco-singers, narco-horses,

among them caught

at

and narco-dogs. There are narco-children,

the five-year-old caught carrying

New

York's

Kennedy

John immune. There F.

2002. Americans are not narco-soldiers' wives,

among them

two pounds of heroin

International Airport in April are even narco-soldiers

and

the American wife of the head of

the U.S. military attache's office in Bogota, convicted of shipping cocaine

home

like a

souvenir of her tour.

My point is not to level blame.

I

propose no cure. Libraries are

filled

with papers and studies and polls about America's addictions and their cost to society.

Many worthy books

have been and

about the war on drugs and the dramas that are

one of them. To write ensure that

hope

it

to

show

that

with

But

it.

in

If viability in

there hangs Colombia,

us.

Yet

it

epically failed,

We

its

failing

we

amplify

not to

it

with our con-

It

has as

is

the world can be likened to a

as if

Our

more than a familmuch to do with us as

Colombia

fingers slipping

watch

does, intimately.

and

bits; this is

a devastating scope.

what looms

torso antic with dread.

juicy

Colombia's conflict predates co-

of Latin corruption or savagery.

does with Colombia.

shelf,

it

its

be written

some of those books, mainly

read

steer a different path.

I

sumer behavior and give I

I

Americans did not cause

caine, so

iar tale

book,

this

will

it

and the twisting of its

had nothing,

really, to

do

failed policy-dramatically failed,

with a numbing, annual frequency-is largely

responsible. I've done my bit, as a human rights activist, to show why and how and where the innocent and defenseless are harmed. At the same time,

though, there

is

more

to be said

beyond the

lists

of atrocities and body

PROLOGUE parts that

xix

human

fill

necessary limits of the

The

rights reports.

human

rights

go beyond the

stories here

world and aim

the bigger truths

at

of the American relationship to Colombia and the need to change

The

book

point of this

is

to lay bare the context of what

and within America's war on drugs United

States,

through

in

consumer

its

lies

it.

behind

Colombia and show how the

habits

and

official policies,

has

provoked Colombia's home-grown demons. The book does not argue that the United States

there

most readers ideas

responsible for

is

blame to generously

is

will take

of Colombia's

all

share. Yet there

away from

is

knowledge contrary,

this,

we

We

certainly, I

hope

these pages: American habits and

and actions on the ground give speed and

gripping Colombia.

ills;

one conclusion

wars now we have yet to achow to stop. To the

bite to the

share responsibility. But

or to think deeply or truly about

delve ever deeper into Colombia's conflict. In 2002, the

Bush administration was granted permission by the U.S. Congress

to

use training and weapons formerly provided to Colombia's military to fight illegal taries

in

even

drugs in operations that targeted guerrillas and paramili-

when

these operations were not drug-related.

mission reflected the facts on the ground; yet

also

it

The change

meant

a step

deeper into a conflict that remains one of the most tangled and treacherous in the hemisphere. I

also argue that there

is

no such thing

violence" in Colombia. Rather, violence

decisions and the behavior of

Human

many whose fame

Giap Vo Nguyen

an amalgam of identifiable

individuals

who

whose names appear

in

and

By

relationships.

that

I

refer

not

newspapers but also

never transcends a family or town. As General

said of another distant conflict,

the decisive factor."

ones

is

an immutable "culture of

beings are the engines and fuel of this war.

just to the personalities

to

known

as

Human

can unmake

it.

beings

make

"Human

beings are

the war; they are the only

Colombia's hope

lies in

human minds and

hearts and hands.

This book

tells

the story of one Colombian

peace, Josue Giraldo Cardona.

whom

I

worked

in

Colombia. The

see in their mind's eye

nonviolence. for

change

in

He

is

He was

is

Josue, a

the one

who

first

who

risked his

a friend and colleague with

and

last

thing

I

want readers

Colombian dedicated

told

for

life

me

Colombia would be "more

that to give terrible

to peace

to

and

up on the hope

than death," which

PROLOGUE

xx

me

gave

the

title

for this

news consumers than they are

Josue

is

book. Although

to believe

like

may be

most Colombians

it,

Pablo Escobar, a better-known

way of recognizing

a

it

all

hard for American

more likejosue

are

figure.

My

focus on

who

of those brave individuals

con-

work for peace and Most Colombians want nothing to do with illegal drugs. Most Colombians abhor murder. Most Colombians want honest, hardworking, and careful leaders. They want quiet neighborhoods, good schools for their children, occasional vacations. They want to leave Colombia.

justice in

tinue to

homes each morning with a better than average chance of returning home alive. They want guns off the streets, criminals in jail, and a police and army that they can be proud of So what they desire their

is

not, in the end,

they for

much

live differently,

different

from what you or

I

might want. Yet

because not a single one of those things

is

assured

any of them.

Colombian history

is

intricate and, to

many, impossibly tangled.

There are too many acronyms; there are not enough periods of excis-

lead

Where possible, I have cut out the many of us who follow Colombia into

own

(since

able calm.

Certainly,

tention lead

is

some

readers will find gaps infuriating or suspicious.

tale).

My

in-

not to mislead but rather to keep to a narrative path that will

me, Colombia

is

complex but never confused.

with that fascinating tangle, yet not lose

Also to ease the reader's way,

I

friend I

hope

my readers

once remarked to to flavor the in

book

the process.

have adopted several space-saving

or confusion-reducing conventions.

Where

possible,

I

say "paramili-

or "guerrillas" to avoid overloading the text with acronyms that

add up to the same sets

a kind of despair of our

one never, ever reaches an end or beginning of any

most readers to the book's end. As one

taries"

knots and intricacies that

thing. Suffice

and sub-subsets that

distinctive ways.

When

at

it

to say that both have sets

times act and

identifying

make pronouncements

Colombians

for the

their full

name

done

Countries colonized by the Spanish use two

so.

and sub-

first

time,

I

in

use

except in cases where the person has not customarily last

names

that

derive from that individual's parents. For instance, Pablo Escobar Gaviria has a father

mother's

last

name

whose

last

name

(from her father)

the matrilineal name.

(from his father) is

is

Escobar. His

Gaviria. Subsequently,

I

drop

PROLOGUE one

In

known

xxi

case,

I

have employed an unusual way to identify a very well-

person: Pedro Antonio Marin, the leader of Colombia's largest

guerrilla insurgency

confirm). This

he

his real

is

identified

is

name

name. However,

government

in

as a youth,

this decision deliberately.

want Marin

last

I

have been unable to

news

reports and books,

by an assumed name that he took when he rebelled

against Colombia's

made

(whose mother's

to appear

first

Manuel Marulanda

Like everyone else in this drama,

forces turned

him

fight

I

today, and why. it is

man who

sum

not the

continues to

from Colombia's hinterlands.

Spelling

name

is

sometimes more a matter of choice than

rule.

"Loayza," for example, can also be spelled "Loaiza,"

rich oral, not written tradition in

AYE-za). fear.

is

into Marulanda. But

of him and does not account entirely for the

I

and explain where

as a person, not a legend,

he came from, what forces turned him into what he

One of those

Velez.

Many

people asked

In these cases,

for that

is

Finally,

I

note that

The fruit

last

of a

Colombia (they sound the same, low-

me not to use their real names, out of am using a pseudonym and the reason

I

always obvious. I

want

to

make

it

clear that this

book

and not those of Human Rights Watch. By

reflects

this,

controversy between myself and the organization

owe

worked with

for the last ten years.

women who

are

tion's history

and contributions to human

my

I

colleagues there.

I

come

my views

I

admire and have

a great deal to the

men and

value immensely the organizarights in

where. This book represents something understand and

only

suggest no hidden

I

I

felt

Colombia and

needed to do to

I

to terms with the breadth of

Colombia, which often breached the necessary

else-

my

limits

experience in

of a

human

rights focus.

Durham, North Carolina

more terrible

than death

CHAPTER ONE

JOSUE

There

a curious quiet that takes hold of Colombian towns.

is

These are towns with central squares and junker

depending on where you

restaurants that play salsa tapes or,

Often, the square will have a fountain or statue.

my mind what I am tect grass that

dren, trash,

writing about,

already punished by

is

and dogs.

vendor waits

in

the

An

shadow of

litter, spit, piss,

man

elderly

sits

Yet there

is

my imagination,

something

in

the

it is

air.

air

tapes

folk

mu-

conjure in

I

to pro-

the feet of chil-

on a bench, a newspaper

a kiosk. There are

passers-by ebbs and flows with the hour. a motorcycle. In

When

wrought iron fence

see a

I

are,

accompany Colombian

featuring the harps or accordions that sic.

and open

cars

flies.

The pace of

A few vehicles pass,

perhaps

always sunny. farmer happens by, the clop-

If a

clop of the horse marks a beat like a racing heart. At midmorning, the

women

shops are open, the coffee brews, and

mesh

bags.

most human presence. Everyone

feels

makings of lunch

in plastic

The it.

in flip-flops carry

portent

is

a palpable,

Something has

the al-

altered the

course of a day. Plans are made. Even the dogs seem poised to run.

On just

such a morning

in just

such a town,Josue Giraldo Cardona

wondered whether he would make nounced with a musical of the town

is

lift,

home

name is proThe name where Josue was born. The town is it

hose-WAY.

Pensilvania and

it is

A

alive.

His

first

chime, a greeting.

neither unique nor particularly prone to acts of violence.

have red

tile roofs.

green of an

There are white churches sunk deep

Andean

valley.

special intensity, as if tinted

Thinned by by an

artist.

Its

in

houses

the grass

altitude, the air gives color a

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

2

Pensilvania

Colombia's coffee-growing center. The coffee-

at

is

symbol known

advertising

as

Juan Valdez could walk with

his

donkey

man in a bowler hat, even among the Toyota

across the square and look oddly fastidious, like a

but

perfectly attuned to his surroundings,

still

Land

men

Cruisers and blaring stereos.

preparing to

kill

They saw him from That moment

is

part of the story

is

happening.

There

Josue,

wore

may be

want

to

Many

tell.

plenty of time to

is

target

may even

Or

class.

the target

is

know and

is

the

It

it

was

in Josue's case.

human

target, is

when

the

have seen again and again

is

a ter-

body

registers that

death

time slows. There

is

space to see and

happening.

in

Colombian towns-had

had been ordered back to

murder

is

imminent.

time.

The

their station. In

The

I

told Josue that the

Colombia,

murder

is

more powerful

this

is

a

mur-

interests.

committed, the police

supervise the viewing of the

with exquisite attention to procedure, that its

the ones

police are either part of the plot or see

After the shots are fired and the

They

like

police withdraw, to give the

themselves as bystanders, unable to halt other,

turn to their posts.

home

one moment,

There

at school.

imagine,

I

consider what

room and

a stu-

the course of a day, as

That morning, someone on the square-a square just

sign that a

Or

young man who has been hanging around on

moment,

For the

know and

ground,

For

is fired.

shopping or buying a newspaper or maybe walking

rible, terrifying

sure,

what

see

recognize the face of the

spoken or shot

last several days. It arrives in

from work or dropping the kids

derers

of the mur-

foretold in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's tale.

a childhood playmate, as

the corner for the

police

shop.

in a coffee

the small of the back.

in

near.

the square that Josue saw

and khakis, with a windbreaker to cover the pistol

a dress shirt

dent in a

is

I

long before any word

it is

was the death

it

tucked It

The human

what

in

from a seat

the one that was planned for Josue that day-

like

deliberate, visible, slow.

killer for

was

a spot on the square.

Colombia are

ders in

It

He saw them

him.

re-

body and make shape on the

its

exact location and attitude, face up or face down,

is

He recognized Amado, his childPensilvania knew that Amado was an as-

recorded. Josue reviewed his options.

hood playmate. Everyone sassin. It

is

Amado

in

a recognized occupation, like butcher or thief

chatted with the police chief,

who

stood beside him.

He

JOSUE

3

was the only

who had been These must

loitering for the past several days in front

slip

When

out of the coffee shop.

two other men, Amado's men, were on the pening. In Colombia,

Josue stopped breath.

in

it is

me

he saw that

did,

and blocked

his

story.

doorway of the local priest. He caught his made insulting gestures with their hands. "They

the

assassins

as

office.

They saw what was hap-

an old and familiar

wanted to leave no doubt that said to

he

side street

escape. Around him, people began to hurry.

The

of his

men

he concluded, Amado's men. Josue thought he might

be,

be able to

still

not in the station, Josue also saw the two

officer

it

me

was

they were searching

for,"

he

he described that day.

Ironically, the gestures

they would announce

confused him.

didn't

"It

seem

logical that

my death so blatantly." The men conferred,

then

vanished. Josue fooled himself into believing that every sense and pre-

monition registered by his brain was him, he thought. Such

Around

is

the

a corner, he almost

They

in error.

power of life. He

bumped

left

want

didn't

one of the gunmen.

into

to

kill

the priest's doorway. Frantic,

he veered into the open door of a restaurant. Again, he waited. Even killers

so blatant, Josue thought to himself,

much

so

time passing and so

would grow nervous with

many people

watching, knowing.

He

convinced himself that he had prevailed, had fooled them. Again, he started walking. It

was then he discovered

that the killers

had waited

for

him

all

along.

WAS A HEAD TALLER THAN JOSUE. HlS BLACK HAIR WAS SHORT AND neatly trimmed. He wore a gold chain bracelet and a gold watch. He

I

favored the pastel Oxford-collar shirts and tasseled loafers of a provincial

self

his

Colombian lawyer. His ease and the confident way he

made him seem tongue against

never quite got

we

larger than

he was. Josue had a habit of pressing

his front teeth to

my name

carried him-

make

straight, calling

a soft

me

thwacking sound.

"Kick" even the

last

He

time

spoke.

Often, while traveling in Colombia,

looked

like a

thousand other

men

his

I

thought

I

glimpsed him. Josue

age and size and

class.

Colom-

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

4

come

bians

coast to the

in

many

tall

and

sizes

colors,

from the Afro-Colombians of the

and blond Euro-Colombians of the

and the short

cities

and broad indigenous Colombians of the Andes and the Amazonian jungles. Yet there

is

wide middle, a combination of skin tone and

fea-

and manner of dress. If one were to pick a Colombian type, someone who represented the general category of what Colombian men look like, Josue would have been it, no question. tures

On

the

last

Colombia's

day that

capital.

north of the

we

was

I

spoke, rain

fell

my ear,

across the street

on Carrera Decima, a busy

sided over their axles.

watched

rain

The downpour

rights

sits at

snow on

the telephone to

I

human

Bogota

city's colonial-era center.

near enough to the Equator to elude

in thick sheets

of a

in the office

all

over Bogota,

group to the

8,000

but

yet

feet,

peaks.

its

is

With

drench the Tequendama Hotel artery.

Buses hunched lop-

did not cleanse them, but

made

their

grime smear and liquefy and drip onto the clothing of the passen-

gers.

The windowpane

I

gazed through was tempered to

resist

an ex-

plosion blast, installed after the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar Gaviria

had ordered a car bomb detonated floors below.

I

of the leather shop eleven

don't think Escobar had anything against the briefcases

and women's purses displayed

he harmed, the shop gave the

in front

tongue against his

I

an Ektachrome photograph.

A

in

sat. I

and the thwack of

radio played salsa music.

whether the radio was somewhere our conversation

damage. The windowpane

listened to Josue's voice

teeth.

Josue was or perhaps

shop window. Like many things

qualified as collateral

city a bluish tint, like

Over the phone,

in the

another

in the office

office,

where

I I

couldn't

his tell

was or where

where the people

listening to

had been told that there was a wiretap on the

line, though it seemed that all the Colombians I had ever met were convinced that the telephones they used were not secure.

telephone

For four years,

I

had covered Colombia

American-based international trips to

human

rights

Colombia, Josue had welcomed

Human Rights Watch, an group. On one of my first

for

me when

few others had.

My

I had learned, was an issue for many Colombians. For was the physical manifestation of a U.S. policy that they consid-

citizenship,

some,

I

ered to be a wholly malevolent force. Others looked to America as the

only force capable of exterminating Colombia's demons. that

America should send troops and airplanes

to

They

Colombia

told

me

to settle

JOSUE

5

matters once and for to business

and

all

so that Colombians could dedicate themselves

which they claim a genetic

parties, things for

These contradictory expectations often ing,

would be made

I

me

one meet-

dizzy. In

to feel like the agent of imperialism quashing a

noble peasantry. In the next,

would be expected

I

weaponry necessary

delivery of the

left

talent.

to

to favor the

prompt

wipe that peasantry from the

face of the earth.

In contrast, the

Colombians are drug

brutally simple.

gota to

Miami on the same

Rosso Jose Serrano. drug

American perception of Colombians tends

A hero in

the

him

for a

My

later

I

flew from Bochief,

General

become

drug warrior friends

Nobel Peace

he hobnobbed with a famous

man who would

Once,

be

Colombia, he had helped dismantle the

Medellin and Cali Cartels.

trafficking

the U.S. Congress proposed first class,

traffickers.

Colombia's police

flight as

to

singer, a

Prize.

famous

Seated

writer,

in in

and

the country's president, Andres

Pastrana.

Miami baggage claim, he was treated say, suspect. The general is short and

Yet once the general reached

Colombian, which

like a

brown

round, with the

and

in civilian clothes,

is

to

skin of a

man

he looked

him from the other

tenna

passengers.

in a Florida hurricane,

from peasant

as tender

separated from his family chaperone. rated

risen

A

and

stock.

lost as a

Alone

grandfather

customs service beagle sepa-

With

its tail

wagging

like

an an-

the beagle backed General Serrano

against a pile of shrink-wrapped suitcases.

The

incident lasted only a

few seconds. But the general's face was a mixture of mortification and outrage. All eyes turned

who

used for people the

transport illegal drugs

on

(the

term

their bodies) caught in

act.

The

beagle must have signaled to the handler that what

was not

moved

With

drugs.

Occasionally,

human is

a tug

on

its

it

smelled

leash and no apology, the handler

on.

rights

I

hear Americans say that Colombia has a "culture of

no amount of

violence" that

this

on him, the suspected drug mule

advocacy

the one

I

will

financial aid or military intervention or

abhor most. For

United States was immersed

Of all the mutual much of its history

change.

in a "culture

misperceptions, as a nation, the

of violence" practiced against

African and Native Americans as well as

new

immigrants. Only time

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

6

Colombia (and all other capable of the same transformation.

and deliberate action ended that countries dismissed as hopeless)

When

is

culture;

found myself the target of a prolonged and spitty ha-

I

rangue-anti-Yanqui or pro-imperialist, referenced to the innocent col-

claimed to represent and focused on the guilty

lective the speaker

collective the speaker

meant

to eliminate-I

came

to consider

it

as

much a part of my work as collecting evidence of abuses. I advocated human rights, but I also aspired to practice them. I wanted to show by deed and, just as important, by

work

other forces at

in the

my

physical presence that there were

world that could produce what

Among

agree were better results for Colombia.

human

movement.

rights

sions with a very

product

in

In other words,

American assumption

could

tried to navigate these ten-

I

that time

and goodwill and

the form of hard-hitting reports, personal commitment, and

improvements on human

tangible

we

those forces was the

would convince

rights protection

the skeptical of my ultimately fine and true intentions. It is

not easy to hang on to this assumption

a person

who

is

aiming

trains for this in

it

human-rights-worker school.

in Spanish, in a blanket

my next

lit.

The

my

skill

of cigarette smoke,

appointment and not sure

bacteria roiling

facing the fury of

squarely at your well-meaning

trained in anything but English

for

when

bowels was

No

one

never actually

of word-to-word combat

in a

how

I've

self.

windowless

to get there,

definitely a skill

I

had

office, late

and with odd

to learn

on the

job.

As

I

course,

a Peace

write I

was

this,

I'm dismayed

naive.

I

by the naivete that shines through. Of

am American to

the core, guilty by passport. Like

Corps volunteer laden with admirable projects or a missionary

sure of carrying God's willfully ignoring

my

one true word,

world. Once, Josue suggested that

I

tion that

he was sure would come

by them,

little

I

came

Colombia small and

to

speck on the big history of the

status as a dust

buy an amulet in

handy.

for the extra protec-

Many Colombians

swear

pouches or packets that have been assembled by a folk healer or shaman.

The problem nothing. There

was

still

saw

knowing I was small changed something I was convinced I could do to make

was, as

I

it,

that

the world a better place. If circumstance

was

willing.

As

for the amulet,

I

saw

it

made

as a

that place Colombia,

funny

little

I

custom. Colom-

JOSUE bia

7

low on exotic products

is

made

as trophies

a note to look into the amulet question

needed

some

of travel, so

I

when

I

day,

gifts.

This digression

had a

home

to haul

is

a long

way of saying

that,

many of his

special appreciation for Josue. Like so

was committed

cause and fiercely

to a political

manner with me was

States. Yet his

with friendships

critical

I

colleagues, he

of the United

made me

Josue never

easy.

rare,

feel ir-

he accepted me as a person with something of value to offer. When spoke on the phone with him that wet afternoon, Josue told me that more death threats had been made against him. He was colrelevant;

I

showed

lecting cases that

links

between businesspeople, Colombia's

army, and the paramilitary groups responsible for most of the killings in the region

to

where he

be the main

The emerald

lived.

dealer and rancher alleged

of the paramilitaries was also one of

financial supporter

Colombia's richest men, Victor Carranza. Josue's work documenting crimes and the help Carranza got from the authorities threatened to land Carranza in jail. That ranza,

who

meant

did not hesitate to

that Josue

kill

home

Josue was no longer able to go

With many

others,

I

would

might be the

he needed help,

began

me

to let

I

in

I

I

Europe.

ticket, I

rest,

and

He hoped

a

that the

he said that he

that our telephone conversa-

would hear him

could help.

girls.

ends the storm. But upon his

knew

I

speak.

I

told

him

that

if

a destination, beds for his

visa,

wanted

to help. But

what

I

offered

what he thought he needed.

met Josue, in 1993, thought would become my

first time

a car that

time

again.

he needed a

know.

wasn't, in the end,

The

last

if

and two

things were calmer. Earlier in the

again. This time, though,

would not leave Colombia

girls,

to see his wife

dissipate, the drizzle that

return, the threats

tion

when

Josue had spent several months

threats

target for Car-

urged him to leave Colombia, get some

gather strength for a return year,

was a prime

his critics.

I

I

traveled three hours

coffin.

The

trip

in

was from Bo-

gota to the city of Villavicencio, at the western edge of the plains that reach

all

known

the

way

to Venezuela

as the llanos, the

flats,

and

Brazil. In

Colombia, the plains are

a largely unpopulated

savannah that ends

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

8

Orinoco River. In some

at the

areas, trucks cross the llanos like

schooners, following only compass directions and instinct. I

had bought a

times a day.

Dodge Dart

seat in a

The highway

that did the

round

Andean

climbs out of the

trip several

valley that holds

Bogota, crosses the Eastern Range of the Andes, then dives into the

From the last height, the llanos stretch like a vast green and brown sea. They make up one-fourth of the country's land mass. That llanos.

journey covered an abrupt and uncomplicated topography-ups and

downs,

valley,

During the

my mind

mountain, and plain trip,

thought a

I

off the junk

lot

to the Atlantic Ocean.

about Colombia's geography.

heap of a Dart and the

Fu Manchu-style mustache.

black,

way

the

all

He

driver,

who had

It

kept

a lush,

used the crumbling edge of the

pavement and every blind curve to pass other

vehicles.

The road was

framed by a wall of rock and vegetation on one side and on the other a

and

straight

fast

drop to a

river glinting below.

When saw out of the open window and my body, it looked tiny, a length of thread. I

it,

Maybe

it

with just a I

was a stream. slight lean

elevated

felt

enough

of to

crave a pretzel pack. Foolishly,

the

I

why

asked the driver

same company

that

all

the

were returning

Dodge

to

Darts belonging to

Bogota were draped with

purple ribbons.

"They are mourning the death of a looked

at

me

driver," the driver said.

over his shoulder. Panicked,

I

He

stared at the curving road,

"He went over the edge with his passhow you where they broke through the

willing his gaze to return there.

sengers this morning.

I'll

weeds."

Minutes car's

later,

he pointed

width of flattened

twinkling.

"Women

at a spot.

grass.

The

are like brakes,"

There were pink impatiens and a driver looked again at me, eyes

he

said.

"They never warn you be-

fore they go." I

had him deposit

Villavicencio.

My

me

well before the transportation terminal in

worst fear

when

traveling in Latin

America

is

the

prospect of dying in a tangle of metal and flaming rubber, with the

tang of excess testosterone

know

me

the

still

name of the stream

pungent

in

the

air. I

so far below, since

it

did not want to

would have made

think of the opening lines of my obituary and the identification of

the place

where

I

had met a senseless death.

JOSUE I

9

headed toward the high-rises that mark the

of the Meta Civic Committee for

on an upper

found, were

floor.

Human

The

city center.

Rights,

The

offices

which Josue helped

heat of the plains rose in a breeze

and ceibas that

that fluttered the leaves of the acacias

patchy shade

left

on the sidewalk. The committee members were having

their

weekly

meeting. At the time, the committee was virtually under siege. Unidentified

people phoned

in threats

every day. Mysterious

Armed men

to the photocopy store, to lunch.

leagues and supporters in nearby towns; funerals had

lingered

members

outside the building lobby, then followed committee

post office,

men

to the

shot col-

become

a regular

item on their schedules. In the conference

room, about

were seated around a large looked

table.

fifteen

who

middle-class Colombians,

like average,

weekends. There was one nun,

in a

dress well even

formal white habit. Sister

Palencia had been sent by the Catholic

committee's

members of the committee me in. To my eye, they

Josue waved

Church

on

Nohemy

to help coordinate the

activities.

That day, the committee was discussing what to do about the hundreds of families that had fled attacks by paramilitary groups working

with the support of the Colombian army. the

muddy

the north.

flats

Many had

congregated

in

along the Guatiquia River, which bordered the city to

They were

terrified, sick,

and

starving.

The

Catholic Church

and the committee were trying to get emergency help from the gov-

ernment and

The

local charities,

did not

city's leaders

with only small success.

want the

budget as well as a source of

from towns near or the Revolutionary

refugees, seen as a

political contagion.

in areas controlled

Armed

by the

The

guerrilla

refugees

came

group known as

Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas

olucionarias de Colombia, or

burden on the

Armadas Rev-

FARC). Refugees were the vanguard,

they feared, of a guerrilla invasion.

Members of the committee knew many of the families from visits made to the countryside to investigate human rights cases. They were bakers, farmers, truck drivers, street vendors. guerrilla supporters

among them. But

it

There may have been

was absurd, Josue

said, to

imagine that a father would put his children through the misery of the

mud a

flats just

to infiltrate a city that he could

more

easily penetrate as

day laborer or salesman. The committee adjourned

after

agreeing on

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

10

by the Catholic Church, and

a plan to use Caritas aid, provided

tinue to appeal for help

from Bogota.

me to accompany him on

Josue invited

he did not have a bodyguard. In

time,

a

it

visit

to the refugees.

he put

his car,

turing music typical of the eastern plains.

and harp gives

to con-

At the

in a cassette fea-

The combination of guitar woven like a

a delicate texture, strings and rhythm

piece of aural lace.

The

was

settlements

no

stink

between the beauty of the music and the misery of the

contrast

picture

They were damp and buggy, enveloped in a could capture. People had left their homes and farms stark.

at night, carrying little

were

built

Without

awaken

so as not to

of scrap lumber, black

own

their

clothes, they

suspicion. Their shelters

and flattened soda cans.

plastic,

wore the

dregs of

ill-fitting

some

charity depository-thin T-shirts and flip-flops repaired with plastic strands pulled from sacks of donated flour.

Josue worried that the rains predicted for the afternoon would cause the river to flood the shelters.

The

skyscrapers of the city center were

on higher ground. But moving the would provoke a families risked

On

violent reaction, Josue feared.

an inundation and losing the

save from their

homes

the one hand, the

On the other hand,

and losing everything. "So

been able to find another place to relocate them," he Faced with equally poor choices, Josue and to pray for sunshine.

The

rain clouds

emerged.

Its

in

far,

we

they

haven't

said.

his colleagues

least this time, their prayers

had opted

were answered.

massing to the north dissipated by evening. The sun

intense heat

cooking them

The round

At

safety

they had managed to

little

or collect from charity.

risked being beaten or shot

them and

families closer to

drew a steam from the damp hovels

someone's massive,

as if

invisible pan.

belly that stretched out Josue's Polo shirt indi-

cated that he was not an ascetic.

He

rewarded

me

for this

thought by

pulling into the parking lot of a restaurant that featured steak in the style favored

on the

llanos.

and charred, served on a blue Meat, simplicity

itself.

As

far as

I

plastic plate

Except "simple,"

could

with

tell,

air

that

on the

in this context,

cooked

meant

large

side. It is

was

not what

JOSUE

11

gourmands mean when they

praise certain dishes.

could have been the knuckle of a diplodocus.

windows. Smoke from the hissing

Over

Amado,

childhood

his

friend.

restaurant thinking that

"Behind me,

man came

I

me

same moment he shot

With

he pulled the

his finger,

fell.

He

said that

the Eastern Range.

cliff in

With

of his

collar

the

went

The gun-

said.

to the center of

me for the first time, The

hit-

bullet buried

it-

shirt

down. Near where

was the pucker of a

scar.

he had tumbled from the highest

felt like

it

left

carry the lead to this day."

the polo player raised his thread mallet

Josue

at

"I

the back at the height of my shoulder. I

he

his pursuers.

walking, pistol cocked and aimed.

in

encounter with

that day in Pensilvania,

he had outwitted

my collarbone, where

self in

On

in the

us.

his

saw the shadow of a movement," Josue

the street and in this ting

surrounded

grills

was served what

A hot wind blew

began the story of

that lunch, Josue

I

his eyes,

he marked the receding

trees,

the stones of the square, and the black earth that sustains the coffee

bushes of Pensilvania.

It

The shock of hitting

was the longest

gunman was

fired again.

"The

bullet scratched

The

Josue stumbled forward. to

aim the third shot

ploded, and a

length ofJosue

my

would

s scalp.

die,

feet.

head and

split

one

at Josue s legs. "I

left

jumped just

The

He

time and missed.

fifth

so he

It

was

eye with his

as the

A

still

He

his last bullet.

shot a sixth

"He assumed

fled."

conscious, in

teacher at the local

never dropped did,

to

I

would not

I

still

out."

I

on

life.

chair.

college called for help.

book of

carried a

holding on

my grip

tight,

On

the

to prevent the police

were responsible

passed

community

hand

was

lose

them repeatedly

since they tal,

my

it, I

gun ex-

bullet sheared off another

Josue propelled himself into a restaurant and grabbed a fell.

Although

hit in the leg."

a fourth time.

shot a

ear.

It

By then, The man

remained conscious."

I

assassin covered his

time, hitting Josue in the stomach. I

struggled to his

young woman passing by was

The gunman shot

that

He

so close that he could have grabbed Josue.

the bullet took off part of my scalp,

hand

life.

was what may have saved him.

the ground

demonstrated that he was not dead. the

of his

fall

for the attack.

"I

He was

Benedetti's poems,

I

thinking that as long as

I

way

to the hospital,

from coming into

When

I

my

I

said

room,

arrived at the hospi-

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

12

Mario Benedetti

poem

titled,

is

a well-known

Uruguayan writer who wrote

"You Won't Be Saved" (No

te salves).

The poem

a

criticizes

the decision to remove oneself from pain and danger for selfish reasons.

days

eral

poem

a

It is

later.

that Josue prized. Josue regained consciousness sev-

He

Amado and two gunmen had

learned that

him

attempted to enter the hospital and

kill

thwarted them by shooting into the

air at

them

ing

Death

to

cil.

Josue

Josue

brother

s

the hospital's entrance, forc-

flee.

itself was

the attack,

in his bed.

not denied, Josue was quick to add. Eight days after

gunmen

killed the president

of the Pensilvania town coun-

man had opposed

later learned that the

the plan to

kill

him.

The man's death was supposed to compensate for Josue's survival. Several killings followed. Amado's men rolled an explosive beneath the police chief's car, killing two officers but leaving the chief unharmed.

Amado was

refused to pay

him

upset,

Amado As

was

with a murderer?

It

was

I

money

to

had many questions. to

do with

as

if,

kill

it?

him?

What

be-

in every instance, Josue

he had other

Why

would

a

did the president of

Why would a police chief consort

chosen the oddest, most contradictory thing to credulity? Perhaps

Amado

police chief disagreed. Later,

killed.

Josue's story unfolded,

town council have

The

sufficient.

himself was shot and

childhood friend accept the

attempt on Josue. Apparently,

for the

lieved that effort alone

turned out, because the police chief had

it

loyalties,

say.

had purposefully

Was he

testing

my

other debts, that he was not

admitting.

manner betrayed cunning. Josue gnawed on a cow thigh. My shirt was wet with sweat made the color of the smoke that enveloped us. The knuckle on my plate glistened. To explain why the assassin attempted that murder in Pensilvania, Nothing

in his

Josue said that he needed to explain some things about the peeled away a tendon that

gan

my first good

I

could have used to

tie

lesson in the truth of Colombia.

my

shoes.

past.

I

Thus be-

CHAPTER TWO

BASILISCO

Like many from Colombia's coffee-growing center, Josue had a large family. infancy.

There were sixteen

siblings

At mealtime, Josue told me, they

ing each plate, Josue

from the kitchen

s

fire.

father

and a brother

lined

would mark the

In this way,

up

who

died in

for food. After load-

child's

forehead with ash

he prevented the child from bolting

the food, then returning to the line for seconds. Josue was child

num-

ber thirteen.

Josue insisted that the

name

"Pensilvania"

had nothing to do with

the Quaker William Penn, deriving instead from an American admiral

who

fought in one of Colombia's nineteenth-century wars. Later,

I

spent a morning searching for this elusive admiral, only to conclude that as far as

name from

I

could determine, Josue's

hometown had indeed

taken

its

"Penn's Woods," the land grant that had sheltered dissi-

dents from religious persecution.

Yet Josue's point of view

made

perfect sense for him.

It

allowed him

be purely proud of who he was and of the people who had made him and the country where he was raising his family. Colombia does not have the legendary ancient civilizations of Peru, whose empires

to

were among the most advanced cultures of pre-Columbian America.

The Chibchas were

the most highly developed of the groups that lived

within the boundaries of modern-day Colombia, but they existed be-

yond the borders of Incan, Mayan, and Aztec

By

rule.

the time the Spanish arrived in Colombia,

Hernan Cortes had

al-

ready conquered Mexico. Fortunately, Francisco Pizarro, the ruthless

13

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

14

who

Extremaduran

would, a decade

later,

conquer Peru,

visited only

then headed south. Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada was the con-

briefly,

quistador

who

finally

penetrated Colombia's interior via the

Mag-

dalena River in his search for El Dorado. In contrast to Pizarro and Cortes, Jimenez de told

him about

Quesada was a lawyer by

a ritual involving a

man

The

leap into a lake every year to insure prosperity. to

be

filled

with gold

most of his men,

idols. In his

The

training.

search for

it,

natives

had

who would

dusted with gold

was rumored

lake

Jimenez de Quesada

lost

wild animals, and

at least 600, to starvation, fevers,

the poisoned-tipped arrows of warriors they often never saw or heard.

When Jimenez

de Quesada

saw a prosperous

finally

valley of corn

rated their doors with

reached what

now

is

Bogota, he

and potato farms. The Chibchas deco-

wind chimes made of beaten

gold.

It

was, as one

Spanish chronicler wrote, the "sweetest melody" they had ever heard.

But the Chibchas didn't mine gold. They obtained

and emeralds, using

for salt

Chibcha control,

leaders

it

to

make

Jimenez de Quesada manipulated the

who

remained,

much

through trade

trinkets. Tisquesusha, the

fought the Spaniards, then

chief, briefly

it

fled.

To

rivalries

as Pizarro later did in Peru.

consolidate

between the

One by

one,

they were flattered, caught, tortured, and executed for failing to pro-

duce the locations of the not

kill

his captives

fictional

without

first

gold mines. Jimenez de Quesada did

submitting them to

trial,

in correct

lawyerly fashion. But his was a law that compelled submission. Overall, riches

Colombia was a disappointment

were disguised

in

its

de Quesada had a brother

to the conquistadors.

temperate climate and

who

fertile land.

He

found some objects on

shores but was unable to reach the bottom. In 1912, a British

its

company com-

a final attempt to recover the gold, emptying the lake

pletely

and creating a giant mudhole that threatened to suck

who dared cross The company recovered 10,000 gold the mud hardened into a surface as hard as granite. it.

When Jimenez One was

potato,

which

in

anyone

objects before

de Quesada returned to Spain to argue that Colom-

bia be placed under his governorship, ties.

Jimenez

tried to drain the legendary lake, called

Guatavita, to recover the fabled treasure.

made

Its

a tuber prized later

became

he brought back many

curiosi-

by the natives that he

called a batata, a

ward

off famine in Eu-

a valuable tool to

BASILISCO

15

among

rope. Unusual

his cohort,

most of

whom

died violently,

Jimenez de Quesada eventually succumbed to old age. Josue prized these quirky, surprising details about Colombian history-markers, he believed, of its true greatness.

He

told

me

that

conviction that

I

to be cloaked in

of pride

may

he could not survive outside

imagined he secretly suspected the country's borders

ammonia and

surprise those

convinced that they

patrolled

who

chaos, death, and drugs. But bians,

He adored his country. He spoke with such

it.

it is

by

hostile species.

That kind

think of Colombia only as a place of quite

live in

common among some Colom-

the greatest country in the world,

perhaps the greatest country ever. For Josue, the presence of great like

men

the American admiral, for however brief or fictitious a time,

showed

that they perceived the brilliance at the country's core.

Josue's siblings followed tradition and

became nuns and wives

(the

daughters) and priests and businessmen (the ten sons). Josue chose

six

law.

Once he obtained

his degree,

gan to involve himself in For most of

its

he returned to Pensilvania and be-

politics.

history,

Colombia had two

political parties.

The

Conservatives claim their roots as supporters of Simon Bolivar, the

Venezuelan general led the liberation

who ended

Spain's rule over

Colombia

in

1819 and

of its other American colonies. In practice, the party

defended a Spanish-bred aristocracy and a fundamentalist Catholicism. Their rivals, the Liberals, backed Bolivar's rebellious vice presi-

dent, Francisco de Paula Santander,

and spoke

for

Americas-born

businessmen and local power brokers. For

much of the

scuffled,

nineteenth century, the Conservatives and Liberals

provoking thirteen coups and uprisings, the "petty tyrannies

of all complexions and races" that Bolivar himself had presaged as he

watched

his vision for a unified

America

tear apart. Families

from op-

posing parties did not mix. Although they might eat the same foods

and enjoy the same music and worship the same god and even

live in

same town, Conservatives and Liberals viewed each other with hostility, the Capulets and Montagues of the Andes. Josue absorbed that history like language. Pensilvania was a loyal Conservative town. Josue's father was a Conservative and a town

the

councilman.

When

Liberal politicians

came

to Pensilvania, Josue's fa-

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

16

ther

would grab

"My

sued.

his

machete

a Conservative and partisan, his blood boiled

was

father

for the street fighting that inevitably en-

blue and he could not stand even seeing a Liberal In Colombia, blue

To in

its

ture,

for Conservatives

and red

however, differences were

outsiders,

topography and

virtually invisible. Difficult

essentially farm-based

on the

both

in

prevailing traditions brought from

ened with indigenous and African

me.

for Liberals.

Colombia was a country of regions, each with

twists

its

is

rally," Josue told

economy and

cul-

local elites

and

its

Europe and

leav-

from slaves bought to work

beliefs,

the haciendas. Although the Colombian state existed as a

word and

a

constitution, backed by the occasional presence of a police officer or

tax collector, in practice

it

was more concept than

real

power. Colom-

was an inward-looking country, with few immigrants (especially when compared to the United States or Brazil) and widely shared tra-

bia

ditions.

Well into the twentieth century, Colombia frowned upon out-

and cleaved to custom.

siders

One Hundred

In his novel

Years

of Solitude, Colombian writer and

Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez Has a character conclude, after

much

confusion, that "the only difference today between Liberals

and Conservatives

is

that Liberals

go

mass

to

and the

at five o'clock

Conservatives at eight." For both parties, the focus was on the town or village,

stars

the Catholic feast days, and the periodic

ple with higher education, mostly lawyers lay

visits

of the

political

of the day, for the most part "doctores" These were cultivated peo-

more

in literary criticism

and

intellectuals.

and cocktail banter than the

Their

dirty

skills

work of

running a nation. While disputes between Liberals and Conservatives in the

countryside could lead to blows, the

Rafael Uribe Uribe, a Liberal politician and clubs, "chatting delightedly

What was

at stake

was

among

doctores,

war

wrote General

hero, remained in their

enemies."

not, fundamentally, ideology, but power.

Historian David Bushnell wrote that "one often needs a magnifying glass

and an aptitude

for refined hair-splitting" to distinguish

between

the parties' political ideas. More relevant were questions like who would reap the rewards of power. Only the president was vulnerable to a vote.

Once

elected,

governors and mayors land,

economic

help,

he and

down

and

to

status.

his party

highway

appointed everything from

inspectors.

Losers plotted

Winners got jobs,

how to

seize

it all

back.

BASILISCO

17

Reliably, the juiciest rewards

went

to a very few,

pockets and those of their families and friends.

most Colombians

election,

either

who was

It

had the vicarious

filled their

own

as if with

each

satisfaction

of see-

become wealthy and renowned-without themselves would become virtual refugees in their own country, without secure homes, jobs, or any hope that grievances ing their doctores

reaping

many

benefits-or

would be resolved

As the mained

civilians

fairly.

largely aloof. Bolivar

from Spain and guard

meant

among

fought

to

meddle

its

themselves, the Colombian

had used

soldiers to free Latin

independence. But they were not,

in civilian affairs.

The

army

re-

America

in his plan,

generals concentrated on

what

they considered a permanent threat to the country's borders. Perhaps

Venezuela would invade or the United States would try to grab more than Panama, once a Colombian province. Even the changes wrought

by World War

II

did

little

to

change the way Colombians thought.

Latin America's third-most-populous country remained intent on self, like

As 1946 the

first

it-

a customer nursing a beer while brawlers fight in a bar. presidential elections approached, the Liberals bickered. For

time, a renegade vied for the party nomination to run for presi-

dent. Jorge Eliecer Gaitan

stew served

in

Ayala was as Colombian as

Bogota to ward off the mountain

ajiaco,

chill.

the potato

Even

his face-

darker than many, with sharp angles and a prominent nose-marked his difference ily

whose

ing.

from most

doctores.

Gaitan was the son of a poor Liberal fam-

allegiance to the party

Yet he had also

studies in Italy.

managed

While

there,

had been the keystone of his upbring-

to leave

Colombia

he traveled widely

as a

in

young man

for

Europe, immersing

himself in the wider forces reshaping the postwar world.

Unwilling to play by the rules of the

Gaitan

doctores,

appealing directly to the party rank and

file,

people

built

support by

like his parents.

They had never been included in backroom deal making, where most business was accomplished. Gaitan also drew in Colombians without strong

ties to politics.

Colombian

character,

There

is

a strong entrepreneurial streak in the

and Gaitan appealed to

it

by promising to

re-

make

the country, using the ingenuity and muscle of the middle and

lower

classes. In public,

Gaitan berated Liberal leaders for enriching

themselves and not their country. Behind closed doors, he bested

them with

his wit

and European

ideas.

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

18

Party leaders failed to quash his challenge, so they backed a candidate, Gabriel Turbay.

"Turk"

rival

wasn't an easy decision. Turbay was a

It

Colombian parlance, the son of Lebanese immigrants. To

in

some, that meant he was not truly Colombian. His Lebanese parents

had been part of a wave of immigration,

first

from the Ottoman Em-

then from Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. These families came be-

pire,

tween 1880 and 1930 to

set

up

businesses, particularly along the

country's north coast. Gaitan's message also upset the Conservatives,

would loose rabble

the halls of government.

in

who

feared that he

To both

Liberal and

Conservative leaders, Gaitan was no more than an Indian thug. believed that his disdain for "delighted chats"

They

made him unworthy of

the presidential sash. There were also murmurings about Gaitan's true

banner of the Liberals or the yellow

allegiances, to the red

and

sickle

hammer

of the small Communist Party.

Gaitan was not a Communist, though he did select ideas from Marxist theory that appealed to him,

like fruits in a

was equally choosy about capitalism and nicknamed him

"II

Duce."

He

fascism,

market

stall.

He

though some wags

once described himself

gleefully as a

"demagogue who has read some books." Gaitan's recipe was never

vio-

though the marches and outdoor meetings he organized struck

lence,

the doctores as manifestations of a barely contained fury. Historian Herbert

Braun portrayed Gaitan

To

neither friend nor foe

of many Gaitan was a cist;

others perceived

tured society from

an

arriviste

was ior

all

whose

of these

at

was

it

socialist;

him

way:

clear

felt

alienated;

concern was

split

his

all

he represented. In the eyes

in

him the makings of a

of resentment aimed still

own

one time or another. For

who would redeem them from

The

whom

some saw

as the ugly face

which he sole

this

at a cul-

others

saw him simply

career.

For many, Gaitan

his followers

earthly

fas-

as

he was the sav-

ills.

within the Liberal Party gave the advantage to the Conser-

who easily won. Nevertheless, it was clear that Gaitan drew on powerful new constituency, people who had never voted before,

vatives,

a

weren't counted in the polls, and had been inspired by his eloquence.

BASILISCO

19

had been the only Liberal candidate, he would have won

If Gaitan

in a

landslide.

Josue's Conservative father was thrilled.

Mariano Ospina, was This meant

now

money and

in a position to

The new

president,

repay favors generously.

prestige for Pensilvania

and

for his family, the

Giraldos. For his part, Gaitan interpreted the election as an incentive

complete

to

his takeover

of the Liberal Party, which he

did. In the

countryside, violence spread as Conservatives began to seize

they

felt

was

their due, driving out or killing Liberals.

In 1948, President

Conference

what

in

Ospina prepared to host the Ninth Pan-American

Bogota, which drew Latin leaders as well as Secretary

of State George C. Marshall of the United the world stage for the

first

States.

It

put Colombia on

time since the Allied victory. Publicly,

Marshall said that the conference would strengthen regional alliances

and establish mechanisms such

as the Organization

would prevent another world war.

States that

that the Soviets

had introduced a seed

generated and were coaxing

it

of American

Privately,

he worried

into the fervor that Gaitan

to flower.

The conference

had

reaffirmed

American hegemony

in the region and American determination to mount any challenge. There were Communists in Colombia, and the Colombian Communist Party, formed in 1930, was active among trade unionists and some farmers in the central Andes. However, their size and influence was

block Soviet efforts to

small.

A CIA

Communists

report completed prior to the conference noted that the in

Bogota aspired only to "embarrass" Secretary of State

Marshall by "turning off lights and hurling miscellaneous objects at delegates" during his stay.

The

Liberals and Conservatives also feared

the Communists, though for different reasons. Several leading bian families (including the Liberal Santos family, publish the

most

influential daily

thetic to General Francisco

communism was kill

priests

newspaper, El Tiempo) were sympa-

Franco and shared

a direct attack

Colom-

which continues to

on

faith,

his conviction that

a countercrusade

and destroy and profane churches.

meant

to

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

20

Gaitan, too,

was suspicious of them. Although the Colombian Com-

munist Party had supported his presidential candidacy, ingly

and only because

it

it

did so grudg-

had no other option. Gaitan understood

world events well enough to

realize that the

Americans were

alert to

The

any sign that communism

was gaining adherents in Colombia.

Communist presence

campaign would complicate matters with

the Americans, to

The

in his

little

apparent gain.

Communist Gaitan would swallow

mistrust was mutual. Gilberto Vieira White, the

Party leader, told confidants that he feared

them whole. He sage to

fit

believed Gaitan had robbed and twisted their mes-

Liberal rhetoric. Three years earlier, Vieira

had even placed

guards in front of his office in preparation for a rumored coup d'etat by

would be among the first imprisoned or The coup never materialized. The devastation pictured in newsreels shot in postwar Europe seemed otherworldly to the Colombians who prepared the hotel

Gaitan. Vieira feared that he killed.

rooms and

restaurant tables for their illustrious guests. This

Colombia's

moment

shaping the globe.

and

activists

who

to shine as a valued

It is

clear that

converged

in

member of the new

none of the diplomats,

Bogota

in

how powerless,

in

the end,

all

to be

alliance

journalists,

1948 suspected

foundly Colombia would change during the

and

was

how

pro-

week of the conference

of them would be

in

the face of it.

Fidel Castro was among the throng arriving for the PanAmerican Conference. Still a decade away from declaring himself a Communist, Castro planned university students.

ership of the

to attend a meeting of Latin

lost

an election a year

American

earlier for the lead-

Havana University student federation. He hoped to main by making his case directly to his countrymen

way back

neuver his gathered

He had

in

Bogota.

Castro met Gaitan and was impressed by him. Later, Castro described the ligent

.

.

.

Colombian

as "an Indian type, his

countenance quite

intel-

brilliant politician, brilliant speaker, brilliant lawyer, all

of

these things caused a great impression."

Castro planned a second meeting with Gaitan on the afternoon of

BASILISCO April

9,

21

way

But as Gaitan was on his

him with a pistol

to lunch that day, a

Gaitan survived the

at point-blank range.

man

shot

trip to

the

hospital, only to die as doctors frantically tried to stop the bleeding.

Colombians have tendered

Since,

about

why

Gaitan was murdered.

man whose

own

their

Was

alleged murderer Gaitan

grassy-knoll theories

the assassin the relative of a

had

won

an acquittal for just the

day before? Or was he a provocateur, sent by the Conservatives or gruntled Liberals to eliminate the agent of change? still

believe that the death of such a charismatic

dis-

Many Colombians and powerful man

could not have been the result of passion alone; there had to have

been dark forces

at

A mob

work, perhaps even the United States.

seized and killed the alleged assassin, silencing his version of events forever.

They

tore off his clothes

presidential palace. bia's brutal

The

his battered

some have

body to the Colom-

called

entry into the twentieth century.

Conspiracy theorists delight Colombia's

and dragged

event marked what

proximity to what became

in Castro's

and most wrenching

first

magnicidio, the

word Colombians

use to describe the murder of a leading political figure. But he seemed as disoriented as the

the street: Gaitan

Some shouted lessly against

Colombians

who

heard the news shouted from

was dead. For hours, there was rage on the

anti- American slogans.

But the

Conservatives and their symbols,

mob

streets.

flung itself relent-

among them

a Conser-

vative-owned newspaper and government buildings. Rioters also attacked churches, since the Catholic hierarchy allied

was viewed

as closely

with the Conservative cause.

Swept

up, Castro observed

and then embraced what he

later called

the spontaneous combustion of the pueblo that had loved Gaitan as

one of

their

own. Castro

were too small traded for a

for his feet.

rifle

and

tried to steal

He

bullets.

some

police boots, but they

grabbed a tear gas gun, which he

But he never

"No one can 9 because what was

fired a shot.

claim to have organized what happened on April

absent on April 9 was precisely that, organization. This there

was absolutely no organization," he

Cuban ambassador helped Castro

later

later said.

On

is

the key,

April 10, the

leave Colombia.

Communists took advantage of what became known as the Bogotazo. A few agile comrades even managed to raise a Soviet banner over the town hall in faraway Barranquilla, on the Caribbean Certainly, the

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

22

coast.

A

army

single

officer pulled

it

down.

In fact, the

Communists

were as shocked by the magnicidio as anyone. Looters even sacked their tiny office. City blocks

and straw

smoldered

wood

buildings. Nevertheless, within hours, the Conservatives

blamed Communists

for Gaitan's

murder and the

movement of communist

inspiration

and

had

riots that followed.

were inspired by

Rioters, charged President Ospina, us, a

torched the

after rioters

"a spirit alien to

practices."

Americans found Ospina's words intoxicating.

They seemed

to con-

firm every suspicion circulating in Washington of the Soviet plan for

domination

hemisphere.

in the

On

April 14, 1948, the

New

York Times

reported on a statement by Secretary Marshall, which struck a

new

and ominous tone: Backing up the findings of the Colombian Government, Secretary of State Marshall

have

now

and other delegates to the Inter-American Conference

likewise accused Soviet Russia,

communism, of instigating the over. the

riots that

and

its

wrecked Bogota and

whole Western Hemisphere. Basing

their

hand information and personal observation on the tragic events

patterns at that

which interrupted

work

as in

makes Bogota,

as

Mr. Marshall

Latin American incident but a world

said, affair,

which Russia

is

in

cast a pall

judgment on

first-

spot, they see in the

their deliberations the

attempted insurrections

tration of the length to

tool, international

same powers and

France and

Italy.

And

not merely a Colombian or

and a

particularly lurid illus-

willing to

go

in

its

no longer

[cold war] against the democracies.

U.S. election-year politics

At the

had a strong influence on Marshall's view.

time, the Republicans

naive in the fight against

were

calling President

Harry

communism. Campaigning

Dewey

S.

Truman

for the Republi-

can nomination, Governor

Thomas

on April

mismanagement of American intelligence what he called "Communist

was

to

12 that Truman's

blame

E.

said in a

stump speech

for the failure to detect

two hours' bombing time from The dispute eventually settled on the question of

plans" for revolution in Colombia, "just

the

Panama

Canal."

whether the fledgling CIA had adequately warned Marshall about potential threats.

BASILISCO

23

Eleven days

New York Herald Tribune columnist Walter Lipp-

later,

mann described Marshall's assessment as well as the fears of an imminent Communist rebellion as based on faulty logic. The Americans were engaging in what he called "the very human propensity to insist on making the to treat a

facts

fit

one's stereotyped preconceptions-in this case

South American revolution

and then to suppose that

lution,

world begin and end

in

as a

phase of the Russian Revo-

revolutionary conditions in the

all

Moscow, but

for

Moscow

there

would be no

revolutions." lost. The United States would communism was afoot in Colombia

But Lippmann's voice of reason was not

and

retreat. In it

had

the American view,

The Colombians were

to be stopped.

ill-equipped to face

own

the Soviets. President Ospina hadn't even been able to save his capital,

much of which

lay in ruins.

Only through more

active inter-

who

vention-meaning military support and picking leaders

firmly

shared Washington's views-could the menace be stopped, the Ameri-

cans concluded. Influential Americans

like

Marshall were convinced

that Gaitan himself and the events that followed his

mistakable

symptoms of a

The immediate

murder were un-

political infection.

violence touched off by Gaitan's assassination

vacuum in the Liberal leadership that the doctores could not fill. They distrusted the rank and file as much as the Conservatives did, perhaps more so, since Gaitan had used them to take over the Liberal Party. Without diquickly subsided in the capital. But his absence created a

Colombia's

rection, the Liberals, particularly the party faithful in

towns and

villages,

were vulnerable, and the Conservatives sensed

it.

There were no more "delighted chats" among enemies. Senators and representatives

went armed

to their floor seats.

The November

ing Gaitan's death, a Conservative shot and killed a Liberal

follow-

on the

floor

of Colombia's House of Representatives, touching off a shoot-out as

dozens pulled out their loaded

pistols.

roads or

in village squares.

much worse in dumped on the sides of

But things were

the countryside. Corpses began to appear,

Often, the only identification

was a card showing the person had belonged

on the body

to the Liberal Party.

Liberals refused to put forward a presidential candidate for the 1950 elections, to protest the violence

waged

against

them by the Conserva-

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

24

tives.

The

field

was open

for Conservative

moved up

unopposed after the vote was but fourteen of the votes

cast.

A

Laureano

Gomez to win He won all

a year, to 1949.

fervent Catholic

and

newspaper and home to the

skilled orator,

mob

Gomez had

lost

Bogota

proof of his status as the Conservative most reviled by the

riot,

both

his

during the

Liberal faithful.

Gomez

returned the sentiment, accusing the Liberals of being

Gomez,

morally corrupt and unfit to hold any government post. For

only an embrace of the kind of strict Catholicism then practiced cist

Spain and a radical reorganization of Colombia's political structure

to favor business rural

and exclude the populacho-xhz uneducated, poor, and

majority-could save Colombia. Otherwise, he warned, a monster

would devour them. Gomez

monster a

called the

nism transported by Liberal ideas to Colombian

According to European legend, the crest It

in fas-

of a chicken and the wings of a bat

basilisco

who

kills

is

a lizard with the

with a mere glance.

hatches from any unusually small eggs laid by hens.

deceptive.

Once

released,

Gomez, the

basilisco

claimed was

its

was

liberalism

"Our

its

diminutive

Communist

breast

fury, its

is

small size

is

and the communism that he

basilisco

walks with

sion and naivete, with legs of blows and violence, the

oligarchy;

Its

inexorable and'impervious to attack. For

it is

secret brain.

commu-

"basilisco,"

soil.

head, yet

arms Masonic and it is

the head,"

feet

of confu-

stomach of the has a small,

it

Gomez

once

said.

The Americans never described it in such vivid terms. But what became known as Gomez's "basilisco theory" fit their view of the Communist threat in Latin America. After

all,

red banners had already been

unfurled during the Bogotazo (the color, the Americans should have

known, used by the Liberals long before the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace). The Americans agreed with to defeat the beast

was

to slay

For the Conservatives, to

abandon

this

their party or

Liberals,

find

like

wherever

it

that the only

way

appeared.

meant eliminating

who

With such seemingly high Conservative leaders

it

Gomez

Liberals

who

refused

simply protested Conservative attacks.

stakes,

Gomez

no measure seemed too extreme. on

did not take direct part in attacks

depending instead on lower-level militants to make plans and

men to carry them out. In control of the government, the Consermade the police one of their most effective weapons. Party

vatives

BASILISCO

25

leaders also recruited hundreds of young

mand. The men were

men

willing to

kill

on com-

called pa/aros-birds-because of their rapid

movements from place

and

to place

certain tasks, then fly apart

their ability to flock together for

and resume

their lives.

became famous, and stories about them sound like Some myths, brutal and fantastic. Colombian writer Alfredo Molano Bravo collected testimonies about one pdjaro known as the "Silent One," or El Silencioso. "His vice was killing Liberals, but he didn't just kill them. Once his client' was dead, the 'Silent One' would castrate the man, pdjaros

toss the testicles into his pocket,

blood so that the

When at

it,

and

sip a little

of the dead man's

wouldn't do any harm to him

spirit

in the next

he came across a dog, he would throw what was

saying, 'Swallow this Liberal,

whoring son of a

in his

life.

pocket

bitch.'"

Soon, Conservative attacks were answered by Liberal counterattacks.

These were not crimes between

ing violence between people

strangers, but acts

who had known

of astonish-

each other their whole

consumed

lives. Called "La Violencia," the struggle that rapidly

Colombia, was personal. Grand

political fortunes

too were simmering land disputes, municipal ambitions, and affairs of the heart and gonads.

town men or of peasant

stock,

immersed

in a

were

at stake,

but so

rivalries, indiscretions,

Most of the

world

little

killers

were

different

from

that of their parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents.

were the

victims.

The people who

killed often

knew

So

their victims well,

had known them since childhood, and had even been playmates, friends, family, or neighbors.

Once blood had been spiral that

was answered with more blood, in a devoured whole families. Vengeance is a theme that runs shed,

it

deep and true through Colombian to quote

Colombian

instant with

the score

century

its

left

history, the "scorpion in the breast,"

novelist Jose Eustacio Rivera, that "stabs at

stinger."

People

killed to

pay back other

killings, to

any

even

by Gaitan's death, the War of a Thousand Days a half

earlier,

the loss of land, of pride, of control. Often,

killers left

notes claiming responsibility for atrocities, ensuring that the survivors

were

clear

on

There was

their authorship.

also greed

of the arable land

in

the

behind La Violencia. Before La Violencia, most

town of Caicedonia,

to take

belonged to small farmers. Afterward, Caicedonia,

one example, had

known

for

producing

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

26

a particularly desirable variety of coffee bean, belonged to a few wealthy families

from the nearest

"Violence

city.

for a very few," said journalist

long report on

La Violencia's

German

became an

excellent business

Castro Caycedo,

legacy there.

"It

who

wrote a

meant murdering in order

to buy on the cheap or simply take what belonged to the poor peasant."

Historians debate whether

La

uncivil in the extreme. Historian

sant war of neighbor

Violencia

was a

Gonzalo Sanchez

tie

war, but

called

or shirt or paint a door red

fatal.

was an

was

it

"an inces-

it

towns

against neighbor, district against district,

and hamlets." Crossing any boundary could be

wear a red

civil

"For Liberals, to

invitation to death.

For Conservatives, to possess an identity card indicating participation in

the

last,

Conservative-only elections could result in the same

Anthropologist Maria Victoria Uribe

known

in

Colombia

violentology

common

internal disputes

one of a group of academics

as violentologos, or "violentologists." In

a broad and complex

is

is

that atrocity itself was not

to

field,

academic

new

fate."

Colombia,

with subspecialties and the

disciplines.

to Colombia.

Uribe has argued

During Colombia's War

of Independence, for instance, one general was

known

for

beheading

the Spaniards he defeated in battle, thus leaving them, in his eyes,

without a

However, La Violencia took

soul.

it

a step further. Bodies

not only sent a message, they became a message, a language. La Vio-

spawned

lencia

a

macabre

arrangement were the

dialect in

letters,

which body

Generally, victims were killed with a single shot,

through massive blood

loss.

parts

and

which caused death

Next, the victims would be decapitated,

then mutilated post-mortem. Until the cadaver was dismembered

Most of the sacrificed

The

cuts

were made with the idea that the people

would be

"cuts," as

went beyond the breasts, ears,

"well

relatively

when

common

who had been

when

they

mutilations like the removal of

and penises. During La Violencia, cuts were elaborate, the

killer

There was the Colombian necktie

on the

(corte

de

incor-

cut a deep groove under the jawline of the victim

and pulled the tongue muscle down and through necktie

.

.

truly dead."

Uribe described them, became language

ventive, even artistic. bata),

and

their

grammar, and words:

it,

so that

it

lay like a

chest. In the flannel cut (corte defranela), the killer sev-

BASILISCO

27

ered the muscles that keep the head forward, thus allowing the head to

backward over the spine

fall

square

collar. In

at a

the flower vase cut

ninety-degree angle, like a (corte deflorero),

the

killer

sailor's

dismem-

bered the victim and inserted the head and limbs into the trunk or the

neck of the body, arranged (corte

de mico) took

its

monkey of a victim and produced by

name from left

killer

the head in the man's

who would

would peel back the

exposing the

skull.

lap.

This cut was re-

skin

(cortefrances),

on the head while the victim

lived,

Occasionally, the killers would leave bodies

along a road, their heads point,

cut

decapitated the pet

decapitate their victims and place the

arranged in a mise-en-scene, sitting as

The

who

a killer

The monkey

head on the chest of the body. In the French cut

victim's

the

killers

like flowers in a vase.

like

if

waiting for the next truck

overnight bags in their

of course, was not just to

kill,

laps.

but to communicate.

The

was meant to demonstrate that there were absolutely no limits to what would be done. In a strange way, gruesome displays by the Conservatives were also proclamations of blood-splattered tableau mort

The Conservatives were most closely associated with the Catholic Church, and some church leaders supported their political aims, even justifying attacks that decimated Liberal villages. One faith.

bishop once ordered the army to burn a village to the ground, since he

viewed

it

as a Liberal

haven

(to this day,

it is

called Pueblo

Quemado,

Burned Town). Acts of violence were therefore not a violation of belief but a proclamation of it, a

The horror became

way

to defend

and elevate the

a testament to faith, to

faith.

how far the faithful were

body around it flayed, is pictured on the walls of thousands of homes in Colombia. The basilisco had rooted into the body of the enemy. By eviscerating it, laying it open to the light, the beast was vanquished.

willing to go. After

all,

Among those who

the sacred heart, the

felt the Conservative onslaught most

was the family of Pedro Marin. He is better known now as Manuel Marulanda Velez, or Tirofijo (Sureshot) and is the FARC directly

leader. In 1948, left

home

to

he was an energetic, independent youth

make

his

way

as a traveling salesman.

who had just

Marin was good

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

28

with people, a natural leader, with a talent for making the kinds of friendships that,

him

to

become

if he

had continued

work, would

in the

a prosperous merchant, perhaps the

or the chairman of the local

likely

have led

mayor of a town

chamber of commerce and the sponsor of

a soccer team.

Likejosue, Marin

not physically imposing.

is

He

broad, low build. His features are slightly Asian, with

and narrow eyes. As

is

has a peasant's flat

cheekbones

the custom in the central Andes, Marin often

drapes over his shoulder a towel or peasant's light ruana, the poncholike

garment equally useful

for

warding off a

chill

or wiping sweat from

the brow. Contemporaries said that he had an excellent sense of hu-

mor, though he rarely smiled. Traveling Colombia's back haggling at

trails

and

dusty cattle auctions, thousands looked just like him.

its

About the only thing born, from Pensilvania,

that distinguished

Genova, where Marin was

where Josue was born, was

was Conservative, Genova

Liberal.

politics.

The towns had

the

Pensilvania

same

traditions

and climate, food and rhythms. They profited from the coffee farms that covered the mountainsides in sional floods

deep green. They suffered occa-

and droughts, rejoiced when the harvest was

plentiful,

and resigned themselves to more beans than meat when times were bad.

On the day Gaitan died, Marin was in a town called Ceilan. their rivals for the assassination, the Liberals there seized tives

who

held government posts and jailed them.

Conservative

official in his office.

mayor and new from the police

police officers,

Then

who began

They

Blaming

Conservakilled

the Liberals chose a

one

new

patrolling with guns seized

station.

But the rage passed. Within a week, they had released the Conservatives

and returned the guns.

The Conservatives were

less forgiving.

Ceilan and killed the Liberals

who

Weeks

later,

resisted. Liberals

pdjaros seized

were forced to

sign papers renouncing their party affiliation. After looting stores, the

pdjaros set

the

fire

hills until

Some

killings

to Ceilan. Survivors later recounted

were reported

in the Liberal

unrecorded even by the authorities later,

Marin

how

the flames

lit

a miraculous rain extinguished them, saving the town.

said that

who

he had wondered

newspapers, but most went

picked up the bodies.

if

Much

the Conservatives meant to

BASILISCO

29

exterminate every

last

Liberal in Colombia. At the

wondered about the Liberal

doctores in Bogota,

He

care about rural brethren like Marin.

the

felt

same

time,

who seemed

he

also

not to

Where was

abandoned.

Who had silenced the doctores? Where were the guns

call to resist?

to fight back?

Hundreds of poor Liberals

Some

Not only did the

was happening even want to

leadership

know

that

it

this situation I

it

get

them?

If

find a solution.

Who

with me?

for

we just

could not bear

will help?

"I

help.

want no part of what

to

anyone

who

began to think later. "I

lived

it,

differently,"

said to myself:

seems that everything has

it

So

who will search they, how do we

said to myself:

I

Weapons, where are

remain calmly

more

to

Arturo Alape, years

very complicated,

is

must

seem

was happening. But

his biographer,

changed, so

little

but in Marin's view, they didn't

in the countryside,

the carnage was impossible to avoid.

Marin told

found

argued that Gaitan's unruly pueblo was responsible for

doctores

the violence.

fled to the cities, but

in place,

they will

us

kill

all.

But

I

humiliation."

Targeted because of his

affiliation to

the Liberal Party, Marin went

became an opportunity to reflect on events. He slept in a makeshift shack on his Uncle Manuel's coffee farm. Every week, Manuel would deliver food and cigarettes. A radio delivered the news, always grim. The Liberal leaders were nowhere to be found. Conservatives traveled openly with police on their rampages. The army stood into hiding.

It

by, collecting bodies.

The

reeds along the Tulua River stank with the

remains that caught there-men, women, children, even their dogs. Gradually, Marin

came

As much

to a decision.

as the Conservatives

and the Americans would have liked to see proof that the

communism had poisoned likely

is

a Liberal

Years

Marin's mind, what appears

that he simply got tired of doing nothing.

and later,

tives] to tie

as a

man, he craved

he described

and

kill us,

bank, not permit

them

much more got mad.

his decision to "[n]ot allow [the

to take us prisoner to take our lives

and walk us

group

guerrillas,

we had no

his allies

idea

As

Conserva-

alive to the river

on the bank of any

was no

river

would

what

be.

"We

a guerrilla was."

and

let

abstract cause,

land reform or social justice. Marin did not even have a

what he planned or who

of

action.

the waters carry us floating as the dead." There like

And he

basilisco

name

for

did not call our

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

30

Uncle Manuel gathered thirteen cousins. Several neighbors joined them. Liberal families rounded up what they had-Remington machetes,

how

to

ambush by the

previous wars,

elderly farmers

men who

who had

barely recognized as

fought and survived

weapons the automatic

guns used by the police. But these veterans were experts

down

war, a birthright handed

Marin and Genova. In

his

band began by

his interview

in irregular

to generation after generation. killing a

Conservative judge

with his biographer, Marin did not say

esinar? to murder, but "ajusticiar" to bring to justice.

borrowed from any Soviet

text but has

The word Liberals

killed,

in

"as-

not

is

origin in the gristle

its

blood of La Violencia. Since Conservatives had kill. It

rifles,

ammunition, clothes, food. They were taught

pistols, knives,

and

would

was an Old Testament brand of vengeance.

With words

like ajusticiar,

Colombians created

their

own

evolving

vocabulary of murder: to take down, to crown, to fumigate, to organize, to break, to cleanse, to peel, to grate or tear,

murder

a "business," a "piece of work."

is

"cold ones," have

"marked a

Marin said that he and men, "workers

like us,

skull,"

his

and to

The

"marked a

tle

wealth, the

To

carry out a

victims are "dolls" or

cross," or "failed a grade."

band went on

to

murder twenty-five

but corrupted by their thirst for violence: Con-

servatives living in villages, farmers, cattlemen

who who

fish.

same kind of men

as

and horsemen, with

lit-

we were." Marin also killed people who gave them shelter, women

helped the Conservatives-those

with them, owners of the restaurants they patronized. For

slept

him, the basilisco had blue skin, emerged whole and frightening from

Gomez. People soon lost the thread began or who had started it. "This was the result of someemerged that was not our fault, something that over-

the breast of President Laureano

of where

it

thing that

whelmed

us,

even against our

the force of destiny, but

Marin believed that

let's

at

will,"

say that

some

we were swept up by

cities,

managed

to seize

would send

there was silence. Without

rural townsfolk.

for the first time.

some weapons,

seize

interest in

Above Genova,

Although forced to

retreat,

he

With eighty men, Genova itself On August

a small victory.

Marin decided to do something grand,

they say,

events."

had no way of or perhaps no

communicating with the peasants and Marin faced the army

said. "It wasn't, as

point, Liberal Party leaders

guns and money. But from the Gaitan, the Liberal doctores

Marin

BASILISCO

31

was quickly routed. Led by

pdjaros, the army some of his fighters deserted. Marin was left with nine men. He managed to make contact with a Liberal family in a neighboring state. Then he slipped away, the firstbut not the last-time he would vanish in the Andean wildness. 7,

1950, he tried but

chased him into the

Terrified,

hills.

The Liberals feared the Conservatives. The Conservatives feared the Liberals.

Both

more extreme, though to

kill

and force people to

Josue told child,

I

me

terrified

my

heard local farmers and

a

and 'Captain Vengeance,'"

of Liberals

mother

of violence that were linked to names venge,'

all

could burst into a

remembered with talia,

Caldas,

home

at night

beat them, then killed

Before

I

killed

like 'Black Blood,' 'Tarzan,' 'Re-

Liberal guerrillas like

and

kill

villains

you

in

Mann. For

but real

ten Pensilvanians

them

them one by

all.

who had gone

one, took

distant

much had happened

spoke

in the grill in Villavicencio, its effects

smoke

that billowed lifted his

Party."

and marginal to

my

since then. But as he

were

as visible as the

us.

arms to take

in the families

near ours, the sons and daughters of families cia for the relative safety

Marque-

to a cattle

them to a room, One Pensilvanian managed to escape.

met Josue, La Violencia seemed

around

men

your bed. "People

because they belonged to the Conservative

education in Colombia. So

Josue

terrible acts

revulsion the massacre of thirty people in

among them

auction. 'Black Blood' caught

They were

Marin. "As a

like

about the

talk

Colombian boy, these were not comic book

who

had greater resources

flee.

he grew up

that

worse or

sides accused the other of being

clearly the Conservatives

of the

plains.

gathered

who had

the tables

at

fled

La

Violen-

Before their parents had arrived,

the llanos were thinly populated by a few mestizo families and the native

communities that had

animal and plant

life.

Expelled from their

refugees arrived in long

wagons and

pigs

for centuries lived off the region's

columns that

and children

in

tow.

filled

New

homes by La the mountain

spirit.

Violencia, trails,

with

towns and

villages pros-

who

brought their

pered from the energy and drive of the refugees, entrepreneurial

abundant

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

32

The day

my

after

lunch with Josue,

founded by Liberal refugees. To

I

get there,

community

traveled to a I

rode

in

one of the Jeeps,

called camperos, that provide public transportation over the dirt roads

that connect Colombia's cities to

sue

Neptali,

s,

had

careful,

mustache.

had

hooded eyes

He

towns and

agreed to guide me.

The

villages.

A

friend of Jo-

child of refugees, Neptalf

that contrasted with his dashing Errol Flynn

rarely spoke, leaving

campero churned over the

me to absorb the landscape as the Low hills rolled under a carpet of

dirt roads.

Most of the

grass

and scrub occasionally punctuated by a ceiba

trees

had been cleared to make pasture. Cattle grazed alongside

scrawny horses. There were a few

Houses sheltered

in

fields

tree.

of yucca, corn, and beans.

the folds of the land, linked to the road by faint

footpaths.

must have been the

I

first

gringa Neptali had ever spent any time

He treated me like a placid but potentially dangerous buffalo, allowing me ample space even as he kept me under constant surveillance.

with.

At one

point, the road

dipped straight into a

river that

had swollen

with a week's worth of rain. Ferrymen loaded the campero onto a

and poled us

raft

across.

was

It

a journey that, in an instant,

wood

combined

ancient Colombia with the technology that permeates the country to

most

its

violent

dered via

and primitive corners. In Colombia,

phone; bodies are dismembered with chain saws;

satellite

mass murderers log into Hotmail accounts and dabble ernist art. Pdjaros

may have been

1950s, their bosses dined with the

trait as distinctive as

in

French mod-

provincial assassins. But even in the

American ambassador and could

converse about geopolitical trends and

Colombian

killings are or-

existentialist theory.

This

is

a

an accent or manner of dress. Moder-

nity adorns but does not fundamentally alter the country's

way of set-

tling a score.

Our ari.

destination

was El

Castillo, part

of a region known as the Ari-

Settlements at the foot of the mountains were predominately Lib-

eral.

The farms were

large,

with sometimes as

many

as 50,000 acres.

Higher up, where the land was poorer, the settlements were more

mixed and included

families that

belonged to Colombia's Communist

Party. I

discovered that the region's political legacy was not hidden but re-

mained proudly on display

in

the offices of the El Castillo

mayor and

BASILISCO

town

33

council.

Above

the council meeting table

Lenin, flanked by Karl the

Colombian

flag.

I

Marx and

met one municipal

named him Eixenhover,

hung

a large portrait of

it hung whose parents had

Friedrich Engels. Across from

after the

official

American president they admired.

Others remained proud members of the Communist Party (and bore

names

like Lenin).

had found a kind of paradise.

In El Castillo, refugees thought they

They could work without

of being ambushed on the way to a

fear

spoke

had been forced with

in his house,

Bogota

1948, right after the life

riots.

his family

from

his

field

whom

or finding their family slaughtered. Zacarias, a resident with

home

I

in

Zacarias had the kind of body that a

of backbreaking labor whittles from flesh and bone. His fingers

were thick and calloused but caressed the tleness

I

often

saw

in

he spoke, with a gen-

air as

Colombian men capable of splitting

a log with

one ax swing. "My father was a Liberal and we were forced from our

home

at

gunpoint.

We fled

on a

jungles east of here, to save our In the Ariari,

no schools or have formal

life

was never

hospitals.

title

Even

been sold by the Conservatives

his

for years, a quiet

hopes

shaped as

the

way

into the

first,

most people did not his family

home. They discovered

who

seized

there were

had

at-

it

had

that the municipality

had

that

it.

was a sculpture

my

guide.

It

had been

his

man's passion for a work of art that expressed

for the future.

like

At

Once, Zacarias and

recently installed at the urging of Neptalf,

dream

it all

after four decades,

their original

In the center of El Castillo

and made

easy, Zacarias said.

to their land.

tempted to return to

river

lives."

The

sculpture

was over ten

the swirl of a soft-serve ice cream cone.

feet high. It

was

The name of it was

exuberant as a Colombian dance tune: "Infinite and Irreversible

Wishes

for Peace."

At the time of my

become enmeshed in another war, as desperate as La Violencia but far more intractable. Although the new residents of El Castillo had meant to flee La Violencia, trouble had followed them like an overdue bill. But I am getting ahead of my story. Zacarias shrugged when he reflected on that brief moment, as a visit,

El Castillo had

new life without fear was possible. "J don't remember how many times moved with the idea of finding a place of peace for my family. Now, I'm getting too old." young man, when he believed

that a

I

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

34

Neptali reminded

was known

for

its

me

we had

that

The road known for

to leave before dark.

massacres, like other roads might be

promising barbecue shacks. There was one particularly bad spot. There, an El Castillo tered

mayor and her municipal team had been

by gunmen hidden

had been

killed in that

in a

one spot over the previous

Neptali didn't have to

tell

slaugh-

streambed. All told, twenty-two people

me where

it

was.

tensed, like a rabbit that has spotted a dog.

The

five years.

As we approached, he stones chittered under

the campero wheels. Neptali relaxed. This time, only the wind lay in wait.

CHAPTER THREE

THE ALCHEMIST

Arturo Alape, Pedro Marin's biographer, met him first time. Just returned from Cuba and a member of the Com-

In i960, for the

munist Party, Alape was fascinated by Marin's direct gaze and manner of speaking. With a companion, Alape stayed in the house of one of Marin's in

allies,

a

Mexico. The

man known as Charro Negro. Charro means "cowboy" name can be translated as "Black Rider," a sign of the

man's admiration of the Mexican cowboys and mariachi music popular in

the movie theaters of the time as well as his

One

night,

Alape gave a

talk to

Marin and

skill

with a horse.

his followers

about

Cuba's revolutionary land reform. Alape later wrote that his audience

responded with

He

silence.

to action, not words.

interpreted

Compared

to

it

as the reaction

of men used

what these men had already gone

through, Castro's journey on the Granma, the boat he used to transport his

men

to

pleasure cruise.

Had he fruit?

Cuba

Had

to begin the revolution,

gathered the body parts of neighbors and relatives fallen

Castro spent less than four years fighting in the Sierra

before toppling arrived,

Cuban

president Fulgencio Batista.

Marin had eleven years of

Cuba teach Marin,

after

all,

had no lawyers, no student or

must have seemed a

Castro ever personally executed a sapo, a snitch?

men

like

Marin,

killing

about war? leaders,

who had won

no

The day

behind him.

Among them,

intellectuals.

their bread

like

Maestra

that

Alape

What

could

the rebels as yet

They were farmers

by traveling Colombia's

bone-rattling roads.

The

night before Alape

was

to leave,

Marin and Charro Negro de-

cided to play a practical joke on this soft intellectual. Charro Negro's

35

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

36

house was one of several that formed the nucleus of the camp.

Alape was

asleep, shots

rang out. People screamed.

dark where there are no electric fires

lights for miles

and the kerosene lamps have gone

Alape leaped out of bed.

He

It

When

was the kind of

around and even the

cold.

ran outside and found a hole to crouch

in.

Carrying a

light,

Marin loomed out of the darkness. As Alape

wrote, the hole where Marin found

him was the camp

urinal.

Alape

tears dripped

down

was "an exchange of experiences, a

politi-

shook uncontrollably. Marin laughed so hard that his cheeks. This, cal lesson

by

Marin

said,

later

assault."

Unlike the hills around Genova or Pensilvania, the department of Tolima, which sheltered Marin after his escape, had a history of peasant organization and protest. For centuries, Colombia maintained a system centered trol

on a small number' of families and

much of it

over huge tracts of land,

Tolima laborers began to press tions.

for better

Others tried to stake out their

olent response, often supported In the unrest, the

cruited

men

to

own

by the

Communist

Party

their con-

kept fallow. In the 1930s,

wages and working condiBoth attempts met a

vi-

saw opportunity. Organizers

re-

plots.

police.

form "self-defense" groups to confront landowners and

the police and to try to buy enough time to win legal right to the land

or a decent wage. Isauro Yosa,

Among those who joined

who had

established a farm

ing the spread of a rich family. At tect his claim.

he began to

fit

The law

failed

first,

the

Communist

Yosa

tried to use the

law to pro-

him. After listening to the Communists,

his personal battle into the larger picture they painted

of the world. Eventually, he took the "war name" Major killed fighting

joined a group pledged to defend

its

like

their allies, the

members

Lister, to

General Franco, and

against the landowners

government. For weapons, they used farm tools

machetes and guns they used

La

was

on uncultivated land border-

honor a Spaniard who had been and

Party

for hunting.

Violencia transformed these disputes. Farmers-Liberals like

Marin and Communists

like

Yosa-saw the Conservatives using La

THE ALCHEMIST

37

Violencia to erase their few, hard-fought victories. Forced to abandon their farms, they realized that apart, they

So some chose to join 1950,

who

forces, Liberals

chance of survival.

little

to resist. In

Marin and Yosa were among the 200 men, women, and children set

up camp

at a place called El Davis.

Marin was not among the remained

in

command

political leaders at El Davis,

men he had

of the

fleeing Genova. Ghosts in the

smoke of their

name One

months

participant later

larger than the

at El Davis that

Tirofijo (Sure Shot).

they collected

fallen

branches to

only at night, to hide silent.

At one

for themselves: the "Revolutionary

of National Liberation."

name seemed

though he

brought or acquired since

Children were taught to be

fires.

meeting, they chose a

hills,

wood and cooked

avoid making noise chopping

the

had

and Communists,

group

itself.

Marin earned the

Among the men most

It

first

Army

commented

that the

was during

his first

of two new names-

experienced with guns, he

newcomers and became known as a marksman who never wasted a round. Colombia is a country of nicknames. They go from trained

the obvious, like Skinny (Flaco) or Blackie (Negro), to the threatening, like

Poison (Veneno), or the simply odd,

caplumas, a

name

given to

men who

like to

like Featherpuller (Arran-

pass the time talking while

they pluck feathers from a chicken).

For the United States, El Davis was further proof that the Soviet

had found a

virus

host.

But

it

was a motley bunch

that

provoked such

They were farmers, most illiterate, chronically low on food and medicine. They squabbled as much among themselves as with the pdjaros and police. The Revolutionary Army of National Liberation anxiety.

was

like a

liefs.

shabby tarp thrown over a wreck of backgrounds and be-

What jutted

will to survive,

out were old

rivalries

and resentments and a shared

not Marxist unity. At El Davis, the Liberals grumbled

at

Communist commissars even only when issued orders (and, some grumbled,

the Communists' efforts to collectivize. told farmers to harvest

await instructions before getting drunk). For their part, the nists

viewed the Liberals as undisciplined. What,

after

all,

Commuwere the

Liberals fighting for?

For his first,

ways

part,

Marin found himself impressed by the Communists. At

he was drawn by their military set

up an advance and

skill.

Unlike the Liberals, they

rear guard, trained,

al-

and had ranks. They

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

38

enforced discipline by punishing those

he began to

told an interviewer,

the

time,

first

doctores

Marin heard

who broke the rules. As what they were

listen to

political issues discussed

he

later

saying. For

without Liberal

shaping debate, providing answers, and pointing to the solu-

tion (which favored

them and

left

men

like

him out

in

the cold).

Colombia was massacre and terror. Why? Marin hated the Conservatives and attacked them and killed them. He could ambush and steal weapons. Why? If once he had feared that the Conservatives would kill until no Liberal was left, would he do the same,

Around

El Davis,

roam the hills until every Conservative was a pile of bones? The Communists seemed to have answers. Those answers came from men like him, their hands thickened by hard work and gun

He said also how to

stocks. Isauro Yosa, for instance.

that

he knew not only

La

stop

it.

Violencia had erupted but

olution.

There were deep

why

The answer was

rev-

pure

sci-

inequalities, historic processes, the

ence of Marxism to combat the oligarchy backed by Yankee imperialists.

The poor man always

pays, Isauro Yosa told Pedro Marin.

Marin had no evidence to prove him wrong.'

Other Liberals were not swayed. At a Liberal meeting, Gerardo Loaiza, Marin's chieftain, announced that he

with the Communists.

men

He

didn't stop there.

to attack their former

Loaiza and his

men

the authorities.

The

he spoke

listening,

lowed them to they not

still

was breaking the

He would now

alliance

order his

The government had offered to pay Communist they killed or delivered to outraged Marin. With his fellow Liberals

allies.

for every

decision

in favor

of the alliance with the Communists.

common

fight their

the enemy? These, after

trayed them, pursued

them

into the

Bird and the other pdjaros to

kill

It al-

enemy, the Conservatives. Were

were the men

all,

hills,

who had

be-

allowed Lamparilla and Blue

their families

and burn

their

homes.

How could Loaiza speak of helping them? The argument became the

chill

Liberals

so heated that

men

pulled out their pistols as

of night seeped into their bones. But no shots were split.

Marin took some, Loaiza took

mitted, his passionate speech before the until that

moment

tician. In

one

others.

fired.

As Marin

men he had

The

later ad-

considered up

him as a master tacenemies where there once had

his brothers did not distinguish

night,

he had made three

been two. Now, he had to

fight

not only the Conservatives but also his

THE ALCHEMIST former Liberal

Communist

still

between "common"

Liberals, like

as the "clean" Liberals, "cleansed"

of

stain.

new and

Fighting took a

who managed

then there were the Communists them-

distinction

became known

Marin, and what

beans

And

allies.

who made no

selves,

the

39

desperate turn. Once, two Communists

to seize a Liberal

simmering on the

farmhouse

fire.

down

sat

They were soon

to eat the pot of

twisted and vomit-

soaked on the ground. The Liberals had laced the pot with poison be-

One

fore fleeing.

Marin found himself

day,

Communist detachment. He captured were marched to

his

fifty

combat with

in

men. The Communists

camp, believing themselves on the path to Sure

Shot's personal firing squad. Instead, they got a speech. scribed

it

explained to

guerrillas,

leave with

We

my

leaders.

I

that

had been opposed to that and preferred

I

people and

set

up a separate

we

gave them clothing,

weapons we had taken from them and we all

The Communists were first

time,

had

was then lived

that

he became a leader

Marin began to

much time in Genova

forces shaping the

to books. to

by

them

was.

them the

that they should

read, the

He

there.

He

them

at

answered any

killing Liberal snipers nearby.

time in his

first

life

that

he

looked beyond the history that he said

were the grand

world and blackening the hearts of the Liberals and evil, in

their view,

aim was to swallow whole countries

the service of capitalism. ness,

returned to

what the Communists

Conservatives. Central to this Its

told

enemy

their real

impressed. Marin decided to rejoin

lingering doubts about his loyalties It

group with our

guerrilla

we

to

of this to their leaders. They responded very positively

El Davis. For the

dedicated

not their enemies;

the Loaiza family precisely because they were

wanted them to understand who

gave them food,

explain

we were

them what was happening within the groups of Liberal

my break with

anticommunist and that

own

Marin de-

years later for a journalist:

We told them that they were mistaken, we

a

like

was the United

States.

Colombia and put them

Colombia would be enslaved

to

Yankee

at

busi-

already planting outposts like United Fruit on Colombia's

Caribbean coast. In one teaching session, Communist Party

who had come

to El Davis told the story

of a Communist

activists

trade union-

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

40

who had died after suffering torture The man had been seized for his role

at

the hands of the authorities.

in

organizing a protest against

ist

Colombia's decision to accede to an American request and send

Korea

diers to

as part

sol-

of a United Nations delegation. Colombia was

the only Latin American country to provide troops, financed largely

by the United that

Marin take the

mon

practice in

identity,

it is

When

States.

slain

the class ended, the instructors proposed

man's name as

Colombia, though

it

fools

war name. This

his

com-

is

no one. Rather than hide an

a sign of transformation, of having

left

behind

civilian life

become a warrior. At first, Marin balked. It seemed too great an The man, Manuel Marulanda Velez, was like a Communist

to

honor.

saint. Finally,

could get

me

call

rid

history

own

reasons. "As long as

why

I

my

fondest wish

accepted the

a skein, here

is

was

I

failed to

to escape this nickname,

name of Manuel."

where two threads-the American

of communism and Marin's choice of a path out of La Violencia-

fear

met.

could have gone a hundred other ways. Marin could have been

It

by the Conservatives.

killed

He

is

for his

of this nickname of Sure Shot-absolutely no one

Sure Shot-so

and that was

If

he accepted, though

could have

their

heads

bowed

in a

bag to

their decision to

He

could have been killed by the Liberals.

to tradition

and hunted the Communists, saving

collect the reward. Instead,

he chose them and

understand La Violencia as the product of wider

forces in the world.

One might

disagree with his choice.

who

One might

faced the

same

questions did not conclude that violence, albeit tailored to a

more

find fault with their analysis.

powerful Yet realm.

I

logic,

Other Colombians

was the answer.

find this a heartening detail, a

It is

often said that

Colombia

glimmer

in

an otherwise

fosters a "culture

lightless

of violence," a

cycle of massacre and countermassacre and counter-countermassacre that can never be stopped.

No man

is

more Colombian

closely identified with this culture than Marin. Yet

mindless violence. ture

He

felt

or

more

he did not give

compelled to find some logic

in

it.

in to

If his cul-

was simply one of brutality, he would have stayed with Loaiza,

loyal to the

blood

tie

of the Liberal Party and

its

vendetta.

He

did not.

THE ALCHEMIST In his decision, is

41

perceive a sign that this supposed culture of violence

I

As a man and as a Colombian, Marin understand what was happening to his country, to pull

not inevitable in Colombia.

chose to try to his

gaze above the bodies and the blood to see a reason for

Pedro Marin began a new

tools at his grasp,

The Communists, of course, was

goal

to overthrow the

style regime.

things

I

am

had gone

bia well.

Of all

Using

did not counsel peace. Their ultimate

government and replace

it

with a Soviet-

not making the case that Marin was right or that

differently,

if

such a system would have served Colom-

the peoples in the world, the Colombians-independent

and embedded

to a fault, self-absorbed, hot for deals,

tions-are

it all.

life.

among the

in their tradi-

accept the kinds of restrictions, sac-

least likely to

rifices,

and conformity demanded by Communism. Of course, the

means

that

horrent. to carry

Communists proposed

to achieve this objective

By then, Marin had more than proved himself as them out.

a

were ab-

man

Yet glimmering in the violence that surrounded Marin at this

juncture were the beginnings of a plan to turn ferent. In later interviews,

of inspiration.

It

Marin never claimed

was a gradual process

captivity in the shack belonging to his

tion

he

felt

for the

it

skill.

more

kill

making the flower vase or the monkey

to

have had a

dif-

moment

his enforced

Uncle Manuel and the admira-

Communists' military

thing that wasn't just a desire to

critical

toward something

began with

that

able

cut,

He emerged

with some-

Conservatives. Instead of

he made an

The Colombian army deposed Gomez

in 1953,

idea.

the act that

blemishes Colombia's record as Latin America's most stable democracy. Finally, the violence

generals. General fresh

from a term

was too much even

Gustavo Rojas in

Washington

for the doctores

and the

Pinilla seized the president's chair, at the

Interamerican Defense Board.

General Rojas promised to stop the bloodbath and impose order. the rebels, he offered an amnesty. atrocities (including

The government would overlook

those by the police and military)

disarmament and the

To

rebels' return to

normal

life.

For

in

exchange

for a

part, the

gov-

its

ernment would send supplies and cash and would build roads to serve

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

42

the markets that would

their harvests.

sell

Those who refused the

amnesty would be exterminated.

Communists were included jas offered

it,

in

the amnesty. But even as General Ro-

he appealed to the United States

military advice

for the

he said he needed to wipe them

out.

weaponry and

He

outlawed the

Communist Party, prompting Philip Bonsai, the U.S. ambassador, to praise him for embracing "the program of the United States to persecute subversives and approve anticommunist legislation." Prior to

World War

for military assistance.

advance

in Latin

aggressively.

II,

the Colombian

army had looked

But as concern mounted about the Communist

America, the United States courted the Colombians

At the

time, influential advisers

Dwight D. Eisenhower

were doing

it,

peasant guerrillas

those holed up at El Davis. Colombia had signed

agreement with the United States

by sending

telling President

in 1952.

its first

military aid

and intelligence

theory in the United States and with American soldiers it

like

General Rojas expanded the

his officers to study military

Canal Zone (humiliating,

In

the explanation went, by us-

among them

ing unconventional techniques,

were

were winning the Cold War.

that the Soviets

places like Colombia, they

relationship

Europe

to

should be noted, since

it

in the

Panama

meant the Colom-

bians had to swallow yet again the disgrace of having failed in 1903 to

prevent the United States from stealing what once had been a Colombian province). General Rojas received twenty-five fighter jets and

six-

teen light bombers from the United States, to secure "collective

hemisphere defense."

It

was understood

that in Colombia, the threat to

who

followed the Communists and

the hemisphere lay with the rebels

Mann

and

soldiers

his fellow

"common"

completed U.S.

One year later,

Liberals. In 1954, the

Army Ranger School

graduates started the country's

the Lanceros, the

first

at Fort

first

Colombian

Benning, Georgia.

own Ranger unit, named

counterguerrilla training center in Latin

Amer-

Among other things, Americans began to instruct Colombian pilots how to handle and use napalm, to apply "discreetly," in Ambassador

ica.

in

Bonsai's words, to

Communist

settlements in the central Andes.

There, however, the battle remained fiercest between the traditional

enemies eral,

who had

Marin was

fought

La

Violencia.

skeptical of the

Still

amnesty

considering himself a Lib-

offer.

mented, General Rojas's promise seemed

As another rebel comsame pig with a

like "the

THE ALCHEMIST new

leash."

To

43

others, however, the point of El Davis

compelling once they saw that their former

weapons

in

exchange

their talk

were turning

allies

Communists'

rules.

Not everyone

less

in their

and jobs from the government.

for cash

Liberals chafed under the

seemed

Many

believed

of revolution. Tempered by war, El Davis crumbled under

the promise of peace. Just before "clean" Liberals attacked

managed

to slip

and

sister, wife,

father.

survival, conjuring life

Yet this time,

and destroyed El Davis, Marin

away with twenty-six others, including his brother,

Once

again,

he proved himself an alchemist of

out of a set of seemingly insurmountable odds.

he had many more enemies-Conservatives and

Liberals,

lapsed Communists, the police, and a newly revitalized army-than friends.

Marin

felt

the isolation acutely. "This meant for us a

was completely disconnected with what was going on it

as if we

was

General

were deep

Rojas's

in a

cave

made up

only of our

life

that

in the country;

own

thoughts."

amnesty was unsuccessful. Although he had

promised to bring peace through order, he was unable to control the pdjaros or

make

Much

Colombia.

from

killers

real progress against the insecurity that reigned across

all

sides

new

was provoked by banditry as took advantage of the moment to grab what they

of the

violence

could.

Mann

established several

new camps, then

Colombia's Nevado del Huila volcano,

The remaining tive peace.

in 1956.

For a time, they lived

A massive national strike and the opposition

Instead, in 1958, a

ment

met there

near

in rela-

of Colombia's

prevented General Rojas from anointing himself president for

elites life.

rebels

finally settled

in a place called Marquetalia.

that divided

five-member military junta negotiated an agree-

power between the

Liberals

and Conservatives. The

National Front, as the agreement was called, meant that the parties

would

alternate control of the presidency.

tasked with

what came

to be

known

as "public order"-getting rid

the remaining rebels and bandits in the

Before La Violencia, the

annoyance. At worst,

it

Meanwhile, the army was of

hills.

army had viewed the

complicated the army's

conflict as, at best, an ability to

do

its

duty,

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

44

defend Colombia's borders against in the region,

Colombia has

most serious

threat.

rival nations.

Like other countries

traditionally perceived

The Colombians

its

neighbors as the

hate the Venezuelans just as the

Peruvians hate the Ecuadorans and Chileans and the Chileans hate the Peruvians (and everyone hates the Argentines).

The army

left

internal

matters to the police. But that force had been corrupted by the Conservatives

and was

major instigator of violence.

itself a

who was

President Alberto Lleras Camargo, the Liberal

the

first

National Front president, placed the police under army control. For time, an army general was given the job of defending "public As long as the generals did not meddle in politics, the civilians would give them free rein to run the war, a pact that endures to the present day. To my knowledge, no one ever made it official with a doc-

the

first

order."

umento or propuesta or plan. But that real

is

the

way with many

substance in Colombia. "If I attempted to

cavalry unit, the ficers

first

thing

and troops, explore

I

would do

is

their opinions,

command

decisions of

even a small

have a discussion with the

of-

ponder them, and attempt

to

get everyone to agree to a plan, and even try to divine the point of

view and

feelings

commanders ever came to unit to

of the horses," President Lleras said to his military

in his first

speech to them

describing the pact.

advance even one

was the

would not succeed

closest

in getting

he

my

mile."

Fernando Landazabal Reyes,

become

"I

in 1958. It

the time a

at

young

officer destined to

a general and future defense minister, later wrote that

bia's elected leaders "tacitly relieved civilian authorities

mordial task of maintaining [public order]." For

understood that to meddle

in politics

meant

its

Colom-

from the

pri-

part, the military

a quick

and usually

shameful retirement. There were serious drawbacks to the arrangement. In his aptly

noted that

it

titled

allowed

book The Equilibrium of Power, Landazabal

civilians to

claim responsibility for successes

while "the military took the blame for any defeats." Yet Landazabal and

many

other officers supported the arrangement.

They

believed that

it

ensured the survival of Colombia's democracy against a Communist threat that

would have

In 1958,

Colombia's

thrust other nations into military dictatorships.

Marin helped

draft a

new government

mands were

list

as part

of demands to be presented to

of a negotiated surrender. His de-

straightforward. In return for disarming, the rebels

wanted

THE ALCHEMIST the

Communist

45

Party to regain

democratic freedoms restored,

its

They wanted

legal status.

among them

certain

the right to organize

They wanted more government inhealth clinics, and bridges. They wanted

unions and peasant associations.

vestment

in schools, roads,

land seized

by pdjaros to be returned

to

its

rightful

owners. In the grand

The Liberal rebels had negotiated a similar deal (though, as would become notorious, the government did not deliver on many promises). More than anything, what was at stake scheme of things,

it

wasn't much.

was

recognition, respect.

was

calling

Marin a delinquent, a

sons that had driven

him

rebel struggle recognized

Marin

way

With increasing frequency, the government

let

some

to war.

and a

bandit,

and compensated,

fighters return

thief,

ignoring the rea-

Marin was making a bid

home.

to

have the

at least a little bit.

Briefly,

he worked

as a high-

inspector, his last legal job. His faith in the National Front

To him,

shallow.

looked

it

power and pretend

that

like a

La

mechanism

was

to return the doctores to

Violencia had never happened.

He

be-

owed anything to him or to the thousands who had fought with him. More likely, they were sick of the rabble, Gaitan's leavings. The bloodshed had shamed them believed that the doctores did not think they

fore the world. In their "delighted chats

between enemies," they had

apparently agreed to forget the whole thing. That meant get rid of men like Marin.

They wanted him

Other Colombians were

Some

that

felt

La

as skeptical of

it

was time

to

to disappear.

Marin

as

he was of them.

Violencia had not gone far enough,

among them

Gomez Hurtado, the son of the acid-tongued Laureano Gomez (who had first called the Liberals a basilisco of communism). A senator, Gomez had inherited his father's obsessions and fervor. Alvaro

From

his

podium, he charged that President Lleras and the Liberals

tolerated "the

be areas

in

most aberrant behavior,

for instance allowing there to

the very heart of the country where

armed groups do not

permit the entry of Colombian authorities." These were "independent republics,"

he claimed, that challenged the existence of the Colombian

state.

Pushed to take a hard offer to

line,

Marin, non-negotiable.

Communists were allowed

at

made

President Lleras

He would

parley on

the table. At the

pealed to the Americans for help. Colombia's

a single counter-

one condition:

same

No

time, Lleras ap-

conflict,

he

said,

was

a

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

46

key front

ble."

Cold War. As long

in the

as the

Communists were using

standoff the

American

military aid,

superpowers remained

Marin to

rebels like

he argued, was

essential to

up

"stir

at a

trou-

winning

this

fight.

In hindsight,

could bia

into

fit

two

seems so regrettably

all

it

distinct

was an important Cold War

the American analysis,

"human propensity" haps a simpler story political at

all.

consequences.

fruit

to

narratives: Either

theater of war or

facts

fit

He had

was

guilty

was impossible

not have been

of being loyal and surviving the

conjured a miraculous survival out of certain

depths of La Violencia and

who had

may

also possible. Marin's crime

is

a tragic flaw in

an established worldview. Per-

He had gone

death, like an alchemist turning straw into gold.

people

was

it

Colom-

of what Walter Lippmann had called the

make

In the end, he

Colombia's story

scripted.

and contradictory

come

out whole.

He

him and taught him how

sheltered

into the

refused to betray the to fight. Loyalty

for either the Liberals or Conservatives, schooled in

double cross, to forgive.

War took an angry and

man. Marin no longer heeded the Liberal broken with

Loaiza, his chieftain.

The men he

made him

confused youth and

doctores.

into a crafty

On principle,

Then Loaiza had

he had

tried to kill him.

most-among them, Charro Negro, his representative to the National Front-were Communists. From his point of view, the government was trying to get him to betray his most valuable allies, tempt him with promises that would prove as fatal as a pot of poitrusted

soned beans.

gunmen murdered Charro Negro, in a plot Marin believed involved the government. With him went the last shred of Marin's credulity. To this day, Marin mentions Charro Negro in interIn i960, Liberal

views. In

all

that

he has suffered and

lost, this is

the

life

he holds on

to,

the vial that hangs around his neck on an invisible chain. Behind

Charro

is

a

one proved friends

crowd to

that

were not to be

reason any

trusted.

It is

that the doctores

an old

loss,

and

loss

their

of

this

American

perhaps, but not for that

less instructive.

There would be no talia.

Marin alone remembers. But the

him beyond doubt

And he

waited.

deal.

Marin ordered

his

men

to fortify

Marque-

THE ALCHEMIST

47

With General Rojas gone, the Americans needed a new

ally

They found one in General Alberto Ruiz Ruiz had commanded the battalion of Colom-

in the Colombian army.

Novoa. As a colonel,

bian soldiers in Korea. Assigned to the U.S. army's Thirty-first Infantry,

Ruiz could not have had a more experienced guide to the military de-

mands of the Cold War. The

Thirty-first Infantry

World War

the Philippines and tempered in Siberia after ing the nickname Infantry lost both

attack in rea,

had been formed I,

in

then earn-

the "Polar Bears." In Korea in 1950, the Thirty-first its

commander and deputy commander

one of the "hot"

of the Cold War. In two years

battles

the Polar Bears lost 131

to a Chinese

men

(the

Colombians

in

Ko-

also fought several

times and suffered casualties). In the 1960s, the Polar Bears went on to fight in

Vietnam's Plain of Reeds and Cambodia before being absorbed

into other units.

After Ruiz's return from Korea, the National Front tapped

the

army

leadership. General Ruiz

him

to join

began to tackle the challenge of the

"independent republics." To defeat them, he proposed winning people

away from Marin with the promise of prosperity. posed that Colombia invest Political rivalry

may have

in areas

played

frustration also fed rebellion,

its

First

of

he pro-

all,

where La Violencia had been worst. part in the conflict, but poverty

he believed. "So long

as these issues

and

were

not addressed in an appropriate manner, the action alone of the security forces

about his

would have no first

success,"

he once wrote

months on the job. "The

social

me when

and economic

I

asked

situation

demanded improvements in [the] living standard of the population." At the same time, General Ruiz knew that he lacked the troops and money to win the war against Marin. The army was being asked to guarantee security over an area the size of France and Spain combined. Its

topography went from the oxygen-thin heights to leagues ofjungle.

General Ruiz's second proposal was to pair investment with a campaign to recruit civilians to fight with the army, to ears and, it

most important, the muscle that

came time

to rustle

become

its

soldiers could call

Marin out of his secret

spots. Civilians

eyes and

on when knew the

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

48

rebels'

supply routes and often the faces of the rebels themselves.

than

effectively

dependent

recruits, civilians

republics."

More

could force the rebels out of their

"in-

This strategy would "drain the sea," General Ruiz

Mao

told me, a deliberate paraphrase of

he used to describe the

civilian

Tse-tung and the metaphor

population in

On Protracted War.

In our correspondence, General Ruiz used the term "self-defense

groups," autodefensas, to describe the

They were

"a very select

men

army began

the

group of peasants"

who

to train.

kept in "permanent

contact with the military units assigned to the regional jurisdictions,

which would and

this

is

also assist them.

They would

defense groups were meant to isolate Marin rebel

and

tivities,

Violencia,

identified as a

civilian population."

some ranchers and army them

defense groups" (they called

and Communists who

money from

(whom he

self-

trying to identify and locate the bandits with the goal

new

General Ruiz's strategy was not entirely

Liberals

work

intelligence

from the people. "With these ac-

a bandit with equal fervor)

we were

of protecting the

La

do

also

a critical element in guerrilla warfare." Ultimately, these

local farmers.

came one of Marin's

"guerrillas

stole cattle

"Major

to

officers

Colombia. During

had created

"self-

of peace") to combat the

and horses and extorted

Lister," the

Communist who

be-

who

tutors at El Davis, also called the farmers

fought landowners "self-defense" groups. General Ruiz's innovation

was

spending

in roads, schools,

strategy,

he called

tie

and health

care.

Tied together as a cohesive

his proposal "Plan Lazo." In Spanish, lazo

or a bond. In English,

lieves that the doctores in

him

army through government

to link the "self-defense" groups to the

it

again, to the position of army

mic

also

commander and

drew heavily on American

shift in

places

the

way war was waged

where the United

link,

ideas that

it

later is

Colombia

war

minister.

clear that Plan

emerged from a

seis-

across the globe, most visibly in

States feared that the

Communists had

gained a foothold. In 1959, the United States sent the itary advisory

a

charge were so impressed that they promoted

Although General Ruiz downplays the

Lazo

means

could be translated as "Plan Unite." Ruiz be-

first

of many mil-

teams (made up of Philippines and Korea veterans) to

to assess the

war and the methods used by

its

army.

The

three-volume U.S. report advocated an extensive network of advisers

and

direct U.S.

involvement

in counter-rebel actions there.

By

1961,

THE ALCHEMIST U.S. military

49

hardware designed to vanquish the "independent

re-

publics" included helicopters, vehicles, communications equipment,

and small arms. Within a year, the Colombians flew sault

on an "independent

loted

by a Colombian with a

erals it.

In

it

was

critical to

first air as-

American helicopter

republic" using an

pi-

U.S. air force instructor at his side.

Hardware was only the most believed that

their

The Americans

visible contribution.

change the way that the Colombian gen-

perceived the rebel challenge and to develop strategies to defeat

February 1962, the U.S. army sent another team to Colombia,

time headed by Brigadier General William

of the army's Special Warfare Center

at Fort

Yarborough. As the head

at Fort Bragg,

Yarborough was a lead practitioner of the Ruiz had met him

P.

this

arts

North Carolina,

of the Cold War.

Bragg and was struck by

Earlier,

how much

the

American already knew about Colombia, even though most of

his

time had been spent on Vietnam. "[Yarborough] was very interested in our experiences with guerrilla war, which he had

become

familiar with

through reports from the military attaches," General Ruiz wrote me.

"The problems of guerrilla wars

now

recognizes,

is

that

it is

like

the one in Vietnam, as everyone

impossible to win these wars without the

support of the civilian population, a factor that the South Vietnamese

and Americans were unable to achieve

in Vietnam."

Yarborough's report on Colombia was grim.

The army had poor

ordination between brigades, no real planning system, and bad

co-

com-

munications. Troops were stationary, not mobile, and unable to pursue rebels effectively

Colombia should implement

ough concluded, and improve planning.

better training, Yarbor-

intelligence gathering

and operations

He stressed the central role of "civic actions," some carried out

with food donated by the Americans (including for the soldiers themselves,

whom

Yarborough described

as poorly fed

and poorly

paid).

But there were deeper problems that could not be fixed with supplies.

to

Yarborough believed that the generals lacked the

make necessary changes, not because they weren't

political

power

willing but

due

to the propensity of Colombia's civilian leaders "to ignore their national responsibilities

and to seek personal aggrandizement." For

Yarborough, Colombia's only hope lay with the direct intervention of the United States.

Only

if

Americans took what he

called "positive

measures" could the Communist threat be eliminated. "Even complete

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

50

made

implementation of the recommendations not bring decisive or lasting

The Americans needed

he wrote

results,"

to create

the basic report will

in

in a secret

what he described

supplement.

as a "clandestine"

force able to perform "counter-agent and counter-propaganda func-

and

tions

as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage

activities against

by the United

known communist

States."

proponents.

This combined

It

and/or

terrorist

should be backed

and military force should

civilian

respond to U.S. command, not Colombian, he noted. "This would permit passing to the offensive in

of endeavor rather than de-

all fields

pending on the Colombians to find

own

their

solution."

Yarborough's conclusions marked an important development strategy since the

end of World War

During the

II.

latter half

in

of the

war, the Allies had supported partisans in places like Italy and France as adjuncts to troops, able to disrupt the

lished lines

and support elements of an

enemy from behind

estab-

coordinated attack.

overall,

Yarborough's proposed force would also coordinate with troops; yet there were no battle lines, since the

Colombia's people.

and

hit rebels

at rest,

He wanted

where and when they

least

through their neighbors, their

Yarborough

also

war was within and among independent action

this force to take

recommended

expected

habits,

and

it:

not in

battle,

but

their stomachs.

that within this clandestine force,

the Americans create "hunter-killer" units to collect intelligence and

execute suspected rebels or their supporters. In Vietnam, the hunterkiller units

were part of the CIA's Phoenix Program, launched

in 1967.

members of

Vietnamese operatives were supposed to target

civilian

the National Liberation Front, thus hampering

ability to fight. In its

first

four years, Phoenix

many of whom,

Program operatives

its critics

its

over 20,000 people,

killed

claimed, were civilians wrongly accused of

rebel activity. In Colombia, these units faced a similar issue.

they to identify the enemy? During

what a person did was

to support

La

Violencia,

it

How were

hadn't mattered

one or another group. All that mattered

that the person belong to a certain political party or live in the

town

that the party controlled or an area said to be under that party's

whether the person was a woman (in women were rarely considered political) or

influence.

It

didn't even matter

Colombia

at

the time, rural

even a

smoke

child. Guilt in the air.

transcended will or action;

it

was suspended

like

THE ALCHEMIST

51

In the end, the question of determining the difference

enemy all

between the

and the innocent went unanswered. Imperceptibly to

too gruesomely to others,

between

political parties to a

La

some and

Violencia transformed from a clash

campaign against subversives and

their

suspected supporters within the society at large. Instead of being guilty

because they were Liberal or Conservative, people became guilty because they lived in or near an "independent republic" or had thoughts

be said to be influenced by the Communists.

that could

General Ruiz's Plan Lazo was a "hearts-and-minds" strategy that

had

at its

core a military-civilian force and covert hunter-killer units

and

able to strike at rebels

their perceived supporters.

three decades, the hearts-and minds

would wax and wane olencia, civilians conflict.

That, at

Was Marin

a

in

component of the army's

strategy

importance. But just as they had during

would continue least,

Over the next

to

dominate the casualty

lists

La

remained the same.

Communist when General Yarborough filed

report in 1962?

Were

Vi-

of the

his

the people at Marquetalia committed to Soviet

or Maoist revolution? If so, were the measures taken-the recruitment

of

civilians,

the napalm, the hunter-killer units-the best

way

to beat

them? Fighting the communist threat had become the foundation of U.S.-Colombia

relations.

Was

that justified?

What was

really

happen-

ing at Marquetalia?

There were Communists

at

Morantes Jaimes, better known ist

as "Jacobo Arenas,"

and Communist Party leader

and rarely

left

Marquetalia, without doubt. Luis

who

was a trade union-

arrived at Marin's

camp

in

i960

Marin's side again until Morantes's death in 1990.

in on mule back a basic library of Communist literasome of it seized by the army and presented later as proof of Mann's suspicious alliance. Communist Party members like Alape

Morantes carried ture,

trekked to the heights to see Marin for themselves, a guerrilla star in gestation.

Although he had not joined the party

Communist rhetoric and Communists beside him.

comfortable with than betray the

yet,

Mann was

willing to risk his

life

clearly

rather

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

52

Yet non-Communists in the "independent republics"

numbered the Communists. There were

fleeing persecution, farmers left penniless, hangers-on,

and a few

and thieves and cheats

real bandoleros,

still

far out-

disaffected Liberals, families

army

deserters,

fleeing the law. In the

light of kerosene lamps, the rebels could not even decide on a

name

for themselves. For a while, they called themselves the "Southern

Block."

Then

the "Agrarian

Movement of Marquetalia." At

the time,

they had no manifestos or grand objectives beyond survival.

Even the Americans, that there

in their secret intelligence surveys, estimated

were no more than 2,000 armed Communists

Colombia. That included newcomers victory and fresh from Havana. In said to

like

fact,

Marin

pitied

Alape that most of these newly converted

ished within weeks of their return to Colombia.

claimed only forty-two

fighters.

Not

all

War

But

fears

it

was cunning

had per-

late as 1964,

Marin

of them were armed.

Communist-in-

money to Cold Washington. One U.S. embassy

strategy to lash appeals for

then the order of the day

in

analyst wrote in a cable in 1955 that the

problems involved are

of

them. Once, he

guerrillas

As

Certainly, Colombia's leaders phrased the threat as spired.

in all

Alape, inspired by Castro's

Colombians

much more complex

realized "that the

than the relatively

facile

explanation of Communist agitation would indicate." At most, the analyst

concluded, "Communist efforts at provocation

exist,

and are made

easy by the state of fear, disorganization, and atmosphere of vengeance

brought about by banditry and the remains of the

politically

motivated

fighting of past years."

Even among the Communists, there were sharp quetalia,

some

ridiculed the notion

Alape that revolution could

ignite

came known

At Mar-

proposed by new converts

like

with the insertion of a few guerrillas

into a capitalist country in turmoil.

born Ernesto "Che" Guevara,

divisions.

Championed by the Argentine-

who had

fought with Castro, what be-

as the "foco? or focus theory, held that

it

was possible

for

a few committed fighters to topple a government using bold attacks against the symbols of power. Their nationality or experience mattered less

than their resolve. With his brutal practical joke on Alape, Marin

had demonstrated

how

thin that resolve could be for novices to

Colombia-style combat.

The argument

that

Colombia faced a

serious

Communist

threat

was

THE ALCHEMIST dubious

53

Marin treated General Ruiz's

at best.

"self-defense" groups

and the hunter-killer units as just another variation on an old tactic, pdjaros with a

new name. They were

the

same Conservatives he despised

and the "clean" Liberals Marin had once trails

ambush him, he was

to

led.

When

they crept up the

them with an

ready, dispatching

effi-

ciency born of long experience.

The

soldiers,

Marin had ently.

They moved

differently,

Marin told Alape that he noticed that

the soldiers' training.

He

however, were a different matter. During La Violencia,

rarely faced them.

skills

as the

thought

differ-

months went

by,

improved, perhaps, he surmised, a sign of American

Marin sent small teams against the army's supply columns.

field-tested

new

unit, trained in a

tactics, like

the creation of his

"Lancero school" for

guerrillas.

He

own

hunter-killer

called

it

the

"Mo-

move fast and strike hard. It was classic guerrilla warfare, something Che Guevara might have counseled. Except Guevara had never been pushed to the wall like Marin. By 1964, Marin was beginning his fifteenth year at war. Most of his allies and many family members and friends were dead. The only people he trusted were the ones willing to give up as much as he had. President Guillermo Leon Valencia, a Conservative, took office in 1962. One of his pledges was to exterminate the "independent rebile"

and equipped

publics." In 1964,

considered

pendent

at

to

it

Plan Lazo culminated with an attack on Marquetalia,

the time the strongest and most dangerous of the "inde-

republics."

It

began with the "hearts-and-minds" overture, an

invasion of doctors, dentists, canned goods, and promises for future assistance.

Overhead, airplanes did reconnaissance and dropped

promising to solve the region's problems

in

exchange

leaflets

for help fighting

the rebels.

Marin was contemptuous. For him, rice for a

was

fraud,

beans and a sack of

people facing starvation. Later, Marin said that

ment had spent even a to help

it

fraction of the

money

it

the brains to think

Years

later,

it

govern-

used equipping soldiers

needy farmers and build roads and schools,

avoided decades of trouble with the

if the

it

might well have

FARC. "The government

lacked

through."

the officer

who

led the army's attack, Lieutenant

Colonel Jose Joaquin Matallana, told Alape that he miscalculated the

depth of local support for Marin and the level of his

skill

on the

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

54

ground. Like General Ruiz, Matallana had served in Korea and was

among

the army's most skilled and thoughtful officers. Only a few

Paez Indians, lages,

who had

rejected the rebels' attempts to absorb their

were willing to guide the

He used

vated, always his strength. his

own

soldiers.

vil-

Pressed to react, Marin inno-

the tools at hand, his "Mobile" and

intimate knowledge of the terrain.

He knew

that

he could not

defend Marquetalia. Instead, he transformed his followers into a force

with no fixed camp, whose main weapon was movement. In the

past,

he had always defended land-Genova, El Davis, Marquetalia. Now, land was a here,

and

liability. It

tomorrow we

gave the army a better

are not," he said to Alape. "This

strategic idea that at first

two men,

target.

we

"Today

was the

we

are

tactical

tested with the small core of forty-

precisely to avoid being destroyed, because the

government

and the top military commanders were able to annihilate any organization that did not use the tactic of mobile guerrillas."

The army's

attack began

Brigade, the military used

United

on

all

May 27,

1964.

Led by Colombia's

of its helicopters, Lanceros trained by the

States, fighter planes,

and thousands of

soldiers (the exact

numbers are a matter of dispute between Marin and the took part

in the operation).

Sixth

During the

officers

assault, U.S. advisers

who

monitored

developments from a nearby army base.

The assault lasted a month. Colombians had never before seen so many and so much launched against so few of their fellow Colombians. Personalities from around the world protested, among them French

intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre,

who had

also protested

French

counterinsurgency operations in Algeria. As Lieutenant Colonel

Matallana rebels,

later recalled,

but the land

one of the biggest obstacles was not the

itself "It is

ancient forest that had

a jungle usually covered with cloud, an

immense

trees that

have

fallen

within the same

jungle and have created an almost impenetrable knot, with huge vines

and vegetation that move, he flew his eral

is

extremely

difficult to penetrate." In a

his helicopter to a clearing at Marin's

guard to cut

down

Ruiz declared

daring

camp and ordered

trees to allow other helicopters to follow.

victory.

Gen-

"[Colombia] was completely pacified and

the guerrillas were exterminated. In 1965, not a single policeman was killed

by

guerrillas in the entire country."

But Marin himself was nowhere to be found. The former highway

THE ALCHEMIST

55

inspector and salesman had across the spine of the

trail

managed to create a kind of Ho Chi Minh Andes that united Marquetalia with the

other "independent republics" and the southern jungle that would over the next

two decades become the FARC's

ent republic" Like trunk, but a

its

complex network of old and new

that allow rebels to

and traps from a

vastly

move

trail

trails,

was not

used to

a single

this day,

undetected. Behind them, they laid mines

as simple as a line

of string

Jacobo Arenas

soldier.

expanded "independ-

Vietnamese counterpart, the

tied to the pin

of a grenade stolen

later told a journalist that

the rebels lost

only two people during the assault on Marquetalia. As they retreated,

they were so weighed diers that they

made

had

down by

the

weapons they had

difficulty walking.

his political preference official.

rebels set

up a

political

seized from sol-

Regrouped weeks

He would

later,

Marin

be a Communist. The

and military wing. They adopted a new

goal,

"thinking big"-in Arenas's words, "create the Southern Block and seize

power

for the people."

new

of a

1964

For Marin, Marquetalia marked the beginning

period and was "the symbol of the guerrilla struggle from

until now." In 1966, the rebels

"What were the consequences

adopted the name FARC.

[of the attack

soldier Matallana later asked. His conclusion

on Marquetalia] ?" the

was

stark:

The army

helped give birth to something that had not existed up to that point"the mobile guerrillas today called the

FARC."

General Ruiz's celebration was short-lived. In January 1965, he fused to mobilize troops to halt a labor strike.

The

doctores forced

into retirement. Privately, President Valencia accused General failing to

ples

honor the pact with

went on

civilians.

him

Ruiz of

Although General Ruiz's

to lead Colombia's military,

re-

disci-

few shared the depth of his

conviction that insurgencies could not be defeated with military might alone. in

Over the

years, the lesson

became,

like

Ruiz himself, a footnote

the telling of a history that has yet to be fully understood.

La Violencia was finished. The next war was already underway.

On

the surface, Colombia seemed at peace. In their suits and

the civilians took the places of sat to

honor on the

the side and behind, subordinate. In

dais.

reality,

The

ties,

military brass

the pact held firm.

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

56

The

generals had

full

tive

and to

tary

in Latin

were

coups

civilians

awaited

results, to

lay firmly at the feet of the generals

Elsewhere military

authority to proceed as they thought necessary

The

against the guerrillas.

if

America, relationships between

disastrous.

embrace

if

posi-

not. civilians

and the

The 1960s and 1970s were decades of mili-

in Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina,

and Ecuador. There, U.S.-

inspired hunter-killer units

morphed

Colombia was a

harmony. Liberals and Conservatives and

their generals

vision of

were

like

debutantes

into death squads. In comparison,

dance, whirling to the same

at a

tune.

Although General Ruiz had claimed victory

at Marquetalia, neither

the generals nor the doctores really believed that "public order" was assured.

It

showed

in their actions. President

ized "self-defense" groups in 1965.

He

legislation that authorized troops to arrest

ians

deemed

guilty

legal-

of siege"

and even court martial

civil-

of vague and generalized crimes, such as "altering

the peaceful development of social

army

Guillermo Valencia

also introduced "state

latitude to arrest people

who

activity."

The wording gave

organized a

march, or simply voiced criticism of the

strike,

military.

took part

the in a

Colombia was gov-

erned under a state of siege for most of the next twenty-five years. The definition of who illegally)

was a subversive and could be

expanded even

as the threat

of

arrested (or executed

real revolution

was declared

dead.

Repression bred resentment and more rebellion. For the young and contentious, the only avenue for dissent appeared to be taking up

weapons. Guerrilla groups proliferated, producing a torrent of

acronyms that makes reading the history of the time

feel like assault

by

There was the ELN, EPL, the ADO, PRT, MIR, PCML, ERP, the ORP, the PLA, the FUAR, the MOEC, the M-19, and

capital letter.

Jega,

the Quintin

Like the

Lame

(an all-indigenous group).

FARC,

nouncing

itself in

Army

the National Liberation

eration Nacional, or

ELN) chose

to

do

1965 by seizing for several hours the small town of

Simacota. Fabio Vasquez, the ELN's charismatic first

(Ejercito de Lib-

battle in the countryside, an-

first

commander, had

considered taking up arms not for revolution but to avenge his

ther's

murder by pdjaros during La

were among the

first

Vioiencia.

fighters to join the

Former Liberal

ELN.

fa-

guerrillas

THE ALCHEMIST

57

But there were fundamental differences between the

FARC.

Several

ELN

founders had studied and trained

ELN

in

and the

Cuba,

finally

the Americans' fear that Castro's plan to dominate Latin

fulfilling

America was bearing

fruit in

Colombia. The

known, studied Che Guevara's

elenos, as

they became

Guerrilla Warfare, published in 1961.

ELN commander in a Medellfn prison in

When I interviewed

an

he proudly showed

me

1996,

code of conduct, which was based on a

their

Cuban model.

ELN

Other

recruits

were drawn from a surprising source: the

ELN: ColomThe son of a Bo-

Catholic Church. After Simacota, four priests joined the bian Camilo Torres and, after him, three Spaniards.

gota doctor, Torres was already a figure of some renown

A sociology professor at the National center of higher education and a

University, the country's largest

magnet

for

poor students, Torres had

on Marquetalia and afterward attempted

publicly protested the attack to join the

Colombia.

in

FARC. Marin was

suspicious and rejected his appeals, per-

haps due to the Catholic Church's historic support for the Conserva-

La Violencia. Torres found the ELN more receptive. At first, his job was to stay at the university and set up a political wing that would promote the ELN's ideas in public debate.

tive Party

and

their pdjaros during

Quickly, however, the group's leaders realized that the task implied virtual suicide.

The new

President Valencia

locked away in

The

ELN

meant

jail.

authority granted to the security forces by that

anyone could be

Instead, Torres

arrested, tortured,

was ordered

provoked national scandal when

it

ELN

to join an

its

hills.

Colombians

faulted the

cision almost tore the

ELN

for

sending Torres into

to an early retirement in

the time Torres vanished,

The repercussions of the deof a murky history of accusa-

ELN

deposed Vasquez and sent

Cuba, where he

many

to

lives to this day).

But

at

accepted the decision as natural, un-

Even Che Guevara had given up

government post

when

and periodic purges fomented by the

mercurial Vasquez (eventually, the

avoidable.

by

daily

guerrilla.

apart, part

tions, desertions, executions,

his

ELN

His talent as a speaker and political thinker was wasted

he was made into just one more

him

One

story "Camilo Torres, Bandit Chief?'

In later years,

the

unit.

released a statement

Father Torres explaining his reasons for taking up weapons.

headlined

and

his career as a

go to Angola and then

doctor and

Bolivia. "At that

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

58

moment, no one could even contemplate the idea would not immerse himself

war was what we faced and pare," Nicolas

of

in the basic reality

for that reason

it

combatant

that a

guerrilla

since

life,

was necessary

to pre-

ELN commander known

Rodriguez Bautista, an

as

"Gabino," once told journalist Carlos Medina.

Some

Catholic activists on the

among them Dorothy Day, saw

left,

Torres as a modern-day Christ and assumed, wrongly, that he "would

never bear arms, nor would [he] take

champion of the poor even shoot a

rifle.

guerrillas

as

he made

Torres went on his

ambushed an army

back

until the

dead

soldiers.

then shot and

life."

first

his

For Day, Torres was a fumbling

first,

armed action

truck. Torres

in early 1966.

had been instructed

He moved

too quickly.

A

killed the three guerrillas

wounded

who

three Spaniards lasted longer.

soldier shot him,

tried to recover Torres's

Manuel

and Jose Antonio Jimenez were "worker their faith

The

to stay

shooting stopped, then collect weapons taken from the

body. Torres was thirty-seven and had been a guerrilla

The

efforts to

by laboring

in factories

and ministering to the poor

Perez,

priests"

less

than a year.

Domingo

who had

Lain,

practiced

or brickyards by day and praying

at night.

They were

captivated by the

seeming romance of Torres's example of devotion paired with armed

became foot soldiers. They endured excruciating marches and meager food as if it were a private Calvary, their action. Like him, they

blood, sweat, and tears sanctifying their decision to take up arms for

the poor.

Jimenez was the

first

ography of Perez,

who

One

of the three to perish.

walking and said that he

felt

later

day, he stopped

Then he threw up and died. In his bibecame the ELN's leader, writer Walter J. ill.

Broderick surmised that Jimenez was felled by snakebite.

army came close to eliminating the ELN near the town of Anon. Dozens of guerrillas died in the fighting, among them the In 1973, the

Spanish priest

Domingo

Lain. Like Torres,

he was shot while trying to

grab a soldier's weapon. Others, disoriented and few in number, searched out their remaining comrades in the jungle.

over a decade to regain the numbers priest

Manuel Perez

said that they

The ELN's rocky munist threat was

in

start

lost in 1973.

were down to

underscores yet again

It

took the

At one

ELN

point, the

forty fighters.

how

fragile the

Com-

Colombia. The explosion of revolutionary aero-

THE ALCHEMIST nyms was

59

None of these groups posed any real threat to States. And around Colom-

deceptive.

Colombia's government or to the United bia, similar la

movements were

failing

dramatically-to the south, Luis de

Puente's in Peru and to the east, Douglas Bravo's in Venezuela. In

Che Guevara met his end after being abandoned by Bolivia's Communist Party and delivered to the Bolivian army and its CIA ad1967,

visers

by peasants

men who drew Colombian

who wanted

soldiers after

guerrillas

nothing to do with the starving,

them

like flies to

Colombia's Defense Ministry estimated

no more than 1,800

guerrillas in

The odds seemed

One of General

all

in the

as late as 198 1,

that, all together, there

were

Colombia. That's 1,800 against 30 milgovernment's

favor.

General Alvaro Valencia

Ruiz's disciples,

command

filthy

Certainly, the

were a nuisance. They robbed banks, extorted

and demanded supplies from businesses. But

ranchers,

lion.

raw meat.

1974 and was the last army chief to wholeheartedly embrace the "sociological" focus of Plan Lazo. Like

Tovar, took

his

of the army

in

mentor, he had served in Korea.

talia

and the

He

fought the

FARC

at

Marque-

ELN at Anorf. Although a decade had passed since Mar-

quetalia, the doctores

had done

little

to address the poverty that

of the generals saw at the root of unrest. Colombia's

Most of the land remained

statistics

some were

the hands of less than 5 percent of the population. Less than 5 percent of the population received half the nation's income. Fewer than 10 percent of Colombians started startling.

high school. disease,

The

rates

in

of infant and maternal mortality, preventable

and the other indicators of health remained despairingly high.

But General Valencia was forced to resign His retirement marked the end of an

been

in execution,

state that

era.

after

As flawed

as

five it

months.

may have

winning the allegiance of Colombians by building a

provided economic security, education, and health care was

an idea with merit. Ruiz and his associates were essentially democratic, particularly in in

only

men whose vision was

comparison to

their colleagues

neighboring countries. Several went on to become amateur histori-

ans and political analysts; one, General Valencia, even wrote novels.

The man who

replaced Valencia, General Luis

Camacho Leyva,

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

60

was

Camacho was

strikingly different.

not

known

for battlefield

prowess or democratic sensibility. Like the conquistador Jimenez de Quesada, he was a

He had

doctor, specifically, a lawyer.

ranks through intrigue and palace plots. For him, the sent in

all its

forms, only the

After taking

command

enemy was

dis-

most extreme of which was communism.

Where General Camacho saw what students of the period

risen in the

call

dissent rooted, he struck.

He began

the "hard war" approach.

of the army, General

Camacho proposed

modifying Colombia's constitution to include what he called the "crime of having an opinion" itary to "prejudge" civilians

(delito

whom

de opinion) and authorized the mil-

it

believed had dangerous thoughts.

For him, ideas were as dangerous, perhaps more

demics and

intellectuals

became the

noted Francisco Leal, a sociologist military. After

General

so,

than

bullets.

"Aca-

preferred targets of the military,"

who

Camacho launched

has studied the Colombian a

smear campaign designed

Marquez to support for guerrillas, the moved to Mexico. Once, after ordering the arrest of an elderly General Camacho commented, "Here, the poets are worthless."

to link writer Gabriel Garcia novelist

poet,

For General Camacho, thought stirred a restive population, the dren of farmers and laborers moving to the tion.

cities for

These were not necessarily Colombia's poorest

were the ones with ambition, political

wedge between the

plans,

Liberals

1970s,

birthright,

it

league,

meant.

I

relic,

once remarked on

he playfully

and Conservatives, earlier,

who

neither

party affiliation had

to be discarded like last season's shirt. this shift to Alfredo, a

identified his family as

To me, he appeared

glasses, the

but they

handed down with family photographs. By the

was becoming a

When

families,

and expectations. They drove a

understood nor controlled them. Decades

been a

chil-

jobs and educa-

Colombian

col-

an example of what

to be the classic intellectual: John

I

Lennon

author of several books, an encyclopedic knowledge of

Cuban music from the 1930s. But his grandparents had been in some of the worst of La Violencia and had moved his parents from the farm to the town. Alfredo made the final transition to Bogota and was the first in his family to finish college. When I asked if he was a Liberal or a Conservative, he flicked his hand in the air, a gesture that meant not only no, but also how could I possibly hold him in such low regard as to imagine him trapped in such an antiquated and corrupt system.

THE ALCHEMIST General

61

Camacho got his promotion just when Josue took the same move to Bogota and the decision to complete a univer-

with his

step,

sity degree.

Josue broke with family tradition and enrolled

Then

school.

his

path was further complicated by the

he found on Bogota's cated

it

came

a

to reading

mouse

streets. "I

more than

in the library.

I

For

who was my

versity;

what

he had a

interested

real lot

me

had ever read months,

six

I

in

my

of books about

firsthand.

life. I

be-

of my broth-

One in

the Free Uni-

and the law and these were

politics

the most." shift that

took place within the armed forces

While walking one day, he

to the city center.

about

entire

would shut myself into a

guide during this period, studied

Josue experienced the

way

ferment

took advantage of my time and dedi-

cubicle and read until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. ers,

political

law

in

"I

fell

in

with protesters on their

joined the march out of curiosity, to learn

why they were marching and what had

gan to pick up the slogans because

I

inspired them.

And

couldn't help but get caught

I

be-

up

in

the emotion that such a large demonstration produced, the largest

had ever seen

in

my life.

But the march ended

in fighting,

gas and one policeman began to choke me. trolley fled

The

inhaled tear

I

students burned a

bus and the police began a determined hunt for students. As

among the crowd,

gan to open

their

I

I

the neighbors along the route of the march be-

doors so that the students could race

in

and

me

ran into one just as the police were going to arrest

hide.

I

and they

paused; but just as they were about to enter the house, they decided to

chase some other guys

who

continued to

run."

A national strike was called for September 14,

1977, to protest wors-

ening economic conditions and the army's repression of dissent. At the

same las

time, the strike confirmed General

parlayed small numbers into a

Camacho's

more powerful

belief that guerril-

force

by manipulat-

ing and infiltrating the unions, student organizations, groups, nongovernmental organizations, and academics strike. Certainly, guerrillas tried to

to further their political goals. tivist all

had

identified for

me

who

led the

place their people in key positions

Once, an unusually forthright union ac-

the

affiliations

of the leaders of one union,

elected, in his words, "at bullet point"

guerrillas.

community

and under pressure from

At the same time, the organizations that led the

strike

not entirely run by guerrillas. Overwhelmingly, they represented

were legiti-

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

62

mate

and demands, among them an end to the creaky

political leaders

National Front and the election of people capable of addressing the

problems that had festered since La Violencia ended. Strikers froze Bogota. Twelve people died as a result of clashes between po-

traffic in

lice

and

protesters.

For General Camacho, there were no shades of gray: All was subversion. Guerrillas didn't

They had

need thousands of fighters

millions in the

called the "brazo desarmado,' 'the

Liberal Julio Cesar Turbay

Camacho, Turbay found an

who

ill-fated Gabriel,

eighteen months

He

tions.

won

the countryside.

in

They were what he guerrillas.

the presidency in 1978. In General

ideal partner.

had no

ties.

unarmed wing, of the

after his loss in

later)

and

cities, in suits

Turbay (no

relation to the

1946 moved to France and died

interest in dealing

with security ques-

signed a presidential decree, called the Security Statute, that

gave the security forces broad authority to arrest and punish protest,

Camacho publicly way you can" to fight

including peaceful marches. Even as General

ex-

horted Colombians to "arm themselves any

the

guerrillas-words that guerrillas gleefully embraced as license to lice

and soldiers-he approved new the

las in

cities,

tactics to

where he believed the

What worked

combat suspected

crucial battles

a

bia,

shadowy group

liance, or Triple A,

be linked to

protests.

Colombia

first

man

time,

toolbox

Colom-

American Anticommunist Al-

in public places, to

Three former army

told journalists that Triple

intelligence battalion. Their charges

the

in the

units. In

claimed responsibility for "disappearing" strike

and planting bombs

leaders

fled

calling itself the

guerril-

fought. villages,

Still

by the Americans was the concept of hunter-killer

po-

of

in the countryside, like the rocketing

could not be transferred to an urban environment. left

would be

kill

Colombia began

rights groups. People

cause panic that could

who

intelligence agents

A was

were never

later

created by the army's fully investigated.

For

to appear regularly in the reports of hu-

began to vanish off the

street or

homes. Between 1970 and 1978, Colombia registered a

from

total

their

of thirty-

three "disappearances," the unacknowledged arrest by the authorities

of

civilians that

could end with that person's murder. In 1979 alone,

there were thirty-two "disappearances."

The rillas

security forces

and

rounded up and tortured not only accused guer-

their direct supporters but

anyone

who

criticized the

govern-

THE ALCHEMIST

63

ment. "The idea was to attack popular organizations and supposedly in

way

that

hurt the guerrillas," noted sociologist Alejandro Reyes.

made things worse, way to protest."

course, this only

came the only For his

would

let

Turbay reacted with incomprehension. Any-

part, President

who was

one

not guilty had nothing to

reporters, "is the president

General others. its

he

said. If

in

only people

would be

all

Colombia," he once complained to

of the republic."

Camacho hated

guerrillas.

The FARC annoyed him.

part, the

But he hated some more than

Yet they kept mostly to the

hills.

For

furious tirades

and

name was

the

ELN was moribund.

The group

him and provoked

that really needled

hundreds of searches and April 19

fear,

the security forces clean out the bad elements,

"The only person tortured

well.

"Of

since joining guerrilla groups be-

arrests

was the M-19.

Movement (Movimiento

Its full

19 de Abril, or M-19), taken from

the date of a 1970 presidential election that

its

members

believed had

been stolen by the Conservatives. Improbably, one of the M-19's heRojas, the anti- Communist

was General

roes

La Violencia. 1970s became the first to

d'etat

during

Many

of the youths

who

lowing General Rojas Unlike the gles,

FARC,

of United Fruit not

swim

in

its

and stamina bians.

fruit

ways

move from

first

for

fol-

did not hide in the mountains and jun-

and slums. Some, among them the

factories fed his rebellion.

pools or shop in

and packed

it

company

their guerrilla ca-

for shipment.

Bateman

the bush into the

in the

shadow

Colombians could

stores,

But the

even as they

FARC was

too

Bateman, whose Afro, unusual height,

dancing made him a legend expelled

in the

experience in politics by

Bateman Cayon, had begun

for the vivacious

The FARC

coup

took up arms for the M-19.

cities

Company

company

harvested the set in

movement he launched

FARC. Bateman's memories of growing up

reers in the

led the

credibly challenge the two-party system.

M-19

but in Colombia's

group's founder, Jaime

political

gained their

later

the

A

who had

cities,

after

tried to

convince Marin to

guerrillas

would have more

he

where

among young Colom-

impact.

Other M-19

guerrillas

came from

had families with deep roots

in

universities or unions,

and many

the system they wanted to overthrow.

Carlos Pizarro Leongomez, for instance, was the son of a navy admi-

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

64

the grandson of an

ral,

army

tried to use her military

A

see him.

colonel,

me

mother, Margot, once told

first

time he was arrested, she

connections to get past the prison guards to

dignified, resolute

earned with dozens of

and the nephew of generals. His

that the

woman, she has

visits to

Colombia's

jails.

a cap of white hair

Along with

Carlos,

Margot's daughter, Nina, also belonged to the M-19. Another son,

Hernando, belonged to the FARC. At one all

point,

Margot was

visiting

three children in prison, while she cared for her three grandchildren

left

temporarily orphaned.

When

she attempted to see Carlos, the

guards rebuffed her. Her husband prohibited further attempts and died without having seen his son again.

ask for anything for cent, but that did

my

children.

made

its

my love for them,"

not with bullets or

campaign that teased Colombia

appearance. "The

for the M-19."

gota

itself

M-19

*

s

told

me

later

never to

never claimed that they were inno-

nothing to change

The M-19 announced advertising

I

"My husband

for

Margot

bombs

said.

but with an

weeks before the group

coming." "Listless

.

.

.

sluggish? Wait

O n January

museum and

stole

17, 1974, M-19 guerrillas slipped into a Bothe sword of Simon Bolivar, then announced

M-19 was taking up Bolfvar's fight against "the exploiters of To many Colombians, the M-19 was fresn and exciting, creative. The Erne, as the group was known, made the FARC look like a sad and shameful relic of Colombia's past. The Ernes were inspired by the Summer of Love and rock and roll; they weren't the doctores, but their rebellious sons and daughters. They were convinced that that the

the people."

they could cut the country loose from tions and, of course, the

ple

whom

FARC's

rotten past with fabulous ac-

they believed supported them. Bateman even rejected the

stale vocabulary, as

are not a

its

immediate and unconditional love of the peodated as photographs of La Violencia.

movement of the masses

propagandists and that

is

or a political party,

we

are

"We

armed

the end of it," he once told a journalist.

Vera Grabe, an early member, was recruited-and seduced-by Bate-

man,

who had

lovers.

a wife and a series of other, sometimes simultaneous

Daughter of German immigrants, she was

cruits: college

mance and political

typical of

many

re-

educated, cosmopolitan, drawn in by the M-19's ro-

intrigue. In

her memoirs,

from the amorous

assault.

it

is

hard to disentangle the

THE ALCHEMIST

65

[Bateman] captivated me. There were no slogans or demands, but rather trust

and a

confidence

in

the people, which

in

himself and what [the M-19] was doing.

me-and many others-was more

Confidence

freshness.

informal, but

it

was

wasn't an alley with no

that in this group, not only

more

also

exit. It

real.

did not

What

that

a

surprised

was everything

There was room

mean

showed

for doubt.

It

one had to break with

whatever one had previously thought or done, but

just the reverse, to

give everything and be with every one.

The M-19 was

tne FARC's opposite.

think before they learned to

fight.

adherents had learned to

Its

Like Marin, those

in

FARC

the

had

learned to fight before they learned to think.

Out of the

spotlight, the

FARC

Bateman showed, Marin was not beyond

disaffected peasants or

waited. As the expulsion of

interested in expanding his appeal

slum dwellers.

few Colombians cared about or even

visited.

He

occupied rural areas

The ruana Marin draped

over his shoulder was a badge of humble origin and persistence that

spoke powerfully to peasants, not university students. In some rural eas,

joining the

FARC

(and to a similar extent, the

law or teaching.

settled a career track as

known

Vargas, degrees,

as "Alfonso

drawn out of an

But most were more

A

Cano," joined

intellectual

like Jorge

ar-

ELN) became

as

few, like Guillermo Saenz

after

completing university

commitment

Briceno Suarez,

to revolution.

known

as

"Mono Jo-

commander of the FARC forces in southern Colombia. The nickname comes from Briceno's fair complexion (called mono in Colombia) and a monkey common in the jun-

joy," currently the thirty-something

gle;

it

his

fits

among

the

cunning and

FARC's most

a likely successor to the

black beret that evokes

pushing insistently sybaritic pleasures.

deluxe edition

at

gleefully destructive style.

effective field

Mono Jojoy

commanders and

is

considered

now seventy-something Marin. He wears a Che Guevara, though his significant belly,

the camouflage he favors, speaks of

The Toyota Prado 4x4 Mono Jojoy

retails for

is

$50,000

in

more

drives (the

the United States, though

it is

very

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

66

Mono Jojoy's

likely that

car

was

either stolen or part of an extortion

payment) once drew criticism from "Alfonso Cano," austerity

he practices

FARC

the

Mono Jojoy was

he joined the

good

war, like being

math.

at

was created by weapons," he

By millennium's

"I

preaches the

member of the General

as a fellow

governing body.

told journalists that

who

Secretariat,

unrepentant. Once, he

because he had a talent for

guerrillas

was nothing when

I

was

a civilian.

said.

end, the powerful logic that had rescued Marin

from the senselessness of La Violencia had become an end stuck in place as the trigger of a rusted gun.

The same

to

Colombia and

his increasingly

remote chance of ever

his business.

to join him,

end

war

is

For the young

now

One

and an

identity

Jojoy,

and an

FARC

Around Marin

"autistic,"

are

men

and the

like

Mono

views power through the muzzle of a gun as a birthright

inevitability, like

What

How

continue

and a lens through which to

once labeled the

analyst

description contains a bitter truth.

who

men and women who

a culture and their reason for being-war as an

in itself, a profession

view the world.

seiz-

what he had and

ing power. Instead, Marin, a frugal man, gathered

made war

loyalty only

him-prevented Marin from examining the cost of

to those closest to

war

in itself, as

qualities that al-

lowed him to survive treachery-an animal caution and a

this

I

to

is left

age but with none of its burdens.

be arranged, then, are the mechanics of

does Marin pay and feed his fighters?

How

survival.

can he keep them

Money was something Marin popular support among Colom-

dressed and mobile, trained and eager?

needed to sustain the bians dwindled.

Kidnapping used

it

decade

in

me

FARC

later

and

even as

source of cash was kidnapping.

Colombia dates

to collect ransoms.

leader Gerardo told

One

in the

The

to at least the 1960s, guerrillas

1980s transformed

Bermudez Sanchez, known

when

criminals

embraced the technique it

into big business.

as "Francisco Galan,"

once

that guerrillas began kidnapping as a response to General Ca-

macho's technique of "disappearing" people. But kidnap victims far

a

ELN

outnumber the

"disappeared."

1973, ten years later the

ELN

Still

suffering the debacle at

now

Anori

in

kidnapped a German engineer and two

Colombian employees of the German multinational Mannesmann. They got $1 million for him and used it to recover and expand by a factor of five in just

one

year.

THE ALCHEMIST

67

Currently, guerrillas take an average of 1,500 people per year, put-

Colombia

ting

pant.

first

"Mono Jojoy"

on the

of countries where kidnapping

list

is

ram-

has defended kidnapping by describing hostages as

members of the hated "oligarchy" and therefore deserving of their fate. The ransom is a "tax" those in the middle class must pay, just as they most of the

pay the government. But the truth

is

are average Colombians. After

the really rich have bodyguards and

all,

and bulletproof

security walls

that

cars. In Confesiones

chronicle of his captivity in the late 1990s, a

meeting with the

guerrillas' victims

de un secuestrado,

3.

Colombian bank execu-

FARC commander responsible

tive

described his

for

determining the amount of his ransom. The executive had just

first

completed an exhausting forced march to the camp, where he could imprisoned or

still

tell

that dozens of other

mountain

guerrillas'

Colombians had been

waited for their freedom in the huts that passed for

shelter:

farc

What

A

executive farc

I

assets

am

do you have, you old son of a

1993 Subaru pickup truck that

the truth to

me or

thing, they

still

paying

off.

everything that you

executive

I

What

have nothing, only debts.

send you to be hung by your

I'll

careful not to forget anything,

careful,

am

not asking you what you owe, just what you have.

Everyone says the same

farc

I

bitch?

own

remember

balls!

Tell

And be

that your family

and

can be blown up by a bomb.

have a house with a mortgage. is it

worth?

because here

What

liars

else

do you have?

have stayed

for

Cattle?

Land? Be

more than seven

years

remember what they possess. I will order a relative of yours hooded and brought here to confront you and then of course you will have to tell the truth. until

they

executive farc

Bring him-I responded-I have nothing more.

How much

executive farc

finally

Get

in

the bank?

Overdrawn-I lost,

said.

you son of a

In the late 1990s,

sponsible for their

ship for cash, so

bitch, before

Marin told

own

his

I

bust that face!

commanders

finances and could not

some converted

that they

were

depend on the

their troops

re-

leader-

into kidnapping

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

68

specialists. Guerrillas

began

"pescas mtlagrosas, " miraculous fishing trips,

by mounting roadblocks on heavily traveled roads and taking any eler

who

appeared solvent. In 2000, the

FARC

announced a new

trav-

"rev-

Law 002 (Law 001 dated from the 1960s and related Law 002 required everyone with assets of more than pay the FARC the equivalent of 10 percent of their worth,

olutionary law": to land reform). $1 million to

The consequence for not paying was a kidnapTo underscore the law's existence, guerrillas took a three-yearold boy from his Bogota home and kept him for nineteen months. Kidnapping has served its narrow purpose, but it has also damaged the FARC's credibility as a group purporting to fight for most Colomeffective immediately.

ping.

bians.

may

Another

tactic that

use of gas cylinder bombs. This

elicit is their

out of a propane tank, fill

has further eroded any popular support they

nails,

bomb

is

confected

dynamite, and a launching tube. Guerrillas

the propane tank with a mixture of gunpowder, metal shards, and

propane. Through a hole in a metal tube, they thread a slow wick con-

On

nected to sticks of dynamite.

Then,

guerrillas load the

acts as a cushion.

When

top of the dynamite they pack

propane cylinder 'on top of the

the dynamite explodes,

the propane tank into the

air.

The

it

dirt,

dirt.

which

propels the dirt and

tubes are installed on the beds of

pickup trucks, which can approach a target surreptitiously, then scurry

away after the tank is launched. The invention, also called a "barracks Irish

Republican

Army

buster,"

was developed by the

(IRA) to attack the British

The weapon is cheap and easy to liably. The aim is influenced by

assemble. But a

dozen

it

in

Northern

Ireland.

cannot be aimed

re-

variables: the angle of the

tube, the elevation of the pickup truck, the wind, the

amount of dyna-

mite in the charge, the amount of material in the tank, the expertise of the guerrillas. That

means

ways land on homes,

that in attacks, a

stores,

and

number of the

offices. "It takes

us at least three shots

to get the aim right," one guerrilla told journalists in

of explaining

why

the

FARC

cylinders al-

May

2002, by

way

had launched a gas cylinder bomb

into a

A

single

church where refugees were housed

in Bellavista, Antioquia.

cylinder killed 119 people, over forty of them children.

Attacks like these

and outsiders

made

alike. Just as

dents that rarely received

the headlines and outraged Colombians disturbing to

me were

the everyday inci-

more than cursory mention

in

Colombia's

THE ALCHEMIST

69

press.

These more mundane

Marin

uninterested in gaining support.

acts suggested to

By

me

authorized a deliberate campaign meant to maximize terror. if

man

he had once again become the angry

was

that not only

he had

his seventh decade,

in his

was

It

as

Uncle Manuel's

shack, with no purpose but revenge. With increasing frequency,

Marin's forces matched and occasionally even outdid the macabre the-

had once marked La Violencia.

atrics that

In 1995, for instance, guerrillas planned to

ambush

a bus transport-

ing twenty-four banana workers loyal to a political group they consid-

ered a

rival.

As

I

from

later learned

missed

investigators, the guerrillas

the bus they had meant to stop. Rather than plan the action for an-

other day, they simply caught the next bus.

knew

the people they sought and they

it.

The

passengers were not

Nevertheless, the guerrillas

men to lie face down on the ground, then executed them one by one. Some were beheaded. Later, news photographers took the

forced the

shot the

men

FARC seemed

lined in a

row

to have designed just for the cameras:

that paralleled the bus, a

gruously festive with

its

catch the rare, refreshing breeze. reporter that they

meant

A guerrilla

to send a

their control. Challenges

chiva, incon-

sides

meant

to

explained to a local

tolerated.

rival political

mattered was the power

later

open

message to anyone

would not be

dead did not belong to the

What

Colombian

bright primary colors and

dead

who

The

challenged

fact that the

group mattered not

at

all.

of the message sent by the bodies laid

out in the road. In

and see

my interviews with them, guerrillas would promise to stop abuses issue orders that

news or hear

guerrillas

ana, or

would

FARC,

would protect the innocent. Afterward,

reports that try to

showed

woo me

culture, to

show

(like

would

had changed. Also,

with what they described as their farithat they

but building an alternative world.

days

that nothing

I

were not just waging a war

They had

songs, poetry,

art, festival

the anniversary of Marquetalia), and a kind of guerrilla chic

of camouflage and gun holsters and the knee-high rubber boots necessary to navigate Colombia's

revered founder. But

it

was

muddy

trails.

Marin was the

distant,

Mono Jojoy who epitomized their aspiramurderer who drives a flashy vehicle

tion, a jolly, vicious, fun-loving

with his pistol on his hip, at

the ready. There are

girls

on the running boards, and a rum

some who

believe that

it is

he,

bottle

and not Marin,

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

70

who a

really in control

is

new

and

sets the

reason for being. Once,

new tone of an army now

a guerrilla

gave

me little wallet

decorated with photographs of beautiful boy and in sparkling streams,

each other's shoulders.

was summer camp with sex

me

told

fighting.

as

It

real clue that

we

lens with their

arms draped around included, the

one that these

reflected in the joke a humanitarian aid

toured the

nearest church to

grin-

they were not on holiday.

a different message, not the

Mono Jojoy

bathing

grouped around campfires, and dancing and

camera

I took away tended. It was

calendars

girl guerrillas

ning contentedly into the

guns the only

seeking

camp

latest refugee

guerrillas in-

worker once

created by Colombia's

preparing for Christmas, so he approaches the

is

make

Colombia, children leave

his gift request. In

re-

who then delivers them to Mono Jojoy describes his behavior as excelBut the Virgin Mary glares. Mono Jojoy has

quests for presents with the Virgin Mary,

the

Baby Jesus.

lent.

He

asks for a bicycle.

to start over. bicycle."

In his note,

The

"I

have been trying to be good," he

Virgin continues to glare.

again, each time revealing

Nothing works on throws

it

more of the

her. Finally,

at the Virgin

He

Mary's

I

want a and

true nature of his behavior.

Mono Jojoy

feet.

writes, "and

revises his note again

tosses off a sentence

"Unless you give

note says, "you'll never see the Baby Jesus again."

me

and

a bicycle," the

CHAPTER FOUR

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

There

a cycle to violence in Colombia just as there

is

cycle to the lives of

most of the people who

good die-so do the bad or

indifferent.

after a big soccer

in

a

live there.

Not only the

People are also

maimed and

scared and vengeful and unrepentant. Killers

ways bad around Christmas and

is

kill

again.

Things are

al-

August, peaking before an election,

game, on weekends, when there are

parties.

When

there are not parties. But there are always parties.

For

dance ears bars.

many years, I believed it necessary to my work to drink and much as my Colombian colleagues. That meant a lot. My

as

would I

ring from the salsa blared in a string of dark

danced every night

aguardiente,

which

tastes

in cigarette

like to

tion.

smoke and the fumes of rum and

of licorice and

is

as

sweet and potent as liquid

my visits to Colombia, would be so hung over that take me days to recover a firm grasp on the horizon. would say that eventually learned my lesson and practiced modera-

sugar. After

would

and mildewed

The

I

I

I

was

truth

that

kind of supercocktail.

were pursuit and in

Piel

I

swore off the grief and the rum that was a

The

night a salsa beat shook

watched,

it

me by day and at my ears. My dreams

sad stories embraced

me

from

my

ankles to

Roja cigarettes, dry-mouthed hunts where

colors as lurid as polyester dancing shirts,

my

I

personal

dramatizations of what had been described to me. There was never

enough coffee

in

soaked edge. So of Colombians flightless birds

I

the mornings to fully shake the night's alcohol-

embraced

my

inabilities.

I

pledged the secret society

who prefer jazz and lemonade. It's easy who grip the edge of the dance floor.

to spot us, the

71

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

72

don't linger.

I

My

nightly ritual

on health and consumer

is

the news, which wastes no time

Colombia has

stories (thankfully,

resisted the

much

temptation ofjokey meteorologists). Perhaps they have too

There are yesterday's massacres and the day's

to talk about.

tragedies, delivered in the rushed style drilled into the

men and women

ployed as anchors. These porters. script,

They

are professionally pretty.

else

fresh

models em-

don't pretend to be re-

With twenty minutes worth of

they cover atrocity, corruption, needless suffering, sports scores,

and beauty pageant

results.

Colombians are crazy competitions for

and Miss Flower. The

beauty pageants and have hundreds of

for

titles like

Miss Coffee, Miss Banana, Miss Petroleum

first

Miss Colombia pageant was held

gena to welcome U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt television

was introduced to the country,

it

has fixed

in 1934. its

November on the beauties gathered in Cartagena to crown. The Miss Colombia competition is more popular the Academy Awards are in the United States and draws every

available television viewership

Colombian

woman

on the competition's

Carta-

in

Since

gimlet eye vie for the

there than half of the

final day.

can be spectacular. During the Miss Colombia

among them parade on beaches, beside pools, The country's largest network sends dozens of its

pageant, the loveliest

and

in restaurants.

staff to

scripted soft.

for

cover the three-week-long competition. Each day

and there

The

prime

is

rarely

reporters review each contestant's cuts.

Camera

is

tightly

unplanned scandal. But the coverage

angles focus

on

is

not

anatomy with a chefs eye

breasts, hips, calves,

not necessarily to admire but to examine in

detail.

and

bellies,

For hours, veteran

reporters and former contestants discuss evidence of cellulite, a too-

short torso, a too-long nose, or less-than-perky breasts. Plastic surgery is

considered successful, a disaster, or

Done

well,

it is

lauded as a

way

insufficient,

to slip the

but never cheating.

bonds of genetics and bad

behavior and embrace beauty. I

don't

remember seeing

a talent competition.

American talk-show

host David Letterman once caused an outcry in Colombia after he

joked on camera that a Miss Colombia had ent segment by swallowing reigning Miss

Colombia

ants are white, but not

all

fifty

to his

won

the Miss Universe

bags of heroin (he

show and

tal-

later invited the

apologized).

Most

contest-

are from wealthy or even middle-class fami-

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS lies.

73

Afro-Colombian won

In 2001, an

plucked from a slum

is

preparing to compete: plastic surgery, hair and

makeup

sonal trainers, gowns, instruction in walking, diction, and

What

ultimately matters

shafts tinted

pended

is

the

and gelled into

to achieve

it

A

for the first time.

beauty

hampered mainly by the costs associated with

final

artists,

what

per-

to say.

package, bone and tissue and hair

nonchalance, not the

artificial

effort ex-

or where the contestant hails from.

Once, a beauty pageant even helped avert a coup. In 1999, the defense minister resigned, prompting Colombia's highest-ranking generals to

was

threaten a walkout to express their support for him.

The

dispute

over the civilians' support for peace negotiations with guerrillas, a

topic guaranteed to anger the brass. Cooler heads strategized that the

evening's broadcast of the Miss Universe pageant-Miss

Colombia was

favored to reach the top ten-would help distract attention while measures were taken to ease tension.

It

worked. In the morning, the top

generals remained at their desks. (Miss

The Miss Colombia pageant

Botswana won.)

coincides with Colombia's pre-

Christmas massacre season. Unlike their American counterparts,

Colombian journalists often viewer

like

me, the

effect

eant week, the newscast

file

on a

fills

night's broadcast

is

striking.

During pag-

with talk of bodies. Sometimes, the broad-

news than a macabre kind of performance

casts feel less like

images compete to reveal the

and the endless ways

whole bodies and

graphic images of carnage. For a news

also

it

fragility

of the

human body

or

its

art,

as

beauty

can be molded, whittled, or twisted. There are

body

parts,

bodies dressed well or incompletely,

bodies in water, body parts in water, bodies in the grass, bodies face

down

or face up. There are bodies from a distance. There are bodies

close up.

They

are beautiful or

gruesome or vacantly

course, the

two types of bodies look nothing

Colombian

television viewer like

me

the fascination for variations on the

alike.

Of

But an occasional

can't help but

human

peaceful.

be impressed by

form, either as a

way

to ex-

press hatred or to celebrate the female form.

Cartagena looks

beautiful.

I

have never been

there.

I

see

what pag-

eant organizers select of the salt-bitten stone walls and bright ocean vistas.

These shots are a

relief in

takes of the latest massacre

site.

comparison to the dank and close

Cartagena

is

yellow sun, blue sky, the

white of the sand. Massacres are shadows and the color green or

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

74

brown, from the grasses and leaves and beaten

makeshift

dirt at

morgues. Sometimes, massacres seem as scripted as the pageants, as all

and narrate them

journalists sent to such events are told to film

certain way. People kneel in grief Journalists in vests with the

"PRENSA"

if

in a

word

(press) bustle about, finding the best angles to relay the

carnage. Authorities dither and stare. Various coverings are used to

hide the bodies, but something always sneaks out. or a shoe, a distinctive cut of hair, a hat.

when

that the faces,

they are

could be a hand

It

always seems to be the case

It

calm, perhaps mildly sur-

visible, are

of their earthly form.

prised, yet resigned to this final display

To most Americans reading the news about Colombia, massacres It is true, massacres have come to be a fre-

appear as normal as sunsets.

quent occurrence. Yet

I

The calmest time

year.

can identify certain peaks and valleys

when many Colombians

in early January,

is

take advantage of Southern

in the

Hemisphere summer by going on

vacation.

may well be that this is a false ebb and coincides mainly with the vacations so many journalists take. And November, as I said, always

It

seems particularly bad, get

out of the

it

way

as if everyone bent

on a

little

killing

wanted

to

before the holiday parties begin in earnest.

But again, there are always

parties.

Sometimes,

in

the prickly quiet of

my hotel, I hear them in the distance, the throb of music and the voices fading in as songs end. This

is

long

after

I

sleep,

when

the busses have

stopped running and the crowds of the day are gone. Parties sound alike

To my knowledge, none of the news anwith was a Miss Colombia. I imagine them as run-

no matter where you

chors

I

am

familiar

are.

ner-ups in smaller contests for Miss Pensilvania or Miss Mango. write something here about the poetics of beautiful

women

day's horrors, something evocative or insightful-beauty

and tragedy, grace and pathos. But pleasing faces before careful diction

The

I

close

my

and massacres.

eyes.

making sense of the

state of Antioquia leads

I

confess that I

Among Colombia's

could

dishing the

and death,

like

life

seeing those

hearing their clipped and

like

senseless.

Colombia

I

I

They

in

both Miss Colombias

most populous

roughly the country's throat and lungs, sucking

soothe.

states,

in the

Antioquia

Caribbean

is

at the

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

75

Gulf of Uraba, then opening wide to breathe

Magdalena River Valley west, the smaller

tioquia

in

is

it

cuts

Cauca River

Western Range, which

Although

as

it

gets

its

cuts

its

curls like a finger at

much

essence a mountain

The

lush

the Andes. Slightly

way through

rocky

the

Panama.

of its wealth from the

and jungle, An-

rivers

and abundant

state. Its difficult terrain

natural wealth have fostered a people

hard work.

own

humid and

in the

way through

known

and

for their tenacity

paisas-as people from Antioquia are known-are con-

sidered canny, avaricious, out for a fast peso.

Many

turcos settled here,

so there are Abads, Turbays, Cafarzuzas (a mangling of Kafarsouseh),

and

Ferises in the markets

coast. ter

One joke

he rubs

it,

and banks, especially along the Caribbean

has a paisa discovering a magic lantern in his yard. Af-

a genie appears and offers three wishes.

that the man's neighbor

will receive the

The only

catch

is

double of each wish. So the

him

paisa asks for a beautiful blond, a fortune, and a fright that leaves half dead.

Unusual

in Latin

America and much of the

rest

of Colombia, Antio-

quia encouraged small-scale farms, not rich and absentee landowners.

A

robust and politically engaged middle class was the

early 1900s, textile mills

drew farmers

backwater became a factory

city

result. In

to the capital, Medellin,

and

Medellin

is

now

Colombia's second-largest

city.

Among

Medellin has a reputation for business success and the to

one of Colombia's leading

one of

its

and the

financial center, playing

York to Bogota's Washington. With a population of over

New

2 million,

Colombians,

arts. It is

universities, the University

the

home

of Antioquia,

most powerful business consortiums, the Sindicato Antio-

queno, and some of its most thoughtful politicians and most interesting artists (such as the painter and sculptor Fernando Botero).

temperate climate makes frigid heights. In

the paisas

who

Medellin's government plaza, a sculpture celebrates

colonized the

on the sharp edge of a Called

it

"Monument

difficult terrain.

three-story-tall

to the Race,"

it is

ument, communicating both pride

anyone

who

stands

in

first

time

I

Human

figures are lifted

machete pointing

into the sky.

a

Colombian Vooertrekker mon-

in

paisa identity and a threat to

the way.

Medellin's reputation outside

the

Its

a refuge from the steaming lowlands and

visited,

my

Colombia

is

quite different. In 1992,

stomach clutched

as the

wheels of the

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

76

Avianca jet from Bogota touched the world's murder

lfn,

tarmac. This was, after

its

At the time, the

capital.

all,

Medel-

homicide

city's

rate

was roughly 260 murder victims per 100,000 residents. Detroitconsidered among the most violent American cities, though substantially

smaller than Medellfn-had a rate of 60 per 100,000. Medellin

home

was

also

that

dominated the trade

of the Medellin Cartel, the drug trafficking network in the 1980s.

In part, the violence brought

why

drawn them out of danger. I was children were

wondered,

live a

into

me

to Medellin.

I

hoped

to find out

and what might be done to keep

it

also appalled

by

How

it.

could people,

seemingly normal life-work, shopping,

school-in the midst of so

much bloodshed? As

I

left

I

parties,

the Avianca jet,

I

entertained fantasies of bullets zinging into the terminal, screams erupting to the screeching of the baggage claim carts. ing of the sort occurred.

My

mate was an

seat

crisp suit appropriate for a day's flight

back to Bogota.

On

Of course,

noth-

executive, dressed in a

worth of meetings and an evening

the long drive into the

city,

the trees were

the vivid green of a child's drawing. Picturesque houses-white, with red banisters across a second-floor balcony, highlighted with brilliant

pink and purple bougainvillea-nestled time, they

seemed incongruous, given the

lence, pasted in in the

air

bodies,

wakes

ruffled hair

seemed

city's

at

tourist gloss

men and women walked and trucks sped

and pressed polyester

the time to

me

At the

reputation for vio-

from some crazed tour brochure hawking

midst of danger. Slender

shoulder. Their gracefulness as cars

the

in the small hollows.

the road's

past, so close that

shirts

and

skirts to

almost as exotic as the sight of a

Kazakh horseman.

Around a fall

in a

curve, the

dream.

Who

panorama of Medellin opened

would

such a narrow, steep valley?

build a city there, Its

I

as

thought,

suddenly as a

wedged

into

skyscrapers were breathtaking, gleam-

ing white spires against the magnificent

lift

of the Andes. Along

you could buy designer labels-just the labels, mind you, carefully trimmed-to whipstitch into your shirts and pants. In the poorest neighborhoods, young men had new motorcycles and women swept their shacks with hands Medellin's shopping avenues,

I

later discovered,

laden with gold-colored rings.

That

night,

I

met some colleagues

for a drink

on the roof of the ho-

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS where

tel

I

was

77

As Pablo and

staying.

stone bowl. Night deepened, and

The

sides

its

Vicky, Medellin natives, chatted,

The

a breeze ruffled the cocktail napkins.

sides

cupped us

city

like a rhine-

melted into the

were the comunas, or slums, where most of the

stars above. killings

with the grime obscured and the want

place. Yet at a distance,

took

invisi-

they seemed adornment, a tasteful setting for the power and glam-

ble,

norm

our of Medellin \s skyscrapers. Violating the

Latin America,

in

the rich live low and the poor live high, with a stunning view of the

opulence of the

Although comuna can be translated

flats.

"com-

as

mune," what residents share generally goes no further than despera-

That desperation did not lead most comuna residents staring

tion.

down

the pools and the Ferraris and the designer clothing to hate

at

the rich.

They wanted

to

be

that

money, but staying

were quite

literally

steeper the street, the

a well of desire.

anyone could get

torcycle, virtually

getting

The

rich.

was

perate the want. Medellin

alive.

rich.

The

Money was

With

trick in

a

more

gun and

des-

mo-

a

Medellin was not

everywhere,

in quantities

impossible to comprehend.

Vicky was a lawyer and represented victims of violence. Pablo

worked

for

an organization that proposed ways to stop violence.

of Vicky's colleagues had been shot on a central Medellin sins

unknown. Pablo worked

war between the

was under

police

left

the comunas, where what he called a

and youth gangs was then

streets for

his prison (essentially a luxury retreat)

as hired killers or

of being young,

and was on the

whom

in their

run.

guilty only

it

was

virtually impossible to fell

move

in the

on house

af-

search for the fugitive Escobar. Sometimes, the dead

were unrecognizable, feet,

who

the police hunted as representatives of a poi-

because of the dozens of police roadblocks. Police

house

city

by the

part in the violence

gang members. Others were young men

soned generation. At night,

ter

The

drug trafficker Pablo Escobar,

Most of the dead were young men. Some took

city

at its peak.

a kind of military siege, as the authorities backed

United States scoured the

had

in

Two

street, assas-

their faces

burned with acid and their

fingers,

and teeth removed.

Yet on top of that hotel, sipping cool drinks,

we were

not sur-

rounded by war journalists or disaster aid professionals or missions of church people

who had come

one of the world's trouble

out of the goodness of their hearts to

spots.

There was laughter and low

talk,

a

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

78

beautiful dress, lovers secreted in a dark corner of the poolside dining area.

I

remember the marvelous

me

to the

city.

In

for the surrender

and

is

my journal,

I

that surrounded us, the

what had brought

wrote that night: "Everyone

I

arrived, the

main bodyguard had surrendered.

two of his bodyguards were had more than

bowl

did talk about

waiting

is

of Pablo Escobar, but a tension prevails as he hunts

When

hunted.

sparkling

Of course, we

whisper of the breeze.

fifty

town was

A

day

of the news that

full

later, after

his

being released,

shot right here in Medellin.

The

bodies

bullet holes apiece."

Pablo Escobar was born near Medellin. After he became the world's most infamous drug trafficker-and

among

the richest

myth of a poor upbringing, part of a campaign to win sympathy and a permanent

men on

the planet-he peddled a

sophisti-

cated, brutal

place in

Colombian

politics.

But

it

wasn't true. Escobar wasn't raised in a

muna, but was part of Medellfn's middle fathers, his, a farmer,

teacher.

She

was

class.

Like

usually absent. His mother, Hermilda,

raised the family of seven pretty

Hermilda gave her children a

classic

co-

many Colombian

much on

was a

her own.

Colombian upbringing of strict

and spirit-haunted Catholicism, an emphasis on school, and a hunger for status, if only

fancier house.

through a better quality of shirt, a late-model

Obeying the law was

circumstances required. nal grandfather.

He had

home brew known used empty coffins

been tricked into stash.

was

They

Hermilda on the

set

by Escobar's mater-

profits

of a Colombian

To smuggle it past the authorities, he and hollowed eggs. As a girl, Hermilda had once

letting police into the

house to search

making

was soon smuggling more than

for the tapetusa

a deal with police,

mother taught school during the day and shopped, cooked, sewed

them with

all

at night

how

his

cleaned the house,

of their clothes, and did the wash, provid-

"simple, but very clean clothes." Yet a thread of larceny

and desire runs through even Pablo was sent

he

ever.

In his memoirs, Escobar's eldest brother, Roberto, recalled

ing

if

as tapetusa.

arrested her father. But after

released and

or a

preferable, but definitely optional

The example had been raised

car,

home from

this familiar tale.

Once, Roberto wrote,

school because he had gone without shoes.

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

79

Hermilda's paycheck as a teacher always arrived a pair of shoes from a

two

late.

So she shoplifted

She inadvertently brought home

local merchant.

however. Crushed, she confessed to a

different sizes,

priest,

who

counseled her to return the shoes. Understanding her motivation, the

merchant found her the correct

The

and sold them on

was simple but was repeated often

lesson

hood-having ities

size

money was no

little

in

credit.

Escobar's child-

The authorTo remedy this

excuse for looking poor.

agreed. In Medellfn, appearance

half the battle.

is

lamentable situation, the authorities would cut deals, even with God.

Escobar followed

in his grandfather's footsteps

by smuggling

and household appliances picked up

rettes, liquor, clothing,

ciga-

the

at

paisa port of Turbo on Colombia's Caribbean coast. In the 1970s,

Colombia was awash American

It

was

trade brought in so

many

government authorized the Bank of the Re-

of Federal Reserve, to begin exchanging them for

public, a kind

Colombian

The

in marijuana.

dollars that the

pesos,

no questions asked.

who

a friend Roberto called "Cockroach" (Cucaracho)

told

the Escobars about a better business-cocaine. At the time, the coca

bushes used to manufacture cocaine were concentrated per Huallaga Valley and Bolivia's Chapare region. a

dwarf Yaupon

mark the

holly.

transition

and harvested

it

flourishes

It

in Peru's

The bush

on the slopes of the

Up-

looks like

forests that

from mountain to jungle. In Peru, farmers grew

themselves, ripping the leaves from the branches with

a single pull from trunk to

tip.

After a day's worth of work, their hands

and the hands of their wives and children and the boys hired to help out would be green from the alkaloid sap that contains cocaine. Yet

even

if

a harvester licked the sap, there

activate, the alkaloid

would be no cocaine

must be paired with a

limestone or ash. In Peru, highland dwellers into the

mouth with the

used the leaves hunger. Coca

is

the

To

crumb of

llipta,

inserted

dried leaves. For centuries, highlanders have

in religious

chewed

catalyst, like a

call this

rush.

ceremonies and as a

like

way

tobacco, then spit out

to dull fatigue

when

the

and

chaw

is

through.

The Escobars were

after

more than

leaves.

For decades, farmers had

been able to process leaves for their alkaloid content and produce a

powder

Once

that could

be further refined

the leaves are gathered

in sacks,

for export to the

the farmers take

United

them

States.

to crude

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH

80

made of wood and

"kitchens" in the forest. In vats cocineros,

or cooks,

them

stir

is

feet.

After each stage, the effluent

is

Men

them with

the leaves like rustic vintners crush grapes, tramping

bare

black plastic,

into a series of chemical stews.

stir

their

poured off and the sediment

further refined.

On

what Escobar bought was the raw cocaine,

his first trip,

pasta bdsica, or

dense as a cake of brown sugar.

base, as

It

was

called

easier to

haul than appliances or the fragrant bales of marijuana. What's more,

promised fabulous

profits.

Escobar bought a truck

ioned a cargo area under the

mud

raw cocaine grown and refined Colombia.

He was

flaps.

in

As

a

test,

in

it

Peru and fash-

he drove a

kilo

of

Peru across three borders into

not caught or even questioned. Within a couple of

months, he was bringing across twenty larger vehicles with

and had to buy

kilos per trip

more room.

Roberto said that he and Pablo further refined the pasta bdsica

in

Roberto's Medellin house, using old refrigerators they refashioned into

rudimentary ovens to leach out the brown impurities and crystallize finished white cocaine.

white

salt that is

Commercial-grade cocaine hydrochloride

is

a

between 65 to j$ percent pure. The deadly crack is in the United States; dealers take the cocaine

manufactured entirely

powder and cook tracts the lit,

with baking soda and water, a process that ex-

when

it is

name. The vapor that users inhale through a

cig-

hydrochloride molecule.

giving the drug

arette or pipe

more

it

is

a

its

full

The rock

and highly addictive dose of pure cocaine. Using

volatile chemicals, the process

similar,

residue crackles

known

as freebasing

produces a

pure cocaine.

Pablo and Roberto would wrap the cocaine in blocks, mark their "brand,"

and pack

it

into suitcases with false

it

with

bottoms. Couriers

known as "mules" hauled it to the United States on commercial flights. The profits in dollars w ould return in those same suitcases, $60,000 per T

kilo.

Roberto's dreams of becoming a professional bicycle racer were

soon overshadowed by

his

new

talents for refining

and wholesaling

cocaine. In 1976, Roberto recalled, Pablo

was

arrested and charged with pos-

session of raw cocaine hidden in the spare tire of a truck. prison,

he

fled

when

seize him. Until 1987,

Moved

to a

he thought the Colombian army was about to

Colombian

civilians

could be prosecuted by the

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS by General Camacho. That day, Roberto

military, a legacy left

Hermilda got

81

made

to her that Escobar's escape ately,

my mother called Pablo

prison. Pablo

From

and

was dismissed

explained

his legal situation worse.

"Immedi-

and she personally took him back

to the

always did what our mother ordered us to do."

I

Escobar finessed and bribed

his cell,

said,

He

from the prison warden.

a telephone call

for lack

his

way

The

out.

case

of evidence. Then Escobar turned his attention

men he believed had

As his mother had in the incident of the mismatched shoes, Escobar made a deal with the authorities and got what he wanted. The killing part was his innovation on what was by then a distinctive family style. Even other traffickers were afraid of him. In an interview with the Public Broadcasting series Frontline, fellow trafficker Jorge Ochoa said to killing the

turned him

in.

that Escobar's violent streak surprised him. "Frankly,

and many other people

us,

dated everyone.

it

.

.

.

He

us,

He

and Bogota.

in Medellfn, Cali,

wasn't just

It

the United States.

he intimidated

but the rest of Colombia and

thought that whatever he wanted

is

should be done, and he didn't ask anyone for an opinion.

do

take anyone into account to

By 198 1, Escobar had was

killed

intimiall

the

He

didn't

this or that."

and threatened

his

king, El Patron, the Boss. Before him, people

way

had

to the top.

and more:

that

At

first,

a lot

theirs.

for

Escobar was an innovator.

He

He

Colom-

killed in

bia for a cause, for loyalty, out of anger, for vengeance, to protect

they thought was

of

way

what

killed for all

money.

Roberto

said, it

hardly even felt like crime.

It

took

of work to navigate the treacherous Andean roads, then cook the

cocaine.

Anyway,

was the

it

gringos, the

Americans, getting high, not

Colombians. For himself, Escobar preferred marijuana. The Ochoas drank scotch and

fine wines.

The

the gringos was an extra, like the profits

seem

other way.

like free

lemon

twist

Patron was sticking

on a

cocktail.

It

it

made

to

the

money. Colombian police and judges looked the

Or they were

history in Medellin,

fact that El

in

on

it.

Smuggling has a long and

illustrious

and what was being smuggled-/tf/>