Short Walks from Bogotá: Journeys in the new Colombia

by Feiling, Tom

  From the landing strip, we were taken past rows of armed Sikorsky and Black Hawk helicopters and the tiny Turbo Thrush planes used to fumigate the coca fields. Once inside the heavily barricaded Army base, the British delegates had a chance to put their concerns to the colonel of the battalion. They wanted to know why trade unionists, community leaders and members of the local peasants’ association in Saravena were being killed. The families of the victims claimed that the Army was working in concert with local paramilitaries to ‘drain the pond’ in which the guerrillas swam. It was classic Vietnam-era counter-insurgency theory, as taught at the US Army’s School of the Americas and practised by its graduates in Central and South America ever since.

  The colonel nodded solemnly. ‘Perhaps a song might better express what I’d like to say,’ he suggested. A young man with a bandana around his head and a guitar in his hand came into the room, adjusted his mic stand and proceeded to treat us to a ballad, which I translated for the delegates in a respectful whisper. The song lamented the futility of war, the endless suffering of the Colombian people and their enduring dream of peace. ‘Peace one day,’ he crooned, before making a deep bow and leaving the room. The MPs clapped politely and exchanged worried looks. The gall of the Colombian Ministry of Defence, in donning the garb of peacemaker while engaging in a bloody counter-insurgency campaign against local people, was lost on none of them.

  Colombian politicians do a lot of hand-wringing when foreigners start asking difficult questions. Following Álvaro Uribe’s election to the Colombian presidency in 2002, trade unionists and elected representatives on both sides of the Atlantic drew attention to the horrendous repression being meted out to Colombian civil society by its Army and paramilitaries. The Colombian government was negotiating free-trade agreements with the United States and the European Union at the time, and was anxious to reassure them that the matter was in hand. Uribe said that ‘not one more trade unionist will be killed’; during his eight years in office, 500 trade unionists were murdered.

  Equally mindful of placating foreign critics, President Santos has also tried to draw a line under past atrocities, insisting that those responsible will be brought to justice and that trade unionists’ lives will be respected and protected. As ever, the rhetoric has been more encouraging than the reality; forty-eight trade unionists were murdered in Colombia in 2010 and it remains the most dangerous country in the world to exercise democratic labour rights.* The paramilitaries aren’t alone in tarring all the government’s opponents with the same brush: the Army, police and many local politicians instinctively regard unionized teachers, nurses and campesinos as subversivos too. The FARC’s military offensive doesn’t help, nor does their strategy of combining ‘todas las formas de lucha’, which has only made it easier for the paramilitaries to lump the trade unions in with the FARC.

  This blurring of the distinction between military target and unarmed protester has resisted all clarification to this day. Over the past twenty-five years, Colombian civil society has suffered a near-genocidal persecution. Hardest hit have been the trade unions. Nearly 3,000 of them have been ‘disappeared’ or murdered since 1985, a cull that has prompted little concern from the government, as shown by the fact that in less than one in ten cases has the killer been brought to justice.†

  I spent several years monitoring human rights abuses in Colombia for the TUC’s Justice for Colombia campaign. When Colombian trade union leaders, journalists and community activists travelled to Blackpool, Bournemouth and Scarborough to address conference delegates, I translated their descriptions of the death threats and bulletproof cars that had become part of their daily lives. I sent letters to British ministers, in which I pointed out that the Colombian government routinely imprisons its opponents on trumped-up charges of ‘rebellion’. I collated statistics to show the extent of the Army’s collusion with paramilitary units, and compiled graphs that showed that on many counts, human rights abuses in Colombia far exceed those committed in Burma, Iran or Zimbabwe.

  The British Ministry of Defence wrote back with assurances. Of course, allegations of human rights abuses by a friendly government were of great concern, which was why the MoD was teaching Colombian soldiers ‘the rules of engagement’, the first of which was respect for the distinction between armed insurgents and unarmed civilians. There was talk of ‘putting pressure’ on their Colombian counterparts and the importance of ‘positive engagement’. But this was as close as I was allowed to get. Like the Pentagon, the MoD supplies military aid to the Colombian Army, most of which is spent on cloudy ‘counter-insurgency training’ and ‘counter-narcotics training’. Little distinction is made between the two; there is no parliamentary oversight and no accountability.

  Reducing British connivance in the Colombian government’s dirty war to grubby money would be a crude simplification, but it can be no coincidence that the UK is the second largest foreign investor in Colombia. Its oil companies in particular have made significant investments in the country; were it not for the guerrilla presence in the llanos, they’d be making a lot more.

  The British government has long regarded Colombia as an ally. In May 2011, Tony Blair flew into Bogotá to receive the Order of Boyacá. President Santos called it ‘a sign of our gratitude for all that you have done and continue to do for us’. Blair had strengthened Colombia’s foreign policy, Santos said, and was ‘a good ambassador for Colombia’. Blair returned the lauding, saying that the Santos government was ‘a dependable ally for those who believe in democracy’, and ‘enjoyed a great reputation abroad’.*

  Tony Blair seemed well aware of the Colombian elite’s boundless appetite for foreign flatterers, which goes hand in hand with a haughty dismissal of foreign critics. According to its own interpretation of the conflict, the Colombian government is struggling to prevent their country becoming a Marxist state. Of course, the concerns of the Dutch and Swedish ambassadors are always listened to and the annual report of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights makes for predictably uncomfortable reading. But ultimately, talk of human rights abuses is a naïve, and at times disingenuous, distraction. The Colombian government is at war with fundamentalists of its own. It is a war it cannot afford to lose: a 200-year-old tradition of democratic government is at stake.

  A leaked report prepared by the DAS (Colombia’s internal security service) in 2005 offers a telling insight into the reality of Colombia’s ‘war on terror’. The report asserted that as well as ‘defending democracy and the nation’, one of the duties of the security services was to ‘create consciousness about the consequences of a communist system’. It went on to list ways of eliminating political opponents, including sabotage, blackmail and terrorism.

  The DAS had just about every one of the government’s critics in its sights. Operation Amazonas was a planned smear campaign against the Constitutional Court and the leaders of ‘political parties opposing the state’. Since the only opposition party worthy of the name in 2005 was the Democratic Pole, they must have been thinking of Carlos Gaviria, a respected former judge, nicknamed Father Christmas for his white beard and fatherly countenance. He was to be dealt with by ‘generating ties to the FARC’.

  Piedad Córdoba, a Liberal Party senator and long-time thorn in Álvaro Uribe’s side, was to be discredited by ‘generating ties to the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC)’. Someone at the DAS had drawn a question mark next to this proposal, which is no surprise: having been kidnapped by paramilitaries in 1999, Córdoba was hardly likely to be hobnobbing with them. Nonetheless, five years after the report was drafted, the DAS got their woman: Córdoba was barred from office for ‘giving advice to the FARC’.

  Among the DAS’s other targets were ‘NGOs in Colombia and around the world’. There was even a plan for ‘Operation Foreigners’, by which DAS agents were to find ways to smear organizations such as the TUC’s Justice for Colombia campaign by ‘establishing their links to narco-trafficking organizations and putting them on trial’.*
The government’s spooks seemed to consider the very idea of a legal opposition an oxymoron.

  But their violent intolerance of dissenters isn’t confined to Colombia. On the day before Christmas Eve came news that Jorge Videla, the former dictator of Argentina, had been given a life sentence. Videla told the jury that he accepted responsibility for the terror campaigns orchestrated against the left while he was president between 1976 and 1983. His government had ‘waged a just war’ against terrorism, he said. In his defence he claimed to have acted to prevent a greater tragedy – the transformation of Argentina from a conservative, Christian society to a Marxist state. Luciano Menéndez, another of the many former generals sentenced that day, remarked that if they hadn’t waged that war, Argentina would still be wrestling with the problems that Colombia faces today. Before he was led away to the cells, Menéndez had a parting shot for the press pack. ‘Democracy gives dignity to the citizenry,’ he declared. ‘But you need dignified citizens.’†

  Wherever I had been in Colombia, the desire to live con dignidad – with dignity – was a recurrent plea. Perhaps this is nothing new in Latin America, whose people have long been inspired by the highest ideals, yet still live with the humiliation of endemic poverty, corruption and violence. The continent’s ‘wars on terror’ have always been waged against its own people.

  But the generals’ defence of their ‘just war’ has implications that resonate far beyond Latin America. If the rejection of terrorism is to be a pillar of global foreign policy post 9/11, politicians should be clear about what the word means. The FARC and the ELN are not the only terrorists in Colombia. The country’s army, in cahoots with its paramilitaries, has been terrorizing its people for the past thirty-five years, to a degree that puts the guerrillas in the shade. The Colombian government has never objected to terrorism per se; what they object to are the ‘enemies of the state’, who sometimes, but far from always, take up arms against it. The distinction between enemy and unarmed opponent has gone unacknowledged for too long. Until that distinction is made and respected, Colombia’s trade unionists, journalists and teachers will always be dealt the same hand as its guerrillas, and Colombia, far from being a bastion of good government, will remain ‘a genocidal democracy’.*

  My friend Deisy had invited me to the Café Pasaje in Plaza del Rosario, where she and her workmates were planning to have a party before going home to their families for Christmas Day. On my way down to the square, I met up with Ricardo, who I hadn’t seen since the communion party at his Uncle Alejandro’s house. He’d grown a scraggly beard while I’d been out of town and was wearing a tracksuit with stripes in the African colours, which made him look like the lovechild of Che Guevara and Bob Marley. He told me that his mother had finally tired of having a 37-year-old son living at home, so he had moved around the corner to his cousin’s house, where he slept on a mattress in the garage.

  There was fresh graffiti in the Journalists Park. The words were in English, as if meant for the outside world – ‘Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear’ it read. Ricardo and I had come across acres of street art on our walks around Bogotá. Much of it was just tags, left on soot-blackened shop fronts in the city centre, but there were also fantastic murals – of birds with eight eyes, police officers with the teeth of piranhas, and solitary old men with beating red hearts hidden under their raincoats – that stood as testament to the creativity at work in the frustrated city. A tramp with a hessian sack on his back stopped alongside us to read the Christmas message. Some kindly soul had given him a large slice of cake on a paper plate. The pink and blue of the icing practically glowed amidst the browns and greys of his clothes.

  In the Plaza Simón Bolívar, the mayor had installed an ice rink for the Christmas holidays. From the square down to the Parque de la Independencia, Avenida Séptima was decked out in lights. Under them wandered bogotano families, who tucked into skewers of chargrilled diced beef with roasted and salted new potatoes, blackened corn-on-the-cob, candyfloss, and plastic cups of pineapple, papaya and mango. They gathered to watch a human statue of a golden angel with huge wings, who was standing on a junction box outside the church of San Francisco. Two clowns teetered through the crowds on stilts, and outside the offices of El Tiempo a contortionist vied with a belly dancer for the crowd’s attention.

  Bogotanos in the north of the city might have been stocking up on Wii consoles and iPhones, but for the most part the custom of buying presents for everyone in the family didn’t exist. The Davivienda bank had sponsored the illuminations in the Parque El Virrey, probably because their best-heeled customers lived up that way, but that aside, the corporations left Christmas well alone. For most bogotanos, Christmas Day meant no more and no less than an evening meal with the family.

  As Ricardo and I came into Plaza del Rosario, we passed a young man sitting on the pavement with his head in his hands. It was one of the few times I’d seen signs of grief in all the time I’d been in Colombia. In a country that has lived through so much murder, I’d expected to see more tears. I must have passed hundreds of hit men, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and corrupt officials on the street or sipping coffee with their friends at the local café. I wished I could spot some telltale sign, but their crimes didn’t seem to mark their faces.

  Instead, just like the Coca-Cola jingle had said, this was a land of smiling faces. Ever since hearing that Colombians are the third happiest people in the world, I had been trying to square the circle. Measuring happiness seems as tricky as putting a pin on smoke, but if the Happy Planet Index is to be believed, Colombians haven’t been dented by tragedy.

  Deisy’s workmates greeted Ricardo and me as if we were old friends. Rum was poured into little plastic cups, our health was toasted, and down the shots went. It was only four in the afternoon, but the dance floor was already packed. If I’d been in a bar in London, people would have been talking, not dancing. No nightclub opened at four in the afternoon – and even if they had, they’d be playing trance or electronica, the soundtrack to a long night drive under the motorway’s glowing sulphur lamps. But the DJ in the Café Pasaje was playing a salsa version of ‘Let It Be’. By some miracle, the Beatles’ melancholy ballad had become an up-tempo celebration of enlightened resignation. It was raucous puro salsa, a cacophony of sounds, led by a bold male voice that rang out clear and strong. The Brazilian singer Gilberto Gil once likened samba to the swagger of one who has negotiated a muddy puddle and still kept his white patent-leather shoes spotless. The same might be said of salsa, the soundtrack to a walk through the potholed lanes of the barrio.

  When we were ready for a break from dancing, I couldn’t help asking Deisy how such a traumatized country could seem so happy. As I thought, she didn’t want to talk about it. She admitted that Colombians weren’t much inclined to dwell on their problems. Everyone had been touched by the violence, she told me; there were no winners or heroes in the Colombian story, unless you counted the survivors. It was best to have a drink and a dance and get on with it.

  Liliana had just come back to Bogotá after a year of travelling around Latin America. Her time abroad had made her more critical of her compatriots. Compassion counts for less in Colombia than it does in other Latin American countries, she told me. ‘Look at the way we treat the millions of people who have been displaced by the fighting.’ There was a sneer playing around her mouth, but also a sadness born of frustration. ‘Colombians have learnt to keep smiling, because no one is going to pay them any attention if they don’t.’

  Liliana’s assessment was a brutal one, but it was borne out by the Happy Planet Index, which shows that some of the world’s happiest countries are also amongst its most violent. At the top of the list are Jamaica and El Salvador. Poverty, corruption and general insecurity top the list of popular concerns in both countries, as they do in Colombia. Domestic violence, street violence and political violence are high in all three, and yet people report being happier with their lot than most Europeans do.

  I asked Giova
nny how he squared violence and happiness. ‘I think you have to be a bit stupid to be happy,’ he told me. ‘By stupid, I mean fatalistic, ignorant of your rights and deferential to the powerful.’ His home department of Chocó is the poorest in the country. The way he saw it, the poverty that his family lived in was a cage, yet their lack of freedom only fuelled their happiness. ‘Everything conspires to favour those who bend with the wind, like reeds,’ he said. Those who deferred to the powerful felt no personal responsibility for the circumstances that bound their lives. They had stifled Giovanny, which is why he lived in Bogotá, but the rest of his family regarded them as a source of security. Within the confines of their neighbourhood, there was a lot of room for movement. ‘They might defer to the powerful, but among those as powerless as themselves, they assert themselves to the full.’

  After years of widespread insecurity, it should come as no surprise that as well as being among the happiest people on the planet, Colombians are also among the least trusting.* Outside the circles of family and friends, most people are not to be trusted. This makes the family more important than in countries where people feel safe enough to venture into the company of strangers. Spending time with members of your family requires you to show great tolerance for the expectations and demands of others. It also means sacrificing a lot of freedom, in return for which you get great security. ‘But feeling secure doesn’t take up much of your attention,’ Giovanny said, ‘so my family spends a lot of time watching the TV together. Living in the countryside, there isn’t much else to do.’