by Austin Galt
After the pat-down revealed I wasn’t carrying any weapons or other items of interest, the jefe began to interrogate me. He first asked what I was doing in Colombia. In my limited Spanish I explained I was just travelling around South America. While my Spanish wasn’t great, I tried to make it sound even worse with the goal to appear as a know-nothing, non-threatening tourist.
He knew the bus was destined for Cali and he asked why I was going there. I explained my final destination was Bogotá with Cali just a stopover point. He asked the question a couple more times which I found curious.
‘Por qué Cali?’ he would repeat. Why Cali? I kept stressing it was on the way to Bogotá. I even used hand movements to describe the map I had in my head of where Cali was situated in relation to Bogotá. He demanded more information on my future movements within the country, and I told him I was then going to the Amazon city of Leticia to get on board a boat and travel upriver into Brazil. That was a lie but I knew it sounded very backpacker-ish. It was certainly not a typical itinerary for an undercover operative which I suspect is what they were looking for.
His unfriendly manner had me on edge and I started to think this could well be where my Colombian adventure ended. After about 10 minutes, which seemed like an eternity, he said I was free to go, much to my relief. Before I boarded the bus the subordinate who had originally questioned me returned to my side. His smiling face was a welcome change to that of his boss and he asked me, ‘Cómo estás?’
How am I? I thought to myself. It’s my first day in Colombia and I’ve already run into you creeps.
‘Bien,’ I replied. Well. I kept my thoughts safely to myself.
As I finally boarded the bus, the driver and several passengers smiled at me and we all knew that luck had run my way as things could have quite easily gone south. If my passport had said I was American then, with Plan Colombia in full effect, I may not have been so lucky. Never have I been more grateful to be an Aussie.
We were off again but my adrenalin was still pumping. The next stop was Popayán and I would return to this city in the near future. For now, I wanted to get to Cali and relax after what had already become an exhausting trip, both physically and mentally. It took another few hours before we pulled into the bus terminal at Cali late in the day. It was an eventful trip but the action had only just begun.
2
COLD SHOWERS, HOT WOMEN
Cali is, as they say, ‘Where the showers are cold and the women are hot’. Located in the Cauca Valley and bordered by the Cauca River to the east and the Farallones de Cali mountain range to the west, it is also the third largest city in Colombia and the capital of Valle del Cauca state.
I made my way to the Calidad hostel, located conveniently near Avenida Sexta or Sixth Avenue which is the nightlife zone, known as the zona rosa or pink zone. That’s where the hot women can be found.
Upon my arrival at the hostel, one of the guests opened the door to reveal a nice airy lounge area where a few other backpackers were relaxing and chatting over some beers. That looked appealing. I organised a room, had a cold and refreshing shower, and joined in.
Dave, the owner, was an Englishman from the Jersey Islands and an avid fan of the Liverpool football club. He had married a Colombian girl who also helped manage the hostel – although any time a football match involving Liverpool was on television she could forget about any help from Dave.
Some of the guys had plans to head out. It was a Friday and, while I was a little tired from the day’s journey, I thought I should probably head out as well. And so I did. With the night sky came an air of excitement, of danger as I plunged myself into the unknown. It was my first night out in the country, and in a city known as one of the great organised crime capitals of the world. I had no idea what to expect.
There was a plethora of bars to choose from, each with their lights flashing and music pumping, but the guys had a couple spots in mind which they said were the places to be on Friday nights. It was all new to me and so I happily followed their lead. The first was a Jamaican-themed bar in the Chipichape shopping mall. I had noticed on the hostel’s noticeboard there were some photos and information, titled ‘The girls of Chipichape’, about where visitors could see and perhaps even meet some of the city’s reputed beautiful women. Ok, let’s give it a go.
We snapped up a spare table and ordered a jarra de cerveza or jug of beer. Reggae music played and we kicked back and enjoyed the beautiful evening as well-heeled shoppers went about their business. With many designer stores located in the outdoor mall, it was certainly a good spot to admire las chicas de Chipichape.
The night was getting on and we decided it was time to make our way to the next establishment: a trendy pub in a nearby upscale area. By the time we arrived it was already 10 pm and the place was packed, with standing room only. We settled in a corner and ordered a round of beers as popular music from the 1990s played. There weren’t many other foreigners there with the place mostly full of locals aged in their 20s.
I spotted a beautiful girl talking to a couple of her friends. She had long brown hair and a fit and curvy body. She seemed the quintessential Latina or Latin woman. I caught her eye and she smiled back. I moved in to say hello. I began talking to her in Spanish but she said she spoke English so that was preferable. Without many foreigners visiting the country, many Colombians enjoyed the opportunity to practise their English with the few foreigners who did actually make it there.
Her name was Sofia and we chatted the rest of the night away. She was in her mid-20s and only a year younger than I was. It was to be the beginning of a brief three-month love affair that could have easily turned into something more if the timing had been right. With a kiss, we parted ways for the evening and I returned to the hostel for a good night’s sleep. I was back to having a good feeling about the country.
*
At the time of my arrival in Colombia, the country was led by Andrés Pastrana. He became the 30th president of Colombia on 7 August 1998 with a mandate to negotiate peace with the FARC. They laid out the welcome mat for him by attacking an army battalion a week later in the western state of Chocó killing 42 soldiers and kidnapping 21 of them.
The army had been looking to rescue several soldiers who had been kidnapped a week and a half earlier after an attack on a nearby refugee camp. The guerrillas had recently been pushed out of the area by both the Colombian military and right-wing paramilitaries and, after receiving reinforcements, were attempting to retake parts of the region. In what became known as the Battle of Tamborales, about 150 soldiers came into contact with around 600 FARC guerrillas. They weren’t expecting so many. They had to retreat but were still able to kill approximately 60 guerrillas despite their own losses.
Back in 1988, while running to become the Mayor of Bogotá, Andrés Pastrana was kidnapped on orders from Medellín Cartel boss Pablo Escobar who was railing against the extradition of drug lords to the United States. He was released a week later and elected mayor shortly after. The experience allowed him to empathise with the victims of the FARC’s own terror campaign.
Pastrana commenced peace talks with the guerrillas on 7 January 1999. His attempt at peace didn’t begin well. He was to meet in the town of San Vicente del Caguán with FARC supreme leader, Manuel Marulanda. However, Marulanda didn’t show up, using the excuse that he had been warned of a possible assassination attempt against him. This left the Colombian president sitting alone at the negotiation table with no partner for peace. Video footage of a solitary Pastrana was beamed across television screens around the country. The image spoke volumes about the FARC’s commitment to any real agreement for peace.
One of the prerequisites for the peace talks was for the military to pull out of a Switzerland-sized piece of land in south-central Colombia. This demilitarised zone was called the El Caguán DMZ, while it was known more colloquially as Farclandia. It comprised an area of 42,000 square kilometres in the departments or states of Caquetá and Meta which was already a FARC stron
ghold.
Now, with no military threats to contend with, they used the opportunity to gain in strength and reach the peak of their powers. By the turn of the century, it was estimated the FARC’s fighting force had grown to at least 17,000, while kidnappings by left-wing guerrillas skyrocketed during that period.
In February 1999, three US environmental activists were kidnapped and killed by FARC guerrillas in Arauca state. They were in the region to protest with the U’wa indigenous people against the drilling for oil by Occidental Petroleum. The bullet-riddled bodies of Terence Freitas, Laheenae Gay and Ingrid Washinawatok were found a week later dumped on the other side of the Arauca River in Venezuelan territory. They had each been blindfolded and tied up with signs of torture. Occidental Petroleum subsequently abandoned their exploratory activities in 2002, stating the project was economically unfeasible.
Despite the good intentions of the government in seeking peace, the FARC continued terrorising the country. They became even more brazen and announced they would increase their extortion and kidnapping activities. In February 2000, the FARC drafted a decree, known as ‘Ley 002’ or ‘Law 002’, stating anyone with assets worth over $1 million would be targeted. Those who didn’t pay a tribute would be kidnapped.
They attacked civilian populations suspected of having paramilitary ties such as those from Puerto Saldaña. In April 2000, over 200 guerrillas converged on the small town in the mountains of Tolima state, bombarding it with cylinder bombs and killing anyone they came across. Among the more than two dozen people slaughtered were seven children while more than 200 properties were damaged or destroyed.
A new terror method involving a collar bomb was also attributed to the guerrillas. However, this was later thought to be a false-flag operation aimed at derailing the peace talks. In May 2000, Elvia Cortés, a 53-year-old woman from the rural municipality of Chiquinquirá in Boyacá state, was startled early one morning when four men arrived at her farm and fitted a collar bomb around her neck. They demanded an extortion payment and gave her a few more hours to come up with the money. Otherwise, they would detonate the bomb remotely.
Elvia alerted her neighbours who called the police and bomb experts soon arrived on the scene. Police and neighbours gathered around as a bomb expert tried to remove the device. Elvia was distraught and in shock. The horrible ordeal began at 4 am and she knew it could end badly at any time. At 12.35 pm, the bomb suddenly exploded. Elvia was blown to bits. The bomb expert who was working on the device at the time of the explosion also died.
This vile act of terror caused President Pastrana to cancel the next round of peace negotiations set for the end of the month. If it was indeed a false-flag operation then it had its intended effect. There were certainly many people opposed to the peace process, including the right-wing paramilitaries who kidnapped the brother of the government’s chief negotiator in June 2000 in order to convey their dissatisfaction with the talks.
It wasn’t their first or last expression of opposition to the negotiations. In the three days following the commencement of talks, the paramilitaries had killed close to 140 people accused of having links to the guerrillas. A similar offensive took place in October 2001 which was likely in response to the continuation of the El Caguán DMZ. The first 10 days of the month saw the paramilitaries kill another 140 people suspected of being in the service of the guerrillas. And unlike the government, the paramilitaries didn’t respect the demilitarised zone with several victims killed inside its border.
Plan Colombia would help to curtail the FARC’s advance. The original draft of the plan focused on the root causes of the conflict, such as economic inequality and poverty, and suggested a fairly even distribution of money between military aid and development aid. However, with American input, the final plan focused more heavily on military aid in order to combat the guerrillas and drug trafficking. This new hardline plan was advocated by several Democrat policymakers respected for their foreign policy knowledge, such as Senator Joseph Biden.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was already in the country having established an intelligence network in 1991. It was focused on both the communist guerrillas and drug cartels. However, eliminating communists has always taken precedence over drugs – communism has, after all, killed many more people than has cocaine. It has been alleged that the right-wing paramilitaries also received covert support as part of their so-called ‘dirty war’.
Controversy surrounded some parts of Plan Colombia, including aerial fumigation of coca plantations using the herbicide, glyphosate. Not only does glyphosate eradicate coca plants, it harms legal crops and causes long-lasting environmental damage. Health problems also arose such as skin and respiratory ailments. Not to be outdone, the campesinos or peasants who maintained the coca plantations, known as cocaleros, developed a new type of coca plant that was not only resistant to glyphosate, but produced more leaves. It is known as Boliviana negra or Black Bolivian.
Another controversial part of the program was compensation for the bodies of dead guerrillas. This eventually led to a major scandal known as ‘falsos positivos’ or ‘false positives’ which were extrajudicial killings carried out by some Colombian military officers. Thousands of mostly poor citizens were killed under this scheme between 2002 and 2008, although there have been reports of killings dating back to the 1990s. After being killed, citizens would be dressed up as guerrillas with weapons placed beside them.
Pressure was brought to bear on army brigades to produce results. That is, dead guerrilla combatants. For their efforts, soldiers allegedly received cash bonuses, vacations and promotions. This has been denied by the Colombian government. The scandal hit the headlines in 2008 after it was revealed about 20 youths from the lower-class municipality of Soacha on the southern outskirts of Bogotá were promised jobs before turning up dead shortly after in the north of the country having been declared as dead guerrillas. A recruiter subsequently testified he was paid $500 for each victim he passed on to the military.
Not all soldiers willingly took part in these atrocities in order to boost kill numbers. In fact, a whole anti-guerrilla unit from northern Colombia was allegedly fired from the army for not making enough kills. One of the soldiers later said, ‘What happened to us occurred in a time of the army where to be good was to be bad.’ While over 800 low-ranking soldiers have been sent to jail, no high-ranking officers have been convicted. It is, however, considered unlikely that subordinates would carry out such crimes of their own accord.
The introduction of Plan Colombia didn’t go down well with the country’s left-wing guerrillas who viewed it as imperial aggression. Instead of running and hiding, they retaliated by attacking police and military forces in the town of Dabeiba in Antioquia state. The battle took place between 18 and 20 October 2000 and was the bloodiest combat the army had seen in over two years. More than 50 members of the government’s security forces were killed, including those on board a Black Hawk helicopter brought down by the guerrillas. For their part, the guerrillas were estimated to have lost a few dozen fighters.
The launch of Plan Colombia would coincide with the peak of the guerrilla movement, but it certainly wouldn’t be the end of it.
*
It was a lazy day and I was content to just chill out at the hostel. After lunch the temperature really began to heat up. Most days the temperature passes 30 degrees Celsius and it’s not that pleasant to be outside. However during the late afternoon, perhaps around 4.30 pm or so, a beautiful and refreshing breeze sweeps in and cools the city down. That’s when the streets start to fill up as the caleños, as people from Cali are called, come out to play.
I decided to head down to a tienda or grocery store about a block away with one of the guys to grab a beer. The shop was very small but there were two tables where customers could sit. One table was taken by three local Caucasian men who were also drinking beer. We acknowledged each other politely and sat down to order.
‘Dos cervezas Poker, por favour,’ I sai
d to the old man who ran the store. Two Poker beers, please. Poker is one of the most popular brands of beer in Cali but hard to find in other parts of Colombia. It’s a light beer and easy to drink, especially in hot climates, and it helped to while away the afternoon.
I’d settled into a bit of a routine, catching up with Sofia most days either after work or during her lunchbreak. She and her family had arrived in Cali a decade earlier after fleeing the violence in her home town, situated an hour drive to the north of the city. She was still just a teenager when her father was killed by FARC guerrillas after failing to pay extortion. She now lived with her mother and brother not far from where I was staying.
There weren’t many tourist activities on offer in Cali but, luckily, a big football competition was about to commence in Colombia so that would help to alleviate any boredom. The Copa América is a football tournament comprising 12 mostly South American nations. Occasionally, Central and North American nations are invited to participate. Two weeks before the tournament was due to begin, CONMEBOL, South America’s football governing body, cancelled the tournament due to security concerns. A week later they changed their minds and reinstated it!
The cancellation was understandable. A couple of months earlier, a car bomb had exploded at the entrance of the iconic Hotel Torre de Cali injuring several players from the Once Caldas football team who had just arrived in town for a game. The authors of the attack were deemed to be left-wing guerrillas. Also, in the week leading up to that attack, three journalists were murdered which led to speculation that an effort was being made by the terrorist groups to disrupt the upcoming football tournament. Nevertheless, the reinstatement was welcome news.
