Postcard From Colombia: Land Of The Body Snatchers

12 August, Bogota.
THEIR FACES looked as though they had witnessed unimaginable horrors. Hollow-cheeked and wind-blasted, creased with fatigue, their eyeballs big, staring question marks. Six hours of suffering, across mountains and jungles. Battered by high winds and constant rain. Tortured by extremes of temperatures. 232 unrelenting kilometres of asking why, why, why, to the drumbeat of their hearts and the chiming of their pedals. The suffering of a country was etched on the faces of the riders who crossed the finish line at La Vega in the fifth stage of the Vuelta a Colombia 2007.
The previous day, a desolate father with his hands in chains marched into the main square of the capital city, Santa Fe de Bogota, to meet the President. He had marched across jungles and mountains, through wind, rain and sun, for seven weeks for this appointment. The pain etched on his face marked 10 years of emptiness. His 19-year-old son had been kidnapped by guerrillas. A decade of birthdays had remained uncelebrated. Day after day of asking why, why, why to the silence of his telephone and the withering of hope.

KIDNAPPINGS

The nation, previously inured to news of kidnappings, had been stirred by the father’s march. Many of them had lost sons, daughters, mothers and fathers to the kidnappers, the guerrillas, the paramilitaries, or the narcotrafficantes during the last 40 years. There are currently believed to be 3,000 people in the hands of kidnappers in Colombia. The art of demanding a ransom – like many other business practices here – is a relaxed affair. Many victims of the body snatchers have been in captivity for years.
In today’s El Tiempo newspaper, it was reported that there have been 1,052 kidnappings in Bogota alone during the last eight years. At least thirty of the victims were killed. Forty were foreigners. And at least 200 were snatched by FARC, one of the left-wing guerrilla groups that still controls large swathes of remote countryside here. Alongside the report was a list of Do’s and Don’ts to avoid being kidnapped. “Keep a low profile and don’t publicise any financial success,” was one tip.

TROPICAL

Washed-up has-beens, however, aren’t considered of much value. So no-one’s tried to kidnap me. Yet. I’m the Course Director at an English language summer camp at a farm in the middle of a tropical rainforest just 45 miles from Bogota, but a lifetime away from the capital’s bright lights and fancy bars and restaurants. We are 2,000 metres below Bogota in the foothills of the Andes, in the heart of the tierras calientes – hot lands – where iridescent parrots and humming birds fly amongst the royal palms and orchids, and the threat of tarantulas keeps the kids awake at night. Cold showers, intermittent power and the slowest broadband internet connection in the world are a daily diet. But I have to say – it certainly beats the shit out of working for a certain language school in Edinburgh.

STRONGHOLD

A mile from the camp is the town of Villeta, which was a guerrilla stronghold as recently as four years ago. The taxi driver who took me up the mountain to La Vega for the finish of the Vuelta a Colombia – until he was turned back at a police checkpoint for not having a permit to cross the departmental boundary line, from where I was forced to hitch a lift – told me how the guerrillas announced their arrival by making discreet inquiries around the town such as: “Who are the drunks? Who are the machistas? Who are the troublemakers?” The guilty parties were then given 15 days to clean up or clear out. Though he didn’t admit as much, I got the impression my taxi driver missed their efficiency. They left pretty hastily after the paramilitaries – who may or may not have direct links to the army and government, depending on who you listen to – moved in and weren’t quite as generous with their ultimatums. “They simply took people from their homes, drove them into the rainforest, and killed them,” said my taxista.

PARADE

In Bogota, where I spend my weekends recuperating at the bullfight(there is currently a series of free novilladas and corridas to celebrate the city’s anniversary), football(Millonarios at the clapped-out Campin stadium are my adopted team) or watching the endless parade of Colombian beauties spilling out of the trendy bars and restaurants or posh shopping centres of the Zona Rosa, the legacy of years of car-bombings, political assassinations and kidnappings is all too apparent. It’s the sniffer dogs who check your car before you can enter underground car parks, or the security guards who frisk you in and out of shopping centres, or the razor wire that defines the rich neighbourhoods. It’s the signs on the TransMilenio – high speed buses – that say automatic sub-machine guns or any other arms are prohibited.

LOLLIPOPS

Or it’s the barefoot refugee from the countryside selling chewing gum from the central reservation of an eight-lane highway while his family try to shelter from the rain in a heap of plastic bags and personal possessions. It’s the pretty little girl at the bullfight selling lollipops for 500 pesos.
Back at the summer camp, Cheo, our friendly Colombian handyman who happily played football with the kids and kept an eye on them while they were in the swimming pool, probably thought he had landed on his feet getting work for five weeks in an area not exactly abundant in employment opportunities. But Cheo doesn’t work for us any more. He was, suddenly and quietly, “replaced” last week.

CATTLE

The farm we are based at is owned by Don Ricardo Delgado, a successfully Bogota businessman who also owns several cattle and sugar cane growing ranches. His oily, playboy son, Fernando, who got his architect’s degree in Milan, wears a Mont Blanc watch and drives a vintage Mercedes, has been showing a lot of interest in my female colleague, Lisa. (I should point out at this point, perhaps a mite ungallantly, that Lisa is plain verging on porcine and as charmless as a wet Sunday in Coatbridge, but that she possesses an attribute considered legendary for a female in Latin America – blonde hair). Lisa, however, in a twist worthy of Colombia’s most controversial telenovela – Sin Tetas, No Hay Paraiso(Without Tits, There Is No Paradise) – was more taken with the rustic, understated charms of Cheo.

REMOVED

Don Ricardo was not best pleased for the prospects for his son. So Don Ricardo had Cheo swiftly removed. The official reason was that “the parents of the kids had requested a female lifeguard at the pool”. And so Cheo can now been seen around Villeta touting for work with an outdoor activities agency.
It’s a cruel, primitive country, the kind of country that can leave fit, strong and healthy young men hollow-cheeked and blank-eyed.
And that’s before the body snatchers have got to them……

© Text and photos Jack Havana 2007. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited without Jack’s say-so.

ABOVE: The author does some intensive research into Colombia's social and political upheavals.
This week, Jack Havana recommends:
DVD: Maria Full of Grace(15). Of course, the average Colombian says his country only produces so much drugs because the rest of the world demands it, but this is a compelling account of life as a Colombian drugs mule.
TV: Sin Tetas, No Hay Paraiso(Without Tits, There Is No Paradise). There’s nothing a Colombian drugs lord likes more than to buy his girlfriend something expensive and ostentatious – like a bigger pair of breasts, for example. Judging from some of the examples I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing this past four weeks, it has become a national obsession. This satirical TV show captured the zeitgeist, and is now out on DVD.
BOOK: News of a Kidnapping, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The greatest living Colombian – apart from Shakira, obviously – wrote this brilliant dissection of Colombia’s number one pastime back in the 90s, but it resonates as strongly today.