Colombia's Paramilitaries: Chasing Guerrillas or Drug Money?

Paramilitary fighters: Looking for guerrillas or drug money?

The skull of the victim of a paramilitary massacre.

Colombia's infamous paramilitary groups slashed a murderous trail thru Colombia during the 1980s, '90s and early 2000s. But, while they were commiting horrors including chainsaw massacres and the forced displacement of entire towns, the 'paras' justified their behavior as necessary to combat the threat of the left-wing FARC and ELN guerrillas, which dominated large parts of Colombia and had ambitions to overthrow the government.

But a new analysis by a Colombian NGO suggests that, more than beating back communism, the paras' main goal was making money from the drug trade.

The organization, 'Ideas for Peace,' studied 531 Colombian municipalities with paramilitary presence and found that in only 100 were the guerrillas a "legitimate menace." In 152 of these municipalities there were no guerrillas at all, according to the report.

But most of those municipalities did have illegal drug plantations.

That made the study's authors ask what the paramilitaries were after, if not drug money.

Of course, it's long been known that the paramilitaries enriched themselves from the drug trade, just as the guerrillas did and still do. Drug money even created a schism amongst the paramilitaries as the old guard, led by Carlos Castaño, opposed participation in narcotrafficking.

A protest against paramilitary violence.

The paras' apparent focus on narcotrafficking also implicates the Colombian military, which long collaborated with the paras, sometimes shielding them from guerrilla attacks while they massacred civilians.

The new report coincides with a court's reopening of an investigation against ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe for allegedly helping found a paramilitary organization in Antioquia Department back while he was the department's governor from 1985 to '87. The court's decision was only preliminary, and was based on testimony by two imprisoned ex-paramilitary leaders, who've confessed to involvement in crimes including mass murders and whose veracity is questionable. According to their testimony, 600 hundred cattle had been stolen from the Uribes' ranch. In response, Uribe and his brother held meetings on their ranch in which they organized a self-defense organization, which eventually morphed into a paramilitary organization. The self-defense group killed the guerrillas who had allegedly stolen the cattle as well as the traders whom they sold them to.

Uribe denies any involvement with paramilitarism, but suspicions and accusations have dogged him throughout his career.

Paramilitarism, one of the darkest chapters in Colombia's long armed conflict, suposedly ended when the groups demobilized around 2005, but their crimes will likely haunt the country for a long time.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Colombian Patrimony: Made in China

Boy scouts relaxing in sombrero vueltiao hats today in La Candelaria.

The news that one of Colombia's national symbols, the sombrero vueltiao, is being imported from China, should make Colombian officials reflect on the consequences of its rush to open itself to free trade.

The hat is traditionally made by residents of the Zenú indigenous territory San Andrés de Sotavento. As you can see here, it's a slow, laborious process.

This story in El Tiempo describes the poverty in which many of the traditional hat weavers live, how they may spend a week making a single hat, which they sell for 120,000 pesos, and how that hat gets resold for several times as much in the big city. The article also mentions that some Chinese businesses had approached a traditional hatmaker offering to pay him for his methods. The artisan says he refused - but the Chinese evidently learned, anyway.

That Chinese factories can make sombreros vueltiao faster and cheaper than traditional weavers is no surprise. And Colombia's proposed government measures, such as labeling hats' countries of origin, aren't likely to make much difference. Colombia's only real option for keeping the hat industry at home is to set up its own factories - altho that would put even more pressure on the traditional hatmakers. Even then, we can only hope that Colombian industry can outcompete the Chinese, even with the Chinese' extra costs of shipping their products halfway around the globe.

Sombrero vueltiao hats for sale near El Museo de Oro. I couldn't find a label saying where they'd been made.

This is yet another sad consequence of globalization, which makes meaningless merchandise out of a national symbol and takes away the livelihoods of traditional craftspeople.

A traditional weaver at work.

Perhaps, at least, the Chinese factories are weaving their sombreros out of Colombian-grown fibers. If so, they'll be following the sad pattern that's trapping Latin American countries in underdevelopment - exporting their raw materials to China, which manufactures them into retail products and sells them back to Latin America at a profit.

But don't blame the Chinese, tho, who are just working hard. Blame the countries which allow themselves to be treated this way.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Re-Inaugurating an Un-President

All for the invisible leader! (Photos from the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias.)

Venezuela's supposed President Hugo Chavez missed his own re-re-reinauguration today. The trouble is, as he begins yet another presidential term, that he's lying in Havana, Cuba hospital bed, apparently near death from cancer. But don't you worry, Chavez is still president.

These things don't happen in a normal country, where the laws apply and the Constitution matters.

Ordinarily, Chavez can't keep quiet, but he hasn't been heard from for a month, since traveling

'Now, more than ever, with Hugo Chavez.'

to Havana for his fourth cancer surgery. Venezuela's Constitution says the president is to be sworn in on Jan. 10, but Chavez's yes-men and women in the National Assembly and on the Supreme Court used technicalities and loopholes to conclude that Chavez can continue being president even tho out of commission and outside the country, and that he can take the oath whenever he wants before the Supreme Court.

And, since the Chavez government has eliminated all checks and balances, they decide.

Even if this un-presidency doesn't violate the letter of the law, it sure does violate its spirit. The Venezuelan people have no more evidence than the word of a few top officials who've visited Havana that their president is even alive, much less that he'll someday recover. And, isn't a president supposed to be in his nation's capital, not on an island ruled by a dictatorship? The word 'president' comes from 'to preside', which is difficult to do from an overseas hospital bed.

But that's Venezuela, a land which Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realism could have created if it didn't already exist.

This travesty is yet more proof that Venezuela isn't ruled by a normal government of institutions, but by a personality cult. Venezuela's top officials seem very aware that their 'revolution's' main appeal lies not in any accomplishments, but in the charismatic personality of the comandante presidente, who's held power for about 14 years. Without him as figurehead, the public's loyalty would waver and the opposition might win any elections. Trials of the Chavez administration for corruption and human rights violations would likely follow. So, the Chavistas believe, it's better to hold out the possibility of Chavez's return, even if everybody knows it's a fantasy.

Behind the scenes, a power struggle's likely already going on amongst Venezuela's top officials in preparation for the inevitable end of this charade. Will Chavez's succesor be able to consolidate power and maintain at least a semblance of democracy? Will a desperate strongman emerge who'll rip away Venezuela's weak institutions and rule thru the military? Or, will the chavista leadership permit fair elections and hand power if the opposition wins?

Chavez lastyear, showing the effects of chemotherapy.

In any case, Chavez seems to have chosen a convenient time to bow out of the political scene for the sake of his legacy. During Chavez's three presidential terms, Venezuela's poverty rate has dropped, literacy has improved (tho much less than the government boasts) and they've done things like expand the capital's subway system.

But they've accomplished that thanks to high prices for oil, on which the economy increasingly depends, as well as huge deficit spending. A hard economic landing looms. The government will be forced to devalue the bolivar currency and reduce or remove destructive but popular subsidies such as the almost-free gasoline. That belt tightening could trigger violence similar to the 1989 Caracazo riots, which helped create Chavismo in the first place.



A sea of red for Chavez.



But if Chavez departs the scene before that, all of that pain will be blamed on his succesors. Chavez the legend will rest peacefully, probably alongside his idol Simon Bolivar in the gigantic mausoleum which Chavez built for El Libertador in the center of Caracas.

Once again, for all of Colombia's defects, the contrast in terms of rule of law couldn't be stronger. In 2010, Pres. Alvaro Uribe wanted to run for a third consecutive term. He was very much alive, healthy and popular. But the Constitutional Court nixed the idea as unconstitutional. Grudgingly, Uribe accepted the verdict, and is now a private citizen tweeting criticisms at the Santos administration.




By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's Own Osama bin Laden

Bogotá's own bin Laden, ready for action.

You thought he'd been hunted down and killed in Pakistan. But Osama's still alive and well, and quite cheerful, living in Bogotá's red light district.

bin Laden, full of fun and games.

I'd heard about this man, read about him in the newspaper, and even glimpsed him once or twice with his long beard, Arab headress, and camoflauge uniform, not to mention the wooden machine gun. Who wouldn't be intrigued?

But I felt trepidation. After all, this was a guy who modeled his appearance after the leader of al Qaeda, a man who's come to symbolize evil and hate against the United States for our generation. And here I was, a U.S. citizen in his country.

Today, we encountered him while passing thru the Santa Fe neighborhood during a bike tour. And Bogotá's Osama bin Laden, who doesn't seem to use any other name, turned out to be a friendly, good-natured guy. He gladly posed for photos with us, even using his wooden gun as a prop. He explained that, like the more famous bin Laden, he'd been born in Saudi Arabia. but then grown up in Cali and lived for the past 15 years here in Bogotá's Santa Fe neighborhood, the site of the city's main red light district. Here, he is his own crime patrol and apparently lives off of tips from neighbors, like the one we gave him.

Off on patrol thru the red light district.

"He's a real good guy," a bystander told us, "a real gentleman."

But, after al Qaeda's Sept. 2001 attacks on New York and Washington D.C., which killed thousands of civilians and destroyed the World Trade Center, he started dressing like the other bin Laden, which can only be interpreted as a kind of tribute. Yet, Bogotá's bin Laden expressed only friendliness towards us tourists.

The 'other' bin Laden never had this much fun.

Bogotá's bin Laden didn't denounce the U.S., but he did give his own pro-bin Laden version of history. Bogotá's bin Laden pointed out that the other bin Laden had worked with the U.S. government back when the Americans needed Islamist allies to throw the Russians out of Afghanistan. Yet, the U.S. government, he said, had taken away bin Laden's fortune. I imagine that the U.S. government did its best to sieze the other bin Laden's fortune once he began attacking U.S. interests. But the bin Laden family are still billionares.

'Take that! you evil westerner!' Fortunately, it's all pretend.

The Bogotá bin Laden's ideas also veered into conspiracy thinking.

"The CIA and George Bush planned the 9-11 attacks," he added, echoing a story bouncing around the Internet with absolutely no evidence behind it.

When we pedaled off, Bogotá's bin Laden warned us to be careful. After all, Santa Fe is not Bogotá's best neighborhood. That's thoughtful advice we probably wouldn't have gotten from the original bin Laden.

Related posts: The Red Light District's Guardian Angel

Not Such a Glamorous Profession

A Profession Like Any Other?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's Little Mysteries

Where is he going? Where did he come from?

The Stairs to Nowhere: Climb these stairs behind an apartment complex near the od Bavaria Brewery and you'll hit a brick wall. It appears to me that once upon a time the apartments had rear entrances here. But out fear of crime or to save money, they bricked up the entrances. 

But the stairs remain.

Is those really the BBVA announcements? 'No More Trash Contracts in the BBVA' 'Imminent Strike in the BBVA'

 Why do Banks Have Signs Denouncing Themselves in Their Own Windows? My best guess is that some judge in a labor dispute ruled that unions deserved equal rights to their bank employers to state their position in the bank's windows.

I wonder whether the unions get to post on the banks' websites, as well.

Is that a Mexican virgin looking down on us?

What's a Virgin Mary who Appeared in Mexico Doing on a Bogotá Hilltop? La Virgin de Guadalupe appeared to a Mexican peasant near Mexico City in 1531. She's often called by some the Patroness of the Americas.

She's in Bogotá because in 1948 a Conference of Guadalupistas was held in Bogotá and the 15-meter statue built in her honor on the Cerro de Guadalupe's peak, at 3,3000 meters above sea level.  

But where do I buy my ticket?

Why does Bogotá, which has no Subway System, have a Subway Entrance? The structures resembling subway entrances on Jimenez between Ave. Septima and Ave. Octava, in La Candelaria are actually entrances to the basement of a building demolished in the early 1900s to widen Jimenez Ave. Colombia  paid for the widening and other public works with the money paid to it by the United States for having chopped off Panama and made it into an independent nation in order to dig the Panama Canal. ?Fair trade?

What are Those Strange Concrete Mounds in Many of La Candelaria's Nooks and Crannies? I'm told they were put there to prevent people from filling those corners with garbage. I guess they've helped, excpect that residents instead put their trash on the streetcorners.

Where Have So Many of Bogotá's Sewer, and Other Kinds of, Lids Disappeared To? They've been stolen by scavengers, who sell the metal to scrap dealers. Why don't the authorities do sting operations on the scrap dealers?

This lid-less cavity makes a handy trash bin. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Egipto's Three Kings Festival

Young men dressed as the Bible's kings walk thru the festival's crowd. 

Have a beer. 

This was a big weekend for festivals in central Bogota. Yesterday, was La Perseverancia's annual Chicha Festival, and yesterday and today was the Egipto neighborhood's annual Three Kings Festival, honoring the biblical kings who brought gifts to the baby Jesus.

Plenty of chicha for sale. 

With more spirit of fun than religious reverence, the festival is the Egipto neighborhood's annual opportunity to show off. The rest of the year, this poor neighborhood with a reputation for crime and social troubles, attracts few visitors.

Masato, made from fermented rice.

A view of the crowd and Egipto's centuries-old church. 

Garbage collectors get into the fun. 

Selling guarapo, or sugar cane juice.

Views of Egipto's hillside neighborhoods. 

Not vegetarian territory. 

An old woman makes her way uphill. 

Revelers. 

A family takes a picture with the Three Kings. 

Trying out a hat on Tenth St. 

On homemade sleds, kids slide down one of the neighborhood's steep streets.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours