by Austin Galt
After lunch we continued on down the mountain, finally reaching the bottom and the town of Cimitarra. This was paramilitary territory with many cattle ranches in the area. It was also nearby where the army hunted down and killed a rogue hippo that had escaped from Hacienda Napoles. Pepe the hippo had lost a battle against the dominant male hippo at Hacienda Napoles, causing him to leave the herd. Pepe’s battle against the Colombian army was even less successful.
Lily and I visited Leticia in the Amazon. I’d finally made it after suggesting it was my destination to the FARC boss on my first day in the country over a decade earlier. It is hot and sticky and not somewhere I’d wish to live. Nonetheless, it was a great experience travelling by boat up the Amazon River.
We met some playful monkeys at Monkey Island which is a 1000-acre island founded by convicted American cocaine smuggler and swashbuckler Mike Tsalickis who was an associate of Amazon Cartel leaders Evaristo Porras and the Rivera brothers – Camilo and Vicente. Tsalickis was sentenced to 27 years in prison for the 1988 Cali Cartel-linked importation of 7300 pounds of cocaine hidden in hollowed-out lumber aboard his boat, Amazon Sky. The monkeys remain Mike’s enduring legacy in Colombia.
Further upriver were some playful indigenous people who, having spotted our boat approaching, were roused to attention by the ringing of the village bell. Showtime! We also visited the indigenous community of Puerto Nariño which is the second municipality in Amazonas state. Spotting some pink dolphins on the return journey was one of the most memorable moments.
Upon returning to our hotel, we came across Kapax who is known as the ‘Colombian Tarzan’. His real name is Alberto Lesmes Rojas and he is famous for swimming the length of the Magdalena River in 1976, taking five weeks to complete the 1700-kilometre journey which drew attention to keeping the country’s rivers clean.
We spent a family vacation on the Caribbean islands of San Andrés and Providencia. The islands are disputed by Nicaragua and in 2012 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague upheld Colombia’s sovereignty over the islands, although Nicaragua’s maritime territory was expanded. Most of the islanders speak English, especially on Providencia, but it is a ‘pirate’ English. During the 17th century, the island was colonised by British pirates, such as Captain Henry Morgan and there is probably no better place in the world to hear an authentic pirate accent.
San Andrés is where several of the country’s biggest drug lords built holiday houses, such as Chupeta, and we got a taxi driver to take us on a tour of the island pointing out all the narco spots. There was one dirt road he refused to drive up, however, stating that at the end lived some current heavyweights. Fair enough.
The islands have long been a midway point for drug smugglers and upon arriving in Providencia I noticed many houses were abandoned and dilapidated. I asked the hotel receptionist what was the reason for this and she told me around 50 percent of the men from the island were in American jails for drug-trafficking crimes. We hired a buggy to drive around the island which takes about an hour and we saw those locals who were more successful. They were often sitting around houses still under construction but they had already bought huge sound systems which belted out Caribbean rhythms.
We, the family, spent one New Year’s Eve in Lily’s home town which was finally safe for me to travel to after the FARC had been expelled. It was now effectively under the control of the Urabeños who maintained order in the region. There was a lot of marijuana grown in the area, although it is strictly for exportation purposes only and not to be consumed in the town.
A couple of years earlier a marihuanero, as marijuana smokers are called, was shot multiple times by the paramilitaries (as the gang members are often still called). Drug users are viewed as criminals who will go on to become rapists and thieves and killing them is viewed as preventative action. This fellow somehow survived and was transferred to hospital but he would not escape the clutches of paramilitary justice so easily. Upon finding out he was still alive, the paramilitary boss and several of his men entered the hospital and asked the surgeon which room he was in. The surgeon gave out his room number and was told, ‘Stay out of it. This is paramilitary business.’ The paramilitaries proceeded to the victim’s room and put a bullet in his head to finish the job. The ‘wild west’ lives on in rural parts of Colombia!
One of Lily’s childhood friends, Guillermo, was the mayor of the town. Guillermo had spent his first few years of life growing up in the town until his father was murdered by the FARC. He and his family then moved to Medellín where they lived up on the mountain slope and across the road from a member of the Medellín Cartel. Guillermo became friends with his son and they would often be playing football on the expansive estate when Pablo Escobar and his men would arrive in a fleet of luxury cars.
‘Hola chicos,’ Pablo would say. Hi boys. His drug-trafficking neighbour was killed in the early 1990s and Guillermo never saw nor heard from his friend after that.
We spent the afternoon catching up with him and his wife and another couple at a cafe in the town square. Guillermo presided over things at the head of the table so he could see the plaza and its people in front of him. His bodyguard also sat at the table. His wife was decked out in fashionable clothing and Gucci sunglasses. She looked good, although perhaps a little out of place in this traditional paisa town. Sitting closest to her husband was Guillermo’s right-hand man who always seemed to be on one of his two phones and whispering in the ear of his boss. Meanwhile, several of the townsfolk would wait their turn before approaching the table to pay their respects. It was like a scene straight out of The Godfather movie!
The evening featured the local beauty pageant and a concert, held in the town square, including a well-known folk singer and a couple of troubadours who waxed amusing lyrics to the sounds of an accordion. We were positioned right in front of the stage in a roped-off enclosure and I was seated next to Guillermo. A foreigner was a novelty here and while I was chuffed to be seated next to the big boss, I suspect he wanted me next to him as it showed the townspeople that he knew everyone, even the token ‘gringo’ who came to town.
I was safely tucked in bed by 2 am but that was just when the real action was getting started. Knife fights are something of a tradition in many rural towns and this one is no exception. A couple of drunken partygoers got into an argument, including a known paramilitary who plunged his machete into his opponent’s heart in the middle of the town square in front of many witnesses. He was able to flee into the night.
It wasn’t the only death of the evening. The following day Guillermo told us that some heavily armed men had entered a nearby house and demanded repayment on a debt from a woman who lived there. She was unable to pay so they killed her innocent 13-year-old daughter. Life can be cheap while justice is often brutal in Colombia.
25
PEACE
Juan Manuel Santos ran for a second presidential term in 2014. His main rival was Óscar Iván Zuluaga, the Álvaro Uribe-backed candidate. Zuluaga won the first round of voting with 29 percent of the vote to Santos’s 25 percent. A run-off election was then held which Santos won with just 51 percent of the vote. It was essentially a vote to continue the peace talks with the FARC.
The peace negotiations began on 19 November 2012 in Havana, Cuba. Iván Márquez, who became a FARC Secretariat member upon the death of Jacobo Arenas, was the lead negotiator for the FARC. The Colombian government was represented by Humberto de la Calle who served as vice-president of Colombia under Ernesto Samper, although he became a strong critic of the president over the Case 8000 scandal and later resigned. A cardboard cut-out of Simón Trinidad was placed at the table and the FARC leadership requested his release from a US prison so he could participate in the talks. It was denied.
One person of interest on the FARC’s side of the negotiating table was the Dutch citizen Tanja Nijmeijer whose presence was aimed at highlighting the international appeal of the guerrilla movement. After arriving in Colombia to teach English in 199
8, Nijmeijer was shocked by the inequalities she saw in society. She returned home after a year but her revolutionary spirit had been awakened. She travelled back to Colombia in 2002 and joined the ranks of the FARC, becoming known as ‘Alexandra’.
Nijmeijer served as Mono Jojoy’s personal assistant until his death while she maintained a romantic relationship with his nephew. She allegedly took part in a bombing in Bogotá in 2003 which was aimed at a local businessman who refused their extortion demands. Instead, an innocent child was killed. In 2010, she was charged by a US court for her role in the 2003 kidnapping of the three American contractors.
A general framework for the talks was signed by both participants after a year and a half of secret preliminary negotiations. The agenda of the talks included rural reform, political participation, illicit drugs, victims, end of conflict and implementation. President Santos initially set a deadline for the talks to end in November 2013. They finally ended three years later on 24 August 2016.
The FARC held their Tenth Guerrilla Conference in September 2016 in Yari, Caquetá which was attended by over 800 journalists from around the world. The guerrillas ratified the peace deal after which the top leaders flew to Cartagena to make it official.
On 26 September 2016, the peace deal was signed by President Santos and Timochenko and witnessed by world leaders, including Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations. Santos received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
It would not be so straightforward, though, with a public referendum still to be held on the matter on 2 October 2016. The question put to voters was: ‘Do you support the final agreement to end the conflict and the construction of a stable and long-lasting peace?’ In an upset result, 50.2 percent of voters voted, ‘No’. This was not a vote against the peace but the peace deal itself. Proponents of the No vote, led by Álvaro Uribe, had major concerns regarding guaranteed congressional seats for the FARC and immunity from jail. Some minor changes were made and the new deal was ratified by Congress on 30 November 2016, ending the 52-year-old conflict, despite some dissident FARC members refusing to recognise the deal.
The ELN also began peace talks with the government in February 2017, although the guerrillas’ commitment to real peace remains under question. Previous dialogues with the Colombian government went nowhere. The ELN have not ruled out kidnapping and have reportedly moved in to take over areas vacated by the FARC. They were also initially believed to be behind a bombing near the bullfighting stadium in the La Macarena neighbourhood of Bogotá in February 2017, leaving one policeman dead and at least 25 people injured. This was just one block from where I had lived 14 years earlier.
*
While security in Medellín has improved greatly over the past few years, it has recently begun to deteriorate somewhat. Jhon Jairo ‘Popeye’ Velásquez was held up at gunpoint while stopped at traffic lights in El Poblado in December 2016. He was robbed of his designer sunglasses, cell phone and a gold bracelet; you know all is not right with the security situation when that is able to happen to the country’s most feared ex-assassin.
The era of the Medellín Cartel continues to reverberate in Colombian society. In 2007, the politician Alberto Santofimio was found guilty of playing an influential role in presidential candidate Luis Galán’s death and sentenced to 24 years in prison. In 2016, the ex-director of DAS Miguel Maza was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being found guilty of conspiracy in the assassination due to changing the head of Galán’s security detail with someone who was later found to be in the service of Pablo Escobar.
In some strange way, I admire the outlaws, as living that life requires some big cojones. I certainly respect them more than politicians who are, in many cases, hypocrites and liars. If gangsters don’t keep their word they are liable to receive a bullet in the back of the head. If anything, it is perhaps powerful and corrupt politicians who should be feared the most and I refer to them as the Cartel de los politicos or Politicians Cartel – the most dangerous cartel of all!
Many paramilitaries who demobilised, such as the old Centauros Bloc leader Manuel de Jesús Piraban alias ‘Pirata’, received maximum sentences of eight years for their crimes and are now starting to be released. They are unsure how they will fare on the outside and believe their biggest threat comes from those politicians who participated in crimes with them.
The cocaine trade shows no sign of abating despite the occasional big bust, including the biggest ever seizure of cocaine in November 2017 in which 12 tons were found in underground shelters on banana farms in north-west Antioquia. It was linked to the Urabeños which the government has renamed either the Úsuga Clan, so as not to besmirch the good name of those living in the Urabá region, or the Gulf Clan after the Gulf of Morrosquillo where it is strongest. Its leader, Otoniel, remains Colombia’s most wanted fugitive today.
After 15 years and having spent around $10 billion, Plan Colombia came to an end in 2015 as the government moved towards peace with the guerrillas. The United States continues to provide financial support, however its focus is now on humanitarian issues such as the replacement of illegal crops, de-mining and providing assistance to victims of the conflict. While the plan was successful in weakening the guerrillas and essentially forcing them to the negotiation table, it largely failed in one of its goals to reduce the amount of cocaine produced.
Coca production has recently begun to increase as other criminal elements move into areas previously occupied by the FARC. As the saying goes, ‘A rey muerto, rey puesto’. To a dead king, place king. Or as we say in English, ‘The king is dead, long live the king’. Regardless of whether someone is killed, captured or even demobilises, there is always someone else waiting in the wings to take over.
*
I still haven’t visited San Agustín or Tierradentro but perhaps now with the improved security situation I just may. Another place of interest is Caño Cristales or Crystal Channel which is a river that turns many different colours due to the weeds that grow on the bottom. Due to being located in prime FARC territory in Meta, it has remained relatively unknown. It’s another example of Colombia’s natural beauty colliding with the beastly elements in its society.
I celebrated my 40th birthday at Taganga with Ally, Andy and a friend from Sydney who was in the country at the time. (I also celebrated separately with my family.) They all had wives or girlfriends and were given special dispensation to join me for the knees-up. Unfortunately, Taganga is now a paradise lost. Backpacking tourists have overrun the village, bringing drugs and prostitution, while the waters were filled with garbage. I doubt I will return.
Ally and Andy both left Colombia in 2016, having sold out of the nightclub and left their jobs. Andy returned to his love of sailing, this time in the Mediterranean, while Ally and his Colombian wife headed to Asia for something different. Chris had also made his way to Asia in 2014 after spending 15 years in Colombia.
As for the Colombian people, I have noticed they are more family-oriented compared with people from other Western countries. The families are bigger too. Colombians have learnt that they can’t rely on the state to help them. It is the family that can only be relied upon and the bigger the family the more help there is available. Colombians are also very patriotic people and that’s perhaps due to being maligned in general by foreigners. Not everyone is a drug trafficker!
For so many people who have never visited the country, Pablo Escobar remains the face of Colombia. I was no different. However, having spent many years living here, I now think of Colombia as a country of breathtaking naturaleza or nature. I would say it is a country of extremes, both in its beauty and its ugliness. It is the most beautiful country in the world with the most fascinating history, especially over the last half century or so – a bloody history full of beauty.
The Gringo Trail now extends into Colombia and the country is packing up with tourists. It was hard to spot one when I first arrived in the country. I spend my time here working on my website – T
he Voodoo Analyst. It features stock market technical analysis which has been one of my passions for many years. My wife Lily works for an international company, while our daughters grow up as Latinas, as paisas no less.
I’m not sure how much longer I’ll remain in Colombia. I’m not ready to return to Australia just yet and, of course, I also have my family to consider now. It was the danger and sense of adventure that originally attracted me to the country. I also think I wanted to escape the fishbowl that can be Sydney, and Colombia is probably about as far away as you can get.
Many years ago my father told me of the expression, ‘Life should be about the journey and not the destination’. This has been part of my journey.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My late father Graeme Galt, for encouraging me to be different and supporting my decision to live in Colombia. My mother Diane Derenzie, for editing the very first draft and getting it ready to take to the next level. Ally and Dave, for reading that first ‘dirty’ draft and providing feedback.
The team at Pan Macmillan – Angus Fontaine, Alex Lloyd and Samantha Sainsbury – for bringing the book to life.
Last but not least, my wife Lily for putting up with me all these years.
NOTES
Special mention to the excellent Colombian publications Semana, El Tiempo, El Espectador, Verdad Abierta and the English language-based sources InSight Crime and Colombia Reports.
