Master of impertinence

Published for the first time in 1985, Fernando Vallejo’s first autobiographical novel “Los días azules” (Blue Days) had become a sort of cult piece for Spanish-speaking exegetes of Mr. Vallejo’s work. Last August—23 years later—a German version of the book was published. Benjamin Jacob reviewed it for the German daily Neues Deutschland.

A CHILDHOOD IN MEDELLÍN — It is a rare, but comforting event, when a book you have written more than twenty years ago is suddenly translated into German—and especially when the best craftsman around has done the translation. Well, the Medellín-born writer Fernando Vallejo can be happy about it. Elke Wehr—the brilliant translator of Mario Vargas Llosa, Javier Marías, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, and many others—produced her last complete work before dying in June: it is the beautiful German version of Mr. Vallejo’s “Los días azules” (Blaue Tage. Eine Kindheit in Medellín) released in August by Suhrkamp, one of Europe’s biggest publishing houses.

Literary critic Benjamin Jacob read “Blaue Tage” and published an extensive review in Germany’s major socialist newspaper Neues Deutschland last Thursday (Nov. 27th). In the article “Song of Love, Chant of Hate”, Mr. Jacob calls Vallejo an “as idiosyncratic as reliable giant of literature business”. Mr. Jacob writes: “Idiosyncratic: because the Colombian author is a radical regarding his world view and his diction. Reliable: because his texts obsessively revolve around one sole topic—the decline of his hometown”. Neues Deutschland’s reviewer observes that “stylistically” in this early work “Vallejo proves himself to be a master”. He concludes: “It is an outrageous book full of light and darkness. An impertinence. A masterpiece.”  
 
The crime after the crime

For decades, paramilitaries massacred thousands of Colombians and buried them in mass graves. Now, newly formed death squadrons are finishing the job: they are unburying bodies and throwing them into rivers, until all evidence of crime is lost.

RE-DISAPPEARING THE DISAPPEARED — Readers of Spain’s second major daily, the liberal El Mundo, found an extensive article signed by the news agency EFE printed last Friday (Nov. 28th) in the newspaper’s pages. The title: “A Drama That Lasts For More Than 40 Years”. It reports in detail about Colombia’s search for tens of thousands of victims of paramilitaries thrown into rivers, or piled up in mass graves. EFE’s article—written from Garagoa, a town in the central region of Boyacá—quotes figures given by several NGOs that estimate the total of missing citizens up to 30 000 in the last four decades.
 
According to EFE, “systematic elimination is one of the biggest dramas of the Colombian conflict”—and it escalated during the 80’s with the emergence of death squadrons. EFE also quotes Garagoa’s district attorney Javier Celedón saying: “Among the ways of getting to these hidden graves (...) there are also peasants who find remains of human bodies while ploughing their land”. To avoid this, years ago paramilitaries started unburying their victims and—so EFE—throwing them into rivers. “But now their successors, the so-called ‘Águilas Negras’ (...) are finishing the job”.

Christmas in liberty

Last week thousands of Colombians poured into the streets of the country’s major cities and claimed the liberation of all kidnapped citizens. Spain’s major daily El País reported on the demonstration last Saturday (Nov. 29th).

SPIRITS ARE LOW — With the motto “Christmas in Liberty – for the liberation of FARC hostages” and dressed in white t-shirts, thousands of people marched in more than 250 locations throughout the country, so Pilar Lozano, Colombia correspondent of El País. The reporter quotes the former guerrillero ‘Isaza’—who escaped from FARC together with the hostage Óscar Tulio Lizcano in October—saying: “They should make up their minds, as I did; they should bring out the other hostages”. 
 
Ms. Lozano writes that more than 700 people are in the hands of FARC at this moment. She points out, however, that this time “the demonstration was not as well attended as the three marches against kidnapping celebrated this year”. El País concludes: “(...) There is an explanation. The first two—on March 4th and July 20th—took place when spirits were high among the people thanks to recent headlines: the proofs of the inhuman conditions in which hostages lived, and the euphoria provoked by Operation ‘Jaque’, that liberated Ingrid Betancourt and 14 more hostages”.

Ingrid on tour

The world’s most famous ex-hostage is touring through Latin America these days. Main European newspapers have commented on Ingrid Betancourt’s first visit to the region five months after her liberation from the hands of FARC.

STOP THE FIGHT — In an article called “Dangerous Return Home”, Peter Burghardt, Latin-America correspondent of Germany’s major daily Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), commented on Ingrid Betancourt’s recent visit to Colombia—and her plans for “reconciling the ‘fighting roosters’ Chávez and Uribe”.
 
The report—published in the SZ print edition on Monday (Dec. 1st)—depicts Ms. Betancourt as “the most famous former hostage in the world” and as “an award-winning and idolized star”, who after “honoring her hometown Bogotá and President Uribe with a visit” will fly to Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela, to “persuade FARC to ‘abandon armed fighting and stride a democratic path’”.
 
President Uribe—a “hard-liner”, according to Mr. Burghardt—has weakened FARC and is very popular at home for this reason. “Yet more than three million Colombians are on the run, drug-traffic is blooming, and Uribe’s attempt to be reelected suffers from all kinds of scandals”, Mr. Burghardt concludes.

FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE — Europe’s biggest online news-service Spiegel Online reported on Ms. Betancourt’s visit to Colombia, too. The article—published in the website’s international section on Sunday (Nov. 30th)—describes her mission with the words: “The former presidential candidate wants to plea throughout Latin America for the end of violence”. Ms. Betancourt, who fears acts of rage coming from FARC, spoke in a brief encounter with President Álvaro Uribe about her “longing for the freedom of all Colombians and her dream that future generations can live in liberty”, so Spiegel Online.

THE BRIGHT SIDE AND THE DARK SIDE — “Three very different, but for their character three emblematic women”. In this way, reporters Philipp Lichterbeck and Michael Schmidt, of the Berlin-based daily Tagesspiegel, comment on the encounter of Madonna, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and Ingrid Betancourt last Wednesday at the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s seat of government. Like Madonna—who stopped by in Buenos Aires during her World Tour and spontaneously joined in the discussions of the two South Americans—“Ingrid Betancourt also finds herself in a sort of tour”. The article—published in the newspaper’s print edition on Thursday (Dec. 4th)—quotes Ms. Betancourt saying: “I cannot stand that the same distress I lived befalls other people”.

Yet, Tagesspiegel’s reporters Lichterbeck and Schmidt write: “In a slightly different trip is, however, the Colombian lawyer Alirio Uribe Muñoz”. Mr. Uribe Muñoz is Vice-President of the International League of Human Rights and, according to Tagesspiegel, he is touring around Germany following an invitation by the NGO Bread for the World.
 
Interviewed by Tagesspiegel, Mr. Uribe Muñoz presented a “daring thesis”: “Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe, who Betancourt praises for his determination, will land behind bars due to Human Rights offenses”. According to the Tagesspiegel, the “major criticism” of Uribe Muñoz addresses the way the government’s Law of Justice and Peace (Ley de Justicia y Paz) is being put into practice.
 
Due to his commitment—so the German reporters—Mr. Uribe Muñoz is victim of numerous death threats: “His car is armor-plated, he wears a bullet-proof vest, and bodyguards accompany him. Once paramilitary forces announced his ‘execution’”. Questioned by the Tagesspiegel about what he would ask from Ms. Betancourt if he could, he replied: “That she finally speaks for all victims of the conflict”.

People of the year

This week Spain’s major daily El País dedicated a special magazine-edition to the 100 major figures of 2008. Among leaders, scientists, politicians, businessmen, athletes, and stars, were three Colombians—and to President Uribe’s irritation, Human Rights Watch’s controversial director José Miguel Vivanco, too.

FROM ZAPATERO, TO INGRID — José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is currently Spain’s Primer Minister and—as it becomes clear from the homage “The Regained Treasure”, published in El País‘ special edition—one of Ingrid Betancourt’s biggest fans. After talking about his first encounter with Ms. Betancourt in Paris after her liberation (where he gave her Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy as a gift), the author admits that he elected her for his article “due to her impressive symbolic charge”. “Ingrid incarnates the struggle for liberty, democracy, dignity, the commitment, solidarity and severe reproval to the trenching of Human Rights”, Mr. Zapatero writes.


FROM PLINIO, TO URIBE — In the extensive and exclusive list published by El País, President Álvaro Uribe also appears—yet not among the ‘Leaders’ (like Ms. Betancourt), but among ‘Politicians’. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, a notorious Colombian journalist, was assigned to write the homage. By the title “Between Two Fires”, Mr. Mendoza’s article highlights the fact that under Mr. Uribe’s government FARC have lost half of their men as well as their most cherished hostages. Yet, about the President himself he writes: “High popularity and incandescent criticism. Either you appreciate him or you combat him: there is no way of fixing Álvaro Uribe in one sole view”. For Mr. Mendoza both criticism and praises are equally passionate, and in Mr. Uribe’s case “there is no way of finding a middle-term”.

FROM BOSÉ, TO JUANES — Miguel Bosé had a wide choice, but he didn’t hesitate as he decided he would dedicate his article for El País' list of 2008’s people of the year to the Colombian rock-star Juanes. In a brief, but eloquently written article titled “Honesty and Blood”, Mr. Bosé, a prominent Spanish musician and actor, depicts Juanes as “a man of faith”. “He has a barbaric look, trapped in eyes alien to brightness (...) that belong to a species of people almost extinct, as old as rocks”, Mr. Bosé writes. And he concludes: “But, above all, (Juanes) has the capacity to generate, share, and give happiness (...). He is a quiet gentleman; a man who is honest with his commitment, discrete as his blood, brave as his talent”.

FROM RCTV, TO VIVANCO — “Defend the defendant”, demands Marcel Granier, President of the Venezuelan broadcast service RCTV, in the title of the text dedicated in El País’ special edition to José Manuel Vivanco, the Americas-Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently expelled from Venezuela and villainized as a “friend of FARC” by President Álvaro Uribe. The author sees Mr. Vivanco’s expulsion from Venezuela as a “deplorable episode that points out the negation of a dialogue, the absence of rule of law, and the systematic violation of guaranties for the citizenship”. According to Mr. Granier, HRW’s Vivanco is a “brave and acknowledged defendant of Human Rights, a Harvard lawyer, professor at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins University, founder of the Center for Justice and International Law, and consultant lawyer of the OAS”.

Notes on the 'war against drugs'

For decades, the ‘War Against Drugs’ has been the most recurrent motive of national policy in Colombia. However, its results are not yet the best. Political scientist and author Raul Zelik wrote an extensive analysis for the German leftist daily Die Tageszeitung.

In a broad essay published in the online edition of Germany’s major leftist, independent newspaper die tageszeitung (taz), author Raul Zelik assesses that, in Colombia, the “terror” of drug-traffic “still appears to be closely tied with the state”. In the article “The Forgotten Coke-War”—published on Monday (Dec. 1st)—Mr. Zelik points out the declarations of the former paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, now in jail in the U.S., according to whom his organization had brought three times more drugs into the U.S. than officially assumed during years.

Fighting against the opposition, armed control of territories, and drug production were interwoven during more than 25 years, so Mr. Zelik. “The paramilitary AUC-militias were tolerated by the state”, he writes. Mr. Zelik quotes sociologist Gustavo Duncan saying: “Not all drug-dealers were paramilitaries, but all paramilitaries were drug-dealers”. He also refers to FARC: “(They) encourage coca-plant cultivation to charge it with a tax”.
 
And finally, within the government—so Mr. Zelik—the drug problem remains “unclear” and “contradictory”. “Although President Álvaro Uribe is receiving the best grades in Washington for his drug policy, organized crime has massively imposed itself on the State during his terms in office”, he assesses. One of many examples would be—so Mr. Zelik—the involvement of the Minister of the Interior Fabio Valencia Cossio’s brother in criminal activities linked with the so-called Oficina de Envigado, a powerful drug trafficking network responsible for hundreds of assassinations.

Mr. Zelik’s thesis is that the corruption of the Colombian society does not derive directly from the drug-traffic phenomenon. He thinks that the process has been the contrary: drug-traffic has been enforced by an erroneous U.S. policy of control and instrumentalization that has deeply linked criminality and politics for decades. An example would be the support of the criminal organization ‘Pepes’ during the hunt of Pablo Escobar: these ended up founding the AUC-paramilitaries, with whom U.S. agencies also maintained contacts, writes Mr. Zelik.