Poor Kid

In the New York Times this Sunday:

The Goat That Got Away

By MATTHEW FISHBANE

A FEW Sundays ago, between 2:53 and 2:56 a.m., a young man was seen loitering outside Cabrito, a Mexican bar and restaurant on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village.

Security video showed the man walking, looking around and then climbing a railing. Soon after, a night watchman noticed that the restaurant’s signature sign, which had hung above the railing, was gone. Whether the man in the video took it is not clear — he disappears from the video frame after he climbs the railing — but someone surely did.

“It stuck out like a pink goat,” David Schuttenberg, the restaurant’s chef, said jokingly the other day. “It was begging to be stolen.”

Read the rest here.

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

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.

More on the aftermath of kidnapping

Photo: Luis Perez, flickr -- stationary bike in Chocó

El Tiempo today paints an odd portrait of the Pacific coastal town of Nuqui, Chocó, where, the article leads, 7 people have recently lost their jobs.

They lost their jobs in this remote beach front, accessible only by air and sea, because last month 6 Colombian tourists were taken hostage by the FARC. Nuqui, and the national parks nearby, are a destination for viewing humpback whales at their northernmost migration, and local officials claim that 450 tourists had visited in the two weeks prior to the kidnapping.

Since then, of course, hotel owners have had nothing but cancellations, especially from foreigners. How long does it take for tourist sites to recover from publicized aggression? It had been six years since anything warlike had happened in this sleepy town, said one local. "People die of old age here, life is so relaxed" said the town doctor. "I haven't had my first heart attack."

Last week, the article says, a pair of foreigners arrived. They are being escorted by local military, and the Colombian Tourism Ministry is pushing its all-clear signal as best it can. (The reporting credit includes: "by invitation of the presidency and the authorities of Nuqui.")

One of the recently unemployed is quoted:

"Yo recibía a los turistas en el aeropuerto, compraba el pescado para la comida, arreglaba la planta y bombeaba el agua para las cabañas. Estaba encarretado con la parte turística y feliz porque conocía a mucha gente", dice Moreno, de 29 años

"I received the tourists at the airport, bought fish for dinner, checked the power plant and pumped water for the cabins. I was into the touristic part and happy to meet a lot of people," Moreno, 29, said.

So, following on the Weigel case: can the six tourists be billed for Moreno's lost salary?

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?