We reached the fifth floor, which was mine, and I noticed that Pedro was taking the longest route. I thanked him. There wasn’t any therapy to attend.
“How’s your roommate?”
“He insisted on telling me his life story, which turned out to be quite complicated. There were some very delicate things, I don’t know why he told me. What do you know about his situation?”
Reaching my door, he went right past it. We would take another turn around the corridors, just to be able to talk.
“He’s waiting for an exchange of legal files, but for now he’s staying here. I only hope you took my advice.”
“What advice?”
“To memorize,” Pedro said.
That was exactly what I’d done.
When we finally got back to the room, the priest wasn’t there. I collected my things and Pedro took me to another part of the hospital, on the third floor of the right wing. The new room looked out on a grove of trees with a parking lot in the middle.
“I’ll come and say goodbye before you go,” Pedro said.
I squeezed his hand.
“Thanks for your advice. Memorize. Now can I have a pencil?”
“Take my pen, I’ll ask for another one in the office. Now rest.”
When I was alone, I took out my notebook and started writing what I had stored in my memory. I wanted to put Ferdinand Palacios’s strange story down on paper, so I started immediately. I don’t know if he would have accepted this version. I like to think he would.
22
DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST
I’m in prison for involvement with the paramilitaries in the west of Antioquia province, but nobody can prove a thing, and even if they could what I say is this: only God can judge me. I’m a priest and in the last analysis it’s only God to whom I must explain myself, because it was He who entrusted me with that task.
I sought refuge when I saw that in Colombia everyone ended up allied with the Communists. Decent people simply had to leave! Not that I admire Spain, not a bit of it. How can I admire a country where fags can marry and adopt children? And they say the government is conservative. Conservative, my ass.
They really got me with this little story, didn’t they?
I don’t feel any guilt because I served my fatherland and the Lord and what I had to do was on their behalf. It was a mess, and sometimes it was cruel, I don’t deny it, but it has to be understood in a wider context: the struggle between Good and Evil.
It was a hard-fought battle, full of cruelty and unfair things. I wasn’t the one who invented it. And as happens in all wars, anyone who wasn’t there is unable to understand it and is simply judging those who actually had the balls to wage it.
Are you one of those who believe that the soldiers of the Devil go about in black uniforms, with horns and a shield on their chests that says Battalion of Lucifer? Don’t think me so stupid. Those who give aid to the Communists go about as peasants, because most are Indians or country people, but also as factory workers and clerks, cooks and mechanics, volunteers for European NGOs and journalists, even members of the Congress, and of course students. Even presidents!
That’s what happened in Colombia, neither more nor less.
Wherever we look there’s nothing left but garbage. Most of our universities are foul brothels; instead of respecting God and their country, what young people learn there is to take drugs and offend the Lord and become Communists. That’s already sufficient reason to leave this lousy world. Wasn’t that what He did to his own children, Adam and Eve, His finest creation, when He saw they had disobeyed him? He kicked them out.
For me the fatherland was Aguacatal, a little town of a few thousand souls, halfway between Frontino and Dabeiba, do you know it? Everyone recognizes the name but nobody has been there, that’s why they don’t understand the things that go on there and the things we had to do to save it. My world was that little pinnacle. We are each given a little piece of this mysterious paradise, don’t you think? I’m a priest, an educated man, but deep down I’m still just a peasant.
I was born in Santa Fe de Antioquia and when I heard the call I entered the Conciliar Seminary in Medellín. I was a studious novice, devoted to the mysteries of faith and obedience. I grew up seeing how subversion, corruption, and terrorism were dragging our country down. After God, Colombia and above all Antioquia are what I love the most. Do you believe that the Lord created those beautiful mountains, those skies, those tropical plants, and those birds with their colored plumage, that He made the hummingbirds and the butterflies, the seas and the snow-capped peaks, the rivers and the trees, only to hand it all over to the Communists and let them turn it into a sewer, a brothel, a discotheque for dopeheads and faggots? No, my friend. The Jews already killed Jesus once but they developed a taste for it: they want to continue killing him over and over again.
I arrived in Aguacatal at the end of the nineties, after having been in the diocese of Manrique and Santa Clara in Medellín. I myself asked to be transferred to a conflict zone. I did so when the Metropolitan Archbishop came to me and said:
“Ferdinand, you’ve finished your training here, now you have to go out and defend the Church, in the name of the archdiocese.”
And that’s what I did. To fight for God and to save this country from the Communists.
As I told you, Aguacatal is a town in the mountains, in Urabá de Antioquia. It stole my heart, if I can put it that way. If you could only see our church! An impressive blue and white church facing the square. The day I settled there I was overjoyed.
But you can’t imagine what it’s like to turn up to give mass one Sunday and find the church empty! Not a single widow, or old pensioner, not even a stupid Indian. Nobody! The central nave with the lights on, the flowers in the vases, the deacon and the altar boys in their vestments, nobody knowing what to do.
But I lost my temper and said, we’re here to celebrate mass, dammit, because it’s Sunday, and I went up into the pulpit and began prayers. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The altar boys and the deacon responded: Amen.
I saw the empty pews and summoned my strength to continue with the reading of the sermon, looking at the cross and the wall fresco depicting the Resurrection.
At one point a boy put his head in the door. He looked astonished and went out again. I later learned that he had run through the streets crying: the priest is giving mass in an empty church!
The guerrillas had kidnapped my predecessor and in a skirmish with the army he’d been wounded. Right now, he was in a hospital in Medellín, trying to recover mobility in a leg and an arm. Thank God he wasn’t killed, which was what they started to do later when they ran into patrols: kill the hostages before engaging with the troops.
This was when I arrived. The priest wounded and the people terrified. That was the state of things to which the Lord led me in Aguacatal, beggars can’t be choosers! But I tell it as it is, and I don’t run away from things. The first thing I did, after that empty mass, was to go to the barracks and speak with the lieutenant, a young man of twenty-eight called Wilson Urrelo, who had been serving for barely six months. His predecessor had also been kidnapped, and hadn’t been so lucky: one day he was found floating in the River Gualí, with his stomach ripped open. That’s why Lieutenant Urrelo was taking things easy. I understood the danger, but I was angry with him: as if defending the people and protecting the church meant getting into trouble. I went to the barracks and when I arrived I saw they were being rebuilt. The front wall had bullet holes. It looked like a sieve. In back they had thrown bombs and gas canisters filled with screws. The only things still standing were the front wall and the side walls, can you imagine that?
Father, what a pleasure to meet you, Urrelo said, I haven’t had time to visit the clergy house because as you can see, we’re snowed under with work.
I see that, Lieutenant, I
said, but for this work you don’t need uniforms or rifles. You’re policemen, not laborers, with all due respect, how can it be that nobody comes to mass because they’re afraid of the guerrillas?
Urrelo looked at me irritably.
You see, Father, he said, you’ve just arrived and don’t know how things are. The truth is that the guerrillas have us surrounded and if anything happens the Fourth Brigade won’t even get here in time before we’re all killed. We’re waiting for reinforcements from headquarters. If I provoke them, the only thing that’ll happen is that they’ll kill the eleven officers I have, and I need them to rebuild the barracks. For now, that’s all I can do.
How angry I felt hearing Urrelo! This was the enemies’ work. Let them come!
The following weeks I spent going to see storekeepers, businessmen, ranchers. I realized that the guerrillas had them all over a barrel: they extorted money from them, kidnapped their relatives, took their cattle. I’d heard about self-defense groups in other parts of Antioquia and Córdoba. Decent people united in the battle.
I myself talked to some ranchers who already knew about these groups and were anxious to start one here, giving not only money, but men, ammunition, and weapons. Whatever they were asked for. The only thing they lacked was a contact and someone to organize them. That was me. In other towns in Antioquia, self-defense groups had been cleaning up the mountains for years, so it was about time.
Soon afterwards I managed to contact a priest in Yarumal, where they had been very well organized for some years now, and the good priest, whose name I don’t remember, agreed to meet me in Medellín, in the cafeteria of the archdiocese. There, I told him what was happening in Aguacatal, and he said, look, I’m going to inform the people in Yarumal about the interest you have, to see if we can send you someone, so that at least you can start to organize. Just to show support, what’s the name of that lieutenant? He wrote the name down in a little notebook and said, good, I’m sure he’ll cooperate with us. We have to stay within the law, don’t we?
A month later someone came from Yarumal and we held the meeting in the clergy house in order not to arouse suspicion, because the guerrillas had a number of informers near the barracks. Why deny it: half the town was with them. I invited some local landowners, among them the biggest of all, Don Alirio Vélez and Dr. Paredes White. A man named Piedrahíta came from Yarumal and told us about what they did there and asked us to call Lieutenant Urrelo. They’d already spoken with him and he was in agreement, because the head of the barracks in Yarumal knew him. A few minutes later he arrived in his neatly ironed uniform, and said, I’m sorry, Father, to come in here carrying a weapon, but I can’t leave it anywhere. Don’t worry, Lieutenant, on the contrary, I said, weapons are what we need to protect this town, aren’t they?
The storekeepers gave money so that some men could come with Piedrahíta. Don Alirio and Dr. Paredes White said that training camps could be set up on their ranches. Meetings would be held in the clergy house and on Don Alirio’s estate, Gaviotas. Some of the workers formed the first group and Urrelo offered to train them. The next thing to do, according to those from Yarumal, was to start with a list of people who were mixed up in it, whether they were Communists, trade unionists, or just gave aid to the guerrillas.
We got down to work. Some people had started coming to the church, especially to confession. I remember a young worker from a sugarcane factory. I questioned him without his realizing it, saying, do you feel bad about anything you’ve done or seen, anything that’s bad? and he said, no, Father, I haven’t seen bad things but I have seen people who live differently, and I said, oh, yes? and how do they live? and he said, in the mountains, Father, they have a different way of understanding life, sometimes they do things they shouldn’t, but it’s for an ideal, they want to help and perhaps they take the wrong path, and I asked him, how do you know them? and he said, because sometimes they come down to my farm and ask for water, they ask about things in the town, they stay for a while and then go, they don’t steal my hens and they don’t ask for money, but they do say they’re fighting for me, so that my family can live better, Father, they aren’t bad people, and then, when the young man had gone, I took out my notebook and wrote down, Vladimir Suárez, and so, one by one, I compiled a list of twelve people who helped the guerrillas.
I took it to the first meeting and Don Alirio appeared with another list of trade unionists who were agitating on the ranches and another of idlers and dopeheads. With all that, the boys got down to work.
As it happened, the first person was the young man who had come to confession with me. Don Alirio’s boys took him from his house at night, with a bag over his head, and on the road to El Alto they shot him three times. They left him outside the factory with a notice around his neck: “Helper of the guerrillas, enemy of the country.”
I remember how nervous we were the next day, waiting for the guerrillas’ reaction, but nothing happened, so we went on to another fellow, a trade unionist. That case was more complicated because his wife started screaming and one of the boys got nervous and shot her in front of her children, which was horrible.
They took the guy to Don Alirio’s ranch and questioned him. At first he played tough and they had to soften him up with pliers until he said something, although he didn’t say much. They also shot him three times and threw him in a ditch just outside town.
The people started to hear about it, and so did the guerrillas. Every night the boys took out two or three pieces of scum, most of them dopeheads and addicts. I continued questioning people and passing the information to barracks. Urrelo passed it on to the boys and bang bang. Goodbye, heartache. That’s what our war was like. And suddenly the church filled up again, the congregation felt safe and returned.
Until something awful happened, which is that the guerrillas kidnapped one of Dr. Paredes White’s children, Tomás, who was twenty-one. During the kidnapping there was a shootout and three bodyguards were killed. According to an eyewitness, Tomás was wounded when they took him away. That night, we met at Gaviotas. This was the guerillas’ response and it showed that they were well informed. The war was starting and we had to be prepared.
Among the reinforcements sent by the people in Yarumal was a guy from Cali, Freddy Otálora, who scared even me. The kind who oozes death from his fingertips. We were told he had to hide because of a problem with the law and that he was a terrific fighter. He’d been in the Army’s jungle troops and knew all about counterinsurgency. He was good at laying ambushes and especially at interrogating suspects.
Dr. Paredes White was in pieces. He swore that if anything happened to his son he would kill every guerrilla in the country with his own hands.
I understand how you feel, I said to him, your son’s a soldier and I’m going to pray for him.
We’re going to have to get God involved, Father, he said, because I’m quite capable of burning those fucking mountains if necessary.
Finally a plan was established. Lieutenant Urrelo suggested working on the minor go-betweens, grabbing them and interrogating them until they gave details of encampments and routes. Something like that kidnapping couldn’t have been planned without the help of people in the town. We had to be very careful, and he said to me, Father, you’re the one who can be the most use to us, people talk to you without reservation and nobody connects you with us.
In those towns in Antioquia the peasants are very Catholic, even if they’re helpers or friends of the Communists. That’s why the pulpit became a battlefront. I continued my questioning until one afternoon what we were hoping for came to pass: a good woman, a seamstress in a dress factory, confessed that her son, who worked in the café at the gas station on the road to Mutatá, hated the Paredes White family because he had been a laborer on their ranch and they had kicked him out because one day he fell asleep and arrived late and another day he showed up drunk. She’d always known that his hatred would lead him to do so
mething stupid, and so the woman said, Father, I’m afraid my boy had something to do with the kidnapping of young Tomás, and I’m going to burst if I don’t tell someone, because I can’t sleep anymore! At least I can tell you, so that you can give me relief, and I said to her, you did the right thing, everything serves to understand the nature of the human soul, God is on your side. I blessed her and, when it was over, I ran to the clergy house to call Urrelo.
I have the first one, I said, this one’s for certain, the son of Doña So and So, but don’t grab him today in order not to arouse suspicion.
They waited two days and then went for him. They took him to Gaviotas and handed him over to that guy from Cali, that Freddy, and after just a few slaps the guy confessed: he’d given information about young Paredes White’s movements and security; Freddy grabbed a machete, laid his finger on the table, and said: you have twenty seconds to tell us who you gave that information to or I’ll cut this finger and go on to the next one. The boy gave up the names.
They turned out to be a worker in a sawmill and the owner of a roadside store.
Things were going well. They saved the young man’s life for that night and locked him in a cellar that not even a snake could have gotten out of. He only had space to change position.
Dr. Paredes White had preferred not to be present because he said, I’ll kill him, and if I kill him we won’t get anything from him. Wilson arranged to go for the guys that same night.
And that’s what they did, but they only managed to grab the guy who owned the store and there was a problem because he was armed and defended himself. We had our first casualty, a good young man, a hard worker, named Farhid. It was a blow to us. There wasn’t much they could have done. The terrorist had a submachine gun and mowed him down as soon as he went in.
It happened in the Espergesia motel, on the road going east, the guy was drinking rum and offending the Lord with a lady who also had to be taken away, and who turned out to be a hooker. I interceded to stop them killing her, because she had two babies, and we kept her under guard for a while, until the matter was settled. The bandit’s name was Demóstenes and he was badly wounded, with three shots in the stomach. They treated him so that he could talk, but he didn’t say much. He said they’d taken Tomas to Dabeiba, he didn’t know where exactly, and even though Freddy put pressure on his wounds that’s all he said. Then they took him to a ditch and there they shot him three times and buried him on the spot.
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