by Austin Galt
Founded in response to the allegedly fraudulent presidential election held on 19 April 1970, the M-19 was a Marxist guerrilla group that really came to prominence in 1980 when they stormed the Dominican embassy during a cocktail party taking 40 people, including a dozen ambassadors, hostage for two months. Luckily for all involved, this siege ended peacefully, with the guerrillas paid a ransom and given leave to travel to Cuba. That wasn’t to be the case for those involved in the attack on the Palace of Justice. I had seen images of the attack on television documentaries but here I was, standing exactly where this epic moment in Colombian history had taken place.
On 6 November 1985, three dozen guerrillas stormed the palace using submachine guns to blow away anyone in their way. They took over 300 people hostage, including magistrates, employees and visitors. The military surrounded the building with armoured vehicles which were essentially tanks with wheels. These were driven into the entrance of the building with troops following close behind using the vehicles as protection. When one vehicle was halfway inside the entrance, it fired in some rockets and the military were soon able to rescue approximately 200 hostages from the lower floors.
The guerrillas fled to the top two floors of the building as the light faded for the day. It was the guerrillas’ last stand. In darkness, an armoured vehicle fired rockets into the top of the building. They would be indelible images. It would take until the following morning before the state was able to retake control of the building. In all, about 100 people were killed in the siege including 12 Supreme Court justices.
It wasn’t until 20 years later, during a Truth Commission, that it was revealed that several hostages, mostly workers at the cafe inside, had been caught on video being escorted alive from the building by soldiers during the siege. They were never seen or heard from again. It is widely believed they were taken by the military to a nearby police base where they were tortured and killed due to the mistaken belief that they were guerrilla members. But without evidence from all the bodies, no one has been willing to say this definitively.
Following the storming of the Palace of Justice, it was revealed that Pablo Escobar had paid $1 million in cash and another million in weapons and explosives to the M-19 to steal or destroy files the court had on members of the drug cartels, pertaining to their extradition. The Colombia–United States extradition treaty was signed in 1979, although no Colombian would be extradited until 1985. It was declared unconstitutional in 1991. A legislative act in 1997 put extradition back on the table and it has remained so ever since.
As for the M-19, after signing a peace treaty with the government they demobilised in 1990, although a small dissident group (called Jaime Bateman Cayón after the M-19 founder who died in a plane crash in 1983) broke away and continued on. The M-19 only forced their way to the negotiation table after kidnapping an important politician.
Álvaro Gómez, the runner-up in the 1986 presidential election who, over two decades earlier, had denounced the ‘independent republics’ of the communist guerrillas, was kidnapped in May 1988 by M-19 guerrillas as he walked towards his house. His bodyguard was killed during the incident. Gómez was a symbol of Colombia’s oligarchy and that was why he was targeted. A slogan of the M-19 was, ‘Peace for the country, truce for the Armed Forces and war for the oligarchy’. Gómez was released in July 1988 after agreeing to promote peace talks. He would be assassinated less than a decade later, allegedly by the Norte del Valle Cartel as part of an alleged narco-politico conspiracy.
The M-19 guerrillas blazed a trail for kidnappings by left-wing guerrillas in the 1970s and 1980s. Victims included both Colombians and foreigners. One of the most well-known victims of that era was the American Kenneth Bishop, Texaco’s chief operating officer in Colombia. He was kidnapped in 1983 and released five weeks later allegedly after a ransom of $1 million was paid. He later described his captors’ treatment of him as ‘ugly, real ugly’.
Two former M-19 leaders, Gustavo Petro and Antonio Navarro Wolff, who was largely responsible for liberating Álvaro Gómez, would subsequently enter politics and become a mayor of Bogotá and senator of Colombia respectively.
Having taken it all in, I made my way a block south where the Casa de Nariño or Nariño House was situated. This is the official home and workplace of the Colombian president. I needed to be careful which direction I walked as a few blocks further to the west was Cartucho, which was regarded as the most dangerous area in all of Colombia. It later became known as The Bronx, named after the New York borough whose reputation had obviously infiltrated the Colombian psyche. It is full of homeless people, drug addicts, pickpockets and delinquents who rule the area on behalf of their mafia bosses.
I was famished by now and in need of a decent meal. There are plenty of delightful little restaurants in La Candelaria. I settled on one which had a nice simple menu and found myself a table. It was a bit cold and a plate of ajiaco was sure to keep me warm. This traditional soup dish from the highland region consists of chicken, corn, three varieties of potatoes and some herbs; perfect for a cold day in Bogotá.
The afternoon schedule included a trip up Monserrate, the mountain that towers over downtown Bogotá with a 17th century church at the top. It is actually a pilgrim destination but also popular with tourists who are able to take a cable car to the summit. It is also possible to walk to the top via a track that winds its way up the hill and takes just under an hour to arrive at the summit. However, for safety reasons, walking is advised against during the week due to the threat of robberies. Undeterred, mostly because I doubted a Colombian would want to take on someone of my height, I decided to risk the walk.
Some unsavoury types, who clearly looked to be in need of a good bath, can be found along the track and that was made abundantly clear in 2015 when the police captured the ‘Monster of Monserrate’. Fredy Valencia is a serial killer who murdered about 16 young women. He generally lured drug-addicted women he met in The Bronx to his makeshift camp where he strangled them if they refused to have sex with him. He confessed to having sex with the dead bodies, although, admittedly, after he attempted to revive them as he preferred to have sex with live bodies. He would then cut them into pieces before burying the remains in the woods around the tourist site. Not long after being captured and apparently still in a state of delusion, he told the press, ‘I am not a monster. I don’t like that they say that. I am not a serial killer either’.
He wasn’t Colombia’s only monster. The ‘Monster of Mariquita’, a municipality in Tolima, refers to Arcedio Álvarez who began raping his five-year-old daughter after his wife died. At first, Alba Álvarez enjoyed the affection of her father as it made her feel special. She stopped going to school and he taught her to read and write. After turning 10, she moved into her father’s bed permanently and eventually became pregnant at the age of 12. She bore a son but he died while still a baby. She then had twins, both of whom died within the first few months. Over the next two decades she would go on to have eight children with her father.
By the end of 2008 and in her mid-30s, Alba decided she’d had enough and fled with six of her children. After not reporting the abuse out of fear her children would be taken away from her, a family counsellor became involved and her father was subsequently arrested. In 2009, Arcedio Álvarez was sentenced to 15 years in jail for his crimes, however because he was already 60 years old, under Colombian law he would be entitled to request release after five years. He never got the chance. He died in jail of natural causes a couple of years later. Alba now lives in Bogotá with her six children under the protection of government welfare authorities. Despite the years of abuse, she said of her father, ‘I love him. I love him as my father. I never saw him as a man, never. He is my father.’
Probably the vilest creature Colombia has ever produced, however, is Luis Garavito known as ‘La bestia’ or ‘The Beast’. He was born in the municipality of Génova, Quindio – interestingly, the same place FARC leader Tirofijo was born. Perhaps there is something in
the water in Génova!
It was the discovery of three dozen decomposing corpses in the city of Pereira that set investigators on a path that led them to the world’s worst serial killer. In 1999, after being arrested for attempting to rape a 12-year-old boy in the city of Villavicencio, the capital of Meta state, Garavito was charged with the murder of 172 children. He subsequently confessed to raping, torturing and killing 138 children for which he was convicted, although he is suspected of killing upwards of 300 young boys since his spree began in 1992. He directed investigators to the graves of over 100 victims spread out across the country. He also lived in Ecuador during his killing spree and he is thought to have many more victims in that country.
Garavito was beaten by his father as a child and also raped by a couple of male neighbours. He became a heavy drinker and would need to be drunk before carrying out his crimes. He often worked as a street vendor where he would meet his victims and gain their confidence. After a few drinks, he would lure mostly boys aged between eight and 16 years old with gifts or money and take them to secluded areas. After overpowering them, he would tie them up and commence torturing and raping them before cutting their throats.
Under Colombian law, the maximum sentence that can be imposed is 30 years. However, because he provided assistance to the authorities in finding many of the bodies and with good behaviour, it is possible Luis Garavito could be released earlier than that. The nation trembles with fear at the thought of The Beast being let loose on the Colombian population once again.
While Garavito occupies the top spot on the list of the world’s worst serial killers, it is another Colombian who holds down second spot. Pedro López is known as the ‘Monster of the Andes’. He was born fatherless to a prostitute who was physically abusive to him. After being caught molesting his sister as a child, he was kicked out of home and made his way to Bogotá where he lived on the streets. He had not even reached the age of 10 when he was sodomised by a man who had promised to help him. He was then put in an orphanage where he was molested by the teacher. Upon reaching early adulthood and already in a life of crime, he was arrested for stealing a car. He was sent to jail where he was brutally gang-raped by several other prisoners. Before his jail time was up, he made sure to murder all of his attackers.
Once out of jail, López started raping and killing young girls. Preferring indigenous girls, he travelled to Peru where he claimed to have killed around 100 girls before being caught by an indigenous tribe as he attempted to kidnap a little girl. He was submitted to tribal law and sentenced to die by being buried alive. However, he was saved by an American missionary and was instead turned over to Peruvian police who immediately deported him back to Colombia where he was a free man again. From there, he made his way to Ecuador while continuing to find young female victims. He was finally captured in the city of Ambato attempting to kidnap another young girl. He was sent to jail after refusing to cooperate with police but was undone by his cellmate whom López confided in, not knowing he was working undercover.
He was charged with 110 murders, although he claimed to have killed around 300 young girls. After serving 14 years in jail, he was deported back to Colombia in 1994 and put in a psychiatric facility, having been declared insane. In 1998, Pedro López was declared sane and released on bail. He has not been seen nor heard from since, although he is considered a suspect in the 2002 murder of a little girl.
Incredibly, the third worst serial killer in the world (who isn’t a medical professional and works alone) is also Colombian. Daniel Camargo was raised by an abusive stepmother after his mother died when he was young. He had two children with his first partner but then left and found another woman, Esperanza, whom he intended to marry until he found out she was no longer a virgin. Camargo confessed to being obsessed with virgins and, in order not to lose her man, Esperanza began to lure virgin girls to the apartment they shared. There the girls would be drugged with sleeping pills and Camargo would rape them. He did this five times before being reported and arrested.
Esperanza was given a three-year prison sentence while Camargo was sent to prison for eight years. Soon after his release in 1973 he moved to Barranquilla making a living as a street vendor selling television screens. He hadn’t lost his appetite for virgins and began to hunt for victims. He raped a nine-year-old girl before killing her so she would not report him, which is what had got him arrested previously. In the rush to leave the crime scene, he had forgotten to take his television screens with him. He returned to pick them up and was duly arrested.
He is thought to have had dozens of other victims in Colombia, however, it was only for the murder of this last victim that he received a prison sentence of 25 years to be served on Gorgona Island, a penal colony situated 35 kilometres off the Pacific coast and known as the Colombian Alcatraz. He managed to escape in 1984 using a makeshift boat that eventually washed up on the northern coastline of Ecuador. He resumed his killing spree, raping and killing over 50 young girls in the city of Guayaquil. He would lure poor girls with the promise of a reward for helping him. If they agreed, he would lead them into a nearby wooded area where he would rape and then strangle them to death. He would then hack the bodies to pieces with a machete, leaving them for animals to clean up.
Camargo was eventually arrested again in 1986 in Quito just after killing another young girl. A policeman noticed him acting suspiciously and found him in possession of a bag containing the bloody clothes of his recent victim along with her clitoris which he had cut off as a trophy. He admitted to killing 72 girls in Ecuador and said that he preferred virgins ‘because they cried’. He was sentenced to 16 years jail and was imprisoned alongside his fellow countryman and Monster of the Andes, Pedro López. The ‘Monster of the Mangroves’, as Daniel Camargo was known, was killed in 1994 by another inmate who was a cousin to one of his victims.
So, unbelievably or not, Colombians occupy the top three podium positions for the world’s worst serial killers. Perhaps there is something in the water in Colombia!
I didn’t run into any serial killers or experience any problems during the trek up to Monserrate but was certainly short of breath on arrival. There’s a fantastic view from the top that makes the trip worthwhile. It really puts the city in perspective and shows how it is situated within the plateau. It confirms that wherever there is ugliness in Colombia, beauty is never far away.
With La Candelaria out of the way, the northern part of the city was next. The zona rosa of Bogotá is located about 80 blocks to the north and is where all the exclusive restaurants, bars and shops are. I took a taxi there. There are so many taxis in Bogotá it is not hard to find one and they are extremely cheap compared to what I was used to paying back home. The taxi dropped me off in the heart of the zona rosa and it didn’t take long to be accosted by a man selling watches.
‘Rolex, señor?’ he offered.
I showed some mild interest and he displayed the watch. I must admit it looked pretty good and I asked if it was a fake.
‘No, señor. Mira.’ No, sir. Look.
I knew real Rolexes had a second hand that moved continuously without ticking each second. He pointed out the second hand which was moving continuously. Nice.
‘Cuánto?’ I asked. How much?
‘Cien mil pesos.’ 100,000 pesos or about US$50.
Well, at that price it had to be a fake but I was certainly impressed with the craftsmanship. I thanked him but declined and moved on. I was beginning to learn that Colombians really were very crafty people.
Another area I wanted to see was Parque 93 which is a popular spot located about 10 blocks further north on Calle 93. Once again, it is packed with upscale restaurants and bars. I walked the length of the street just observing. This part of the city is the playground of the affluent. It is quite beautiful in its own way with tree-lined streets. This area and the zona rosa would become my stamping ground in the near future.
After a long day, I returned to the hostel and met up with a few other tra
vellers to go for a drink. While at a little bar, an Irishman in the group diverted his attention to the television which had the news playing.
‘Shite,’ he remarked in his distinct accent, eyes still transfixed on the screen. We all turned our attention to the television set. News was breaking of three Irishmen being arrested at Bogotá airport travelling on fake passports. They were alleged to be Irish Republican Army (IRA) members who had been training FARC rebels. This was big.
The three men had arrived in Colombia just over a month earlier and had then travelled into the demilitarised zone controlled by the guerrillas. The authorities had been tipped off and they were arrested after arriving back in the capital, intending to connect to an international flight out of the country.
It was not uncommon for Colombia’s criminal groups to bring in foreign help, with the cartels of Cali and Medellín and the right-wing paramilitaries using both British and Israeli mercenaries. The three Irishmen – James Monaghan, Martin McCauley and Niall Connolly – were held in prison for the next six months on false passport charges. Then in February 2002, they were all charged with training the FARC guerrillas in bomb making. The trial didn’t commence until December that year.
The trial finished in August 2003 with all men being found guilty only of travelling on false passports. The prosecution appealed but the men were given parole, although instructed to remain in Colombia. It was no surprise that the men used this opportunity to slip quietly out of the country. They were long gone by the time the appeals court overturned the original verdict and sentenced them all to 17 years jail in December 2004.
