Pure and Simple Terrorism

Memorials to the three women killed hang in the Centro Andino shopping mall.
(Photo: El Espectador) 

The bomb which exploded in a shopping mall bathroom yesterday killing three people and injuring at least eight caused far fewer human victims than many other Colombian attacks, but in its own way was much more terrifying.

Pablo Escobar's bombing of the DAS headquarters in 1989 killed 70 people (including the grandmother of a friend of mine) and injured many more. The Feb. 2003 FARC bombing of the exclusive El Nogal Club in north Bogota killed 36 people and injured more than 200. In November of that same year, FARC guerrillas threw hand grenades into a Bogotá Beer Company bar and neighboring restaurant, which North American Plan Colombia workers frequented, killing one Colombian woman and injuring 73 other people, including three Americans. This February, a bomb exploded on the sidewalk above Bogotá's bullfighting stadium, killing two police officers and injuring 20 more people.

As terrible as those attacks were, at least they were directed at some recognizable target: the DAS (Colombia's FBI), the business elite, U.S. government employees, the police, etc. But yesterday's bombing in the Centro Andino shopping mall had no rhyme or reason we've learned of, and nobody has claimed responsibility for it. The victims were common people, if likely wealthy ones, and the bombers could have had no way to know who would be inside that women's bathroom at that moment. One of those killed, Julie Huynh, a 23-year-old Frenchwoman doing social work in Colombia, was a friend of friends of mine.

That gives this bombing a special sort of horror, like a vehicle mowing down an anonymous crowd of pedestrians: the feeling that fatal violence could occur anywhere, with no reason, and that there's no way to avoid the risk - besides perhaps staying at home in bed.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

1989, a Fatal Year

Wreckage of the bombed Avianca flight.

On the morning of Nov. 27, 1989, a teenager nicknamed 'El Suizo' disguised as a businessman boarded an Avianca flight from Bogotá to Cali. The youth carried a suitcase which his handlers had told him contained a device to record conversations of enemies of the Medellin drug cartel.

Five minutes into the flight 25 years ago, the young man, whose family survived by picking thru trash for things to sell, obediently pressed the 'record' button. But the suitcase contained explosives, which blew the Boeing 727 out of the sky, killing 107 people on board, including the young man. The wreckage fell on a rural area of Soacha, in south Bogotá, killing three people on the ground.

But the bomb's apparent target, presidential candidate Cesar Gaviria, had not taken the flight.

Aftermath of bombing of the DAS building in Bogotá.

The Avianca bombing was only the most deadly of the terrorist attacks and assassinations which took place in 1989, a quarter century ago. Only nine days later, a truck bomb containing about 500 kg of dynamite exploded beside the Bogotá headquarters of the DAS, Colombia's FBI, killing 52 people and injuring about 1,000.

The bomb was apparently planted by the Medellin Cartel to kill DAS director Miguel Maza Márquez, but he escaped unharmed.

In August of that same year, presidential candidates Luis Carlos Galán was assassinated, by a conspiracy also led by Escobar. Two newspapers, including Bogotá's El Espectador, were attacked with car bombs. And in Antioquia, both the governor and chief of police were assassinated.

Guards react to presidential candidate Galán's shooting.

Perhaps the most perverse crime of 1989 was the massacre of Rochela, Santander, when 12 court experts investigating the disappearance and murder of 19 businessmen were themselves massacred by paramilitaries.

And the most absurd episode may have been the drug-financed murder of a football referee, which forced the cancellation of a national championship game.

And, the next year, leftist presidential candidates Carlos Pizarro and Bernardo Jaramillo would be assassinated by right-wing forces.

Many of these crimes are still under investigation, including the Avianca bombing. Only one person,

'Colombia With Memory.' Relatives of victims
of Pablo Escobar.

one of Escobar's hit men, has been convicted for the bombing. Dandenis Muñoz, nicknamed 'La Quica,' is doing multiple life sentences in the United States because two U.S. citizens were on board the plane. Muñoz denies any part in the plane bombing, and several news reports support his case. But Muñoz unquestionably committed many atrocities during his years as one of Escobar's hit men. Popeye, another Escobar hit man, who was recently released from a Colombian prison, has acknowledged helping plan the bombing. Investigators today are particularly interested in whether public officials collaborated in the bombing.

The Avianca case is just one of many from that era which never seem to die. A few days ago, investigators disinterred the remains of M-19 presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro to test, among other things, whether one of his bodyguards may have killed him.

Escobar hit-man Jhon Jairo Velásquez, alias Popeye.

But, while the late '80s was one of the bloodiest periods in Colombia's history, the victims have not received the same government compensation as have some of those persecuted by leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and government forces. That's because narcotraffickers' crimes are not considered political, even tho their victims may suffer just as much and be just as dead. (The Avianca case, however, has been officially declared to be a 'crime against humanity.')

Today, in an attempt to restart the peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas, the government broached the idea of categorizing narcotrafficking as a 'political crime.' The idea is absurd on its face, but would enable a new level of impunity to the guerrillas, making possible a peace treaty which the FARC leaders could sign.





By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Goodbye for Santa Fe's Bombed Building

The bombed building, as it stood for years.

After five years in ruins, city workers are preparing to demolish the bombed building in Bogotá's Santa Fe neighborhood. For most of the neighbors, the ruins are a reminder of a tragedy which might also have killed them.

The day of the explosion (Photo: Flickr)

At 12:15 p.m. on April 15, 2006, a second floor room of an apartment building in the middle of Santa Fe, a gritty neighborhood known as the site of Bogotá's principal red light district, exploded. The explosion killed five people and wounded ten and devastated the building. The first reports said that cooking gas cannisters had ignited. However, investigators then reported finding traces of bomb-making chemicals. They concluded that several university students working with the FARC guerrillas had been building a bomb, or practicing bomb-making, when something went very wrong for them and the neighbors.

People living in blocks around heard the explosion. A woman walking by during the memorial told us that on that day in 2006 she'd walked past the building with a friend on their way to church. The explosion happened during the mass. Thank God, she said, that she hadn't been walking past when the explosion happened. In fact, the explosion did kill a woman walking past that day.

A neighbor who heard the explosion while in church.

Luis Alejandro: Victim or bomber?

Government policy here is to rebuild things destroyed by terrorism. However, I understood that when authorities investigated further they discovered that the building's owners had bought the building with drug money . and so it remained in ruins, a reminder.


That was the official version. When I passed by today, a group was holding a commemoration for Luis Alejandro Concha, a philosophy student killed in the explosion. Those at the event, who included members of Movice, the National Movement of Victims of Crimes by the State, and the young man's parents, claimed that the government had planted the bomb in order to kill the young man.

The parents tell their story. 

Colombia's government and its institutions have certainly been responsible for many illegal killings, as Colombian and international courts have ruled repeatedly. However, I strongly doubt that this was one of them. After all, if the government had considered this philosophy student some sort of threat and wanted him out of the way and been willing to commit murder, they could have found easier ways to do it than blowing up a whole building with occupants inside. Also, such sorts of government crimes do tend to come to light, and I've heard of no evidence that the government was behind this one.

A new mural, vowing that there will be neither pardon nor forgetfullness. 

The scene after demolition: an empty lot and graffiti warnings: don't piss here!

For scenes of kids scavenging from the building and perhaps living in it, look here.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours