Guatemala is the saddest country in Latin America. The beauty of its verdant highlands dotted with whitewashed colonial towns, its shimmering lakes overlooked by soaring volcanoes and its Mayan ruins half buried in rainforest cannot conceal the ancestral oppression of its indigenous majority. It has had an elected civilian government since 1986. But a guerrilla war lasting almost three decades was settled only in 1996. It cost some 200,000 lives; most of the victims were Mayan Indians killed by the army. The war continues to cast a dark shadow. Guatemala’s democrats must struggle against what some have called poderes fácticos – shadowy networks linking corrupt former army officers and organized criminal gangs of drug traffickers and money launderers. In many ways, these networks are the real power in the country. They appeared to flourish under Alfonso Portillo, the country’s president from 2000 to 2005, who fled to Mexico on leaving office and faced charges of stealing $16 million of public money. Under Oscar Berger, a reforming liberal elected in 2004, a new effort began to cut Guatemala’s army down to size and to liberate democracy from military tutelage.

The CIA snuffs out the Guatemalan spring

And yet Guatemala might have developed into a far more robust democracy much earlier. That it did not do so is in large part the fault of the United States: more than anywhere else in Latin America, Guatemala is a victim of American intervention. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration organized a coup to topple the democratic, reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz, which the American president alleged to be a possible ‘communist outpost on this continent’. Though the enterprise was initially hailed as a success y its authors, in the words of one historian sympathetic to them ‘in light of subsequent events it might reasonably be considered little short of a disaster’. Not only did Guatemala itself pay a high price for the American intervention: the lessons drawn by the United States and by Latin Americans of both left and right had tragic consequences in other countries, handicapping democracy in the region for a generation or more. How was it that Guatemala came to be the first battle in the Cold War in Latin America?

Central America was an underdeveloped backwater throughout the nineteenth century. After independence in 1824, the United Provinces of Central America soon fragmented into five separate countries of which Guatemala, the seat of the colonial captain-generalcy, was the largest. Except in Costa Rica, an unenlightened despotism was the norm in the isthmus. In Guatemala, a long line of brutal dictators went through the motions of legitimating their rule through elections, but these were farcical affairs in which opposition was rarely registered. An oligarchy of coffee planters dominated the republic; they assured themselves of a seasonal Indian workforce through debt peonage.

When the Second World War drew to a close, democratic eddies washed across Latin America. Several dictatorships in the region fell, to be replaced by governments elected on a reasonably broad franchise. Labour unions expanded, and flexed their muscles in a strike wave. Communist parties grew rapidly, from a total membership of less than 100,000 in 1939 to 500,000 by 1947. In Latin America, as elsewhere in the world, there were expectations that a new era of democracy was beginning. According to one account, this opened up an opportunity for Latin American countries to move towards social democracy – as much of Western Europe would do in the aftermath of war – through an alliance between industrialists and the emerging middle and organised working classes. But the opportunity proved tantalisingly brief. In Latin America, the rural landlords had not been hurt by war, and they still exercised a powerful political grip, while the trade unions were still weak. By 1948, in most countries, the progress towards democracy had been rolled back, and Communist parties had been banned. By then, the Cold War had begun. It did not create anti-communism in Latin America. This had been espoused by conservatives and the Catholic Church since the formation by Lenin in 1919 of the Third Communist International (Comintern) with its brief of world revolution. So most Latin American governments were happy to line up with the United States in the Cold War. For Washington, it began to matter more that those governments should be reliably anti-communist rather than democratic.

In Guatemala the post-war democratic spring lasted longer. In 1944, protests by students, teachers and other members of an incipient middle class prompted Jorge Ubico, a dictator even more repressive than his predecessors, to step down. Three months later, junior army officers rebelled against his chosen successor. This ‘October revolution’ was carried out not in the name of Bolshevism but of ‘constitution and democracy’. Both were quickly achieved. Juan José Arévalo, a mild-mannered teacher of philosophy who had returned from years of exile in Argentina, was elected president in the freest vote Guatemala had seen. Arévalo claimed inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and from the Four Freedoms – of speech, religion, and from want and fear – for which the president had fought the war. A new constitution extended the franchise to all except illiterate women, created elected local authorities, made racial discrimination a crime and banned military men from standing for office. Arévalo’s government gave rights to trade unions, established a social security system, central bank and statistical office, and built hundreds of new schools. It brooked no restrictions on political or press freedom, despite suffering frequent plots from conservatives.

In 1950, Jacobo Arbenz, a leader of the ‘October revolution’, was elected to succeed Arévalo, with 65 per cent of the vote. While Arévalo had established democratic freedoms, Arbenz promised ‘to convert Guatemala from a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state’. His plans to do this centred on agrarian reform and public infrastructure projects, several of which had been proposed by the president of the World Bank. On both counts, that meant a confrontation with the United Fruit Company, an American firm based in Boston. Known to Central Americans as el pulpo (‘the octopus’) because of its all-encompassing tentacles, in 1899 United Fruit had obtained a 99-year concession over a vast tract of jungle from Guatemala’s then dictator and with it, the right to finish and operate a railway to the Caribbean coast. The company thus obtained a monopoly over much of Guatemala’s trade: its port at Puerto Barrios was the country’s only Atlantic port, and its railway the only means of transport to and from the port. In return it paid only a small tax on banana exports. Arbenz proposed to build a public port next to Puerto Barrios and a highway to it; United Fruit, which had already seen a rise in trade union organizing, became the main target of this land reform.

Even by Latin American standards, land distribution in Guatemala was highly unequal: 2 per cent of landowners held three-quarters of all cultivatable land, while more than half of all farmland was made up of large plantations (above 1,100 acres). Much of this land was left fallow. Arbenz’s reform affected farms larger than 670 acres whose land was not fully worked, or those above 223 acres where a third of the land was uncultivated. Compensation was paid in interest-bearing bonds according to the land’s declared taxable value. In two years a million acres – a third of this from German-owned farms nationalised at American insistence during the war – were distributed to 100,000 families. Arbenz ordered the expropriation of 380,000 acres of United Fruit land – a substantial chunk of its holdings, of which 85 per cent were left fallow, supposedly in case of banana diseases. The government offered compensation of $1.1 million; the company claimed the land was worth $16 million, thus revealing the scale of its tax evasion. Its claim was backed by the US Department of State.

By then, the Eisenhower administration was bent on overthrowing Arbenz, whom it accused of presiding over a communist takeover. With support from Nicaragua’s notorious dictator, Anastasio Somoza, and his counterpart in Honduras, the CIA trained and armed a force of 170 men, and assembled a dozen planes. Their ‘invasion’ was a halting affair. But bombing and strafing from the air, combined with disinformation broadcasts suggesting a force of thousands, caused the army high command to oblige Arbenz to resign. Through a mixture of threats and manipulation, the Americans quickly secured the appointment as president of Carlos Castillo Armas, the undistinguished retired colonel they had chosen to lead the ‘invasion’. Guatemala’s ten-year democratic spring was over.

Ever since, controversy has raged over the American action. Was the coup an enterprise of crude economic imperialism, in which the Eisenhower administration was acting as enforcer for United Fruit? Since the days of Arévalo, the company had conducted an effective propaganda campaign in the United States, painting Guatemala as being in the grip of communists. The family of John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, and his brother Allen, the CIA director, were shareholders in the banana company; both brothers had worked for Sullivan & Cromwell, a New York law firm which had represented United Fruit’s rail subsidiary. Several of the company’s officials had close contacts with the administration. But J F Dulles insisted: ‘If the United Fruit matter were settled, if they gave a gold piece for every banana, the problem would remain as it is today as far as the presence of communist infiltration in Guatemala is concerned.’ Just five days after Arbenz was toppled, the US Justice Department began an anti-monopoly action against United Fruit; as a result, the company eventually agreed to hand over some of its land in Guatemala to local firms and sold the railway. In 1972, it sold its remaining interests in Guatemala to Del Monte. (United Fruit changed its name to Chiquita in 1989; the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001).

In recent years, as official archives have been opened, historians have come to accept Dulles’ contention. But many question his verdict on Arbenz. Not for the last time in Latin America, the critics argue, the United States failed to distinguish between a nationalist reformer and a communist. The Guatemalan Labor Party, as the communist party was called, was tiny; it never had more than 2,000 activists. Though an enthusiastic backer of Arbenz and the land reform, it was the smallest of the four parties in the governing coalition. It won only four of the 56 seats in Congress in an election in 1953, had no Cabinet members, and fewer than ten senior government jobs. Guatemala had no diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc. Until the late 1950s, the Soviet Union had only three embassies in the whole of Latin America, a region Stalin had dismissed as ‘the obedient army of the United States’. Dulles made great play of an arms shipment from Czechoslovakia received a month before the coup. But the United States had imposed an arms embargo on Guatemala since 1948, and the Czech arms were of limited use. Arbenz’s coalition was fractious, the army restless and the middle class became disillusioned as tensions with the United States rose. The president did come to depend on the communists, who alone could mobilise popular support for the government. His wife is alleged to have been a communist sympathiser. The CIA feared that land reform would create a base for the communists in the countryside. Even so, it is hard to see the army or the civilian politicians acquiescing in a communist takeover.

In the event, the US crushed democracy not communism in Guatemala.  Castillo Armas quickly reversed the agrarian reform, reached agreement with United Fruit, and restored the old order of corrupt dictatorship. In 1960, junior army officers would rebel in the name of nationalism, angry that Guatemala was being used by the CIA to train anti-Castro Cuban exiles. The rebellion failed, but two of its founders went on to found Guatemala’s first guerrilla group. This was crushed after right-wing death squads murdered thousands of civilians, many of whom had no connection to the guerrillas. In the mid-1970s, new Marxist guerrilla groups established a presence among the Mayan Indian communities of Guatemala’s western highlands. That prompted the army to undertake a scorched-earth campaign that saw scores of Indian villages wiped out, their inhabitants butchered and the survivors forcibly relocated and conscripted into army-backed auxiliary forces  called ‘civil patrols’. Of all the counter-insurgency campaigns in Latin America during the Cold War, only that in Guatemala merits the much-abused term of genocide. Repression by dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, where most of the victims were middle class, attracted far more outside attention. But in the deliberate infliction of mass terror, the massacres of the Mayan Indians in the western highlands in the late 1970s and early 1980s had no parallel in the region. Those excesses caused Jimmy Carter to cancel the United States’ previous aid to the army. Another Democratic president, Bill Clinton, made a formal apology for that aid on a visit to Guatemala in 1999. But by then the Cold War was long over.

The ease with which Arbenz was overthrown would lead policy-makers in Washington to adopt ‘regime change’ as their standard process to perceived communist threats in Latin America. A few years later, another such attempt on a much larger scale would end in disaster in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Thwarted, President John F Kennedy would launch the Alliance for Progress in an attempt to stall the spread of communism in Latin America by encouraging democratic reform. ‘Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable,’ Kennedy declared. Indeed, had Arbenz’s agrarian reform taken place a decade later – or a decade earlier when FDR was preaching freedom from want – it might well have drawn applause from Washington.

The Latin American left, too, drew lessons from Guatemala. A young Argentine doctor, Ernesto Guevara, had arrived there on New Year’s Eve 1953 and witnessed the fall of Arbenz. By the time he was given safe conduct from the Argentine embassy to Mexico, he had acquired the nickname Che, bestowed by leftist exiled Cubans he met in Guatemala. According to one of his most perceptive biographers, Guatemala was Che Guevara’s ‘political rite of passage’. Guevara thought the coup showed that the United States ‘was a priori ruthlessly opposed to any attempt at social and economic reform in Latin America’. So he inferred that the left should be prepared to fight US interference rather than try to avoid or neutralise it. He also thought that Arbenz had allowed his enemies too much freedom, especially in the press, and had erred in not purging the army. This is confirmed by Hilda Gadea, Guevara’s first wife, who wrote: ‘it was Guatemala which convinced him of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the initiative against imperialism’.

See the other sections of Reid’s book I’ve published here: Cocaine Cartels and Economics in Colombia or FARC, Guerrillas, and Paramilitaries in Colombia. Or for more on the sordid past of United Fruit Company / Chiquita, see the separate Wikipedia articles on United Fruit and Chiquita.

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When on the Anabolic Diet, I’ll eat all that and more in a weekend.

Colombia owns a good chunk of the Amazon rain forest, two coastlines along the Caribbean and Pacific, and varying altitudes up and down the Andes Mountains – all in a tropical climate of heavy rainfall. Very fertile land. Put anything in the ground and it grows.

In addition to apples, oranges, strawberries, grapes, watermelon, and all the fruits you can get in America, you find exotic fruits I’d never heard of. I don’t know the name for most of them. Locals don’t know their names. There are too many. Plus, it seems what’s on the market changes all year round. You eat whatever’s in from the jungle that particular week.

I surely haven’t included every exotic fruit possible, but this is a good start. Also, I’ve surely gotten some names wrong.

Curuba

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These are known as banana passionfruit in English. They’re so sour it’s hard to eat more than one.

Tuna

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I got used to eating tuna (or prickly pear in English) in Southern Peru, where they’re more abundant, tastier, and cheaper. They’re also green on the inside, but who cares? They’re still good.

Carambola

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Carambola, or starfruit, is good and common.

Tomate de Arbol

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If judging by how often I buy them, these are probably my favorite. The tomate de arbol, or tree tomato, or tamarillo, are orange, tart goodness. Most Colombians say you can’t eat these, that they’re only for juice. Remember most Colombians don’t know shit and I eat all kinds of fruits they say you’re not supposed to.

I use these in my own personal Colombian chili, which has red, green, and tree tomatoes plus coconut milk.

Lulo

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Lulo is another of those fruits you’ll surely have as juice in a restaurant, but the locals say you can’t eat it raw. They’re super-sour and I need a big cup of milk to take one down, but it’s possible and delicious.

Pitaya

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The pitaya is delicious. You eat the inside white part. Unfortunately, they’re expensive. It’s hard to get one for less than 2000 pesos ($1).

Guanabana

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Guanabana makes one of Colombia’s national drinks. They mix that white flesh with milk and sell small cups on the street. Usually it still has the big black pits in it, but sometimes they remove the pits and mix it in a blender. I recommend having it without pits for true goodness.

On this particular day, a friend and I tried to eat that whole guanabana with four liters of milk. It was a failure. Half that big-ass fruit remained the next day.

Guanabana (‘soursop’ in English) has been linked to Parkinson’s disease due to its high annonacin content. However, I believe it’s only a risk to the costeños who eat the stuff every day.

Anona

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Anona, or sugar-apple in English, has super-sweet white flesh inside. It’s closely related to the chirimoya, which I ate tons of in Peru but haven’t had in Colombia yet. I’ve tried to eat them here, but every purchase has turned out to be rotten. So I’m convinced there are no chirimoyas in Colombia. Only guanabana and anona, all of which are high in annonacin and may increase risk of Parkinson’s.

Uchuva

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Uchuvas are just like what I remember eating  when I lived in Southern California, called cumclops. They’re different though.

Sapote

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I actually don’t know if this is any kind of sapote or not. I don’t eat these much either, so I don’t remember what they taste like. But I bought it the day I took a bunch of pictures.

Papaya

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Papayas are big. There are many different kinds. In Peru, there were Lima papayas and Arequipa papayas. Here there are normal papayas and Hawaiian papayas. The one on the right is Hawaiian, which are more bitter.

Noni

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Many people like noni, but I can’t stand the smell of them. I bought these to give them another chance, which failed. They smell so bad I can’t bring them to my face, but lots of people love them. Maybe I’m weird.

Noni juice has a following among natural cure enthusiasts. Google search noni and see all the pill and juice products under shopping results. It’s been suggested the stankin’ shit prevents cancer.

Mangostino

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Known as purple mangosteens in English, these little guys are lovely. Cut and break off the purple shell, then eat the white flesh, which have pits. Sweet and delicious.

Mango Dulce

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Mangos dulces (sweet mangoes) are another one Colombians say you should only make juice with. Colombia has regular size mangoes, but these ones are tiny. I can hold three in one hand. You slice off a bit of skin and go to town. I always get my face and hands completely covered in juice, but it tastes good.

Colombia also has green mangoes, which are sour and I don’t have a picture of. They’re sold on the street with salt.

Feijoa

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Feijoa is common in juices. They’re also edible raw.

Granadilla

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Granadillas are cheap, and they grow in abundance from Colombia to Peru. I pay about 200 pesos ($0.10) for one. You break the soft orange shell and eat the inside guts, which in Peru is sometimes called moco (snot). Similar texture.

Guayaba Pear

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Guayaba is guava in English. The fruit pictured was one of my early favorites in Colombia, and I thought they were guayabas. I later learned that somebody crossed guayabas with pears to get these green-skinned, pink flesh things. Cheers to that guy!

Not pictured: maracuya, mamoncillos, green mangoes, all the fruits you can find in the States, and surely shitloads more. As always, add me on Facebook for easier viewing of my pictures.

A Facebook update from November 2009 (facebook.com/post.colin):

I’m spending 6 weeks in the States and I’m not eating one grain of rice the whole time!

My January 13 tweet (twitter.com/colinpost):

Life in Latin America is a daily struggle to minimize my consumption of rice.

Rice has no taste. Rice is nutritionally worthless. Rice is filler crap, the most abused filler crap in the world.

I went broke in Bogota, so I’m living and working in America for the summer. People here are always surprised at my refusal to eat rice. I didn’t have anything against rice before moving to Latin America. If you grew up in the States, you wouldn’t think anything of it because you rarely eat it. It wasn’t until about the one-year point living in Latin America that I grew weary of rice. You can’t escape it. If you eat in restaurants, then you’ll have to eat rice EVERY FUCKING DAY.

Rice tastes like nothing. If someone wanted to create a purely fuel food that eliminated all flavor in life, it would taste like rice. However, it wouldn’t be rice because rice is nutritionally worthless.

I’ve already decided that, whenever I start a family, my kids won’t eat rice more than a few times a week. I’d rather not keep it in the house. High consumption of rice may be why Colombia and other countries suck at sports on a global level. How many rice-eating countries make it to the World Cup finals? Argentina eats pasta and meat. Brazilians eat rice but also lots of steak. 2010 champion Spain is known for paella, but most Spanish cuisine does not have rice.

The only public good rice serves is in alleviating famine. It’s cheap filler crap for countries that have trouble feeding themselves. I’m not from such a country.

Nutrition Facts, 1 cup of rice (link)

Calories 193
Total Fat 1g
Total Carbohydrate 44g
Dietary Fiber 1g
Sugars 0g
Protein 4g

For every 44g of simple carbohydrates, rice has only one gram of fiber. A cup of rice contains no significant amount of vitamins or minerals save a measly 10% RDA of iron, which I don’t need given my high intake of iron-rich eggs, beef, chicken, fish, and beans. From a nutrition standpoint, the only functional reason to eat rice would be immediately after lifting weights to spike insulin. However, you’d still be better off drinking a liter of milk for the same effect PLUS protein, calcium, Vitamin D, and all the essential amino acids. (Read why Milk is the Ultimate Post-Workout Food)

Here’s a list of carbohydrates better than rice:

• Potatoes – more fiber and rich in Vitamin C
• Oats – more fiber, protein, and complex carbs for energy throughout the day.
• Beans – maybe the world’s perfect food. Complex carbs with lots of fiber and protein, plus B vitamins.
• Carrots – more fiber plus Vitamin A and beta carotene.
• Fruit – simple carbs plus fiber and lots of vitamins and minerals. And FLAVOR! See my post about the kick-ass fruit in Colombia.

After moving out of Chapinero, I moved into Hostal Fatima in La Candelaria. I noticed I was rarely getting asked for change or offered drugs. One of the gringos I knew at another hostel confirmed the neighborhood’s changed since last year.

I ran into a hostel owner I knew (not Fatima) and mentioned the difference. He replied, “Pagamos por seguridad.” We paid for security. The local business owners pooled money and hired an additional private security force to patrol the streets at night. Private security companies are a major industry in Colombia, and you see as many rent-a-cops as regular police and military.

See Limpiezas: Social Cleansing in Colombia to learn more about how local businesses respond to neighborhood crime.

There were always a couple security guards in blue uniforms standing around Carrera 3 during the day, but they’d leave at night. Now there’s a whole crew of guys dressed in all black standing watch all night long.

My first run-in came at the end of a Friday night. I was with Rico, an American from New Orleans who’s new to Bogota, getting dropped off by a taxi. We saw a crowd outside Jamming Reggae bar. We hopped out and approached the door. The guys outside seemed sketchy and I wanted to go back to the hostel. Rico would have none of it. At that moment, one of the security guys in all black came up and asked me where my hostel was. He recommended I get going, offered to walk me there, etc.

Another night, Rico and I were walking down Calle 14 around 3am. A half dozen gringo tourists were walking ahead of us. They were first to pass a big group of these security guards standing at the corner of Carrera 3. The guards stopped them and asked where they were going, confirming they weren’t wandering the streets but just heading back to their hostel around the corner. The interrogation lasted a minute or so. One of the guys approached us and I joked with him that I know how it is and no ladrones are prowling the streets while his team’s out. He laughed and we kept going. We walked the streets aimlessly for a while without coming across any undesirables whatsoever.

Later I saw that group split up to make rounds, each guard walking in a different direction. I imagine they’re liberal with their batons on locals who they don’t deem good for the neighborhood.

‘Life is But a Dream’ by The Harptones

While Universidad de los Andes is the most prestigious in Colombia, the national university is actually ranked higher. One of the national university’s claims to fame comes from its former rector and recent presidential candidate, Antanas Mockus. He once mooned a disorderly crowd of students.

I’ve passed the Universidad Nacional de Colombia several times on a bike, but never entered the campus. Even from outside the fence, the first thing you notice is the anti-American and socialist graffiti spray-painted on all the buildings.

So I went to take pictures of the campus one day, but unfortunately several students were rioting. So I took pictures of that instead. This one was a bigger deal than the UPN riots (see the first time I got tear-gassed). There were many more coppers and they used an unbelievable amount of tear gas. I breathed so much of it the skin of my face started to burn. The last two photos compare the sky to the west, above the university, with the clear sky to the east. The difference is in tear gas.

Don’t like viewing my pics on my site? Add me on Facebook for easier viewing.

Also, below the pics is an embedded video I made, hosted on Expat Chronicles’ new YouTube channel.

Universidad Nacional de Colombia on Google Maps

I quit drinking for over six months in Colombia. Toward the end, I started smoking weed every day all day to get by. That habit stuck after a month in the States and returning to Colombia in January. My smoking started to stink up the apartment building, annoying the neighbors. One day somebody said something to me and I decided not to smoke in the apartment anymore.

I started smoking on short bike rides around the neighborhood. One night, the same week as publishing the last bribery story, The Mick and I walked across Septima to burn one in Chapinero Alto. We each had one lit as we were passing a small park on Calle 61.

A cop on a motorcycle pulled up, seeming pissed off and motioning us to stop. I threw my joint as far as I could into the park and The Mick dropped his. The cop got off the bike and frisked us. He picked up The Mick’s joint and asked if I had one. I told him I didn’t. He called for backup.

A pickup truck with two cops in the cab pulled up. The windshield of the truck was smashed up as if someone had beaten on it with a baseball bat. The motorcycle cop ordered us into the bed of the pickup, and he jumped in with us.

They drove us to a station somewhere around Carrera 4 or 5 and sat us down on the bench. They went into the station and did … I don’t know what the hell they were doing. There was nothing preventing me from taking off in a sprint besides knowing these cops work just a few blocks from my apartment and I’d certainly see them again.

We waited around for fifteen minutes or so. This time I had the 20,000 peso note, which I slipped to The Mick. He knew better how to handle this, but he was in a bad mood and said a few times he didn’t care if they took us to jail. Fortunately, one of the young coppers came out and made some small talk while The Mick slipped him the money. We were free to go.

We went back to the park to find the joint I’d thrown, and smoked it on the way back to my apartment. Then I swore off smoking weed forever because it was getting to be a pain in the ass. I didn’t even enjoy it anymore.

That was my last dance with Mary Jane to date – except for a couple times while drunk after the bars, which don’t count, and a couple times with family, which don’t count either

Kick-ass song by Tom Petty, ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’:

This particular sorrero lives (most of the time) in the park outside Bogota’s Teatro Libre, around the corner from my place. As I understand it, he’s a former bazucero (not anymore). He’s never asked me for change. The Mick and I woke him and the family up (they sleep in the cart) around 7am and we got to work.

The images of my moving everything I own this way should be interesting. Most were taken along a beautiful stretch of Carrera 9. Also on display is the extreme wealth disparity with the sorrero among some of the most expensive property in Colombia. Latin American countries have most of the world’s highest Gini coefficients, which measure income inequality.

The sorrero‘s second trip was interrupted at the Teatro Libre by a couple giant buses letting kids out for a field trip, which happens about every day.

Don’t like viewing my pics on my site? Add me on Facebook for easier viewing. By the way, I took most of these while riding my bike – mad skills!

May 1 I woke up on his couch around 10am. He was having a beer and rolling a joint. I couldn’t go anywhere because it was pouring rain. We got stoned. Pechonorme showed up around noon. She invited us to lunch. She took us to Paisa Consulado, a seemingly authentic Antioqueño eatery on Carrera 11 south of Calle 72. I had a delicious bandeja paisa, which I noted cost over 20,000 pesos. While enjoying my food, I decided to have sex with Pechonorme to positively reinforce her buying me lunch.

After lunch, The Mick wanted to go for a beer in Lourdes on Pechonorme’s expense. I opted to go for a nap at his place while they drank. I woke up to them returning in the early evening with some other people for a little party. Pechonorme came in to The Mick’s room where I was sleeping. We did a little heavy petting the others couldn’t see. We couldn’t do much without arousing attention so we joined the party.

Before having a drink, I went downstairs to take a poop. While I was doing that, I heard somebody come downstairs so I said loudly, “Ocupado.” I finished wiping and came out to find Pechonorme. We started heavy petting again. I undid my pants and she started sucking it. I took her pants down halfway and lifted her against the wall. I fucked her right there while the party was going on upstairs. I was finished in a minute or two. We went back up where nobody noticed a thing.

People were getting drunk. In addition to Pechonorme, The Mick, and I, there were Alejandro, a Colombian taking English classes with The Mick, Walter, a lawyer who I’d met on a trip to Anapoima, and Veronica, Walter’s girl who The Mick used to “ride.”

I had a beer and a shot or two of aguardiente when something suddenly angered The Mick. He started yelling at Walter “not to do that again.” Nobody knew what the hell he was talking about, but he seemed to calm down so it was forgotten.

He calmed down for all of about two minutes before he started yelling again. He yelled with ferocity. His tirade was flawed (if he was trying to make a point) as he was yelling in English. I was the only one in the room who understood what he was saying. He was calling Walter worthless and shameful and blaming him for why Colombia will never be a great country. His tirade reached a fevered pitch when he started yelling, “GET OUT! GET OUT!”

I’m not the guy to get involved in others’ quarrels – plus I had just napped and ejaculated - so I didn’t translate any of this for Walter. Maybe I assumed they’d understand “GET OUT,” or maybe I just didn’t care. Walter didn’t understand. He stood up and walked around the table, completely confused. The Mick got more angry, increasingly threatened by Walter’s presence.

Then The Mick hit him. I didn’t see if it was open-handed or a closed fist, but it was loud and Walter staggered back. That seemed to get the point across as to what “GET OUT” meant. Walter clutched his head as if he’d never been hit before. As if he couldn’t believe what just happened. He stammered, “Mi amigo sincero, no sé lo que hice, ¡pero disculpame por favor!” Veronica apologized to The Mick and they left.

I hadn’t left my seat this whole time. The Mick sat down next to me and I asked him what Walter did. He replied with a story I’d already heard from a couple weeks before about Walter parking a Mercedes on the sidewalk. He came over with Veronica and pulled his Mercedes onto the sidewalk, blocking the pedestrians’ path. The Mick said something when he got home and Walter brushed it off. The first time he told me this story, The Mick referred to this method of parking as “a form of violence,” and another time as “violence at its highest level.”

I told The Mick he’d already told me this story. What did Walter do tonight that was so offensive? The Mick told me he definitely did something, and he would definitely tell me what – in just a minute. But first he went into another talk about how mediocre Walter was. And how Walter’s part of the system inherited from how the Spanish colonized Latin America and exploited the Indians. I dropped the subject, convinced The Mick’s lasting anger over the Mercedes-on-the-sidewalk incident plus the aguardiente levels in his blood combined for this outburst.

We were down to four – what a party! Alejandro was my age and we started bullshitting. The Mick and Pechonorme went into the bedroom to have sex.

After a half hour or so, I proposed to Alejandro that we go to a bar in the neighborhood. He agreed. I interrupted the bedroom activities with a request for The Mick to let us out. He came out butt-naked holding the keys and led us downstairs. Well, butt naked except for the corny-ass Teva-style sandals he wears every day of his life.

I thought this a funny scene: this skinny, 55 year-old man naked except the corny sandals running around as if nothing in the world were out of place. Alejandro seemed a little weirded out.

Alejandro and I had a few beers at an interesting place on 71. I went back to crash on The Mick’s couch. It was an interesting evening overall.

Reid devotes many pages to Colombia’s security situation. I’d been contemplating writing a brief history piece about Colombia, but he did it better than I can. So I’m publishing his content word for word, silly British English spellings and all. Enjoy.

This is Part 2 of 2. To start at the beginning, see Cocaine Cartels and Economics in Colombia.

Democratic security in Colombia

At first glance, San Vicente del Caguán looked like any other small cattle town on the fringes of the Amazon basin. On its stiflingly hot, bustling streets, lined with half-finished houses of concrete and brick, Japanese pick-ups and motorbikes jostled with horse-drawn carts. From early afternoon, Mexican rancheras blared out from the loudspeakers of the numerous brothels. What made San Vicente unusual in 2001 was the presence in the main square of a small office of the FARC – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the largest and longest-lasting leftist guerrilla army in Latin America. For three years, the government of Andrés Pastrana allowed the FARC to control a Switzerland-sized swathe of mountains, jungle and grassland around San Vicente. The FARC had demanded this ‘demilitarised zone’ as a condition for getting peace talks going. But the talks made little progress. The FARC used them for propaganda purposes. They held public hearings on how to reduce unemployment, while carrying on their war with increasing savagery.

That war began in the 1960s, but has undergone several changes in character. The FARC’s origins lie in peasant self-defence groups organised by the pro-Moscow Communist Party during the conflict between Liberal and Conservative supporters known as la violencia. They were driven to what became the ‘demilitarised zone’ by the army. Even today, most of the FARC’s guerrillas are of peasant origin, according to Alfonso Cano, who himself is not but who is in charge of political affairs in its ruling secretariat. Sociologically, the FARC can be seen as representing the interests of two particular groups of Colombian peasants: some among small-scale farmers who colonised ‘internal frontiers’ and whose farms were threatened by cattle barons; and farmers and day-labourers in the coca industry. The FARC combines peasant stubbornness with narrow dogmatism. Its lifelong leader, Manuel Marulanda (known as Tirofijo or ‘Sureshot’) is in his 70s; he is not known to have visited a city larger than Neiva (population: 250,000) in southern Colombia. Though the FARC was nominally the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party it quickly came to dominate the party: it imposed its doctrines of ‘prolonged popular war’ (learned from the Vietnamese) and the ‘combination of all forms of struggle’ (i.e. military action plus legal politics) on the party, which has shrivelled into insignificance. It also began to espouse ‘Bolivarianism‘, a gaseous populist nationalism.

The FARC’s original justifications for its armed struggle were land and opposition to the power-sharing pact between Liberals and Conservatives known as the National Front, which ended la violencia. Yet Colombia has long since become mainly urban, the power-sharing pact ended formally in 1974 (and in practice in 1986) and the country’s democracy has been the subject of almost continuous political reform. Peace agreements saw three small guerrilla groups lay down their arms in 1990 to 1991 – but not the FARC or the ELN, its smaller rival of originally guevarist inspiration.A new constitution followed in 1991, designed to open up politics to new parties and to decentralize power. The FARC had taken part in peace talks launched by President Belisario Betancur (1982-6) and set up a political party called the Unión Patriótica. This won 4.5 per cent of the vote in the 1986 presidential election. But over the next five years more than a thousand of its members were murdered, including two of its presidential candidates. Most were killed by the right-wing paramilitaries, who at the time had close links with some army commanders. The FARC cited this as proof that it was excluded from democracy. But its opponents noted that while appearing to accept democracy, it had carried on building up its army during the truce under Betancur with the aim of seizing power militarily. For that reason some military commanders opposed Betancur’s orders for a ceasefire and the release of guerrilla prisoners and began to work with the paramilitaries. The FARC had also go into the drug business in a big way, as well as extortion and kidnapping. By 2001, the best estimates were that it was making $250 million to $300 million a year from drugs (while its paramilitary foes were making perhaps $200 million). In a lengthy interview, Cano admitted that the FARC received money from retenciones (kidnappings). When asked about drug income he said this was ‘everywhere in the world economy’.

By the 1990s, the FARC’s actions had much more to do with plunder and a self-sustaining militarism than with any residual social grievances. Drug money helped the FARC to expand greatly, from perhaps 5,000 fighters in the early 1980s to a peak of around 20,000 in 2002. (The ELN, which engaged in kidnapping and later drugs, had around 5,000 at its peak.) In the mid 1990s the FARC began to operate in larger units. It inflicted several humiliating defeats on the armed forces, in which small detachments were overrun by forces of several hundred guerrillas and some 500 police and troops were taken prisoner. The guerrillas also launched devastatingly inaccurate and bloody home-made mortar attacks on police posts in small towns, as well as frequent sabotage attacks against infrastructure. They would erect roadblocks on main highways, abducting motorists for ransom. The armed forces were far too small and too immobile to respond effectively: commanders noted that the security forces would have to expand some thirtyfold to achieve the same ratio of troops to territory that El Salvador‘s army enjoyed during that small country’s civil war of the 1980s.

The drug-fuelled growth of the FARC exposed the weakness of the security forces and of the state – the flip side of Colombia’s aversion to militarism and its tradition of civilian government. The relative impotence of the army prompted an expansion in the guerrillas’ polar opposite, the AUC paramilitaries.  ’The AUC exists because (the) armed forces have not done their institutional duty of guaranteeing lives, property, and honour,’ Carlos Castaño, one of its leaders, told the Washington Post. The paramilitaries counted on the complicity of some politicians and army officers. They proceeded to act with even greater savagery than the FARC. They used terror to control territory, massacring groups of villagers whom they held to be collaborating with the guerrillas. Trade union leaders were targeted, partly because of the past enthusiasm of some of them for armed struggle. So were human-rights workers. Journalists and social scientists were the targets of both the AUC and the FARC. By the late 1990s, the government’s writ ran over only about half of a vast country, although that half included the cities where most Colombians lived. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of Colombians fled to the cities to escape a conflict that had become a self-sustaining war for territory to plunder. Insecurity began to affect the hitherto vigorous economy: combined with the new constitution’s fiscal liberality, that triggered a sharp recession in 1999 and unemployment climbed to 20 per cent. A million or so Colombians moved abroad in the late 1990s. There were widespread fears that Colombia was on the way to becoming a failed state.

When Andrés Pastrana, a personable former television news anchor from a prominent Conservative family, succeeded Samper in 1998 he took two important decisions. One was to open peace talks with the FARC. And the other was to seek a strategic alliance with the United States. He was more successful in the second of these. Under Plan Colombia, drawn up jointly by Colombian and American officials, the United States granted Colombia some $500 million to $700 million a year in mainly military aid between 1999 and 2006. Most of this went on some seventy helicopters and the training and equipping of new army battalions. The aim was to fight the guerrillas (and the paramilitaries) by fighting drugs, and so squeeze their finances. Pastrana also began the task of expanding the armed forces, and of turning a conscript force into a professional army.

While the state was strengthening its defences, so was the FARC. Its politics were remarkably intransigent. Not for it the compromises with democracy made by the Central American guerrillas of the 1970s and 1980s. ‘Our struggle is to do away with the state as now it exists in Colombia, preferably by political means, but if they don’t let us then we have to carry on shooting,’ said Cano. The FARC would not demobilise in return for ‘houses, cars, and scholarships’ or a few seats in Congress. ‘This country will be saved when we have the chance to run the state.’ To that end, even as it supposedly talked peace, the FARC carried on its war. According to the armed forces commander, General Fernando Tapias, it used the ‘demilitarised zone’ as a logistical base: ‘They are supplying, equipping and training with no action by the state to hinder them.’ With the talks going nowhere and the FARC continuing to stage brazen kidnappings of politicians and others, Colombians became disillusioned with a ‘peace process’ that wasn’t. In 2002, with an election looming, Pastrana called off the talks and sent the army back to San Vicente and its environs. The ‘demilitarised zone’ did serve one purpose: ‘It has allowed the country and the world to see the government’s willingness to seek a negotiated settlement, and the opposition to democracy of the insurgents,’ as General Tapias put it.

The presidential election saw a crushing victory for Álvaro Uribe Vélez. A lawyer and Liberal former governor of Antioquia, the economically important area around Medellín, Uribe was an austere, intense figure. His father, a cattle farmer, had been kidnapped and murdered by the FARC. He campaigned on the slogan of mano firme, corazón grande (‘firm hand, big heart’). He seemed to believe that he was a man of destiny: he promised that he would be ‘the first soldier of Colombia’ and would double the size of the security forces. In normal times, this uncompromising message would have been electorally unattractive in Colombia, a country whose mainstream politics were moderate, consensual and mistrustful of a powerful state. But these were not normal times. Uribe, running as an independent against his own party’s official candidates but with the support of the Conservatives, captured the national mood.

Uribe’s ‘democratic security’ policy involved a big military build-up. In his first four years he expanded the security forces by a third, adding more than 60,000 troops and 30,000 extra police. He continued Pastrana’s work of turning the army into a salaried, professional force. He extended the state’s control over more of Colombia’s vast territory, placing permanent police detachments in 150 municipalities (of a total of 1,100) which had lacked them. He created a force of some 20,000 part-time ‘peasant soldiers’ (later renamed ‘popular soldiers’) for local guard duties. Six new mountain battalions of the army occupied the high Andean massifs which had served as transit corridors and strategic refuges for the FARC. He also turned the army into an offensive force, creating nine new mobile brigades. All this was micro-managed by the president himself. He recounted with glee to visitors that his Friday-night relaxation was to stay at his desk until two a.m., ringing police and army commanders across the country to quiz them about security in their areas. Each weekend he would set off to remote towns or villages and hold public meetings to discuss local problems. All this changed the strategic balance in the war. The FARC were driven from much of central Colombia, forced back to remote jungles and to operating in smaller groups. Several thousand guerrillas deserted, individually or in small groups. Officials reckoned that the FARC’s fighting strength had been cut to around 12,000 by the end of 2006.

The weakening of the FARC enabled Uribe’s government to persuade paramilitaries to demobilise. The terms on which they did so were controversial. Under the Justice and Peace Law approved in 2005, those of their leaders who were accused of crimes against humanity were required to give a voluntary account of their actions and, if convicted in the courts, would face a reduced sentence of no more than eight years’ confinement in a special facility (perhaps a prison farm). The government also had a powerful lever over those of the AUC leaders who were wanted on drugs charges in the United States: it would suspend extradition only while they co-operated. Officials argued that the law was a reasonable compromise between peace and justice, given that the paramilitaries had not been militarily defeated. Uribe insisted that the AUC chiefs would not be able to get away with intentional omissions in their statements because the government ‘has made visible those involved in atrocities’. But human-rights groups complained that the law was too lenient in not requiring a binding confession and in not ensuring that the paramilitaries dismantled their criminal networks. Colombia’s Constitutional Court agreed: it put more teeth into the law, requiring full confessions on pain of forfeiting reduced sentences. Whatever its imperfections, the process quickly appeared to acquire momentum. In late 2006, 57 paramilitary leaders were jailed pending court hearings. No fewer than 25,000 people registered as victims of the paramilitaries. Mario Iguarán, the attorney-general, said that charges might eventually be brought against 300 – 400 paramilitary leaders. The government’s intention was to apply the same terms to the guerrillas – something that the FARC might well find hard to swallow.

Uribe took the same approach to the drug issue as he did to security. With American support, he unleashed a massive programme of aerial spraying of coca fields. According to the measurements by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, by 2004, the area under coca had fallen to half its 1999 peak before drifting up again thereafter. But there was no discernible effect on the supply price of cocaine in world markets. The spraying was controversial; in 2006 the government switched tactics and put more emphasis on mutual eradication and on the development of alternative economic activities. Predictably, Plan Colombia proved to be far more effective as a counter-insurgency plan than as an anti-drug plan, though it had been sold to the American public as the latter.

Uribe’s democratic security policy certainly made Colombia a safer place. According to official figures, the murder rate fell steadily: whereas 28,837 people were killed in 2002, the figure for 2006 was 17,277 (or 41 per 100,000). The number of kidnappings fell over the same period from 2,883 to 687. Critics disputed the figures, but there was little doubting the overall trend. The main roads became safe to travel again. Greater security brought a boom in investment. Economic growth reached 6 per cent in 2006. Uribe’s supporters saw him as the saviour of his country. Most Colombians tended to that view. In opinion polls, respondents regularly gave the president an approval rating of 60-75 per cent. His popularity and political success allowed him to persuade Congress to change the constitution to allow him to stand for a second consecutive term. In a country that historically had been deeply suspicious of an over-mighty executive, this was perhaps his most surprising achievement. In 2006, he was duly elected by a landslide for a second term: he won a thumping 62 per cent of the vote. That was almost three times as much as his nearest challenger, Carlos Gaviria, who represented a coalition of the peaceful, democratic left – a novelty for Colombia. But it was soon clear that Uribe’s second term was going to be far more difficult than the first.

Some high-ranking army officers had long been guilty of collusion with – or at least turning a blind eye to – the paramilitaries. Several of the most important paramilitary leaders were former army officers. These links undermined the legitimacy of the state. Support for the paramilitaries was not the policy of the armed forces as an institution, nor of the government, and such cases became increasingly rare. But thanks to investigations by journalists and prosecutors the penetration of politics and state institutions by the paramilitaries began to be laid bare, becoming a political scandal (dubbed parapolítica or ‘parapolitics’ by Colombians). The former head of the civilian intelligence agency from 2002 to 2005 was accused of collaborating with the AUC. The Supreme Court ordered the arrest of a dozen legislators for the same reason; nearly all were supporters of the president. The investigations revealed that in some areas of the Caribbean coast in particular, the paramilitaries had seized control of local politics, murdering, intimidating or bribing those who stood in their way. They used that control to extort commissions from public contracts. They also controlled much of the drug trade in the area. These developments seemed to echo the claim made by some of Uribe’s critics on the left that the president was himself in league with the paramilitaries. There was no evidence of any personal link. However, he was sometimes guilty of poor judgement in his choice of friends and collaborators. Uribe insisted that the scandals were only coming out because of the climate of greater security and because of the demobilisation of the paramilitaries and the investigations under the Justice and Peace Law. There was some truth in that. Parapolítica had little effect on Uribe’s popularity at home. But it did severe damage to his standing abroad, especially in the United States. The Democrats, who had won control of the US Congress, had become increasingly hostile to Plan Colombia. They made it clear that they would not quickly ratify a free-trade agreement with Colombia. That was potentially a big setback for Uribe and for his country.

Colombia’s transformation was remarkable but remained fragile. The FARC was not defeated. Some Colombian officials claimed that its leaders were receiving succour in Chávez’s Venezuela and in Ecuador. After Rafael Correa‘s victory in Ecuador they felt surrounded by hostile governments. The security forces needed further strengthening if new criminal groups were not to spring up where paramilitary demobilisation had left a vacuum of territorial control. Between 1.5 million and 2.5 million Colombians had been uprooted by conflict, and many of them were surviving in poverty in the cities. There was a strong case for a land reform which would have settled some of the displaced people on land bought or grabbed by drug traffickers and paramilitaries. But Uribe showed little interest in this. Partly because of the strength of its democratic institutions, such as the courts and the independent attorney-general, Colombia had stumbled into an effort to bring war criminals to justice on a massive scale and with almost no outside support. The man of destiny had strengthened the authority of the democratic state. But by seeking a second term he had vested that authority in himself. He had not groomed a political heir, not institutionalised many of the changes he had wrought. Much hung on who came after him. But the main barrier between Colombia and normality was the continuing failure of cocaine prohibition in consuming countries around the world. Politicians in the United States and Europe cavilled at granting aid to Colombia’s embattled democracy, or at helping its legal economy to expand through trade. Meanwhile, their countries’ cocaine consumers continued to pump money into Colombia’s illegal armies.

Reid devotes many pages to Colombia’s security situation. I’d been contemplating writing a brief history piece about Colombia, but he did it better than I can. So I’m publishing his content word for word, silly British English spellings and all. Enjoy.

Part 1 of 2, on drug cartels:

‘Lead or silver’

Enrique Low Murtra wanted nothing more than to leave his job as Colombia’s justice minister to open a law office and return to his previous career as a university teacher. ‘I would like to imagine that vengeance is not eternal. To be exiled, like Scipio, from one’s own country seems to me to be an injustice,’ he said. A gentle, avuncular man who had once been a supreme-court judge, he was still only 49. He spoke softly as the rain pattered down outside his office in a colonial mansion in Bogotá in March 1988. But he would indeed suffer exile – and worse. Two months earlier, on the instruction of Colombia’s president, Virgilio Barco, Low Murtra had signed warrants for the arrest and extradition to the United States on drugs charges of the five leading members of the ‘Medellín Cartel‘. They included Pablo Escobar, perhaps the world’s most ruthless and notorious drug baron. Faced with constant death threats, the minister sent his daughter out of the country. ‘Even going for a haircut has become a problem,’ he said. So intense did the threats become that, in July 1988, Barco sent him to Switzerland as ambassador. That did not save him. In 1991, he was back in Colombia, working as he had hoped as a law professor at the University of La Salle. No longer in government service, he had no bodyguards. He was gunned down at the entrance to the university.

Low Murtra’s assassination was just one of thousands of murders inflicted on Colombia by the drug trade. It had begun quietly in the 1970s with marijuana and then cocaine. Few people in Colombia bothered much until the traffickers began to use their cocaine wealth to go into politics. Pablo Escobar, who had begun life as a car thief and small-time hoodlum, became the alternate to a Liberal congressman. A reformist faction of the Liberal Party, led by Luis Carlos Galán, denounced the infiltration of ‘hot money’ into politics. When Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, a member of Galán’s group, was appointed justice minister in 1983, he started cracking down on the drug trade, with enthusiastic support from the US Embassy. After the traffickers attempted to smear Lara Bonilla, he denounced Escobar by name in a session of Congress. Weeks later he was shot dead by a hired assassin on a motorbike as he was being driven in his ministerial car in Bogotá. It was the start of en years of warfare of terrifying intensity by the Medellín drug mob against the Colombian state and others they saw as a threat to their business. The victims included judges, politicians and journalists, as well as hundreds of policemen and ordinary Colombians. The carnage reached a crescendo in 1989, when three presidential candidates (including Galán, the likely winner) were murdered and an Avianca jet with more than one hundred passengers on board was blown up in mid-flight between Bogotá and Cali. The country’s politicians had had enough: a constituent assembly, called into being to reform Colombia’s constitution, voted to ban extradition – the fate most feared by the traffickers. The new government of César Gaviria negotiated the surrender of Escobar and his henchmen. But after 13 months in comfortable confinement near Medellín, Escobar escaped hours before he was to be moved to a maximum-security jail. After a desperate manhunt lasting 16 months that involved half a dozen different US government agencies, Escobar was finally cornered and killed in Medellín in December 1993.

Escobar famously offered those who stood in his way the choice of plomo o plata (‘lead or silver’), a bullet or bribe. Either way, the rule of law was the loser. The drug trade enveloped the Colombian democracy in violence and corruption. To defeat Escobar, the Colombian state recruited some dubious allies. These included not just his foes in the Cali drug mob, who were less flamboyant and more businesslike than their counterparts in Medellín; they also encompassed a criminal gang called Los Pepes (short for ‘people persecuted by Pablo Escobar’), whose leaders included the brothers Fidel andCarlos Castaño, who would become leaders of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), as the umbrella group of the right-wing paramilitaries was known. The Cali drug barons gave money to the 1994 election campaign of Ernesto Samper, whose presidency was dogged by his battle to clear his name in the face of American hostility. And the dismantling of the ‘Medellín Cartel’ had no effect on the flow of cocaine to the United States and Europe.

Richard Nixon was the first American president to declare a ‘war on drugs’. But this only got serious under George H W Bush, after an explosive increase in the use of crack cocaine in the United States. In 1989, in a  televised speech to the nation, he singled out cocaine as ‘our most serious problem’. He committed the US armed forces, whose commanders were seeking a new role after the end of the Cold War, to this new battle. He offered unprecedented amounts of aid to the Andean countries. He urged upon them a three-pronged strategy for the eradication of coca, the hardy shrub from whose leavescocaine is extracted; the use of the security forces to interdict processing facilities and trafficking routes; and ‘alternative development’ of legal crops in or near drug-producing areas. Almost two decades and several billions of dollars later, the drug warriors could point to a series of tactical victories, in particular places at particular times. The total amount of land under coca, as surveyed by the CIA and by the UN, reached a peak in 2001 of around 200,000 hectares and then fell somewhat. But the flow of cocaine was never seriously interrupted, and its street price in the United States, having fallen in the 1980s and early 1990s, remained more or less constant thereafter.

There were three reasons for that. The first was what came to be called the ‘balloon effect‘ – squeeze the drug trade in one place and it will expand elsewhere. That applies to transport routes as well as coca production. Both the trade and drug consumption have spread far and wide. Latin American countries are now cocaine consumers, while drug gangs control many of the slums from Tijuana to Rio de Janeiro. As power in the drug business, like in many other industries, moved closer to the consumer, Mexico’s drug gangs began to mimic the wealth, firepower and turf wars previously confined to their Colombian counterparts. Drug-related murders soared in Mexico (to 2,100 in 2006). Felipe Calderón‘s first initiative as president was to send thousands of army troops to the most affected areas and to expand the federal police. However, it was not clear whether the government would carry out the radical purge and reform of the police that Mexico needed.

The second reason was the modernisation and professionalisation of the drug industry: for example, the bulk of coca cultivation shifted from Peru to Colombia in the early 1990s, and the original drug ‘cartels’ were replaced by a host of small, flexible networks, some of them run by accountants, lawyers or other professionals. There was also evidence that coca growers had raised their productivity. But the third and most important explanation was the peculiar economics of an illegal trade for a good that continued to be much in demand in the United States and Europe despite its prohibition. As Peter Reuter, an economist at the University of Maryland, has pointed out, prices at each stage in the long chain that turns a coca leaf on an Andean hillside into a gram of cocaine on the streets of the Bronx or the City of London are determined mainly by the need to reward risk-taking, rather than the cost of production. That is why the price of a kilo of pure cocaine (measured in relation to its equivalent in coca leaf) rises by a factor of roughly 200 times between the coca farm and the street. Most of the increase occurs once cocaine has entered the United States or Europe – because law enforcement is tighter and risk is thus higher. So even if repression in the producer countries succeeds in increasing leaf prices, this has little effect on cocaine prices.

Both the drug trade and the American-sponsored ‘war’ against it have been very costly for the Andean countries. American aid has been feeble in relation to the scale of the problem. Involving the armed forces and the police in fighting the drug trade has sometimes corrupted them. It has also drawn resources away from other priorities, such as citizen security. It has required democratic governments to use heavy-handed repression of peasants who are trying to earn a better living by growing coca. Such repression has sometimes produced a nationalist reaction. The rise of Evo Morales to Bolivia’s presidency owed much to the American insistence on eradicating coca. Some Mexicans were irritated when the Americans pressed Vicente Fox into vetoing a law legalising the consumption of small quantities of drugs. Large-scale aerial spraying of coca crops with weedkiller by Uribe‘s government in Colombia has brought claims that legal crops have been affected, too, and of environmental damage (though producing cocaine itself involves the large-scale use of more toxic chemicals).

But as long as cocaine remains illegal, officials argued, the costs for the Andean countries of ignoring it were higher than those of fighting it. Visit any drug town in the tropical lowlands of Peru or Colombia, and it is clear that cocaine brings squalor, violence and insecurity as well as easy money. Even if only a fraction of the profits from the trade return to the producer countries, that is still big money – perhaps $2 billion to $5 billion a year in Colombia in the 1990s. The Latin American organised-crime syndicates generated by the illegality of the drug trade have global reach. They are immensely powerful, wealthy and well-armed. By their nature, they pose a huge danger to the rule of law and the democratic state in their home countries. And the profits to be had from cocaine have provided a ready source of cash for illegal armed groups.

Continue reading about those illegal armed groups at FARC, Guerrillas, and Paramilitaries in Colombia.

At 10pm there was a knock on the door. The Mick was so drunk (he’s also started drinking again) he couldn’t walk straight without leaning on the woman he had with him. This little cougar was between 40 – 45 years old, but definitely hot. Her breasts were so big that I’ll call her Pechonorme. The shirt she was wearing was under considerable strain in holding all the boobs in. Strangely, the rest of her body was slim. The only fat on her was in her enormous breasts.

I gave them each a beer and started devising how to get rid of them. I didn’t want The Mick having sex in my bed. We exchanged pleasantries for a while. At one point I reached to grab something and Pechonorme said, “Guau, mira sus brazos,” and rubbed my tricep muscle. She rubbed it for longer than necessary. “No es celoso,” she said referring to The Mick. He’s not jealous. That was an early indicator of what was to come.

Even though we were in my apartment, Pechonorme proved the better host by making sure my glass always had aguardiente in it. She was persistent in forcing liquor on me. The Mick wasn’t so subtle. He told me in English, “She’s mad to ride. Mad to ride you.” I’d never met her before, but apparently she’d seen us running around Chapinero or Chicó together.

The Mick invited me back to his place for some whiskey and marijuana. Then he said “And SEX,” while staring into Pechonorme’s eyes. I pretended I didn’t hear it. I agreed to go because he had Jameson, the best whiskey in the world which I haven’t had since the States, and because I hadn’t had sex in a long time. I decided to have one drink and if the chemistry was right, I might engage in some sexual behavior of some sort. Otherwise I’d duck out and they’d be out of my apartment.

We left my place and The Mick, stumbling drunk, pointed us toward Carulla to get Jameson. I protested in English that he’d told me he already had it. He knows goddamn well I’m broke and can’t afford an expensive bottle like Jameson, to which he replied not to worry. Pechonorme paid for the booze. Apparently she makes good money working for a well-known multinational hotel chain.

We got to The Mick’s place and Pechonorme fed me Jameson. She made sure I was always drinking by monitoring my glass and regularly proposing toasts.

I’ve been around the kinds of guys who run trains on girls and have wild orgies, but I’ve always been more traditional. I’m good and nasty at it, but I’ve never wanted to do the group thing. Call me conservative or selfish or whatever, but I’ve always thought mine should be the only penis in the room.

The Mick, on the other hand, is a veteran of so many orgies he can’t count them all. He’s also a professional at setting the stage. He told me Pechonorme is a pecadora, a sinner. He has a way of making people feel good about being bad. He said we’re all going to die and that we should enjoy the moment now.

The Mick had all his windows open and it was raining, so he talked about sex in the rain. He emphasized it while staring intensely into Pechonorme’s eyes. La lluvia. Being the inexperienced one, I had hoped to play dumb and shy. The Mick was not making it easy for anyone to play dumb. He proposed that we all lay down in bed, to “atenderla,” referring to Pechonorme. She reminded me, “Él no es celoso.” I played dumb again and drowned myself in more Jameson.

The Mick was wasted and kept asking me if I needed a drink, despite Pechonorme obviously taking care of me in that department. He produced some weed and we started smoking. As subtle as always, The Mick brought up the effects of marijuana on sex. Jesus, this wasn’t going away.

The Jameson was taking its toll on me. I felt warm in the head and presented a question to Pechonorme. I didn’t want to be liso or descarado, but would she tell me her bra size? I said I’d never seen such huge, natural breasts on such a slim body. She immediately pulled them out over her shirt, which got a break from containing those monsters. Her nipples looked nice. She said 38 (no letter).

The Mick, after all the cheesy sex talk, seemed surprised when the boobs came out. He reached out for them and Pechonorme offered them toward his mouth. He sucked her nipples for a moment, until she came over to me and asked if I wanted to feel them. Well, OK. I massaged them. They were huge.

At some point in the massage she let out an exhale and her eyes changed. She jumped on my lap and started kissing me. I kissed back. She rubbed my penis through my jeans. Then she undid my pants and started sucking, which felt great. From behind her, I heard The Mick slur, “Eso.”

Pechonorme stood up, smiling, and invited us to the bedroom. The Mick followed her in. I took my clothes off right there on the couch and took my first condom out of its wrapper, palming it on my way into the room. Seated, Pechonorme went right back to sucking me while The Mick fondled her.

I wrapped it up as she got on top to ride. The Mick kissed her and massaged her breasts. After several minutes of her riding and a little bit of me fucking her from on top, I noticed there was no rubber on the tip of my dick. I got up and stepped outside the bedroom where there was light. The only part left of the condom was the ring wrapped tightly around the middle of my penis. Where the hell did the rest go? There aren’t many worse feelings than having broken a condom inside a woman of questionable morals. I wish I could say that was a first. I went and put on the other condom I’d brought.

When I got back into the bedroom, Pechonorme sat on the edge of the bed and started sucking it. After a couple seconds she took that condom off and threw it aside. Great. Well, I wasn’t going to quit at this point.

We went back and forth from sucking and fucking, usually with her on top. The Mick was so drunk he was falling in and out of sleep. He’d occasionally wake up enough to kiss her while she was riding me. And he kept up with the talk. She’d be riding me and getting all out of control and he’d say, “Lovely, lovely. She’s so lovely.” Another time she was sucking my dick with passion, pumping and licking it up and down from each angle as if we were filming. The Mick said, “Divina, divina, que divina.”

This is a key difference between a sleaze veteran like The Mick and a wholesome traditionalist like me. When I see a girl sucking like that, sure it’s stimulating and exciting. But I don’t think ‘lovely’ or ‘divine’. I reserve those words for good, sweet, innocent girls. But to each his own.

The Mick fell asleep for good at some point, and I kept fucking Pechonorme. I fucked her and she switched to oral and I fucked her and she switched to oral and I fucked her and fucked her, all this right next to The Mick who was fast asleep.

I told her when I was getting close. She asked if I wanted to cum in her mouth. Of course I did. I came in her mouth and she kept sucking it after I was all done. Then she hugged me tightly from down there, pressing her face into my package. She rubbed her face back and forth against it while squeezing my butt cheeks and hugging my legs tight. She gave me a thorough massage for a while and then went to sleep next to The Mick.

I went back into the living room to drink more Jameson. I spent the rest of the night there, until the sun came up, drinking Jameson butt naked. The windows were still wide open but I wasn’t cold, so anybody walking past would’ve seen me walking around butt naked. I was basking in the post-sex afterglow, drinking my delicious Jameson. I earned it.

After drinking most of the bottle, I got dressed and walked home under the blue dawn of early morning, among all the people going to work.

We paid 10,000 pesos to go into a place offering an open bar, but they ran out of booze just as we got in. It was a hip hop scene packed with 18 year-olds. So we left. At the next club we danced and drank aguardiente. I was quite drunk so I don’t remember why we left the second club, but we found ourselves standing in the street. I don’t remember how, but I met a guy named Silvio. He told us about a club that’s open late, so we all jumped into a taxi and went. Silvio plus our original group of 7.

This club was on Caracas at Calle 36 – not exactly a posh section of Bogota. We got a table and bottle, then started dancing. A thick black girl was all over me. She jumped up and wrapped her legs around my waist. I held her up and we did a little fist-pump thing in the air for a while.

At that point, this little buff black guy came up and told me not to dance with her. He was completely nice and polite about it, obviously wanting to be friends. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but something along the lines of she’s the girlfriend / sister / whatever of that important drug dealer / pimp / whatever sitting at the booth watching us. The little buff black guy was wearing a tight polyester t-shirt and a goddam herringbone – like he just stepped out of New Jack City.

I got paranoid and my night was somewhat ruined as I kept an eye on the booth and that drug dealer. Silvio offered me cocaine, which cheered me up. The back of this place was a pool hall, and in the front was the club / dance floor. We walked past the pool hall to the bathroom to snort it. As the night wore on, Silvio stopped going all the way to the bathroom and just did the coke in the pool hall section in full view of the half dozen people playing pool. And as the night wore on some more, he stopped going back there altogether, opting just to snort it right on the dance floor. He gave me some every time he did some.

Back at our table, the little buff black guy came up and offered me cocaine. He didn’t verbally ask me if I wanted any. He held out his knife with a big pile of it on the tip of the blade. I don’t know if the knife was his modus operandi of doing coke, or if he wanted me to know he had a knife. Who knows? Even as drunk as I was, I insisted he go first and I go second. None of these fools are going to give me scopolamine. I do this (insist they go first) with booze too. After the little buff black guy and I had our snorts, we took a shot of my aguardiente.

The thick black girl continued to follow me around the dance floor. One time she jumped up expecting me to catch her. Having made friends with the little buff black guy and being paranoid of the shady character at their table, I didn’t catch her. She fell on her ass on the dance floor, which made an uncomfortable scene for the both of us.

All my original group was gone. It was just me and Silvio. I decided I was too drunk to have any more fun and left. Silvio followed me. It was dawn outside. He asked me for money. What the hell was he talking about? He needed money for the bus. I refused as these deadbeats are one of the most obnoxious things about Colombia. He kept walking with me for more than a block.

Fed up, I gave him a 5000 peso note – the last of my money – on the condition that he box me. No head shots, just the body. I put my hands up and started lightly slapping at his arms, trying to get him to punch back. He didn’t, so I threw a (real) right hook around his arms and into his side. He half-crumpled over, then turned and ran away. I immediately felt bad and called after him, “¡Parcero!” but he didn’t even look back. I got home at 7am after walking 30+ blocks home.

I didn’t feel as bad about that today. I mean, if you have to hit somebody to get them away from you, then that somebody is probably an asshole.

For those who don’t remember the 90s, this is a goddam herringbone:

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New Jack City trailer:

Being in a hurry, I quickly sized up the situation. Facing north up 11 from the south side of 72, I saw the rolito rioters standing on the median on the other side of 11. They were throwing rocks at the riot police who were holding their position north of 72 next to the Porciúncula church. This was my exact view of the northeast corner (from the southwest).

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I had to continue up 11 so I’d pass the church on my right. The rolitos were throwing rocks toward the church from the median in the center of this image.

I hastily judged that it’d take a college baseball player or football quarterback to hit me from that distance with a rock heavy enough to hurt while I’m speeding past. So these little pussies wouldn’t have had the power or accuracy to do any damage.

I squeezed through the audience and took off into the empty street. Just as soon as I built some speed heading across 72, I noticed a second group of rolito rioters on the northwest corner (not pictured) throwing rocks at the same cops standing next to the church. These guys were positioned behind the university fence that separates campus from the Carrera 11 sidewalk and bike path.

With more haste than I made my first decision I changed course and turned left after the 72 median heading west. So Plan B was to go around the puppet show. Just as I started to speed downhill, I heard two loud pops a couple seconds apart. My nostrils filled with chemicals, as if someone broke their solution beaker in science lab class or mixed the wrong chemicals together. My eyes immediately teared up and tears ran from each eye while the smell made me nauseous. Fortunately I was hauling ass downhill and my next breaths were fresh air. I never saw the clouds.

I turned right at Carrera 13, which I followed north for two blocks, then cut back to the 11 bike path. My class was on Calle 94, where those nerds’ little disturbio had backed up southbound traffic the whole way. I made it to class on time.

My Photoshop masterpiece:

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As you can see, my kid brother could hit me with a rock from behind that fence.

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Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, or UPN as it’s spray-painted all over the city, is a big Education school. So those idiots throwing rocks are going to be teachers someday. They stage one of these harmless skirmishes often, so much so that nobody takes them seriously (me included, obviously).

And here’s YouTube footage of some other riots those kids have staged.

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Here’s that area on Google Maps:

My last girlfriend in AQP, ‘Milagros’, has learned about this blog and hates me. Not only did I document every step of the way in our mostly sexual relationship, but I also cheated on her from the start. She knows everything and isn’t answering my emails now.

This is horrible because I really liked her.

My Swiss roommate Nicolas had seen me with the other girls and noticed a difference with this one. He asked me early on, “You like this one, don’t you?” It was obvious. With all the other Peruvian girls, I’d try to get them out of the house soon after waking up or whatever. With Milagros, I’d try to get her to stay. I had fun hanging out in bed.

The older I get, the less I believe in real love, soul mates, and that Hollywood nonsense. Milagros and I spent days in bed. Days. That’s love. That’s how babies get made. We’d only leave my bedroom for pollo a la brasa when we had to eat.

Milagros didn’t have the brichera issues. A gringo and Peruvian girl get stared at in the streets of Arequipa. Sometimes guys yell insults. I sensed from the other two girlfriends that, even if negative, they enjoyed the attention. Women’s vanity. Milagros, on the other hand, hated it. She’d get noticeably uncomfortable. She didn’t want to stand out. She’d have been happy to stay in bed forever.

Milagros’ genes would be an ideal match. Having athletic children is important to me. I have height but, unfortunately, I don’t have good genetics for muscularity. I have to work hard and keep a strict diet to stay fine. She, on the other hand, doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her body. She’s super-skinny and strong as shit. A body full of fast-twitch muscle fiber that burns everything she eats. My height and her genes would produce excellent athletes.

How do I know she was so strong, besides the time she slapped the shit out of me? From her hugs. I miss how much she worshipped me. She would spontaneously grab a hold of me and hug as tight as she could. With other girls, I can wriggle out of that easily. With her, I’d have to peel her off by her hands and it’d still be an effort. One day I was eating pollo a la brasa when she wrapped her arms around me like that. I’ll never forget the contrast of how tight she held me and my helplessness in her grip vs. the softest, most delicate, wet kiss she planted on my cheek.

She would stare into my eyes with such intensity during sex, never looking at anything else (unless the position didn’t allow it). Her stare was piercing. The sex was amazing. It seemed every time I’d be getting close, she’d get one first and we’d change positions. So I’d have to start almost from scratch. That’s how we’d carry on forever and it was great. I’d be exhausted afterwards.

Afterwards, she’d give me backrubs. Long backrubs that I enjoyed very much. The only thing I didn’t like is when she found a pimple on my back, she’d squeeze it. I scolded her every time but she’d always do it anyway. I always thought this was weird so I never told anybody. In the States, an old gringo told me how much he liked Latina women, and how a Panamanian girlfriend of his did that. He considered it her caring for him in every way possible. So I mentioned it to another gringo down here, who confirmed that he’d had Latinas do that also. I guess it’s a good thing – a good thing you won’t find American or European women do for you. That’s in addition to cleaning your room and folding laundry.

I told Milagros the fact that we had sex the first night we met didn’t matter. However, no guy can eliminate that from his evaluation of a girl’s long-term prospects. I also told her that her age (20 to my 29 at the time) didn’t matter, but it certainly did. 20 year-olds get attached easily.

One of my greatest fears in life is being cheated on by a wife. I don’t know why, but it is. My worst nightmare would be my wife having a kid that’s not mine. I’m cynical about human fidelity.

One night we threw a party and Milagros tried to make me jealous by talking to a German guy for a long time at the end of the night. I was drunk and apparently her plan succeeded. In the morning, she wouldn’t shut the fuck up teasing me: “Tú estabas celoso, tú me quieres mucho.” I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior if it continued.

Another limiting issue was Milagros’ not being rich. After living down here for a while, a gringo realizes he has access to the upper crust of society. Milagros was the daughter of a Peruvian cop, and she was studying to become a nurse. When you’re all liberalized / first-world / Americanized, you think that stuff doesn’t matter. But after acclimating to Latin America you think, “How could I go out like that?” A daughter of a cop studying nursing?

So those were the pros and cons. My target age for marriage and family is 35. I told Milagros when I left that at 35 I might come back for her, and I meant every word of it. Have a quick marriage and pump her full of kids. If I don’t have any prospects at the time, why not? Well, that option’s off the table. I liked that girl so much and now it’s ruined.

This blog turns 2 years old today and I have some thinking to do. Upon leaving Peru, I had decided that I’d tell all girlfriends about this site. One-night stands might be left in the dark, but not girlfriends. It started off easy when I was blogging in English while living in a Spanish-speaking country. However, the popularity of this blog is not decreasing or remaining constant. It won’t be harmless and anonymous forever.

Sound off your opinion in the comments. I know for a fact that many of you people despise me. Now’s your chance to let me know what you think. I’m listening with an open mind.

This is us:

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This is the song I listened to for hours on repeat while getting drunk after realizing she’d read the blog:
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DISCLAIMER: Do NOT use ‘marica‘ in Spanish with non-Colombians. It’s similar to ‘maricon‘, which means ‘fag’.

Friday night I found myself wasted alone at a bar. At the table next to mine was a tiny little beauty, also alone, with a huge bottle of aguardiente. This little girl couldn’t drink that much aguardiente if she had a whole day to do it so I assumed there were others at the table. Still, I asked her if that whole bottle was just for her. I only had enough money for beer so if we made friends I’d surely get in on that precious booze. She replied in a friendly enough way so I moved over to her table.

I moved over just as three guys and another girl returned, which made for an uncomfortable moment until I ordered a round of beers for everybody. Then we were all friends. In addition to Tiny Beauty, there were two devastatingly handsome guys, an equally beautiful girl, and a not-so attractive guy who was completely wasted. The last guy didn’t seem to fit in this group.

I talked to Tiny Beauty and Model #1. They all work at a major designer clothing brand (you’d recognize it) except the not-so attractive guy, Drunken Cuckold. He owns a boutique that carries their brand. Drunken Cuckold was nice enough. He’d occasionally wake up enough to make eye contact and smile or give me a thumbs-up. He had something going on with the second girl at the table, Zorra Creida.

Zorra Creida was the only one at the table who didn’t say a word to me the whole night. She obviously had something going on with Model #2 despite the appearances of being with Drunken Cuckold. Whenever Drunken Cuckold dozed off, she would be holding Model #2’s hand or leaning into him or somehow flirting. Their chemistry was obvious.

Every time Zorra Creida said something, the first or last word out of her mouth was ‘marica’. Sometimes it was the first and last word.

My March 20 tweet (twitter.com/GringoColin):

Bogotanos that say ‘marica’ more than twice in less than a minute – I don’t want to be their friend. More than 3 & I stop listening.

Many rolos talk like this. It is inarguably the most annoying thing about Colombians. I don’t know if they think it’s clever or urban or hip or edgy or cute or what. But it’s NOT – they’re morons! It’s a disguise to cover up a lack of original thought. It’s smoke and mirrors to hide the fact they’re not saying anything. These people lack substance.

Aside from El Tiempo and Portafolio, I don’t consume Colombian media. I’m not sure but I doubt they make fun of these people like they should. So I’m going to start the trend. English / American culture is excellent at calling out idiots. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was an early 90s movie that made the point to impressionable young minds like mine that people who use ‘dude’ in excess are subprime simpletons. See:

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With the exception of Zorra Creida, those people I met were very nice to me and they fed me loads of their aguardiente. Especially Tiny Beauty and Model #1.  I don’t know them well enough to render them brainless. But given that they work in the fashion industry, we can assume they’re not intellectuals in any sense.

People who use ‘marica’ more than once in a conversation are CHIMPANZEES. The worst is when girls talk like that, which is common. There’s no bigger turnoff than hearing a girl rattle on “Marica … blah blah blah … o sea … blah blah blah … huevon, marica.” How could you take a girl like that seriously? Imagine that Drunken Cuckold, getting cheated on by one of those. What a poor bastard!

The only way I could have anything to do with a girl who talks like that is to fuck her out of HATE. I’d choke her while on top, and I’d pull her hair and spank her red during perrito. I’d use violence to punish her lack of thinking and try to beat the stupid out of her.

Here’s a cute Bud Light ad that shows how one word can communicate different messages:

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This piece was contributed by Christopher K, who was the big Bogota blogger before he was locked up in a Brazilian penitentiary last year. We have a correspondence and he sent this story in response to my posts about getting mugged in La Candelaria and Why I Hate Downtown Bogota. In my opinion, this piece exaggerates the situation in La Candelaria. But I only lived there one month as opposed to Christopher’s 2 1/2 years. Also note that he moved to Bogota in 2004, when the crime situation was very different than it is today. Here’s his piece:

I also stayed on the 3rd floor of Aragon and walked to the Platypus to use the internet. I made the Plat-to-Aragon walk at all hours: day, night, 3am, whenever, and always with my laptop. Of course, locals say this is crazy stupid, but there’s a knack to it.

The first skill you need is to read body language on the street, and I mean from two blocks away. I can tell an armed thief from a harmless bum in La Candelaria from at least one block away. What’s he doing, where’s he looking, how’s he carry himself?

A bum shuffles. He looks aimless. He might hang around a certain spot, but he doesn’t own it. He’s always looking around, but not in a predatory fashion, and often looks at the ground, keeping an eye out for coins or food or whatever.

A thief moves like a shark on land. Either it’s an unusually confident casualness, or a direct hunting posture, or if they’re fucked up, spastic aggression. The first is most common. Sometimes they work in pairs, but the second man usually walks some distance behind – moving at exactly the same speed and direction. They look like two idiots trying to look like they’re not together.

Here’s where you develop the hyper-vigilant state: you should be constantly scanning 180 degrees in front and on the sides. At night, you should know exactly who’s on the streets around you. You don’t want to be looking behind you – that shows fear – so you listen carefully for footsteps or anything unusual from the rear. During the day, you look for breaks in the pattern of how people move, and use glass windows to see who’s behind you.

Obviously, at night you walk in the middle of the street.

The second skill is to develop your own body language. I’m 5’10” and maybe 130lbs if I drink a lot of water – dangerously underweight. I’m a scrawny geek, and I’m not a scrapper. But I’ve seen thieves cross the street to avoid me. Once, in front of Aragon, an older man set down his shopping bag and crossed himself as I approached. Bums would usually avoid me, and in 2.5 years of living in La Candelaria, I was hardly ever offered drugs.

I would go into shark-mode myself. I put myself into the frame of mind that every time I walked out the door, I was going into combat. And I was the baddest motherfucker of all. I walked like I had a purpose, and that purpose was to tear out your jugular with my teeth. Chest puffed, arms out, chin pointed slightly down, and stay the fuck back, Jack. Normally, this would be comical on a guy like me. But in Bogota, it worked.

Sometimes a thief would get close enough to where he was thinking about having a go. I’d glare at him and subtly shake my head ‘no’. You could not be retarded enough to make me snap your spine. And that’s all it took. Like everything in Colombia, appearance is everything. Substance is nothing.

There were times on Carrera 3 between Calle 15 and 16, the Platypus-to-Aragon route, when there were muggings every day at any time, day or night. I can’t count how many thieves I put off like this. Once at the same intersection you got mugged at, there was a gang of five waiting to rob people. The scowl and head-shake put them off. Incredible.

The only time I got mugged was at that same intersection. It was 3am and three teenagers came from behind on Calle 15. I heard them, turned to look, and dismissed them as just kids. I could’ve easily run but thought, “Nah, they’re no threat to me.” Fucking stupid. I had just passed two bums squaring off with knives over a pile of garbage and chuckled that I was so accustomed to this, I didn’t even give them a second glance. My mistake was believing my own hype. You need to know when to stop believing and fuckin’ run. Those teenagers were the ones to finally get my ancient, busted laptop.

But generally, this approach is how you keep Bogota thieves away.

The problem is this wears you down. Frequent trips out of the city – Villa de Leyva was always my favorite – are extremely important. And going back to the US or somewhere civilized is a good way to recharge and remind yourself why you live in Colombia.

OK, the shark walk, scowl, and head-shake aren’t as effective for bums. What works is the ‘Fuck-Off’ wave. When they approach, give a passing glance and an aristocratic ‘shoo’ motion with your hand. It may feel like a dick move, but don’t be shy.

If that doesn’t work, talk to them. Pretend you’re a parent talking to a bratty child. This may feel condescending, but it’s better than beating them. Tone is everything. Don’t swear, call names, or show anger. You’re the parent, you’re in charge. They need to shape up and stop bothering you. Try it and see.

I think bums and thieves are so effective and aggressive with foreigners because we’re either easily spooked or too nice. Don’t be shy about being a dick. It’s the only way to get by in La Candelaria.

This piece was contributed by Christopher K, who was the big Bogota blogger before getting locked up in a Brazilian penitentiary last year. Here’s his story:

Something’s not right in front of the tienda bar. It’s not too late at night and Sam’s just purchased an arepa con chorizo. We’re talking with two friends on the sidewalk when a mendigo asks for money – perfectly normal in La Candelaria, but there’s something off about this particular bum. His eyes are too focused, too searching. It’s so subtle I wonder if I’m the only one who notices. All four of us fuck him off and he wanders away. We’re involved in an animated discussion , but I make a note to keep an eye on this guy. He’s distinctively short.

A few minutes later a one-armed mendigo rudely breaks into our chat to beg. We fuck him off as well. A minute later I notice him standing with the short guy. They’re looking at us while talking – planning something maybe.

I look away and a minute later, the one-armed guy comes back begging. I look around for Shorty, but he’s gone. I step forward and raise my hand in the middle of our group to stop the conversation. “Hey, something’s up” … and then I spot Shorty. He’s crept along the wall next to Sam. In that instant, he barely taps Sam on the waist, then turns and runs. Sam responds without hesitation, “Motherfucker!” He sprints after Shorty. We all follow.

Shorty’s got a 10-yard lead on Sam. Sam’s yelling after him, “‘¡Hijueputa, no voy a dejar!” Without breaking stride, with a shot that’d make an NFL quarterback’s father weep with pride, Sam chucks his arepa at Shorty and the half-eaten sandwich explodes across the back of his head. “I’m not gonna stop!” Sam reminds him.

Shorty hesitates at a corner and Sam tackles him, hitting him right in the ribs. “Gimme back my cell phone!” Sam demands in Spanish. Shorty cries he hasn’t got it, which turns out to be true. All Shorty managed to get out of Sam’s pocket was a few small bills, maybe 6000 pesos. Sam doesn’t realize this yet and and beats on Shorty with his fists.

A fat Colombian guy wanders buy and asks going on. ‘Caught a thief,’ someone explains, and the fat guy says (all in Spanish), ‘Oh yea? Step aside.’ He kicks Shorty in the head a few times, then goes on his way.

Improbably, a lone uniformed police officer turns up. Sam doesn’t stop his pummeling. Once the cop’s been told what happened, he tells Sam in Spanish, “OK, that’s enough.” He pulls out his baton and taps his palm saying, “I’ll take over from here.”

Sam got his money back and is relieved to find his cell phone safely tucked in another pocket. The cop cuffs Shorty and drags him up to his feet, leading him away. Every few steps the cop cracks him across the head or shoulders with his baton. Safe bet: the cop in only warming up.

I first passed through the area on the bike tour I took. I made a mental note to not cross Avenida Caracas in Chapinero if I didn’t have to. Then The Mick started taking me to the market for cheap food. I always hated going because the place is crawling with indigentes, bazuceros, stumble-bums, and drunks. After countless times going, I never stopped getting uncomfortable. I thought pictures or video of the area would be great for this blog, but I could never imagine stopping to take out a camera around all those dirty junkies. I even joined the conversation about 7 de agosto on Poorbuthappy, recommending tourists steer clear of the area.

I’ve been going to 7 de agosto alone for the last few months. I noticed a stark difference from before: there are no indigentes. None. I asked myself, “Why was I so nervous?” All the people around here are normal working Colombians – definitely not rich or even middle class, but nothing to be afraid of.  None of the filthy addicts and beggars I came to associate with the neighborhood were around anymore. What happened? Where’d they go?

I brought the issue up with some Chapinero neighbors and they all agreed. The scum of 7 de agosto seems to have disappeared. They said there must have been a limpieza – a social cleansing. Squads of police, military, paramilitary, or just vigilantes sweep through picking up the undesirables. They bring them to the mountains and shoot them, then dump them in the gullies where nobody will ever find them. Social cleansing is a well-known practice in Colombia and much of Latin America.

I usually use the word, indigente, to describe these people. Some are bazuceros and others borrachos, but they’re all indigentes. There’s another word in the local slang I don’t use: desechables. Disposables. Merriam Webster definition: subject to or available for disposal.

I heard of a well-known case from Barranquilla in the early 90s. The private security guards for the Universidad Libre were behind a massive for-profit limpieza. They drove vans around the city looking for vagrants. They told them they had loads of cardboard they needed to get rid of, which the vagrants could have if they just came and picked it up (recycling cardboard is one of their primary money-makers). Once the guards had the vagrants away from the streets, they killed them and sold their bodies to the university’s medical department. It was a major scandal. Source: Deadly ‘social cleansing’ hits Latino poor

Every article I found about social cleansing featured a quote from a citizen defending the practice. From that last article, a restaurant owner in downtown Bogota said:

“The social-cleansing violence stems from a lack of legal guarantees. We pay our industry and commerce taxes and the government is supposed to keep the streets lit and provide a safe atmosphere for business … But the government does not keep its part. It is incapable of fulfilling its role as the regulator of peaceful coexistence among citizens.”

Here’s a 1994 NY Times article on social cleansing in Colombia: Vigilantes in Colombia Kill Hundreds in a ‘Social Cleansing’. That article confirmed something else I heard about limpiezas, especially downtown. I’d heard that the groups sometimes announce their sweeps in a given neighborhood. They warn the junkies when and where they’re coming with signs plastered all over the streets. So the junkies who (A) can read and (B) are sober enough to read have a chance to escape. Here’s a quote from a political science professor at the national university:

“No state is viable with 30,000 homicides per year … Only 3 percent of those crimes go punished. Social-cleansing organizations spring up as a substitute for real justice.”

I’ve had some harsh words for the addicts of Bogota. Apparently, a lot of people dislike them more than I do. If I hated going to 7 de agosto because of them, imagine how much those local business owners hated them. It wouldn’t take much of an effort to take up a collection between those dozens of businesses to finance such a sweep. Maybe the business owners weren’t involved, but a group of police and military who felt it their civic duty. However it happened, the change in 7 de agosto is undeniable.

Here’s a recent tweet of mine (twitter.com/gringocolin):

A beggar came up WITH A BOTTLE OF GLUE IN HAND. He asked for change in between huffs. Unbelievable.

Social cleansing is obviously wrong and should be condemned. But to play devil’s advocate, I had often looked at some of these people and wondered why they don’t just kill themselves. It looks like many, many locals took that thought a step further. I just went to 7 de agosto today and concluded I’d have no problem whatsoever bringing my camera to take pictures or video. The only problem is there’s nothing interesting to take pictures of.

Revolution is a long shot. In Hong Kong I was studying for a Master’s degree in economics. None of my classmates seemed to have strong political views. Most took up economics because their parents told them to, or because they thought it would lead to a well paying job, or just for the prestige conferred by higher education – any subject would do.

I once attended a seminar on China’s one-child policy, where the guest speaker was a Hong Kong-born Ivy League professor. He explained its effects and stated that he thought the policy should be repealed. Chinese students rarely speak up in class, and never to contradict someone so distinguished. But surprisingly, a few classmates vehemently defended the one-child policy – because the buses and trains are so crowded.

Equally ridiculous was a question asked by a different professor who attended the seminar: “Could there possibly be multiple equilibrium points in regard to population?” Multiple equilibrium points? At any rate, Westerners may find the one-child policy abhorrent but many Chinese do not.

I’ve seen little of the political fanaticism necessary for government upheaval. The over-a-beer debates commonplace in the West don’t exist here, at least not in my presence. Yes, everyone in China knows about the Tiananmen Square incident and may even refer to it as a “massacre”. But I’ve also heard separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang described as “troublemakers”. The discussion usually stops there.

Once a group of Hong Kong students were complaining about how they couldn’t change their government by way of vote. (There is universal suffrage in Hong Kong, but only 1/3 of the legislature is elected; the rest are appointed by Beijing.) I asked if they thought things were unfair, or if they thought the government was not active enough, or what exactly they wanted changed. After all, it doesn’t get much better than Hong Kong. “We just want to vote like other countries.”

In Beijing I once thought revolution possible. Just next to my first apartment was a small shop selling instant noodles and beer. I rarely saw any customers other than myself. This place was just outside of a network of hutongs – alleyways with one-story, traditional-looking buildings generally occupied by poor people – within the Second Ring Road. In the hutongs some people burn charcoal for heat and you can find cages with live chickens. The most traffic my local instant noodle/beer store would see was a group of middle-aged men who played a version of checkers outside in the evenings.

Once as I was opening the fridge I turned my head to see a string of chain-linked bullets lying on the ground next to the shopkeeper. Holy shit. “Ni shi jun dui ma?” I asked, which is undoubtedly incorrect Chinese for “Are you in the army?” He made a nervous laugh and pushed the bullets behind the counter with his foot. He then responded with something I didn’t understand, not just because my Chinese sucks, but because he spoke in thick Beijinghua. I put five kuai on the counter for the beer and didn’t inquire further.

Although my experience with weapons is limited to what I used in the army, chain-linked rounds are indicative of automatic rifles – the kind you have to periodically lay off the trigger to keep the barrel from melting. And those bullets were big, not quite 50-cal but larger than the 5.56 mm used by the M-16 – very illegal. As violent crime is rare in China, I don’t think the shopkeeper would need to deter robbers with something that could be mounted on a tripod. Running drugs maybe? This also seems unlikely as I rarely see evidence of drug use, and he was in his forties and poor. This was the most compelling thing to make me think revolution could happen.

Despite the display of some desire to vote and the strapped shopkeeper, a revolution is less likely than Western media leads you to believe. A Chinese friend once told me that Chinese culture is centered more on the family than on any transcendent ideology or absolute truth, personified by the traditional importance of religion in Western cultures. Just as the Inuit language has more words for seal and snow due to its importance in their culture, the Chinese have something like 35 words for family members which do not readily translate into English – paternal grandfather, maternal grandfather, older female cousin on the mother’s side, father’s older brother, on and on. What this means is that most Chinese people probably don’t care about “freedom” or political issues so much as a train ticket home for Chinese New Year. True, there have been two revolutions here in the last century. But from what I’m seeing, I can’t imagine a third.

Security

I’ve been to many corporate office buildings all over the city. To enter, you have to leave your identification at the front desk. Or they record your ID while taking your picture and sometimes even your fingerprint. All this just to go inside! They have X-rays for any bags you’re carrying – this is just as much to prevent laptop theft as sneaking bombs in. They’ll record the serial number of your laptop on your way in, which must match up to take it out.

There’s no protection against “illegal search and seizure” in Colombia. Street police have the right, which they often use, to demand your identification for no reason at all. I’ve never had mine with me when they’ve asked, but they always let me go. I don’t like to carry my wallet around, so I printed a photocopy of my cédula and work visa to show to the coppers.

This may seem insignificant to the Colombian reader, but first-world citizens probably think it’s intrusive or fascist to require leaving your ID just to enter an office building, or to surrender your documents to authorities with no probable cause.

And of all the world airports I’ve been to, El Dorado in Bogota is the only one that subjects everybody to a manual search of their carry-on bag.

Once in a while, the street police carry out what I’d call sweeps. There are a lot of cops and military around normally, but the number spikes so they’re everywhere for sweeps of undesirables or whatever they look for. During these times, you see teams of them on almost every block in Chapinero.

Another common scene in the city is when somebody important is getting ushered out of a neighborhood. I’ll be walking wherever when all of a sudden a motorcycled cop, siren flashing, will whiz by escorting a group of SUVs with all tinted windows. The trucks haul ass past me, always in a rush.

Militarization

Once while walking through a crowded family park on a Sunday, I saw the Brinks guys dropping off at an ATM. It’s a standard scene: one guy with the 12-guage pistol-grip shotgun (finger on the trigger) covers the other guy with the money bag, who holds his revolver up in the air at eye level (finger also on the trigger). Fingers on the trigger among whatever’s going on in the area.

The regular infantry servicemen walk around with standard machine guns. In Chico – between 72 and 100, east of 11th – live many of the country’s politicians and high-ranking generals. So those affluent neighborhoods have military with assault rifles on almost every block.

You see military with machine guns so often I have pictures.

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One day while walking past the Chamber of Commerce office in Chapinero, I saw Colombian special forces positioned on each corner of each block facing the building. I don’t know who was in the building (Uribe?), but this team with bad-ass machine guns was ready for serious urban warfare. They wore berets and different uniforms than the personnel you see every day. I looked for the guns I saw and learned they use are the Israeli IMI Tavor TAR-21, pictured below.

bad-ass artillery

I learned that force is an urban counter-terrorism unit. From the Wikipedia article about the Colombian Agrupación de Fuerzas Especiales Antiterroristas Urbanas:

Due to terrorist acts conducted in cities by guerrilla groups, the Colombian Army needed a specially trained unit to deal with this threat. This unit was required to be able to both operate and co-ordinate operations with other units of the army, or from other military branches.

Then there are the super decked-out guys you see around Plaza Bolivar and sometimes on Calle 72, the financial district. They carry regular machine guns, but are different for their armor. These guys’ outfits go beyond riot gear. I assume those plates are supposed to resist bullets, shrapnel, rocks, fire, and more.

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Colombia has mandatory military service for all males. You can get out of it if you pay an amount based on your family income.

All this stuff isn’t so bad (mandatory inscription aside). You get used to it, and Colombia’s recent history certainly warrants such measures. In fact, this stuff fuels my optimism in Colombia’s increased security, which I discussed in my recent post: Why I’m Bullish on Colombia. And here’s a pretty pic of Colombian military in their nice dress uniforms: