A Gentle Land (with apologies to Michael Vickory)
by Ivan Kasimoff
A few members of the August ’09 Delegation came to Colombia before the official arrival date and have seen a wonderful, lush country, from the rich colonial cities of the Caribbean coast such as Cartagena, to the exciting city of Cali, to several historical towns such as Mompoz on the Magdalena River, and to Barichara frozen in its 17th century construction in the Andean highlands. And some of us have walked through the Centro Histórico of Bogotá where the large cathedral stands before the wide Plaza Bolívar named after the great liberator of Latin America from Spanish Imperial control.
As the delegation has been through several days of meetings, we have together been able to go to uptown Bogotá to the Parque 93 in a peaceful area of cafes and restaurants, a small area of respite amongst towering skyscrapers on all sides. We find the Colombian people to be polite, perhaps a bit restrained, but always helpful. The common greeting here is a simple "Buenas" everywhere you go. Their days are busy as it seems that everyone goes to work. Street life is vibrant and there is no shortage of open shops, discos, cafes, and exotic produce on stands and carts on the street. We are dazzled by the jugos naturales with names like lulo, maracuya, mora, zapote, and the list goes on. We get around easily as many Colombians do on the modern transportation systems, one cleverly named the Transmileno. There are also several subway lines in the city of Medellín, not to mention several funicular lines up into the hills of this modern city. After now a week in Colombia, it is fair to say that the delegation has been enjoying our stay and experience in this land.
The image we have of Colombia is of course informed on the one hand by what we see in our travels. There is also the image of Colombia represented by President Uribe and widely disseminated in the media here, much of which is presented in the same way in the North American media””a country making progress and overcoming its historic problems of terror and drug trafficking. There is another image which we learn about in our own studies of this country and meetings we have with members of various NGOs and activists as you will read by keeping up with the writings in this blog. As in much of the conquest of the Americas beginning in the 16th century, hundreds of thousands if not more indigenous people were killed in Colombia. Then soon after the war for Independence from Spain, Colombia had not less than eight civil wars in the 19th century. When the Cold War began, some 200,000 people were killed in the Bogotazo uprising. Waves of political and military battles by a number of armed actors continued on into the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And in the 90s and into our own millennium, the drug wars became a component of the violence of everyday life not only in the country but in many major cities. With the election of President Uribe in 2002, Colombians now live in the state under his firm hand called Seguridad Demcrática, which if one wants to look carefully means police and military personnel are present on many, if not every street in the cities. That is not all we can see in this land.
Everyday life is filled with police or military actions. Our bags are checked when we enter buildings and certain streets in the city. We are finger printed and photographed when we enter the lobby of the building that hosts the UN High Commission on Human Rights and Refugees. Large military personnel trucks are parked at city plazas and parks where uniformed officers comb through the public space questioning military recruitment aged youth to see if their registration papers are in order””if not, on to the trucks these youth go for basic training.
And out of the cities, there are police and military checkpoints on the roads. Passenger filled buses are stopped on their journeys so that the authorities can check over ids and suspicious behavior. On one 100 mile trip to a major Caribbean city with 3 Colombians in our taxi, we were stopped 3 times, one stop 5 minutes after the other. All of our papers were looked over twice. Us males were frisked on two of these stops, and I had to nearly empty out my luggage for them to see. Perhaps more stunning than these acts “for our security” was that each time we returned to our seats, not one person commented or even sighed at the intrusive actions of these highly armed men.
Once in the coastal city, on the way back to my hotel, I was stopped on the street by 2 young police officers. They patted me down, and up. They asked me to empty my pockets. The officers then personally went through my pockets from behind me and upon only finding money and an id which they showed no interest in, accused me of having cocaine. What could I say? There was some back and forth, but again, what could I say. They had no explanations. No probable cause. No logic here. Then they requested a gaseosa, a soda pop. I just starred at them in disbelief. They let me go, let me go with feelings of violation, humiliation, and fear.
None of this is unusual here. In our meetings we learn about arbitrary arrests, police harassment, disappearances, forced displacements of thousands of peasants and indigenous people (about 10% of the 43 million population are refugees in their own country). And there are targeted assassinations, and more recently selective assassinations (where 2 or 3 persons associated with a targeted person are killed). The very office in Bogotá where we meet to learn about Colombia today, was recently broken into and its computers stolen in the same month as 3 other NGO offices were similarly robbed. And in a meeting with campesinos in a small town that FOR delegates participated in, heavily armed police officers stood outside the meeting hall while simple people sharing the story of their lives were watched.
There is no gentle land. This is the Colombia Gabriel Garcia Marquéz exposes readers to in the city of Mompoz in 100 Days of Solitude. This is the Colombia of President Uribe’s Seguridad Demcrática. This is the Colombia the United States supports with Plan Colombia.
