The Killings of Community Organizers

Protesters against the community leaders' killings rally in front of Bogotá's planetarium.

In recent months, Colombia has suffered an epidemic of killings of community leaders, which seems to be worsening in recent weeks. 

'Defense of Human Rights.'

I haven't seen evidence of a nationwide conspiracy behind these killings. Rather, perhaps they are a product of social tensions, illegal money and lack of rule of law or government presence in many regions. 

And it all once again highlights a fundamental paradox of Colombia: How can a nation of such nice, friendly people suffer such an undercurrent of violence?

Colombian leaders are vowing to stop the killings. But if they are linked to such fundamental national troubles, then the crisis will be difficult to resolve.

Protest signs on the Plaza Bolivar.

'There will not be enough tombs to silence all of us.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Mass Murder Chic

A vendor with a 'Nazzy' t-shirt on Calle 13 the other day.

Nazzy t-shirt up close.

While on Calle 13 the other day, I saw this very short street vendor wearing a 'Nazzy' t-shirt while hawking his candies and cigarettes. I suspect that the man has little idea about who the Nazis were and that they were responsible for murdering tens of millions of people - including people with genetic abnormalities like him.

It's more than a bit bizarre that many mass murderers have become chic - including Colombia's own Pablo Escobar, who is estimated to have murdered as many as 50,000 people while building his drug empire.

But here's Escobar, a cultural icon, smiling from a t-shirt:

Argentinean-Cuban rebel leader Che Guevara was idealistic, courageous and led an exciting life. But he also executed hundreds - including teenagers - without trial, and made racist statements about Afro-Venezuelans in his Motorcycle Diaries book. But that hasn't stopped Che from becoming a hero for young people who want to make the world a better place.

Students walk below a Che Guevara mural on the Universidad Nacional campus.

I found this image on Rodolfo Grimaldi's blog, which exposes Ché's dark side. I don't know about all of those accusations against him, but do understand that the Cuban revolution was very homophobic at its origin.

And Chinese dictator Mao Zedong, whose tyrannical rule killed as many as 70 million people thru massacres, public executions, starvation and forced labor, has become a cartoon figure - and commercial icon.

Mao beauty salon near the Universidad Nacional.

Fortunately, Hitler has not (yet) become a hipster symbol. But I have seen 'Stalin' used as a first name in Latin America - chosen presumably by idealistic parents who shut their eyes to the Soviet dictator's purges, mass murders and ethnic cleansing.

I can't help including this t-shirt made by the Spanish company Zara which looks a lot like a Nazi concentration camp uniform, altho the company claims it's supposed to look like something from the U.S. Old West.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The False Positives Victims, Still Seeking Answers

Relatives of young men, including some from the poor south Bogotá neighborhood of Soacha, who were kidnapped and murdered in the military's 'False Positives' scandal, demonstrated today on Plaza Bolivar.

The victims were promised good jobs in the countryside, but were instead murdered and disguised as guerrilla fighters so that military units could earn rewards of head money and days off. Several thousand yong men were murdered as 'false positives.' Years after the scandal became public, only a few soldiers and offices are in prison and many families are still looking for answers.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

How Much is a Life Worth?

That apparently depends on who you are and how interesting your death is.

University student Luis Andres
Colmenares, whose death has become
a national obsession.

Take the death of Luis Andres Colmenares, a popular student at the Universidad de los Andes whose body was discovered under a bridge in a north Bogotá park two years ago. Since then, we've seen an unending drama of news stories, court appearances, arrests and releases of suspects and tales of romance and betrayal. Colmenares, who was just another student, even has a Wikipedia entry and El Tiempo lists nearly 2,000 stories about his case. Most recently, a journalist even published a book about the case - in which he concludes that Colmenares' death was an accident.

Certainly, Colmenares' death was a tragedy for him, his family and friends, no matter what caused it. But does it really rate all of this attention in a country in which many people die violently every single day?

The grieving family of six-year-old Isaac, killed by a bus.
(Photo: El Tiempo) 

In contrast, take the case of six-year-old Isaac, who was hit and killed the other day by a bus, which also severely injured his friend. Even tho the bus driver, who witnesses said had run a red light and tried to flee the scene, had tens of millions of unpaid traffic fines, the last I heard he was resting comfortably at home. He hadn't even lost his driver's license. And how about his victims? A bus company lawyer claimed the company had done nothing wrong by hiring an evidently dangerous driver. He did mention something about insurance benefits for the victims, but didn't sound very sure.

In fact, now that the few days of attention to Isaac's death have passed, the bus company will likely give a token payment to Isaac's family, who are very humble people, and then continue with deadly business as usual.

Luis Colmenares was just another partying
student until his death made him interesting.

A dealth like Colmenares', which might have been a murder, accident or even a suicide, is no easy thing to prevent, and the resources and attention spent on it don't seem to have gotten us any closer to preventing a repeat. But in Isaac's case we know who killed him and how it happened. And prevention, if anybody has the will to do it, seems clear enough: make sure that bus companies and drivers pay for the consequences of their actions. (which is why one of those miserable, ambulance-chasing liability lawyers could do great things right now.) The city also needs to take measures to end the murderous 'War over the penny,' in which buses race each other to pick up passengers.

But the Caso Colmenares will continue monopolizing the public's attention, while little anonymous Isaac seems to have already been forgotten by all but his family - and traffic goes on as deadly as usual.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The 'Mexicanization' of Colombia?

A lot has been written during recent years about the supposed 'Colomobianization of Mexico,' by which observers mean the shifting of Colombia's violence north to Mexico and Central America. There is something to that: While violence has declined here, it's soared to the north, as Mexican cartels battle each other over the drug sales routes which they've wrested from Colombian cartels. But nevertheless, Mexico's violence has been different: Unlike Colombia's left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, Mexico's narcos are non-political organizations out to make money.

But now, after the massacre Wednesday of 10 campesinos in the town of Santa Rosa de Osos, Antioquia, some observers are talking about the opposite: the possible Mexicanization of Colombia. It's far too early to say, and let's all pray that it doesn't happen. But with the demobilization of most of the paramilitaries and the weakening of guerrilla groups, there's the danger that plain old criminal organizations, like Colombia's bacrims, will take over the industry. It's a grim observation that, while Colombia has suffered many massacres, they have 'at least' generally had a political character and have in some way been deliberated and controlled by the conflicting groups. The fear is that the wholesale and gruesome Mexico-type massacres, whose killers seem to have no compunction or moral law except vengeance, could become more frequent here.
The nine men and one woman were killed Wednesday on a farm, targeted apparently because of whom they worked for. Authorities suspected that the killings were committed in retaliation for the arrest a week ago of criminal band leader Jorge 18. Officials blamed the murders on the Rastrojos - succesors of disbanded paramilitary groups.

President Santos vowed to capture the killers and the government offered a 150 million peso reward for information.

A more fundamental solution? Legalize the drugs these groups fight over and finance themselves with.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Motorcyclists' Tragedy

Motorcycle club members grieve their lost companions this afternoon. 

This afternoon, members of a motorcyclist club laid to rest three of their members, who were killed Saturday night by an apparent drunk driver, whose release caused national outrage.

Motorcycles parked behind Bogotá's Central Cemetery.

About 100 motorcyclists were headed to dinner in the town of La Calera outside of Bogotá when a couple driving a 2012 Mercedes Benz plowed into the group, killing three people and seriously injuring a fourth. The young man driving the car refused to take a breathalyzer alcohol test, but later failed a test of coordination meant to test drunkeness. 

Q'Hubo newspaper quoted the son of one of those killed, also a participant in the VTM Custom motorcycle club, as saying that the car driver offered to pay him not to press charges. Later, a prosecutor released the car driver, telling him to appear the following week for a court hearing. The ensuing public furor has spurred a judge to order the driver's arrest.

This was only the most recent case of an a drinking and driving case in which the killer was treated with kid gloves. Unfortunately, money counts, and car drivers may be able to corrupt the legal system. In addition, getting drunk is still often seen as just good, clean fun, and the drinkers as not responsible for whatever damage they may cause. 

 Related Posts:

Drunk Drivers: Still Almost Invulnerable

I didn't mean to do it - but you're dead anyway!

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The FARCs' Apologists Emerge Again

Barbarity! headlines El Espectador.

Yesterday's cold-blooded murders of three policemen and a soldier whom the FARC guerrillas had held prisoner in the jungle for more than a decade provided yet more proof of the guerrillas' moral bankruptcy.

(The guerrillas had, apparently, met a military force in the jungle, and, fearing that the kidnappees could be rescued, they murdered them.)

However, some of the responses to the tragedy revealed the distorted and duplitious attitudes this long and futile conflict has produced.

Luis Alberto Erazo, the sole survivor. 

Take the relatives of the four men whom the FARC had kidnapped, held in chains in the jungle for as long as 14 years, subjecting them to hunger, forced marches and jungle diseases, until the day they ordered them to lie down and shot them point-blank in the head or the back. (One man managed to escape.) The relatives' response: To blame the government, for 'not being capable of making peace with the guerrillas'.

The response is not rational, but is at least understandable coming from people shaken by tragedy and grief. Less concienciable are groups like Colombianos y Colombianas por la Paz, who - probably sincerely and with good intentions - have already used this tragedy to call on the government to give up its military activities and negotiate with the guerrillas. That would amount to a unilateral retreat before a group which has, once again, demonstrated its barbarity.

In its statement about the murders, Colombianos y Colombianas refrained from blaming the guerrillas and called for the creation of a "new ethical force to end this bleeding."

FARC hostages in a jungle cage. 

Any such 'ethical force' needs to begin with the guerrillas, who have committed countless human rights violations including kidnapping, murder, forced abortions, planting landmines, recruiting child soldiers...and on and on. This isn't the FARC's first mass murder of kidnappees, either. In 2007, the guerrillas shot point-blank 11 city councilmen from the city of Cali whom they'd held prisoner in the jungle for five years. The guerrillas blamed the deaths on cross-fire, but evidence soon proved they'd been murdered.

The burden is now, more than ever, on the FARC to cease their murderous, fratricidal and totally futile drug-financed war, stop their violence against the military and civilians and immediately release all their hostages. 

These killings also show the level of either terror or brainwashing of the FARC guerrilla fighters. After all, these guerrillas had lived together in the jungle for months or years with these kidnappees, sharing with them bad food, wet marches, boredom and, probably even conversations and chess games. And yet, when ordered to, they didn't hesitate to cold bloodedly murder these men who had become their companions.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Deadly Democracy

A propaganda tricycle in Bogota, where campaigning has been generally peaceful.

While the mayoral elections in Bogotá have been carried out with a relative order and civility, that's not true in many parts of rural Colombia, where the campaigns have turned deadly.

El Tiempo reports that an astounding 41 candidates have been murdered during the campaign. In most countries, when even a single political candidate gets assassinated, it makes national news. But here, we've heard little about it.

The murdered include Luis Gonzalo Marinez, a Liberal Party mayoral candidate in a town near the Ecuadorean border in Nariño Department, who was shot by several men while campaigning Oct. 13th. (That same day, a mayoral candidate in Salento said that armed men tried to kill him and the current mayor.)

On Sept. 30, Giraldo de Jesus Gomez, a candidate for city council in Antioquia Department, was murdered by thieves who entered his home.

On July 11, Fernando Vargas Restrepo, running for mayor of the town of Yumbo near Cali, was shot and later died. Vargas Restrepo was a local congressman, and had made accusations that drug money had entered the campaign.

Pres. Juan Manuel Santos defended his handling of security (which people have questioned because of the guerrillas' recent killings of 20 soldiers) by claiming that the number of violent incidents connected to the elections was 'only' 97 - or 19 fewer than in the 2007 elections.

Either way, it's a sad commentary on Colombia's level of violence, which is unlikely to change much as long as outlaw groups continue managing huge flows of drug money.

El Tiempo: Narcotrafickers and FARC behind Candidates' Crimes

Ten Candidates have been Assassinated in the Valle del Cauca

Elections Under Fire

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The False Positives, an Endless Crime

A protest march by the mothers of the disappeared in Soacha. 

In 2008, about 17 poor young men disappeared from the impoverished south Bogotá neighborhood of Soacha and soon after appeared in mass graves near the Venezuelan border, labeled as dead guerrillas.

Two Soacha mothers. 

Many of the dead youths were troubled, some were drug addicts and others were small-time criminals. But their families quickly showed that the young men had not been guerrillas. Rather, they became some of the most notorious examples of  'falsos positivos' - young men allegedly kidnapped and killed by military units and then falsely labeled as guerrillas in order to earn awards and pay bonuses.

Among the many terrible chapters of Colombia's long armed conflict, the Falses Positives stand out not only because the killings were committed by the military but also because of the calculated and cold-blooded way that the crimes were carried out.

Now, more than three years after the Soacha killings came to light, the victims' mothers have made a documentary which is being shown around Bogotá. Here's their Facebook group.

The mother of a False Positive victim
before her son's photo. (Photo: Global Post)

In all, human rights advocates estimate that some 3,000 youths were murdered by the military as false positives - a scandal which in another nation would likely have brought down the government. But decades of conflict have left Colombians so inured to killings and rights violations that the scandal barely touched then-Pres. Alvaro Uribe's popularity.

On the positive side, the killings were not covered up. And, in the end, a group of high-level military officials were fired over the scandal. But legal prosecutions for the killings have been few and progressed slowly. In the case of the Soacha youths, El Tiempo reported in May that only one of the prosecutions had advanced, while cases against some other soldiers had been dropped because time limits had expired. Eight soldiers were convicted in this case.

Meanwhile, the mothers who continue fighting for justice for their sons are gaining a moral stature similar to that of the Argentinean mothers who lost children in that nation's 'Dirty War.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

24 Hours Without a Homicide?

Shoot 'em dead.

Today, we were watching bicycle polo in the National Park when this oddly-dressed troupe of young people appeared, and, without explanation, carried out a silent theatre.

Only afterwards did they explain: they were part of a campaign called 24-0, which is calling for a day without any murders. That's a tall order, particularly on a Saturday, in a city with a murder rate of almost two people per day. More importantly, the campaign is intended to draw attention to the problem, which overwhelmingly impacts poor people, and ask Bogotanos to think about solutions.

Down he goes. 

It's mind-boggling that Colombia, despite its wonderful people and culture and increasing stability, has a annual murder rate of 38 per 100,000 people more than double that of Mexico, at 18 per 100,000, which is under siege from narco cartels. That's to say nothing of Europe, Asia or even the gun-saturated United States.

It's tempting to blame Colombia's murder rate here on its half-century of armed conflict. But, in fact, that conflict can be blamed for only a few thousand murders per year. That's a lot, but only a fraction of the nation's 18,000 annual killings. However, I suspect that this conflict feeds a general atmosphere of lawlessness and a tendency to resolve conflicts with firearms. The closely linked illegal drug trade, of course, also fuels violence on all levels.

What would you do about this? activists ask passers-by.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Step Forward for Alleged Drummond Victims

A funeral of a mining union member (Semana.com)

In the latest turn in a long-running lawsuit against Alabama-based coal mining company Drummond, an Alabama court has ruled that the children of Colombian union organizers murdered by paramilitaries can sue the company in the U.S. for damages.

Jorge 40 - back in his jungle days.

In March 2001, paramilitary fighters pulled the union leaders off of a bus carrying Drummond mine workers and then killed the two men.  Jorge 40, a paramilitary leader now imprisoned in the U.S., later confessed to ordering the killings. But Drummond rejects allegations that the company colluded with the paramilitaries in the killings in order to repress union activity. The case has received additional attention because ex-Colombian Pres. Alvaro Uribe, who has been dogged himself by allegations of paramilitary ties, will have to testify in the case, although he is not accused himself.

Despite this victory, the plaintiffs are still a long way from collecting anything. Business collusion with paramilitaries, also called 'death squads' because of the massacres they committed, was apparently widespread for many years in Colombia. Like Colombia's leftist guerrillas, the paramilitaries are considered to be terrorists by the Colombian, U.S. and European governments. The Chiquita banana company even confessed to the U.S. government to having paid protection money to leftist guerrillas and later right-wing paramilitaries and paid a $25 million fine. However, proving any Drummond collusion with the paramilitaries has proven more difficult. Nevertheless, the case has damaged Drummond's public image, and the company is said to be looking into selling its Colombian mines.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Homicides: Declining, But Still Way Too High!

Murder numbers drop (Graph from El Tiempo)

Colombian authorities congratulated themselves recently that a historic drop in homicides - a decline to nearly half since 2002, even though Colombia's population has increased.  

Nevertheless, the murder rate of about 33 per 100,000 people is still horrible. The United States murder rate is only 5 per 100,000 , Brazil's is 22 per 100,000 and even Mexico, in the throes of a drug-fueled wave of violence, has a murder rate of only about 14 per 100,000. Venezuel is in a different class, with 49 murders per 100,000 people. 


(Then, there are sane nations, such as Chile, Canada, Australia, Japan and most of Europe, where the murder rate is just a few per 100,000 . Most of those countries, incidentally, restrict gun possession.)

In recent weeks, murders have generated headlines because of the murder of two vacationing Universidad de los Andes students, who because of their cameras may have been mistaken for spies by an illegal armed group. And the killing of two Catholic priests in Bogotá. Ordinarily, most murder vicitms are poor and anonymous.


Why Colombia's murder rate is so astronomically high is a mystery to me. The nation's armed conflict might contribute a few thousand killings. Is there a streak of violence in Colombian culture? Anyway, let's hope it continues declining.

For the record, the great majority of murders in Colombia and elsewhere are committed during drug disputes, domestic conflicts, etc, rather than crimes against people not looking for trouble.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Skeletons Chase Uribe

Soon to Testify.

The other day as he was leaving an event at Georgetown University, where he teaches a course, someone threw something at Colombian ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe.

Doubtlessly to the relief of Uribe and his bodyguards, the object wasn't a bomb or a rock, but rather a piece of paper. Still, the document means trouble, because Uribe was being subpoenaed for a trial in which coal mining giant Drummond is accused of collaborating with paramilitary groups, which are notorious for murdering unionists and leftists across Colombia.

Uribe isn't accused of anything himself. But he's got to be looking over his shoulder these days, and this subpoena will make him more cautious about future travel plans, just as many ex-officials of the last Bush administration must be. Throughout his political career, after all, Uribe was dogged by suggestions that he and his family were linked to the far-right paramilitaries, who committed some of the most horrific human rights violations in Colombia's history.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours