The Shape of the Ruins

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

  “And who is that man?”

  “I don’t know,” said Anzola.

  “You don’t, do you?” said Julián Uribe. “You have circumstantial evidence, Anzola, just circumstantial. There’s Acosta over here, Correal over there, the priest Berestain a little farther back . . . I want to believe you, but you still haven’t explained how all the things you discovered are related. Beyond your imagination, or rather, your theory. And if you haven’t explained it to me, how are we going to explain it to the judge when the trial begins? I want to believe you, Anzola, but the judge is not going to want to, because what you maintain is not going to be to anyone’s liking. With this Vista Fiscal we’ve run out of time. The law is the law: only the suspects in the Vista will go to trial. The ones who are not in the Vista might as well not exist. And you know that as well as I do, don’t you?”

  “It’s true.”

  “The trial is going to begin within the year, more or less. We have a year to tell the judge why the Vista Fiscal is a lie. We have a year to convince him that this book is wrong. To put it a better way: the one who has a year is you, my esteemed Anzola. You have a year not to let us down, and not to fail my brother’s memory. You have a year to demonstrate that we were not wrong when we assigned you to this delicate operation. Many things are at risk, Anzola, many things that go beyond justice in the particular case of my brother. If what you say is true and there is a conspiracy, the future of this country depends on the conspirators not getting away with it. One who kills with impunity kills again. Whoever organized this will do it again. How are you going to prevent it?”

  Anzola remained silent.

  “Tell me, Anzola,” Julián Uribe went on. “How are you going to convince the judge that this book is a distortion of the truth, or rather that the truth is elsewhere and that we have found it?”

  “I am going to write as well,” said Anzola. He pronounced the words with such certainty, that in that instant he had the illusion of having decided this some time ago. “I am going to tell everything. And then let the heavens fall.”

  * * *

  —

  THE FIRST of his articles came out five days later.

  The vile murder of Rafael Uribe Uribe, eminent Liberal leader and moral beacon of the Republic, has gone unpunished before the trial of the accused has even begun. We can draw no other conclusion from the unfortunate Vista Fiscal from Dr. Alejandro Rodríguez Forero, whom we had thought more upright and honest, or at least more diligent and rigorous. But his document is the sad proof of the power that those behind the crime, who still remain in the shadows, have over the entire citizenry; if they can wish for and achieve the death of a personage as illustrious as General Uribe, if they can organize and perpetrate in broad daylight a cowardly and treacherous attack such as the one our leader suffered on October 15, 1914, we must accept that none of us is safe; that the powerful decide from the shadows who lives and who dies in this godforsaken country.

  The Vista Fiscal is a formidable document, not for its probability or its justice, but for the talent with which it manages to mask the truth and hide those responsible for the aforementioned crime. So obvious was the twisted will of the Prosecutor from the very beginning of the investigations, that the victim’s brother, Dr. Julián Uribe Uribe, found himself obliged by suspicion, which is sometimes a good adviser, to commission us to carry out a parallel investigation into the events. At the time we took on the task with honor, the honor that was possible for having known and admired the work of General Uribe and having been hurt by his death; little could we imagine that we would come up against this web of plots, falsifications, immorality, and lies. For months we have spared no time or expense to bring to light the truth of what happened, against the somber interests that have distorted the facts and obstructed the investigations. And today, from the pages of this valiant newspaper, we dare to raise an accusing finger, just as the illustrious Émile Zola did in recent and similarly tough times, and say: We accuse.

  We accuse General Salomón Correal, police commissioner, of having appropriated the Uribe case without the necessary authority, and even of having lied about a supposed personal order from the President of the Republic. We accuse General Correal of having pursued and harassed the detectives who deludedly thought, as in the case of General Lubín Bonilla, that their duty was to find the murderers of Rafael Uribe Uribe, not hide them behind a smoke screen. We accuse General Correal of having refused to receive evidence that implicated individuals other than the named assassins, when he prevented a valuable witness, with the complicity of the Prosecutor, from giving a statement. We accuse General Correal of hiding evidence, as when he received a bundle of papers found at the house of one of the assassins and, in front of his subordinates, chose a few, put them in his pocket, and returned the rest, leaving to posterity the question of what information those now disappeared documents contained. We accuse him of having allowed the assassins to communicate freely with each other since their arrest; we accuse him of indicating to them with his finger when they should remain silent and when they should answer the investigators’ questions; we accuse him of having arranged for the assassins to have only a thin partition wall between their cells in the Panóptico, so they could reach agreement on their lies and their strategies; we accuse him of having assigned each of the assassins a personal orderly who cooks for them whatever they want, makes their beds in the morning, and removes their waste at night, and allowing each of them to receive unusual quantities of food from the market, according to some prisoners, around six pounds of meat. We accuse him, finally, of using his power, which is not small, to extend to the assassins benefits that no other prisoner in Colombia has a right to expect. Why? Because only these assassins might speak up against those truly guilty of the crime against Rafael Uribe Uribe; because only these assassins are the owners of a silence worth its weight in gold.

  General Correal’s behavior is surrounded by suspicions under any dispassionate gaze, to any free intelligence whose intention is none other than finding the truth. Not so for Prosecutor Rodríguez Forero, who has been his accomplice since the dawning of these proceedings, and whose conduct, rather than that of an upright civil servant, has been that of a slave who obeys his masters. Thus, he has refused to pursue the possible truth in the declarations of so many witnesses who saw General Pedro León Acosta in the company of the assassins at Tequendama Falls; he has refused to even consider the possibility that General Pedro León Acosta was the man who was seen the night before the crime speaking to the assassins at the door of the carpentry shop. He has refused, in fact, to involve General Pedro León Acosta, in spite of the thousand indications that implicate him in the criminal activities. The public Prosecutor, faced with the testimony of dozens of witnesses, has preferred to take the word of the suspect, who has denied he was even present in Bogotá on the days preceding the tragic moment. Readers of La Patria will remember, since it was a very public event, that General Pedro León Acosta was the same man who attempted to assassinate General Rafael Reyes, President of the Republic, one ill-fated day. Is it his word the Prosecutor chooses to believe over that of others? What does this tell us about a civil servant like Prosecutor Rodríguez Forero, supposed representative of the interests of the community, when he gives full credit to the word of a coup attempter and discounts that of citizens with blameless pasts?

  Today, only deliberate myopia or bad faith can deny the evidence that General Pedro León Acosta had more responsibility in the assassination of Rafael Uribe Uribe than the Vista Fiscal assigns him. Only corruption or indolence can maintain without blushing that the police commissioner is free of all guilt and innocent of all negligence. And only ignorance or amnesia can avoid the fact that the two sinister men have something in common: they each once tried to murder a president of Colombia. Salomón Correal, torturing the elderly Dr. Manuel María Sanclemente; Pedro León Acosta, attacking in cowardly fashion General Rafael Reyes. What mor
e proof is needed of their complicity and their identical purposes?

  But there is a third point in this triangle of evil, readers of La Patria, good Colombians, a third point that must be sought among the Society of Jesus. Scandal, shout the readers, blasphemy? No: simply, the audacity to put in black and white certain truths that hurt us all and few of us accept.

  We must look at the evidence. Who were the men who held meetings behind closed doors with the police commissioner? The Jesuits, represented by Father Rufino Berestain. Who were those who used the pulpit to insult and attack the memory of the assassinated general just a few weeks after the fateful day, who desired that his soul should rot in hell? Once again, the Jesuits; once again, represented by the Basque Berestain, Machiavellian Rasputin of the Colombian police. Where did the assassins emerge from on October 13, 1914, according to testimonies we have been able to gather? From the Jesuit college, that has a little door on Ninth Street. Who visits and accompanies the assassins in the Panóptico, who brings them gifts of books that libel and dismiss General Uribe, undoubtedly to strengthen their resolve and convince them that the Catholic faith condones and even celebrates their horrendous crime? The Jesuits. The Jesuits. The Jesuits.

  Launching these difficult contentions from the tribune of the free press, we do not pretend to establish criminal responsibilities, which is what the justice system of our country should be concerning itself with. We will settle, however, for denouncing the faults and errors in a Vista Fiscal that seems designed more to cover up than to elucidate. Dr. Rodríguez Forero’s Vista Fiscal states his opinion that there are no other people responsible for the murder of General Uribe Uribe than the two confessed assassins who are awaiting trial in jail; but common sense and diligent investigation suggest a wider fan of complicity that involves high-ranking members of our society. In the days that follow, if God gives us life and the pages of this heroic paper lends us space, we will reveal what we have been able to find out in the course of our own investigations, unspoiled by any spurious interest or thirst for vengeance. We seek only the answer to our legitimate questions. Do the Colombian people not have a right to leave behind deceit, conspiracy, and lies? Do they not have a right to know the truth about who rules their destiny? Who are the true masterminds behind General Uribe Uribe’s death?

  Who are they?

  * * *

  —

  WHEN MARCO TULIO ANZOLA read his own article published in the pages of La Patria, he thought that now it was certain: there was no turning back. Over the next few months, with some frequency, he sent the newspaper the results of his investigations, or rather gave written shape to what resided in disorder within the unfathomable universe of his notes and documents. He did so fully aware not simply of publishing indignant columns, but excerpts from a future book: a book that would have to be a valiant response to the Vista Fiscal, his demonstration that Julián Uribe had not been mistaken in entrusting him with this task: a book that would be, yes, his J’accuse. He didn’t publish those articles under a pseudonym, as the Campesino or Ariston Men Hydor did with his diatribes and false accusations against Uribe Uribe, but used his own name in proud capital letters, and he was flattered that hurried readers would stop him in the street and praise his courage. Word went around that those scandalous articles were part of a book in progress, and there was respect in the eyes and voices of his few readers and sometimes admiration. Anzola had never known vanity till then, the terrible vanity of being brave.

  That was when he started to see suspicious people on every corner. It all began one morning, when he looked out the window to see if it was raining and saw, instead of rain, two men who seemed to be watching his house. He saw them again—at least, he saw what he thought were the same two men, but then later he wouldn’t have been able to confirm it, even if his life depended on it—as he came out of his office one Friday night. He didn’t tell anybody about it, certainly not Julián Uribe: he didn’t want to be one of those men who is always looking over his shoulder. General Uribe, he thought, had not looked over his shoulder that day, he had not been one of those men. What right had Anzola to harbor fears that the great general had disdained?

  Nevertheless, he did write a letter to the minister of government. He reminded him of his responsibility to safeguard the rights of citizens; he told him of the interest he’d taken in the clarification of the crime against General Uribe; he told him that, as part of this “perfectly legitimate” task, he had begun to publish a series of columns in La Patria demonstrating the errors committed by those responsible for the proceedings. Since then, he explained in his letter, he had been the victim of a “covert but no less dangerous persecution on the part of unknown individuals,” and he requested the minister to send officers or detectives to arrest those individuals. “This does not mean the undersigned is requesting personal protection,” wrote Anzola, “but is simply proposing an efficient and opportune support from the authorities when the case should present itself.”

  A month later he received a reply. More than a negative, it was a taunt: “As soon as what the correspondent says happens, the National Police will provide whatever help might be necessary.” Anzola saw in the disdainful sarcasm the stamp of Salomón Correal. Meanwhile, a newspaper published an elaborate cartoon in which a ferocious Anzola, with aquiline nose and prominent teeth, stood beside the figures of Uribe Uribe and Death with a scythe; on the other side of the frame was Salomón Correal, serenely holding a Christian cross. The caption said: Cowards attack in gangs. The cartoon appeared on a Monday; the next day, Anzola attended a speech given by followers of Marco Fidel Suárez, a white-bearded grammarian who had begun to sound like a Conservative candidate for the next year’s presidential elections. The meeting took place in the Parque de la Independencia, among tired trees and low houses that protected no one from the wind that blew down from the eastern mountains. There was Anzola, standing in the middle of the anonymous crowd, waiting for the first speaker to take the stage, when someone recognized him.

  “You’re that atheist,” a man in a dark poncho said to his face.

  And before Anzola knew it, a catcalling had started up. “Atheist!” mouths he didn’t see shouted at him. “Atheist!” Anzola attempted to defend himself: “I am Catholic!” he shouted absurdly. “I go to church!” Behind the threatening faces, beyond the gold teeth that shone in slanderous mouths, the treetops had begun to tremble. He remembered what had happened to General Uribe shortly before his death: in a park like this one or perhaps right here, during a speech by Ricardo Tirado or Fabio Lozano, a furious crowd had shouted at him, had surrounded him, and was on the verge of striking him when his companions opened a black umbrella as a shield and almost carried him through the air.

  Around the same time he wrote to Ignacio Piñeres, director general of penitentiaries, to request he order and carry out a search of the assassins’ cells. Would there be evidence there, valuable clues, compromising documents that would allow him to back up his accusations? Anzola thought it possible, at least judging from what he’d been able to see when he’d been on his secret mission inside the Panóptico; but for it to be useful an inspection would have to be carried out in full compliance with the law and, at the same time, without the assassins’ knowledge. It wasn’t difficult to convince the official: on March 14, at around half past nine in the morning, Anzola and Piñeres arrived at the front door of the Panóptico. They were accompanied by the director of prisons, a young man called Rueda, who spoke and moved as if he were holding something between his buttocks, and whose piercing voice took some getting used to. Piñeres and Anzola, however, got along from the start. He seemed diligent and disposed to help. When they arrived in front of Galarza’s and Carvajal’s cells, he stepped forward to take charge; he informed the assassins, who regarded him disdainfully from their beds, what was going to happen; and asked them, in a firm but not impolite tone, to stand up and wait in the corridor. Galarza came out first, barefoot, and Anzola sa
w his hairless feet and dirty toenails, except for his left big toe, which was violet as if he had stubbed it; Carvajal took a little longer, and when he finally emerged he took a quick look around, sweeping his gaze over the cell as if wanting to make sure nothing compromising or incriminating was lying around there. The assassins leaned against the wall in the corridor, without looking at each other. On their mouths, on those pale, thin lips their sparse mustaches did nothing to hide, there was a hostile but at the same time serene expression, as if all that was going on was happening to others. Galarza, fixing his slanting eyes on Anzola’s necktie, said:

  “Aren’t you the one who used to work here?”

  “Yes,” said Anzola.

  “And didn’t you get fired?”

  “No, I wasn’t fired,” said Anzola. “I was transferred, promoted. They didn’t fire me.”

  “They told us you’d been fired.”

  “Who?”

  “People.”

  “Well, it’s not true. They didn’t fire me. They promoted me. They transferred me.”

  Galarza said: “Ah.”

  Then the search began. For three and a half hours, the two civil servants went through the two adjacent cells looking and touching and separating and describing, and then noting down everything they found in a loose-leaf notebook. In Carvajal’s room, which they saw first, they found a three-piece serge suit in good condition, a new jacket and well-pressed trousers, three foreign-made shirts, and a box full of very good undershirts and shorts. They found a rope ten arms-lengths long, a metal hoop, a saw, and three needles. They found a box with chocolates and pandeyucas, a wallet with money in it and a key ring without keys, and a quantity of letters, books, and notebooks that Anzola looked through while Piñeres and Rueda moved around the spacious rooms, coming out of one and going into the other under the impassive gaze of the assassins. In Galarza’s room they found woolen blankets, three pairs of almost new boots, a suit of green cloth in perfect condition, four pairs of trousers, two fedoras, half a dozen recently purchased collars, one box of ties and another of good-quality underpants. After revising the inventory, Piñeres summed up the situation in seven words: