Colombianidad II

Thanks to Felipe, again.

Marcos's Cocuy photos on PDN's Photo of the Day

Marcos's work in the Cocuy is featured on PDN's Photo of the Day. Take a look.

El Cocuy in the Times

On the Ritak U'Wa Blanco. photo: Marcos Roda

I report from El Cocuy National Park in this week's travel section.

Above the Clouds in a Secret Colombia

AS crampons crunched ice, our guide, Rubará, raised his traditional woven sisal-thread handbag by his face and asked me to snap a photo. We were climbing above 17,000 feet, just shy of the summit of the Ritacuba Blanco, a glaciated peak shaped like a soft-serve ice cream cone, at El Cocuy National Park in Colombia. Aquamarine-hued icicles hung from the maw of a crevasse and, far below, clouds blanketed the Orinoco Basin.

The landscape stretched across dozens of ice-capped peaks and deep cirque valleys. Moraine lakes, formed by the natural erosion from glaciers’ unhurried flow and retreat, shimmered in mineral hues. Nearly 30 miles away, we could just make out the telltale church spire of the town of Soatá. Save for a photographer friend and one other guide on the ice field, no other people were in view. The February day was bright. I’d finally caught my breath.

Read on here. And please check out Dennis Drenner's excellent photos in the slide show as well.


More photos, from Marcos Roda and myself, with the voice of Miguel Herrera; 2:08 in all:


Thanks to mucholoquito for creative commons use of his music, off Jamendo.
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Colombianness

Thanks again, Felipe. No idea who to thank for collecting the photos.

The End of Ice – and the Beginning of a New Kind of Literary Journalism

Come on down April 16 to 20 Cooper Square, my old NYU stomping grounds, and meet some smart folks championing the VQR, including Lawrence Weschler, Ted Conover, William Finnegan, and editor Ted Genoways. (Read Ted's Batman story from the February Outside Magazine here, and Weschler and Conover's contributions to the current VQR here and here.)

Considering the illustrious company, I won't be saying much, but I will have a chance to talk about reporting and writing my story on the exhumation of victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia, published by VQR this winter.

More event info here:

• WHAT:The End of Ice – and the Beginning of a New Kind of Literary Journalism
• WHEN: Thursday, April 16th , 7pm to 9pm
• WHERE: 20 Cooper Square, 7th floor commons

Hope to see you there.

Lion Loose in Bogota

Ok, I have no idea where this comes from, and I have Felipe to thank back in Bogota for passing it along. But whoever owns this animal is a genius.

A foul-tasting brown sludge...

Glad to see John Otis and Scott Dalton out in the jungle -- always something interesting they come back with. This time, it's yajé:


Read the story over at GlobalPost.

I'd say that the idea is ripe for South Park, except that they already did it:

With the first kidnapping, it all falls apart

Interesting argument from Elizabeth Dickinson over at FP on post-conflict tourism. I'm preparing a travel piece now about a remote region of Colombia and grappling with the problem of how to describe the risk. For years, a friend of mine talked about the suggestion of visiting Colombia in this way: "I'd go, but I'd never take responsibility for anyone else going." Has that changed now? Like I said about emeralds a long time ago, it all holds up until the first bad deal.

There's a big idea behind all this about "travel-warning lists" and the responsibilities of the tourist. But also about the politics of opening up a country that has remained largely isolated. Topics Naipaul exposed in The Middle Passage, but that remain unresolved in places like Colombia, and Iraq.


photo: Suba, Bogota, Colombia

Photo page update

I've updated my photo page. Please give it a visit.

Toros, Bogotá

Sound and photos are my own.

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make do

Yeah, but an architect costs money.

(thanks to Felipe for the tip.)

The Bones of Mendihuaca, in Winter VQR

Colombian military escort the forensic team in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta.

In its Winter 2009 issue, the Virginia Quarterly Review publishes my report on the exhumation of victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia. Complex, gruesome and under-reported, the injustices of Colombia's vast paramilitary power remain unresolved. Here's what happens when the trappings of order are cynically deployed in a lawless land.

Maira Alejandra Martínez Suarez is sweeping away another layer of dirt when the bullets come flying overhead. She’s twenty-six years old, and with her French braid tucked under a brand-new baseball cap, she looks more like a rec-league softball pitcher than a forensic anthropologist under fire. She grabs her shovel, paintbrush, and dustpan and, standing in an open grave, peeks over the ledge of moist earth. She scans for incoming fire across the clearing dotted with body-sized rectangular pits. Her Colombian army bodyguards, belly-down, shoot out into the surrounding brush. A ranch corral is too far for escape. She crouches, comes eye to eye with a silver tooth in a half-buried skull and starts to pray, lying in a grave she’s digging.

Subscription required to read the full story. Better yet, support VQR with a newsstand purchase.

Close to the Bone: Searching for Justice in Colombia

In the Sierra Nevada, 2007

I've got a brief on the forgotten victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia in this month's Walrus, Canadian magazine of the year winner.

SIERRA NEVADA DE SANTA MARTA — I’m trudging down the lower slopes above the city of Santa Marta with a black plastic bag of human bones dangling like a scarf bundle from the handle of my shovel. An assistant to the forensic anthropologist I’ve been shadowing for the past eight days — a big, ribald gravedigger — stops on a ridge overlooking the misty clouds that have rolled in off the Caribbean, and laughs. “Do you want me to carry Doña Tulia?” he asks. That’s what we have taken to calling the woman we exhumed two days ago, a likely victim of paramilitary violence. “Tulia’s no trouble,” I say, more spooked by my nonchalance than by the bones.

Read the rest here. Or buy the Walrus -- great publication.

What Colombia and Frogs have in common

photo: mr. ëd, flickr

Andrew Revkin muses today in Dot Earth on the problem of complexity in newspaper coverage. He's talking about frogs, by way of example, and the post is worth a thorough read (especially following through on to this link to a discussion from On the Media), but his larger topic is the way complex, shifting topics get explained in the press.

What’s a journalist (or citizen) to do? The more definitive a statement, the more effort should go into testing its basis. Somehow, we need to figure out a better way to deal with complexity and uncertainty. That goes for scientists, journal publishers, and definitely journalists and readers.

The problem of the golden frog, it turns out, is the problem of complex political and social realities like those of Colombia. "The more complex or conditional a story is," Revkin writes, "often the less space it is granted."

eyes, all of a sudden, on kidnapping in Colombia

photo: El Tiempo -- (left to right) Luis Eladio Pérez, Jorge Eduardo Géchem, Gloria Polanco and Orlando Beltrán.

With the news today of the release of four former Colombian lawmakers after more than six years in captivity, came a statement from the FARC declaring an end to "unilateral liberations," until demands for a New-York-City-sized distension zone is conceded to the rebels. Good news for the four pictured above. Bad news for the 500 still left, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, and three Americans.

While the wires relay developments (all 627 related » at the moment over on Google News), only one article so far puts some of these developments in context, and I recommend taking a look at Kevin Whitelaw's review of the "War on Kidnapping" in U.S. News & World Report, and then follow on to a previous article on the power of both kidnapping imagery and the FARC.

Anyone who sees recent releases as purely positive steps, should reconsider the scope of the conflict. Whitelaw writes:

Places to hide. Kidnapping remains a problem. A number of hostages—U.S. intelligence agencies estimate some 750—remain in captivity. Many are middle-class Colombians, but there are also several dozen high-profile captives, like Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian woman and former Colombian presidential candidate. The guerrillas can still find places to hide in Colombia's jungle, which is almost the size of France. "That's the part of the territory the bad guys still know more about than us," says Colombia's Vice President Francisco Santos. "They have been there for 45 years, and we have been there systematically only for five."

Remember that kidnapping peaked back in 2000 at an astonishing rate of over 3500 a year. Such was the bonanza that armed groups took to calling road blocks and other random kidnapping techniques "pesca milgarosa" or miraculous fishing.

Here's what it looks like to come out of the jungle after 6 years. That's left-wing senator Piedad Cordoba in yellow -- she's been shuttling back and forth to Chavez to help negotiate the release.



Finally, who's still out there? Another excellent post from Adam Isacson, at the Center for International Policy, provides a full update.

Ask not what your country can do for you

photo: REUTERS - 24/11/2003 (from El Pais) -- Reinhilt Weigel (brandishing an automatic), Asier Huegun Exteberría and members of what turned out to be the first division of the ELN to lay down arms.

What if kidnapping were treated more like a disease than a crime? You may remember the case of Reinhilt Weigel, a German national who was kidnapped in 2003 along with a Spaniard, a Brit and four Israelis who were trekking to the Lost City of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta. Held for 74 days by Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN), the European hostages were released, and picked up by a Colombian helicopter escorted by German commandos.

Ve varned you, mein fraulien, said the German Foreign Ministry, who had restricted travel to the area. The ministry promptly slapped Weigel with a 12,640-Euro bill -- for the helicopter ride and other expenses incurred in the aftermath of an "irresponsible adventure."

Weigel's case had taken some bad PR through the publication of the above proof-of-life photo, on the day of release, showing a healthy-looking and apparently convivial Weigel with her captors. Regardless, she refused to pay and took the matter to court, where a Berlin judge declared that only the return airfare to Germany was her responsibility.

Yesterday, that ruling was overturned, and will likely now go on to a higher Federal Administrative Court, as the case will set precedent.

And just what precedent is that? A fascinating one that tiptoes along the line that separates personal and state responsibility.

When I lived in Colombia, it was running joke with some Colombian friends that we wanted to set up an adventure tour for just the kind of high-octane Israeli and European backpackers that the Santa Marta coast attracts. We'd bring them down to the farm, where they'd be kidnapped by a band of actors playing guerrilla, let them pay their ransom for the mere thrill of it before letting them go, revealing the play, and carrying on with the tour. Smiling photo of hostage carrying machine gun included.

Truth is these schemes are already in place in Colombia. At Hacienda Napoles, Pablo Escobar's former 7,000-acre ranch (with 11 wild hippos left over from the old zoological days), it's still possible to negotiate a guided tour of a working coke lab in the paramilitary-controlled area. I met a man who regularly took Israelis (and anyone who'd pay the ticket price, no more than any other tour in Colombia) to see the field kitchens and sample uncut merch, as if at a winery.

So, now does your government have a responsibility to bail you out of that kind of adventure, when it inevitably goes wrong? The debate around Weigel, unfortunately, is clouded by perceptions of her likability. Nevermind any debate about whether the ELN are simply criminals, organized terrorists (as they are currently designated by the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe), a guerrilla army or what? The concession is that the ELN won't be paying for that helicopter ride.

I've made the same trek as Weigel -- with the same tour company belonging to the well-reputed Frankie Rey -- three times, and twice with a group of 45 upper class school children. I was in the region again last June to report on forensic anthropology there. As a reporter, I want to know that if I take risks to tell stories about the world to the people in my country, that in exchange my government will help provide for my safety. More to the point, though, I'm intrigued by the idea of someone being "irresponsible" enough to get themselves kidnapped. The agency is all their own, and the obvious off-shoot is an insurance package for high-risk behavior. That way, when you go to Colombia and get caught by the FARC, it's actually you who've caught a case of the FARC instead.

In Colombia, where the news was picked up by El Tiempo, comments quickly turned the lens on their own Ingrid Betancourt, former presidential candidate who on Saturday, Feb. 23 completes 6 years in captivity. Will she pay for the current visit of French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner? How about the public Mass to be held in France -- will that run her more than a wedding? And then the comments turn vitriolic, criticizing "romantic" foreigners for believing guerrilla propaganda, and wondering aloud that after Weigel finishes with her own government, will she sue Colombia for letting the ELN exist in the first place?

Why legality has nothing to do with it: Cocaleros on strike in Antioquia, Colombia

They've been growing coca for the past two decades. Waves of drug mafiosi, then paramilitary bosses, now guerrilla have reaped power and money from the region's farmers. Now the Colombian government has moved in with 3,000 eradicators and a security escort of 1,800 national police. The plan is to rip up coca plants one by one. In response, thousands of growers have gathered in the region's towns to protest, reports El Tiempo today. They've been disrupting traffic on the main coastal highway, shaking down cars, and letting local municipal governments know that they won't give up a long-standing livelihood without a fight.

Eradication has already taken the lives of 30 men, most dramatically in the Macarena National Park, through 2006. (Visit the Colombian National Parks website and find the strangely ominous "undefined" in the sections covering descriptions and visitor's guides.) Eradicators there were ambushed by guerrilla and injured by mines; they expect the same welcome as they move into this new front in Northeastern Colombia, where by UN accounts, 23 percent of the coca fields targeted for eradication are located.

What's really going on? Peel back the layers and find rumors that the strikes are being led by the 18th division of the FARC, under alias "Ramon Ruiz." Peel some more and find that aerial spraying, which had been occurring in the region from time immemorial, had settled recently into a once-a-year rate, allowing for three good three-month harvests before a replanting of sprayed crops. Eradication undercuts this deal by leaving peasants to bridge too long of a season without income. The structures are in place for providing replacement crops of cocoa or coffee, or simply paying off former growers as "family park rangers" to the tune of US$157 a month for two months until they get on their feet. The growers counter with a demand for a two-year window of unobstructed coca growing for "paying off debts." The government replies that it doesn't negotiate with illicit product. The bloody tally begins: 9,000 hectares by March 30, promises the national police; one police shot dead and 8 workers blown to bits by a mined coca plant so far.

The Colombia of president Alvaro Uribe currently has nearly 7,000 peasants on eradication detail, earning US$300 a month for plodding through minefields to force a destitute population of farmers into growing something significantly less lucrative than what they've lived off of for decades. The stated goal is to pull up 100,000 hectares (386 square miles) of coca. The operation will cost the government, subsidized by the US's Plan Colombia of military and economic aid, US$26.2 million. Some 120,000 Colombian families live off of coca.

This time, they'd gone too far

photo: BuzzSugar

Here's the throwaway line that caught my interest:

The Colombian version was canceled in October after a woman confessed on the show that she had hired someone to kill her husband.

So ends a late paragraph in Alessandra Stanley's review of "The Moment of Truth," a Fox reality-TV offering this season. The show's basic premise is to ask increasingly intimate questions and reward truthful answers with cash. Half the fun is in watching the contestant squirm, the other half is in watching his family seethe. Classy.

According to Stanley, the Fox version is expected to be "quite tame" compared to adaptations abroad. Digging a little with friends in TV down in Colombia, I found that it isn't exactly true to say the show was canceled after the hired-killer confession. Instead, the show's demise seems to be due to a crusader named Santiago Salah, a Colombian lawyer who published high-holy op-eds in the daily El Tiempo, lashing out against the gameshow as morally reprehensible. If you speak Spanish, check out this Telemundo report.

Still, there's a charm to this whole mess. Colombian morality, their twisted sense of Catholic guilt and truth, their ability to take distraction to professional heights, and then Fox television glomming on to things of a piece. It wasn't long after the October end to "Nada mas que la verdad" that Colombia turned its attentions to an equally compelling reality show, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez negotiated with Colombia's largest guerrilla group, the FARC, to have two long-held, high-profile hostages released.

So what, exactly, is going too far in Colombia? Let Fox show us.

Narco-gallina

Colombia's "El Tiempo" daily reports today on the capture and confinement of a drug smuggler near the Venezuelan border. Police report that the suspect, discovered hiding in a large agricultural sack on a bus, had several bags of coca paste, the basis for cocaine, tied to his legs and wings. The police further note that the suspect was a chicken. The chicken, reports Colonel Richard Portilla, director of operations for regional law enforcement, is being held at the local prosecutors office until further soup ingredients become necessary.

In the last year, several ducks and at least one turkey have also played mule.

From Neiva to New York

Read my piece on Colombian adoptee Jen Cerami in this month's Inthefray.org.