The DMZ Page 11

  Julie hadn’t understood the tension vibrating from her companions. These riders seemed no different from any band of cowboys riding into town for an evening at the cantinas, a few in the combat fatigues that were a common leftover of every Colombian male’s stint in the cuartel, the others in civilian shirts and baggy pants. Even the weapons thrown casually across the saddles were not abnormal. On more than one holiday, Julie had watched the gauchos galloping into town, shooting their guns into the air in sheer exuberance.

  Nor was she surprised when the horsemen drew up outside her front door. Everyone knew the region’s only resident gringos, and the Baker house was always the first stop if there was a problem. When her father emerged for a low-voiced conversation with the leader, nothing in the calmness of his expression gave her cause for alarm.

  Until the riders turned their heads in her direction.

  They made no threatening moves, but just sat there looking at her, a band of grim men, some as young as herself, with unsmiling faces and unreadable eyes. She still didn’t know who they were, but she recognized the smell of fear around her. Tasted it in her own mouth. The choking dryness of dust kicked up by impatient hooves. The hot musk of the horses. The strong ammonia smell of underarm perspiration that was not only from her companions.

  The leader snapped his fingers. Wheeling their horses, the band thundered back down the street. By the time the darkness swallowed them up, her friends were gone, melted away into the night. They didn’t come around again. The next day she was on a plane back to boarding school. “Leftist rebels are moving into the area”—that was her father’s only explanation. It was better that Julie stay where it was safe until this blew over. Maybe next vacation, things would be better.

  But by her next vacation, her parents were gone.

  * * *

  “Miss? Are you sure I can’t offer you something to drink?”

  Julie glanced up as the flight attendant’s patient repetition registered. “Oh, I’m sorry! I was just …” Following the attendant’s inquiring glance, she saw that the printout in her hands was crumpled beyond readability. Thrusting it back inside the data packet, she hastily unlatched the tray from the back of the seat in front of her. “Uh … just some water, thanks.”

  Julie waited until the flight attendant deposited cold water and a bag of pretzels before picking up the last report. It was on the largest paramilitary group, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia or United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. At least with the paramilitaries, Julie could understand their motives and objective. Government presence and protection had always been minimal in Colombia outside the major population centers. Even she could remember that. It had been the recommendation of America’s CIA back in the sixties that Colombia’s counter-insurgency operation include the arming of the peasants to defend their lands against guerrilla incursions. The American pioneers had once done the same, banding together to fight off the attacks of Indian tribes.

  But if, like the guerrillas, the paramilitaries had started with noble goals, then by the statistics she was reading, those had quickly disintegrated. The Colombian government might have approved the self-defense strategy, but they’d had no funding to make it a reality. The only ones with money to equip a peasant defense force were the large landowners and the narcos. Over the decades, the self-defense units had degenerated largely into the personal armies of the wealthy and of the drug cartels, and in their fight against the guerrillas, they stooped to even worse atrocities than the guerrillas themselves, routinely entering villages and towns to round up and execute locals suspected of sympathizing with the guerrillas.

  Julie sighed as she replaced the report in the file and shoved the whole folder under the seat into her knapsack. For decades now, senseless violence seemed to be the pattern of Colombian society.

  If a country could be said to have a temperament, Colombia’s had to be that of the artist—passionate and excitable. It was this passion that gave richness and depth to Colombian music, art, literature, and to the close interweaving of personal relationships that was the heart of Colombian society. But that passion was also the curse of Colombia. The same fervor that made them so generous in friendships was as easily roused against an enemy. And since Colombians were as passionate in their politics as in their friendships, a political opponent was an enemy. Put two Colombians together, the saying went, and you had a political debate. Three and you had a multi-party system.

  Julie could still remember the stories told by village old-timers of la violencia, a virtual civil war between the two main political parties, Liberals and Conservatives, that spanned almost two decades and left three hundred thousand Colombians dead. A coalition government dividing power between Liberals and Conservatives brought an official end to la violencia in 1958, but the political passions and anger lingered on to become the roots of today’s guerrillas and paramilitaries.

  Still, the present climate of violence in Colombia could not all be conveniently blamed on the warring political factions. It was something Colombians didn’t like to talk about—that Colombia was not only the homicide capital of the world with a per-capita equivalent of a quarter-million Americans being murdered each year, but that, according to the human rights report Julie had just read, less than 8 percent of those deaths had any political motivation. Had the decades of violence loosened the restraints that kept most people from giving rein to the inner rage and hatreds that would take another’s life? Or was there something fundamentally wrong with Colombian society?

  It was impossible for an outsider to judge. But the reality was that a Colombian was more likely to be shot by a jealous neighbor or knifed by a drunken cantina companion or gunned down by a fan for poor performance, as more than one Colombian athlete had died in the last years, than kidnapped by the guerrillas or butchered by the paramilitaries. In Bogotá or Medellín or Cali, a mere one hundred dollars slipped to a sicario, or professional assassin, would take care of a business or social rival.

  And why not, when 99.5 percent of all crimes in Colombia went unpunished?

  The question was why. And how. Surely the country had a police force. And what of the other factors? How did the drug trafficking that every American citizen thought of first when “Colombia” flashed onto their TV screen figure into this mix?

  And what of Julie’s own country? Not her birthplace, but the country of her citizenship. What was the United States doing to stop this pot boiling over only too close to its own borders?

  For all her claims when fighting for this assignment, Julie was only now realizing how much she didn’t know about Colombia. Sure, she’d been born there. But a child’s view of a jungle village was as little a reflection of an entire country as growing up in rural Montana made one an expert on the complexities of American politics, and consciously or unconsciously, she’d given little more than cursory attention to news that crossed her path on Colombia since she’d left it seven years earlier.

  And I was slamming Bob Ryder for poor preparation.

  “I ordered a vegan meal when I booked my ticket!”

  The dinner cart had now reached their row, the flight attendant looking flustered and apologetic under the angry barrage from the woman beside Julie. “I’m sorry, miss, but pasta is our only meatless choice.”

  “It still has animal products. No, take it away. Just give me another Bloody Mary. What kind of airline doesn’t offer vegan in this day and age?”

  For a moment, Julie thought her seatmate was actually speaking to her, but a glance showed that the complaint was being addressed to the ceiling. Settling for the beef, Julie ate half of what was purported to be filet mignon before shoving her own food onto the middle tray and setting up her laptop. Not waiting for this morning’s confrontation with Norm Hutchens, she’d spent several hours last night on-line running key words through her search engine. Colombia. Drugs. Guerrillas. FARC. Demilitarized zone. San Ignacio. The resulting data had been far too vast to more than skim through, but she’d stored th
e downloaded files on her laptop to study during the flight. Julie pulled up the first file: “U.S. Targets Colombian Cocaine Crop.”

  “We are now making our final approach to the International Airport in Bogotá. If you will please store your belongings and return your seats to their upright position.”

  The announcement brought Julie abruptly back to her surroundings. Twilight closed in early on the equator, and it was now full night outside the portholes of the plane. Beyond the wingtip, Julie could make out a hazy glow—the city lights of Bogotá. Perhaps because of air traffic, the plane had banked in a circling pattern over the city, and as it dropped in elevation for the final descent, the haze of light separated into the twinkling box forms of skyscrapers, a fiery circle that was the coliseum, the glittering spires of the central cathedral. Crisscrossing it all were the rivers of light formed by boulevards and overpasses alive with rush-hour traffic.

  Bogotá was nestled on a wide mountain plateau more than eight thousand feet up into the Andes. The floor of the valley was dark beyond the glitter of the city, but Julie didn’t need daylight to know what lay below the outstretched wings of the plane. Dairy farms with their fat Jersey and Holstein cattle. Strawberry fields and greenhouses filled with roses and orchids. Forests of pine and juniper sweeping up the mountain flanks to snowy peaks. Lush vegetation patchworked with coffee and banana plantations tumbling down from the plateau to lower elevations.

  It really was a beautiful country, her birthplace.

  If only its people hadn’t spoiled it!

  Julie slammed the laptop shut. That was what it all boiled down to, wasn’t it? These people just couldn’t seem to solve their own problems. So was it really fair to expect others to do it for them—all these environmental groups and human rights organizations and government aid programs?

  And of course, the missionaries.

  Why should other people sacrifice their time and energy and very lives to help people who quite evidently didn’t want to be helped?

  Julie found that her hands were trembling slightly as she shoved the laptop into her knapsack. This was crazy! Uncle Norm was right. She should never have come. When she’d said goodbye to those mountain peaks down there, it had been with relief and for good. What was she doing here?

  If it hadn’t been for these last two years of running senseless errands, writing reports on garbage dumps and squirrel populations! But she needed this story if she were ever to get out of the basement of a small-time environmental quarterly. The opportunity was too good to pass up.

  A journalist doesn’t get personally involved, she reminded herself fiercely. None of this has anything to do with me! Not anymore! This isn’t my country. These aren’t my people. I’ll get in, get my story, and get out.

  The landing wheels touched down with a thump. Julie checked the instructions Kenny had drawn up for Bob Ryder. For the night, she was booked into the local Holiday Inn. For the next leg of the trip, she was to meet the rest of the press corps and the UN mission at 10:00 A.M. tomorrow at a military airfield that the American embassy used for its chartered flights.

  Her seatmate had disappeared without a backward glance. With no luggage to collect, passing customs was a brief affair. The airport was as modern and clean, its personnel as smiling and polite, as any American airport. By night, the skyline from the taxi might have been any North American city, the hotel room a clone to the one Julie had stayed in last week in Miami. Flipping through the cable channels to the English-language CNN, Julie called room service to order a filet mignon that was a world apart from that served on the plane.

  She did not open her notes or her laptop. For this night at least, the confusion and complexity that was her birthplace could remain outside the walls of her hotel room.

  * * *

  A good night’s sleep did much to restore Julie’s enthusiasm for the assignment. Polishing off an arepa, the toasted corn cake that was a Colombian breakfast tradition, she sipped a steaming cup of mountain-grown coffee as she shook out the morning paper the hotel had included with the meal. A news item bordered in black on the back page caught her eye.

  DIED: Iranian Minister of Transport Parviz Gangi, age 42, in a car bombing outside his residence in Tehran. Parviz Gangi administrated Iran’s involvement in Plan Colombia, President Batallano’s international investment program.

  The last sentence explained the item’s inclusion in a Colombian paper, but it meant nothing otherwise to Julie. Of more interest was the front page headline: FARC KIDNAPS PROMINENT CONGRESSMAN.

  Same-ol’, same-ol’! Julie grimaced. Checking out of the hotel, she flagged down a taxi. She gave directions to the driver, then turned her attention to the streets passing outside the cab window. What changes would daylight reveal in the Bogotá she remembered?

  Whatever she had expected, it was not what she saw. This Bogotá looked even more modern and prosperous than the one she had left seven years ago. She noticed new skyscrapers, expressways to alleviate the traffic congestion she remembered, a new stadium. A huge new shopping mall flashed by on the right.

  Everywhere there were people, thronging the sidewalk, honking their way through the snarls of traffic, all in a hurry. It wasn’t a hurry born of anxiety or fear, or a need to get off the streets before something unexpected occurred. They were simply busy, intent on their own affairs.

  Street venders were doing a brisk business hawking the country’s most widely read dailies, El Tiempo and La Republica. Tables in front of a bakery were crowded with men grabbing a cup of coffee and pastry and a glance at the headlines on their way to work. Only last week, CNN had carried the story of a grenade exploding in just such a sidewalk café. Didn’t these people worry that disaster might strike them as well?

  And where were the depredations of conflict Julie had read about? She’d expected at least some shattered windows or bullet-pocked walls, if not an actual bomb crater or two. Some sign of the human misery decades of violence had spawned.

  But in this part of the city, at least, the buildings were freshly painted. The metal shutters rolling upward with a clang revealed shop windows filled with luxury items. Even the beggars squatting on street corners looked well-fed.

  This was a country at war?

  A scrawl of graffiti spray-painted above an overpass seemed to echo her incredulity. El pais se derrumba y nosotros de rumba. Rumba was a dance. The graffiti was a sarcastic play on the verb derrumba—to tumble down, to cave in.

  We rumba as the nation tumbles.

  The taxi driver was whistling a popular salsa tune as he maneuvered in and out of traffic. Leaning forward, Julie asked, “And how is Bogotá these days?”

  In Colombia, even a cab driver counted himself a political analyst, and Julie was not disappointed. “Good, good!” The driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror before cutting across two lanes of traffic to zip onto an exit ramp. “Business is good. The city is growing. Bogotá does well for herself, and so do her citizens.”

  “But what about the guerrillas?” Julie asked. “I’ve heard there is much violence these days. Three bomb attacks in the last week. And just two days ago, three foreigners were killed. Three Americans.”

  “Were they?” the taxi driver answered indifferently. He speeded up as the traffic light ahead turned yellow, just clearing the intersection as the opposing lane of traffic began to move. “I did hear of a bomb last week, but not in this neighborhood.”

  “Oh, this was down south in the lowlands. Near a town called San Ignacio.”

  “Ahh!” The taxi driver’s exclamation was dismissive. “Down south. But of course, that is another world out there.”

  His glance was shrewd in the rearview mirror. “Me, I think la guerrilla is convenient for los políticos. If they can point to the guerrillas and say, ‘Look, these rebels are destroying our country,’ then they do not have to answer for all else that is wrong. The poverty. The children on the streets. The crime that goes unpunished. The campesinos with no home and no land. Th
e ricos who own this country while the rest go without. If they can blame the guerrillas, then they do not have to answer for their own broken promises.”

  “But … don’t you think the government has a responsibility to fight the guerrillas?” Julie asked. “All the kidnappings and murders … you can hardly travel in Colombia anymore. At least that’s what I’m told. Don’t you worry for your own family?”

  The taxi driver gave a comfortable chuckle, visibly calming down a nervous tourist. “Oh no, señorita, it is not as bad as they say. La guerrilla—it is a long ways from here. Out in the jungle, you know. But here in Bogotá you are safe. Aquí no pasa nada.”

  Aquí no pasa nada.

  “Nothing happens here.”

  Julie had first heard that popular Colombian phrase repeated wryly by a Colombian environmentalist, now safely removed to OAS headquarters in Washington, D.C. The guerrillas might be blowing up the oil pipeline. The paramilitaries might be massacring villagers. But as long as my city, my neighborhood is quiet, aquí no pasa nada.

  Julie had never understood that attitude. In the United States, if an attack was made on any part of society—whether the bombing of government buildings or the gunning down of school children—the American public rose up like an infuriated elephant, trumpeting rage, pointing fingers of blame, and demanding that the government do something … anything! To ignore pain and death as long as it didn’t touch one personally was inconceivable to the American mind.

  But now, little though she could agree, Julie was beginning to understand something of where these people were coming from.

  “It’s a long way from here,” the taxi driver had said as if that dismissed it all.

  It was true that the very geography of Colombia contributed to such a mind-set. In most countries, cities and towns sprang up on the waterways and coastal ports that facilitated trade. Not so in Colombia. Here civilization had emerged in the mountains. The Andes mountain chain that formed a backbone ridge along the west coast of South America split when it arrived in Colombia into three cordilleras, or ranges, that intersected Colombia from southwest to northeast, neatly dividing the northern coastal region from the southern jungles. Nestled within its mountain valleys were every major Colombian city. Bogotá. Medellín. Cali. Bucaramanga. There also lived the overwhelming bulk of the Colombian population. Industry. Education. Wealth. Political and economic infrastructure.