[Dryerase] The Alarm!--Colombia: know her before judging her

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Colombia: know her before judging her

By Mauricio and Carmen
Translation by Maryanne S., Blaize W. and Armando A.
The Alarm! Newspaper Contributors

Contributor Maryanne Schiffman received the following from two friends 
of hers in Bogotá. We of the Alarm! decided to treat the piece as a long 
letter, to allow the voices of the writers to go forth unfettered.

Bogotá, Colombia— Last Wednesday, as we watched the television coverage 
of the inauguration of the new Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, 
and listened to his acceptance speech, just that outside the  
presidential palace yet another of Colombia’s daily human dramas was 
taking place.

It was only after the government transmission of the ceremonies had 
ended, and the private television channels had begun to broadcast, that 
the country began to learn that as the eloquent speeches were being 
given, the presidential palace itself was being attacked by missiles. 
For you Americans, it would be as if while George Bush was taking his 
oath of office, someone was shelling the White House.

It seemed strange that we only began to find out what had happened after 
the end of the official ceremony. We wondered why the government had not 
allowed the private news broadcasters to break in. And it was even more 
strange for us that the ceremony was taking place inside the 
congressional auditorium: in the hundreds of years prior to this, all 
presidential inaugurations have been held in front of the palace, in the 
Plaza de Bolívar. The new president was supposed to arrive walking, not, 
as Uribe did, in an armored car surrounded by bodyguards. We eventually 
found out that only one of the missiles hit its target, in the process 
injuring two policemen, but no one more. However another missile went 
astray and exploded in a poor neighborhood nearby, killing more than 
twenty people, including three children.

Colombia Today
For four years we heard the campaign slogan of the last president, 
Andrés Pastrana Arango, saying “The change is now!”—and yet we kept 
waiting for “the change.” In those four years Colombia has continued in 
a state of dire crisis, with an official unemployment rate of sixteen 
percent, an escalating armed conflict throughout the country, the 
economy in recession and the exchange rate for the peso diving day by 
day. And now the new president,  Álvaro Uribe Vélez, has arrived with a 
new slogan: “A firm hand and a big heart.”

It seems that the governing institutions of Colombia are finally reaping 
the rewards of their actions. The current violence in Colombia  has not 
been born of itself, but has sprung from seeds sown by many years of 
lies and the corruption, years of forgetting our less favored classes, 
years of exclusion of the cultures that inhabited our territory long 
before the Spanish arrived. These seeds were sown in the absence of 
opportunities for education of young people both in the countryside and 
in the cities, and in the systematic extermination of not only the 
voices but the people who have opposed this negligence in administration 
after succeeding administration.

This same neglect, over fifty years ago, gave rise to the armed groups 
who at that time formed to vindicate the struggle of common people in 
Colombia for a just and dignified life. But now the tactics and the 
ideologies of these same groups have run off track and become confused, 
and whatever end they seek seems for them to justify the means they use—
even, as is now almost always the case, when the pain they inflict is 
felt most by the ones they claim to defend.

Violence begetting violence
The attacks on civilian populations show how so many years of honest 
work can be destroyed from one day to the next. They leave behind 
orphans, widows and irreversible trauma in children who have been 
witness to the worst outrages. They create reactions in people who are 
propelled by feelings of impotence, rage and vengeance. They justify 
their actions by pointing to  the almost total absence of a government 
they can turn to. From this rage and impotence the paramilitaries have 
emerged as a quasi-state force, generating their own violence that rages 
out of control and leaves aside any type of ideological or political 
motivation.

This situation has created a bonanza for the arms dealers and drug 
traffickers, who indulge their self-centered interests at the cost of 
human lives. And the majority of those who die don’t understand or are 
not even aware of the “causes” that they die for, or the reason for 
which they put themselves or are put on the front lines.

In the middle of this overwhelming situation, drug trafficking is the 
only way for many people to make ends meet for their families. For 
others, like the guerrillas and paramilitaries, drugs are the financial 
source that keeps their fight alive.

At the same time, foreigners have discovered Columbia’s wealth of 
natural resources and, because of them, the transnational octopuses have 
set their sights on the country. These corporations only follow their 
own macro-economic interests, and are not interested in the well-being 
of the people who live here, much less their history or who they are. 
This ignorance is why so much of the territory of indigenous people has 
been expropriated here in Colombia, expropriated and then exploited by 
others. This is also why in Colombia you can see sparkling industrial 
complexes next to desperately poor slums.

All of this,—in addition to the media images of the victims left by the 
guerrillas, the paramilitaries, the sate and the drug traffickers—makes 
people see of Colombia only the social and economic conflicts, the 
contradictions, the self-serving interests and the hypocrisy. They see 
Colombians as a peoples without a culture, people not worth knowing.

The Other Colombia
This is a nation so big in territory and heart that despite the awful 
situation, there are marvelous lived moments, moments rich with the 
powerful spirit of what it is to be Colombian.

This is the Colombia that you Americans should discover, because to 
speak of Colombia is to speak of a dance called mapalé, and of a long 
wooden flute called the gaita, and of the music of the cumbia. It is to 
speak of dances and musical rhythms that, with African and European 
influences mixed with our native rhythms, have come to be Colombian. To 
speak of this country is to share the warmth and spontaneous solidarity 
of its peoples, as it is to feel the ancestral wisdom of the more than 
sixty indigenous communities that live in Colombia. To speak of Colombia 
is to speak of a rich cultural diversity: it is precisely these 
different ways of life and ways of looking at the world that makes 
Colombians, beings produced by a fusion that has existed for more than 
500 years

Knowing the magnificence of Colombia is what makes it so painful for 
Colombians to be known only for armed violence and drug trafficking. 
Colombia is a place blessed with world class biodiversity, and 
privileged with such paradise-like places from the snow-capped Sierra 
Nevadas to the tropical Parque Tairona, to the deserts of La Guajira and 
the Coasts of the Pacific and the Caribbean, from the elegant walled 
city of Cartagena to the rivers of the Amazon.

For us, the Chibchombianos as we often call ourselves (referring to the 
Chibcha Indians who were the first to inhabit our capital), we are 
humiliated every time someone says “Oh Colombia—good coke!” or when one 
of us passes through an airport: “Oh, you are Colombian” they say. 
“Colombians to this side please” the line goes, “Check their baggage.”

No one has the right, nor the reason, to be so prejudicial and 
judgmental of people they have never gotten to know. The world should 
show more respect and appreciation for the little treasure that is 
Colombia and Latin America. (The way the rich countries use Latin 
America to satisfy their selfish interests, it seems like they know 
something about the little treasure.) What Colombians want is to receive 
a part of the benefits and to be part of the economic game, but with 
honesty as the basis of any given play.

Now is the time that we ask you to see Colombia, a country so abused by 
the media, with different eyes. These eyes of course still see the 
problems, but they are capable of seeing the good things about Colombia 
too, that when taken all together, without a doubt amount to much more. 
Because we assure you, from the Caribbean to the Amazon, Colombia is una 
berraquera!

For more info contact: Mauro <corronchaco at hotmail.com> o Carmen 
<chibchombiana at hotmail.com>

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noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in 
whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or 
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