This will be my first book recommendation on this blog, though I intend to do more in the future. The book is: More Terrible Than Death: Drugs, Violence, and America's War in Colombia by Robin Kirk.
This is the best best book I have read about Colombia yet. Discounting almanacs, textbooks and country specific encyclopedias, this is the third history book I have read on Colombia and it is by far the best. Robin Kirk is a human rights activist with long experience working in Colombia. She currently teaches at Duke University. You can read more about her as wella s find links to her website here:
Don't be thrown off by the title, it isn't what you think. Kirk's focus only shifts to the US's role in the decades old Colombia conflict in the latter chapters of her book and the thing that is more terrible than death... it isn't what you may imagine at first. She opens the book by saying telling the reader that she has collected thousands of stories from victims of the violence in Colombia. She has produced thousands upon thousands of pages of official reports containing facts, figures and statistics. She tries to do neither here. She begins with a personal story of a Colombian friend and how his life became inextricably and brutally entangled in the conflict. She then pulls back and gives the reader an understand of the mechanics, the culture, the ritual of that circumstance. Then pulls back some more to explain how that culture came to be. Then again brings it to the personal level by telling the personal stories of the main characters in this decades old drama. As they evolve, as the conflict evolves, the stories build and overlap, touch and become one. She herself enters into the complex narrative midway through the book and some of the stories shift to the third person as we see her direct experience with paramilitary leaders, military officers, priests and victims of the conflict.
Her writing is crisp. It is full of imagery and she weaves the metaphors of Colombia into her book as if it were a myth. The specter of Communism is the basilisco (a fabeled dragon that was able to regenrate itself). The generations old blood fueds are "serpientes", coiling around each new son or daughter. The reader is held, spellbound, by her storytelling and lost in the personal dimension of the narrative. Names, dates and places are all here, but only to enrich the story of Colombia and lend context and greater understanding. In contrast with some of the other books (the most recent of them, Evolución del Conflicto Armado en Colombia e Iberoamérica) I have read, Kirk's writing never slows the reader down with facts or dates or figures because everything fits into a personal story and it is the people who matter, not the dates or the numerous acronyms.
Her depth of the knowledge is evident, her perspective tries earnestly to be neutral (to the extent that is possible) and her compassion for the victims of the conflict is powerful. Near the end of the book, as several of the narrative threads pulled tightly together, I was moved almost to tears, something I cannot recall being true for any other book in my memory. I read most of the book while riding buses through Bogotá or eating lunch in its many cafés and I couldn't help but to think of people I had met here who could just as well have been one of the characters. Or the man I pass on my way to jiu-jitsu practice who has no hands. Or the posters I saw in the South of the city pleading for the return of a loved one. Yet if you aren't here, this book will bring you here. It will transport you into this nation, bumping down a jungle road toward a meeting with Carlos Castaño or sipping coffee in the heat of a summer day next to the police chief as you know that the man hired to kill you waits outside. You will hear the salsa and vallenato of the taxis and discos through these pages, a soulful backdrop to a macabre tragedy.
The edition that I read was published in 2002, early in Álvaro Uribe's presidency, so she could not include the developments of the past nine years. Enormous changes have taken place since 2002, including major reductions in violence and kidnapping throughout Colombia, reduction in the export of cocaine (Perú has recently passed Colombia in tons exported) and the assassination of several of the major guerrilla and paramilitary leaders that play important roles in the book and in Colombia's recent history.
This is what history books should be. History is not facts and figures, names and dates fixed to places. History is the stories of the people who have lived it. That is what this book is. It is part myth, part reporting, and part storytelling. It is personal. It is powerful. It somehow captures, in my opinion, something essential about the Colombia of the second half of the 20th century. Here we have a nation infected by violence, a beautiful and resilient people suffering in a cycle of tragedy, and the refusal of the brave to surrender to this cycle.
This video of Noam Chomsky is from is from 2006 (at least that is when it was uploaded) but his points are relevant today. Are we, Westerners, hypocrites? Do we, the West, fight al-Qaeda simply because they oppose us or because we believe ourselves to have the moral high ground? If it is the latter, we must question not only our other unrelated actions (Nicaragua, for example) but the way in which the War on al-Qaeda (previously called "the War on Terror) has been waged and waged against other ancillary parties.
To disagree with Chomsky, the US uses terrorism and state violence to solve problems because the world court is largely inadequate. In short, might makes right on the world stage and the US is still the mightiest military power. It is a practical necessity to serve national interests.
The illusion of morality or justice is helpful in a federated republic. The United States isn't a democracy, but neither was feudal China. But here may apply the concept of the "mandate of heaven" first to rulers and second to nations themselves. The US has put forth the myth of "American exceptionalism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism) to justify American interventionism, aid or violence abroad. A cynical reading of it is to see this American exceptionalism as a way to retain the "mandate of heaven" that allows the US to remain the hegemonic world power.
I am not saddened by Bin Laden's death. I am saddened by the deaths of more than three thousand innocents who died in the September 11th attacks. I am saddened by the cilivan deaths in Iraq, believed to be well over 100,000. I am saddened by the death and misery that has occurred in Afghanistan. Both sides have enough blood on their hands to drown a nation. I am sure the West has done some great things and some of them with good intentions. But to believe that justice or moral righteousness is or even should be our highest goal, is naive. What made use of atomic weapons on civilian cities alright for the US while the attack on the World Trade Center was not for al-Qaeda? It is not my intention to defend murderous religious extremists. Both actions were morally wrong but one was perpetrated by a global superpower. And might makes right, on the world stage.
What do you think? Are freedom and justice the true goals of the West or are they simply guises to hide their ability to maintain their status as world powers (and to retain the mandate of heaven) for as long as possible? Would the other options for dealing with al-Qaeda have been better?
I had lived in Bogotá since September but I had only ventured outside the city for work and only a few hours at a time. I didn’t grow up in a city and though I have adjusted to city life now—Bogotá has around ten million inhabitants—I am still a country person at heart. The city here is congested, polluted, crowded, noisy, and most of my friends have been robbed at least once. I was ready to get out of the city.
The city grows naturally and unnaturally. Naturally, Bogotá is a banking center and home to numerous successful businesses. There is wealth and prosperity there. Unnaturally, it grows through the suffering of the countryside. Here in Colombia, when the people of a town are forcibly evicted by the paramilitaries or the guerrillas, they come to the major cities. In any suburb in the United States, you might see an ad for a lost dog or cat taped to a lamp post. Here the fliers are for lost sons. Or husbands or brothers or daughters. I saw another that day as I walked to the bus station. It was a piece of paper with a black and white photo printed on it. It was a photo of a husband who had gone missing. On it, his wife pleaded for any information about his fate.
One news story that stood out in my memory was a story in the national newspaper, El Tiempo, that made the front page section. It was of a woman whose daughter had been raped and murdered by the paramilitaries. When she went to look for the body, they attacked her as well. She abandoned her house, her job-- everything--and moved to Bogotá with nothing. Such is the way of things. “The disappeared” has grown to be an entire class of people only less seen than “the displaced”, who have fled to the Bogotá with nothing. These are social classes created by theft and by violence. Their homes were taken—or their families. The violence has seeped into the culture through these long years. It has many faces: the cartel hitmen, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC), the paramilitary death squads, the new and ruthless Bandas Criminales (bacrims). They eat and take and drink of Colombia. The city feeds on the violence in this way. People flow in like tears into the ocean. One drop at a time.
Like I said, I had been in Bogotá since September and I wanted to see something else outside of that concrete jungle. I wanted to see the mountains and the plains. I wanted to get outside the constant worry of nighttime petty thieves or aggressive, drug addled beggars, even if for just a day or two. I settled on a town several hours outside the city, through several mountains and across hours of beautiful, rolling hills. The town was San Nicolás de Myra.
I had been on the bus for several hours already when we stopped at a small way station to refuel. The temperature had risen considerably and the sun shown down brightly on this fly speck of a human settlement. Some passengers wandered off the bus to stretch their legs and when they began to board again, a new passenger sat down next to me and introduced himself.
“Hola. Mi nombre es Juan,” he said, as he extended a grimy hand for me to shake. He was a small man, maybe around fifty years old and life had not been easy on him. He was dressed in a cheap suit that looked like it had been worn continuously for weeks at a time. He had no left ear.
“Mucho gusto. ¿De dónde es usted?” I replied, asking where he was from after telling him my name. I was reluctant to dirty my hand by shaking his, but I didn’t want to seem rude. As we clasped hands, I noticed that he was missing his middle and ring fingers.
“Soy de San Nicolás,” he told me. He was from the town I was going to see and he was returning home after many years. I asked him why he had left and he responded first by looking away. When he looked at me again, he asked me if I knew the reputation of San Nicolás. I told him that I did not.
We are thieves, he told me. His eyes locked with mine as he told me that if I were wise, I wouldn’t get off the bus. That I would stay on the bus and ride it back to Bogotá as soon as I saw San Nicolás de Myra. We are thieves. We steal and take and rob until there is nothing left. I did not react. I didn’t know what to make of this strange warning.
Suddenly, he reached forward and grabbed a hold of my pocket. We steal your money. I pushed his hand off but his other went to my chest. We steal your life. I shoved him away again and we struggled for a moment as he thrust his index finger at my face. As I shoved him away, I noticed that he was missing two of the fingers on that hand as well. We will take what you love most. He instantly recoiled and seemed to draw into himself. He sat in silence and didn’t look at me for the rest of the trip. I read from the book I had brought, the short story collection Doce Cuentos Peregrinos, by Gabriel García Márquez. The magical realism of Márquez only heightened the sense of discomfort that the man next to me had inspired.
We finally arrived in San Nicolás in the early evening. It was a small town, even smaller than I had imagined. It appeared dusty and run down from the bus window. Ignoring Juan’s advice, I left the bus and headed out to look for a hotel. I felt in my pocket for my cell phone but it was gone. Had it fallen out on the bus? Was it in my backpack? I unzipped my pack to look inside. My book was also gone. I started to walk back to the bus but it was already pulling away. A crowd of people brushed past me as I stood up and I was buffeted back and forth, a little disoriented after realizing I had lost my book and my cell phone. Or I had been robbed.
It didn’t take long to find a cheap hotel in the town. It was a few streets down and back several blocks. It was only one story and nothing special. I reserved a room for the night, not sure then whether I really wanted to stay as long as I had planned. I tossed my bag on the bed. I was traveling light and so had not brought much. Just the basics. I was hungry and this rented room didn’t come with meal service, so I decided I needed to find a restaurant to get a bite to eat for dinner. As I passed by the hotel office on my way out, I asked the owner if he had a safe to lock up my ID while I was out. He took it and locked it in a drawer as I left and I handed him my room key.
I stopped into a restaurant a few streets down. It was hot and dirty. And empty of customers. When I asked for a menu, the waitress instead just pointed to a sign hung over the kitchen listing their dinner offerings. I looked over the prices and felt in my pocket for my bills, but my pocket was empty. I was certain I had put my cash in my right, front pocket before leaving the hotel. I had no money with me to buy dinner. I went back to the hotel to ask for my wallet back. Maybe the heat was getting to me.
The owner handed me back my wallet. It was empty. Empty of both my ID and any cash. He claimed ignorance. He claimed that I had given it to him just like that. The more insistent and angry I became, the more of the ignorant fool he played. It was getting me nowhere. I threatened to go to the police and he didn’t seem to care. I took the room key back and returned to my room, now unsure how I would pay for it. At least I had bought a round trip bus ticket and would still be able to get back to Bogotá.
Back in my room, my bag had been emptied out and all of my clothes were missing. I tore through the folders I had brought, looking for my bus ticket. It too was missing. I collapsed back onto the bed to think. Night had since fallen and the heat was oppressive there in San Nicolás. What had I gotten myself into? I realized that there wasn’t much else I was going to be able to do right then. I got up just long enough to lock the deadbolt on the door, then I lay back down to sleep without bothering to pull back the sheets or take off more than my shoes. The minutes dripped by in the heat of the tropical darkness.
I woke sometime in the night with a confused recollection of nightmares of loss and suffering. Half remembered images of searching for loved ones of nakedness of pain clouded my mind. Then the memories of the dreams melted back to my reality. My clothes were gone. All of them. And I became aware that the pain from the dream was now an intense pain in my mouth. I moved my tongue and realized that I was missing several teeth. My hand shot to my mouth to confirm what I feared and I felt empty, bloody holes where six of my teeth had been before. My head spun. I began to panic. I was completely naked and all of my clothes were missing. I found the towel in the bathroom and wrapped it around myself to cover my nakedness as I ran outside to the “office”. I found the door locked and the light off. The street was empty by then as well. I could see no option but to wait until morning. I returned to the room to sleep, or wait until morning. I had nothing left except the taste of blood in my mouth.
The next morning I found the hotel owner in his office and through my toothless, slurred speech I explained what had happened (all while wearing only a towel). He lent me a pair of shorts and a tattered T-shirt. I told him I would be back later to pay for the room, knowing that though I had nothing to pay with I had nothing to come back for. I had to get back to Bogotá. But how? I had no bus ticket, no ID and no money. I nonetheless headed to the bus station, thinking I could figure something out on the way.
The bus station was as small and dusty as every other place in San Nicolás. But there were crowds. I stood in line and watched the crowd around me. It seemed not to move at all and only grew longer behind me as more townspeople packed into the cramped office. It was increasingly hot and increasingly crowded. There was a boy, maybe ten years old, who appeared to be alone and I caught him staring at me. He moved around the room but his eyes were fixed on me. I watched him suspiciously. His tiny hand deftly reached into a man’s pocket and pulled out the wallet yet he never took his eyes off from me. I was close enough to reach him. I seized his arm that he held the wallet with and yanked him closer to me, intending to return it to its owner.
He hissed and only pulled himself closer to me. His other hand flicked out, holding something metallic, like a pair of metal shears. Before I realized what was happening, he had fixed it on one of my fingers and in the next instant all that I had left was a bloody stub where my right index finger used to be. I was in shock. He disappeared into the crowd after I lost my grip. Blood was pouring out of my hand and the people around me recoiled. I remember feeling dizzy and weak and then all went black as I assume I lost consciousness.
The next memory I have is of lying in a hospital bed. I opened my eyes slowly and scanned the room around me. It was bare and the paint was peeling from the walls. I tried to move my tongue against my teeth to feel the holes once again, but my tongue was also gone. I remembered the bus station and my hand moved to feel for my finger but I found nothing. I groped my hand around and tried to move my right hand. I felt bandages instead. My right arm had been severed at the elbow and I had been left with only a stump. My heart jumped and I struggled to sit up, only to realize that both of my feet had also been removed. I thrashed wildly and cried out, incoherently, insansely. I had to get out of there.
Hearing my guttural cries, a woman dressed in white—presumably a nurse—entered the room with no sense of urgency. She pressed me back down onto the bed with one hand. I noticed that she had only one eye… she was smiling at me and didn’t seem concerned. She looked into my eyes with interest. Before I could speak, she spoke first.
“Qué lindos ojos… me encantaría tener unos así…” (what lovely eyes, I would love to have some like those) she said with more desire than I was comfortable with. Her smile was the last sight I remembered as a needle touched my arm and I feel asleep again. Her smile was the last sight I ever saw. After, there is only darkness. And loss.
Appendix
The preceding story was a work of fiction but the plight of the displaced and the disappeared is no fiction. Colombia is second only to Sudan in the number of people displaced from their homes due to armed conflict. Recent years have seen a rise in the number of people displaced internally by armed conflict in Colombia, pushed out of their homes by despicable acts of violence, millions have migrated to cities in other regions, losing everything and being forced to eek out a meager existence on the streets or relying on the kindness of distant relatives. After years of reductions under President Uribe, the number of kidnappings too rose sharply in 2010. These are done sometimes for political reasons and sometimes for ransom. Here are two new articles, one concerning the displaced and the other the disappeared.
KATY CLARK: In Colombia the government says the country’s long guerrilla war is winding down, but the number of Colombians being forced off their land by warring factions is actually rising. Last year, 380,000 Colombians were uprooted, and many of these Internally Displaced People, or IDPs, have little chance of ever returning home. John Otis reports from Bogota.
JOHN OTIS: At a shelter in a South Bogota slum, students at a bread-making class trade jokes with their teacher. It’s a rare moment of light amid grim circumstances. These peasants were forced off their farms by guerillas, paramilitaries or drug traffickers. Now they’re trying to pick up new skills to rebuild their lives here. Colombia is home to more Internally Displaced People, or IDPs, than any other nation except Sudan. According to human rights groups, about four million Columbians, nearly ten percent of the population, have been displaced since 1985. Most fled after they were accused by either Marxist guerrillas or paramilitary death squads of collaborating with the enemy. Colombia’s president says he’s winning the war against leftist guerillas, and tens of thousands of right-wing paramilitaries have demobilized. But in remote areas guerrillas as well as re-armed paramilitaries are now fighting for control of drug trafficking routes, and they’re forcing even more people off their land. Marie-Helene Verney is spokeswoman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Colombia.
MARIE-HELENE VERNEY: What we’re seeing is the creation of new groups, smaller groups, and these groups are creating really a level of instability and violence in — again in these very remote areas of Colombia.
JOHN OTIS: Paramilitaries are also accused of joining forces with legitimate business interests to seize large swaths of land to mine gold and produce palm oil for Colombia’s booming biofuels industry. That’s Jorge Rojas of the human rights group Codhes. He says that big palm oil projects almost always produce legions of displaced people. One of the newly displaced is Maria Elvia Mendez. She lives in a rundown building housing IDPs in Bogota. She used to live on a coffee farm in the southern state of Huila, but gunmen threatened to kill her so she fled in March. “If soldiers pass by your farm, the guerrillas accuse you of spying for the government,” Mendez says. “But if the guerrillas pay you a visit, you come under pressure from the army and the paramilitaries. It’s an impossible situation. Your life is up for grabs.” The Colombian government has set up shelters for the displaced and it provides food, health care, education and small monthly stipends. But officials insist the problem has been exaggerated. Armando Escobar is in charge of the government’s displacement programs. He claims that many poor Colombians are registering as displaced to scam the government out of benefits.
While the upcoming release of five FARC political hostages has been widely publicized, the more than 200 civilian victims of kidnapping in 2010 have been "forgotten," says Pais Libre, a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting victims of kidnapping and their families.
"We think that those kidnapped for economic extortion are forgotten. There is a perception that kidnapping for economic extortion has ended. That is not true. Actually it increased 32% in 2010," Claudia Llano, a representative of Pais Libre, told Colombia Reports.
Out of the 282 reported kidnappings last year, 57% are attributed to common criminals, 23% to the FARC, 12% to the ELN and the remaining 7% to neo-paramilitary groups, according to a report published by the organization last week.
hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young
pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing,itself hiding one)
life's only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin
comes here a man would have from madame death
nevertheless now and without winter spring?
she'll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing (if he should not sing)
how much more than enough for both of us
darling. And if i sing you are my voice,
The tone of this blog has been rather abstract, literary and full of densely layered psychological and symbolic meaning. I intend to inject some action into these paragraphs with an incident that I have alluded to in recent postings but never divulged fully. I am omitting certain key details, such as exactly where and exactly when the incident took place and the reason for these omissions will become obvious as you read this account. Anonymity and a delicate dose of fiction, as I mentioned in my previous posting, can be an effective shield. If the story is to be told, it must be from under that shield. I was inspired to share this story from editorials I read in two separate newspapers here in Bogotá today, each lamenting the dangers of the pedestrian bridges around the city and the numerous robberies and violent assaults that take place there each night after the sun goes down. El Tiempo hasn’t posted today’s editorials in their web archive yet, but here is a related story of a women being robbed, beaten and stabbed on a pedestrian bridge not far from here. http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-7737054Now that I have set the context, let us begin the story.
I take the Transmilenio everyday as I move about the city. I practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at night, I have friends who live on the other side of the city from whose homes I sometimes return at night, and I have been out later for job interviews several times. The area where the Transmilenio, that hybrid metro-bus system, let’s me off late at night when there is limited service is what has seemed most dangerous as the streets are dark, trash strewn and populated by an odd cast of ugly hookers, drug addled vagrants and petty criminals hustling what they can. But ironically it wasn’t through one of these slums that violence found me this night, it was late at night on a pedestrian bridge near the Transmilenio. These pedestrian bridges, frequent ambush zones, as the news article attest, are high in the center to accommodate the largest vehicles, and have long ramps on the side that wind back and forth. The perfect site for an armed robbery.
I am moderately vigilant during the day but I am hyper-vigilant when I walk at night. I saw the man on the bridge in front of me before I got on and I suspected he might be trouble before I got close. I also saw the two men behind me and took note of their quick pace as they rushed to catch up to me as I made my way across the bridge. As I had reached the top of the bridge but had not yet crossed the road, the man already on the bridge moved to intercept me as his two accomplices neared from the other direction. They had me at a choke point. The drop was maybe thirty feet to a paved sidewalk area below. Few vehicles pass this point at night and even those that did would be in little position to notice much less help thwart any crimes happening above them. We were as alone as we could be in a city of eight million inhabitants.
My reaction to threatening individuals on the street has been to watch their hands for weapons. Usually, the only object I spot is a bottle or a cell phone, but not this night. The man in front now had a knife in his hand and a quick glance behind me revealed another knife in the hands of one of those two men. My own knife, a 3 inch iodized black Benchmade folder that will lock open with a snap of the wrist, was clipped to my pocket. I never go anywhere in this city without it.
In my front right pocket I had my wallet with my credit cards. In my back left pocket, I kept a second wallet with an empty Visa debit card and a thousand peso note, in the hope that I could someday satisfy or distract a thief with it. I did not like the odds I was up against on this night. I looked at their faces and I didn’t see the fear that I often see in the faces of such people who are about to commit some crime. They were not new to this. Their faces said to me “we have done this before, we have stabbed and robbed men for far less and your blood matters not to us”. I had little doubt that they would injure or kill me if given the chance. I did not intent to give them that chance. Perhaps I am foolish or just unwise, but I don’t feel much fear in these situations and I never panic. My thinking becomes very cool, quick and calculated in these moments of urgency. I feel stronger and the expectation of violence feels almost pleasurable sometimes. I am not sure which should be more frightening in reality, this feeling within myself or the danger around me.
All three of them were almost on me, but their pace had slowed. I didn’t wait for them to ask for my money, I announced it, as I reached into my back pocket for the decoy wallet. “Voy a sacar mi cartera… aquí está…” –I am going to take out my wallet… here it is… -- I said to them as I produced my wallet and offered it to the unarmed man. My other hand had already palmed out my knife and my thumb was in the hole that snaps it open in an instant. Their attention was on my wallet at the moment though, and not on the blacked black that was concealed in my right hand.
I held to him lower than we comfortable, which compelled him to bend forward to reach for it. Both of his companions were close by with their weapons in my direction, but for a moment the unarmed man was between us. As he bent forward to take the wallet from my outstretched hand, I snapped my own knife out and twisting my entire upper body around, bringing my blade with my arm in a whip-like motion that caught him across the throat. The blade of my knife cut deep into his throat from one side to the other and his veins and arteries were wide open before he knew what had happened. A single spurt of blood shot to one side at first, then as the pressure dropped an instant later, the entire front of his throat just poured blood. I did not have time to contemplate the vacant look of shock in his eyes as he clutched his neck and fell forward. I moved quickly enough to avoid him and the blood as well as I could.
The other two men were obviously the more dangerous. One of them was momentarily blocked by the body of the thief whose throat I had just slit, so I moved to disable the other man first. When facing a knife, you can either fight at a distance and attempt to cut his knife hand every time he enters to attack your center of mass, or you can close the distance and engage him from inside. The first option requires patience and space, neither of which I had. So I closed the distance before he could put his weapon to use. When closing the distance on an opponent wielding a knife, the most important detail is whether his knife arm is on the inside or the outside of your body. Either way presents options for effective counters, but they are different. In this case, I charged at his center so that his knife hand was to the left of my body. Judo is a martial art that focuses on the use of leverage and balance to control and ultimately through an opponent. Judo is normally practiced in a heavy uniform ideal for gripping. This man was wearing the next best thing: a leather jacket. I switched my own knife to my left hand as I closed with him, leaving my right hand free to grab his jacket lapel. My other hand, now holding the knife loosely, just had to block his knife and guide his knife arm to complete the throw. The throw I performed is called
morote soei nage.
By pulling his lapel strongly towards me, turning my back to him, dropping to a squatting position while pulling him over my shoulder, I succeeded in pulling him completely over top of me. I had done this throw thousands upon thousands of times on the mats while training in judo and had some success with it in tournaments as well. The difference being that in this case when my opponent was pulled over my head he didn’t slap the mat below us. I finished the throw facing the edge of the bridge and the man in the leather jacket continued in a parabolic arc over the end. I didn’t watch him hit the pavement thirty feet below, but I heard a sickening thwak as what I later imagined was his face slamming into the ground. Only maybe five or six seconds had passed in total, but now the odds were much more in my favor.
I ended in a position to now face the third attacker, who was on my other side. I rushed into him before he could slash or stab effectively with his knife. I was on his outside this time though, in contrast to the first man. I did what is known as “jamming” him, as I tackled his knife side and clutched his weapon arm to my chest as I charged into him. I knew his natural reaction would be to tear it free and I was not in a position to apply most of the jiu-jistu shoulder locks I knew. But simple shoulder pressure from that point, a staple of Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling, worked beautifully. As I kept control of his knife arm, I torqued my body into his shoulder. This put a lot of pressure into his shoulder joint and should have been able to bring him down. But somehow he changed his stance and fought out from it and I lost the pressure. For the first time in the encounter, I experienced the smallest measure of apprehension as I felt myself begin to lose control of my opponent.
But then I realized that as he was focusing on wrenching his arm free, his footing was now unstable. I quickly switched my hips and pulled his arm off my chest for just long enough to sweep his legs out from under him. He hit the bridge with his back and head like dead weight, and I followed him down. I swung one leg over his body and the other leg I braced against the side of his head, with his arm between my thighs and his elbow beneath my hips. I had what is known as an arm-bar in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. In practice, we are taught to raise our hips slowly, exerting pressure our pelvis against the elbow joint. I did not move slowly but instead squeezed my knees together and thrust my hips up as hard as I could manage. I felt his elbow dislocate as I did and his grip on the knife was released. I didn’t care to stay on the ground for long, so as soon as I felt him release the knife, I scrambled to my feet and kicked the knife away. The first man was lying unmoving, his face sideways and his eyes open and unblinking, so I ignored him. The man whose arm I had broken began to curse and clutch his arm. I stood over him. It felt so easy to lift up my leg, lift it up as high as I could, and bring the heel of my shoe down on his face. Then again. And again. I kicked him in the throat. I stepped on his head and felt his skull bounce off the surface of the bridge. After several more stomps, he stopped even the blood choked gurgling noise he was making and lay still, so I let him be.
I had some blood on my shoes by them, which I was not happy about. I also noticed then that I had blood on my knife. I wiped the blade off on the pants of first man, then closed it and clipped it back onto my pocket. I picked up the decoy wallet again and replaced it into my pocket. After the event is when I felt winded and shaky. My legs shook, my hands shook and even my back and chest seemed to shake. I think clearly when I am in danger, but afterwards I feel the effects. I left the bridge and decided not to take the bus at all. I walked off my anxiety and I felt almost normal thirty blocks later as I neared my apartment building.
You can understand why I don’t want to provide too many details about where or when this event took place, and even, for those who don’t already know me, who I am exactly. If anyone who is reading this lives in Bogotá, I must caution you against using the pedestrian bridges at night (or in the early morning hours too). And I must also caution any thieves reading this: I will still be using those pedestrian bridges at night. You have been warned.
A light rain had passed away perhaps a half hour before but the clouds remained, obscuring the dying light of the early evening in Bogotá. It rains or drizzles most days in Bogotá and when it isn’t raining we have the protection of somber gray clouds. On this night, darkness seemed to descend quietly, gently, earlier than usual and I was left with an unsettling feeling of emptiness. It was not only emptiness, but the sensation that something meaningful was coming to an end. I absentmindedly ran my fingers over my knife, clipped to my pocket, a hole in the blade for my thumb to snap it open in an instant. The rough ridges along its edge reminded me of the bloody violence I had done with it. They reminded me of its potential. I felt hollow again. The flea market is full of color and life in the morning. But later it dies a slow death. Endings: On Sundays the street people congregate around several of the plazas to sell the garbage that they find or steal during the week. This is where tonight’s story begins, on the edge of this zone of desperate poverty.
I wandered slowly through what passes here for a flea market (though the term is perhaps more appropriate here than elsewhere) running my eyes over the worthless detritus swept from the city by this wave of scavengers. Earlier in the day, it is a real market and there are items for sale that have value. But by the end, everyone who has someplace better to be has left, anything worthwhile has been sold and all that is left is an odd assortment of broken, forgotten, mismatched junk. There was a computer keyboard from the 1980s, a broken piece of a telephone, hundreds of tiny porcelain figurines, cables and connectors that may have been torn from an abandoned building, and tattered and mismatched clothing of all descriptions. Certain scavengers seemed to specialize in just cell phone accessories and their dirty and mismatched wares were laid neatly on blankets. There were no tables. Everything was arrayed on blankets that could be rolled up when night fell and would later serve to keep the vendors warm while huddled against some building.
To me, everything I saw by this time held negative value. It was utterly useless to me, would take up space in my life and carried the risk of disease as an additional danger in some cases. At least those were the calculations that ran through my head. The people peddling these trinkets and pieces of refuse were dirty and listless, no doubt enduring years of invisibility or outright disgust at the hands of the rest of Bogotá. Curiously, I sensed no feeling of community or comradeship among these people who shunned each other, or just gazed silently and who on other days seemed to wander the streets alone.
It was dusk when I passed through and most of vendors were in the process of rolling up their blankets and moving off throughout the city. Many had already left. On the edge of this curious gathering I glanced over yet another blanket filled with small electronics, porcelain figures, old records, tattered paperbacks and one item that caught my eye. It stood out from the rest immediately. It was rectangular, red and about the size of a paperback but thinner. The official seal of Colombia was embossed on the cover.
It was a Colombian passport. I stopped. Perhaps it was the “officialness” that caught my eye and held my attention. Or maybe it was just something about the mood that hung in the air. I reached down and thumbed it open. A man with short, neatly trimmed curly hair stared back at me. He was born in 1969. In the photo, he didn’t look so different from me. I read his name and forgot it. I glanced at the man selling the passport but he wasn’t interested enough to even pay attention to me. It was not his passport. Had he stolen it? Had he found it? Impossible to say, but it seemed to hold as little value for him as all of the other odds and ends held for me.
At one time, this document had been valuable to someone. This was a representation of someone’s identity. With this document the man in the photo was permitted to travel the world. With this photo a man could prove that he was a person, a citizen of a nation, and not a nameless and dislocated vagabond. Perhaps this is why the street scavenger didn’t value the passport. He had no identity. The concept of identity, of belonging, had slipped away from him.
I did not move. I did not release the passport. I was captivated. First, it was the fantasy of buying it and assuming that other identity. Becoming someone else would be leaving behind who I am or it could be just stepping into that other skin. It would be like being invisible. What would you do if you were invisible? What did these invisible people on the street do? The comparison is not adequate though. The identity of this man on the passport represented freedom to me in that brief instant but the very concept of government issued identification is one of bondage. Colombia has a system of national identification cards, la cédula, that is far more rigid and inclusive than the United States. To name someone, to identity them, to force them to produce this name and personal data on demand: is a manner of control. In the most basic sense, we assert our control over the world by naming, by applying language and labels to everything around us. It is no accident that this was the power ceded by God to Adam in Hebrew myth, because by naming all the creatures of the Earth he could assert his dominion over them. Likewise, in many cultures the true name of a demon or other evil spirit is the means to defeat it.
With that passport I would be Colombian. It offered me protection. It offered me escape. The red faux leather cover was different than my American passport. Would the red hide the blood? The passport was undamaged and untarnished, and the paper was only slightly aged by the years. It felt light in my hand. Endings. Beginnings. I was at the seashore and the ocean lapped at my feet. It was cold and reminded me of the vastness of the ocean. The seaweed had been brought up by the tide and lay stinking all around me. From within the tangled mess of rotting plant matter, I saw a conch shell, untouched by the action of the waves. I plucked it from the knotted cords of green and brown and held it to my ear. I looked into the endless ocean and the crashing waves as I listened to the conch. It whispered in my ear, “Colombia… Colombia… Colombia…” as softly as if it were the amplified sound of my own inner ear. As I held the conch to my ear, blood began to slowly drip from it. Threw its twists and turns there came a trickle of warm red liquid. This is what it offered me. The blood began to spill onto my hand and run down my arm. Right then I made the decision to be rid of the conch. I didn’t throw it back to the depths but instead dropped it at the edge of the water, among the seaweed. Perhaps the next wanderer would see the value as I had.
The passport now out of my hand, I felt its pull. It could grant me my darkest wishes. Fear and desire seemed to hang over it. I looked back at its current owner but he seemed to not comprehend the value of the object between us. He looked absently at the few scattered people passing or maybe a stray dog in the distance. I straightened back up and returned to my world. If I wasn’t careful, I could drown in those dark waters. I headed back home in the dying light of a Sunday evening. I absently ran my fingers over the black metal of my knife, folded neatly in my pocket. The hollow man was there on the ground behind me. Between the potency and the existence, between the essence and the descent: fell the shadow. Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act: fell the shadow. This is the way it all ends. This is the way it all…
I have no special knowledge of Chernobyl. I know only what I have read and what I have seen on the net and on documentaries, but recently I came across a photo essay that touches on some of the tragedy of Chernobyl. The essay, by Paul Fusco, is limited in its scope and reserved in its depiction yet it is a powerful piece of journalism. I would like to share this with you tonight. The boy in the cover photo of the essay, shown here in a wheelchair and in a near constant state of terror (in which he is trapped) is a haunting reminder of what went wrong and that even when children aren't born with debilitating tumors or deformities, the neurological ailments are just as heart breaking.
If you click the link, you should be taken to the intro for the photo essay. After the intro, hit play to see the slide show showing all of the photos along with their narration. Pripyat. 500,000 children affected in Belarus. 200 times the Cesium radiation poisoning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
The year 2006 was the 20th anniversary of the disaster. Recent scientific studies have indicated that the damage done may be more widespread, serious and long lasting than previous believed. The map below shows areas of contamination. I took the map from the link I have included here and you can view it in higher resolution along with a discussion of the scientific data associated with it.
As a boy, I first came to know of Carl Sagan through his novel Contact. This introduced me to pi and number theory and reading this book--in which I learned the word "numinous" was tantamount to a religious experience. His entreaty was to see a deeper order in the world, to imagine that such mysteries exist, contained not in an ancient book or magical incantation but in the complex and uncharted depths of nature. Carl Sagan was a writer, cosmologist, astronomer and peace activist. He was all of those things and something more.
Apart from the scientific discoveries he made (mostly in relation to the planet Venus and the moon Europa, as far as I am aware) it was his power to inspire that has left the world with the great lasting benefit. He inspired generations of students to think and examine their beliefs. He imbued many, myself included, with a deeper appreciation for science, mathematics, and nature, while cutting away the deadwood of superstition. His book The Demon Haunted World tears down superstitions by exposing them to the light of reason, and he does it with ease.
Tonight I would like to share with you twelve aphorisms and quotations by the late Carl Sagan. Each one captures some of the essence of his body of work--fiercely dedicated to science as a way of knowing and the expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge.
1 ---- ---- ----
Evidence that contradicts the ruling belief system is held to extraordinary standards, while evidence that entrenches it is uncritically accepted.
2 ---- ---- ----
For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.
3 ---- ---- ----
If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.
4 ---- ---- ----
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
5 ---- ---- ----
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.
6 ---- ---- ----
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
8 ---- ---- ----
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.
9 ---- ---- ----
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.
10 ---- ---- ----
In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way."
11 ---- ---- ----
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
12 ---- ---- ----
We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars. The Sun is probably a third generation star.
---- ---- ----
I hope that after reading these twelve quotes that they will have touched you as they did me. Even more than the work he did in basic, hard science, to me this power to dream and inspire others to dream is Dr. Sagan's greatest legacy. Sadly, Dr. Sagan passed away in 1996 and we have only his books, films and scientific work. But I think he would be pleased with the result of his labors if he could look on his achievements from the grave. You can learn more about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_sagan
The first of three Spanish language rappers I am going to present you is a Mexican group, Cartel de Santa. They have a hard and gritty style and their lyrics often have violent, drug related or sexual themes. Their first two albums are their strongest, in my opinion and though they have produced three more since then, the songs I am going to feature here are from their first two albums.
Cartel de Santa has a distinct Mexican sound to its rapping, deep and throaty on some tracks and others in which they lend a Mexican accent to touching ballads of love or betrayal. They tend to fall hard on their beat and pound out their strong syllables as if they were blow delivered to their often mentioned enemies. A visceral emotion and sense of impending violence pervades their sound.
Their songs that break from this pattern are all the more effective because of this shift in style. The change in tone between a strong, energetic and violent rap like “Burreros” or “Asesino de Asesinos” and a more thoughtful rap such as “Mi Ciudad” or “La Pelotona” is striking.
Here I will provide the youtube videos and lyrics for four of their songs. I have included one hard song and three soft songs (in reference to their tone). The first song is “Asesino de Asesino” (murderer of murderes) and it is one of the hard songs and in it he challenges and degrades rival rappers.
Asesino de Asesinos
Asesino de asesinos como rayos elimino
Porque solo son la mierda estorbando en el camino
Mi destino está en la cima por hacer mejores rimas
Mientras que aquí en la tumba te bajan de la tarima
No gastes la saliva queriendo competir
Porque de la m a la c yo soy el mejor mc
Aléjate de aquí que tu rap es asqueroso
Pinche prieto piojoso ya salte de ese pozo
Diez años y no sabes cómo se hace el buen hip hop
Conozco principiantes que te dan una lección
Escucha bien mi voz y ya cállate el osico
Pinche micro de circo que yo soy tu domador
Mi látigo es el flow que te causa esas heridas
Andas buscando fama retando a la artillería porquería
Que creías yo soy el real emesías
Me tienes envidia porque yo soy el estigma
El enigma que siembra a todos tus secuaces
Con solo dos frases me deshago de sus aces
Mis fauces se abren y rompen el estilo
De tontos asesinos que querían jugar conmigo
Ahora con mi filo te voy a eliminar
En el cuarto de control te acercaste a saludar
Mientras que por detrás nos estas deseando muerte
Pero en ese momento (chido les deseo mucha suerte)
De frente eres un joto te faltan muchos huevos
Y mucho más te falta para llegar a ser bueno
No llegas ni a pedo y dices que eres una mierda
Gordo por favor ya vete mucho a la verga
Que estoy harto de escuchar todas tus estupideces
Pagarás un alto precio con muy altos intereses
No hace falta que reces al real emesías
Se te cumplió el deseo ya te conteste las rimas
Y decía tu pandilla que tú eras el mejor
Ahora ponen veladoras al mega rimador ósea se yo yo yo
No pudieron con mi flow mucho menos podrán con todo mi batallón
Soy la acción soy la gloria en mi micro la victoria
Tengo más audacia que los topos en Camboya
Soy la olla donde hierven los mcs cuando tratan de acercarse
Con su micro a combatir me los paso por aquí todos juntos de uno en uno
Mi ritma al rey Neptuno grande como Atila el huno
Visible como el humo de un incendio forestal
Te cagas en los calzones cuando suelto mi freestyle
Ay ay ay, ay ay ay en la mano traigo un mic
Y en los ojos el infierno del que me quiera enfrentar
Vas pa´tras en retroceso como lo hacen los cangrejos
Aun recuerdo los consejos que algún día mi dio mi viejo
Hacer caso de un pendejo tan solo es engrandecerlo
Siéntete gigantesco porque durante 2:28 acabo de hacerlo
Siempre he pensado que un verdadero mc
Debe ser directo en sus mensajes
No andar con ataduras en la lengua
Aquel que me lance rimas va a recibir rimas
Y aquel que me lance golpes va a recibir golpes
En el mundo del hip hop y sus cuatro elementos
Lo más importante es la competencia
Todos quieren ser el depredador más grande
Siempre el más grande acaba con el más pequeño
Mientras nadie acabe conmigo seguiré siendo el más grande
Vas fuera...
The next song, “Escucha”, is curiously devoid of any explicit sex, drugs or violence. It is a song about artistic creation, seizing the day, and lost opportunities. It is about struggling to follow ones dreams and refusing to accept failure. This song is more introspective and poetic than the first song. It is a smoother as well. Again, I have included the lyrics along with the youtube video.
Escucha
Vivo buscando un sueño del que jamás despierto,
y en momentos pienso, si la vida dibujara mi lienzo,
seguro nubes negras cubrirían mi firmamento,
y siento que se perdió mi fe en el tiempo
y mi tiempo se está yendo volando como el viento,
esperando,
observando ver si caigo, me levanto y como lo intento,
es cierto que la vida solo da una oportunidad,
y en realidad el problema está en cómo saber si apenas
viene o ya se va lejos de lo real,
no existe la gravedad y cada ilusión está latiendo
entre mis dedos pero abro los ojos y veo que no puedo,
que me quedo que no crezco,
que carezco de paciencia y la esencia
de este mundo la hundo en mi consciencia,
mi experiencia dice basta ya no sigas con eso
tu defecto es que siempre pones
los ojos muy lejos pero que de mi reflejo?,
si o no me llena de orgullo,
se que ahora construyo un castillo que destruyo al hacerlo sin cimientos,
pero en mi alma los murmullos dicen "muere en el intento" ,
textos y textos he gastado de ideas inconclusas
mientras mi esperanza rehúsa a tirar la toalla en esta lucha,
yo solo le sigo diciendo a mi corazón "por favor ¡escucha!"
The third song is about the desperation and poverty on the Street of Mexico’s large urban centers that traps children in lives of crime and abuse. There is a definite class dynamic in play in this song, as well as a critique of the church and the justice system. A cycle of violence, perversion and injustice is sustained and the end of the first long stanza reads translates as, “you had to defend yourself and you went off strongly, paying back each blow but now with interest”. An environment of crime and poverty that ignores its children has created not only more victims and misery but also a future generation of criminals, victimizers and malcontents.
The chorus, which is repeated again and again as it intones the underlying message of the rap, seems to suggest the cyclical nature of this situation. After each long stanza, the chorus returns and it is both repetitive and pounding—insistent even. “In my city it is very easy to find a child of the street living like an animal/ In my city it is very easy to observe how a child of the street is transformed into a criminal” he reminds us throughout the song until the closing when the voice of a child is heard, begging for alms.
CORO
En mi ciudad es muy fácil de encontrar a un niño de la calle viviendo como animal...
En mi ciudad es muy fácil observar como un niño de la calle se transforma en criminal...
Por la serie de maltratos de esta pinche sociedad inhalando pegamento pa´olvidar, que su madre es prostituta y su padre esta en el penal, y cumpliendo este problema me hablas de humanidad, cuando duermas en banquetas y comas de la basura, cuando te alejes de dios porque te ha violado el cura, cuando tu único destino lo encontraste en el camino, viviendo cada día rodeado de porquería donde el mas grande podía agandallarte la comida, tuviste que defenderte te fuiste haciendo fuerte, cobrando cada golpe pero ahora con intereses...
CORO
En mi ciudad es muy fácil de encontrar a un niño de la calle viviendo como animal...
En mi ciudad es muy fácil observar como un niño de la calle se transforma en criminal...
desde muy pequeño llevas el odio en la sangre, no busques solución es ya demasiado tarde, pa´arreglar este desmadre, verdad que esta cabrón y a tu primer error te encierran en la prisión y te sigues preguntando donde está mi corazón, no existe un solo momento donde haya arrepentimiento, al verte en el espejo solo ves gestos violentos que son el documento de tu eterno sufrimiento, al hijo de un Burgués nunca lo ves encerrado te buscaran a ti para que seas enjuiciado y así culpado de todos sus delitos, tu mayor defecto es no haber nacido rico.
CORO
En mi ciudad es muy fácil de encontrar a un niño de la calle viviendo como animal...
En mi ciudad es muy fácil observar como un niño de la calle se transforma en criminal...
The last of the songs for tonight will be a love song from Cartel de Santa entitled “La Pelotona”. This has a female voice as an accompaniment and with the chorus. It is a love song as only Cartel de Santa can produce—it comes off as raw, full of vivid imagery, and deeply honest. To me this honesty rings true more than most love songs that deal with an idealized concept of romance and courtship. This song is about carnal desire, loyalty, need, and love.
He begins his song appropriately by rapping about how he cannot express his feelins (certainly a manly flaw to have) when he raps, “I travel in silence/ and I don’t express feelins/ but you well know/ that I carry you here inside me”. Enjoy.
La Pelotona
Viajo en silencio,
y no expreso sentimientos,
pero tú bien sabes
que te llevo aquí adentro.
Cuando llega la noche
y es la hora de partir,
voy viendo tu silueta,
alejándose de mí.
Un profundo sentimiento
se apodera de mi cuerpo
y es que si no estoy contigo,
es como si estuviera muerto.
Tristeza se apodera
de mi mente y de mi alma,
porque solo a tu lado
puedo conocer la calma.
Se viene mucho el tiempo
que no estás tú conmigo,
pero me parece eterno
y me pierdo en el olvido.
El viento me acaricia
y me recuerda tus manos,
la brisa de la noche
me hace pensar en tus labios,
el brillo de la luna
es igual al de tus ojos,
sabes que sin ti,
tan solo soy un despojo.
Y aquí sobre mi cama,
el aroma de tu cuerpo,
que me mantiene vivo
y me eleva al firmamento.
Eres lo mejor
que en vida ha pasado,
te juro pierdo el rumbo
cuando no estas a mi lado.
El viento me repite
tu nombre a cada instante,
la brisa de la noche
me recuerda lo distante.
Que se encuentran
tus labios,
y yo sigo aquí,
y yo sigo aquí.
Cuando estoy contigo
cada día es alegría,
pero lejos de ti
me sumerjo en la agonía,
del recuerdo de tus besos
y el sabor de tu saliva,
despierto en las madrugadas
y abrazo una pinché almohada,
deseando fueras tu
la que comparte mi cama.
Te juro que estremezco
cuando no estás tú conmigo,
quisiera mandarle al tiempo,
poder hacer eternos
todos los momentos
en que me elevas al cielo,
mi vida es codiciada
muchos quieren mi cabeza,
la verdad no me preocupa
si la muerte se atraviesa,
con tal de estar contigo
juro resucitaría,
para estar a tu lado
lo que te resta de vida.
Eres lo mejor
que en vida ha pasado,
te juro pierdo el rumbo
cuando no estás a mi lado.
El viento me repite
tu nombre a cada instante,
la brisa de la noche
me recuerda lo distante.
Que se encuentran
tus labios,
y yo sigo aquí,
y yo sigo aquí.
The following text is something I recorded in my journal while I was in Colombia and I typed it up upon returning to the US (and redacted the names of people I know who are in it). Needless to say, I didn't sleep well that night after writing down what you are about to read. I enjoyed Colombia immensely and look forward to returning, but this narrative shows some of the darker side of my move to Colombia. Nothing in this experience is without meaning (though much of it is buried) and it is true on a level that most nonfiction stories are not. If you understand what happened to me here in this story, you will understand my move to Colombia and my feelings about it.
The accompanying graphic is a photo that I took of a painting that hangs in the Botero museum in Bogotá. The title of the piece is Conversation and the painter is the German George Grosz. The version here is rather small, but the detail in the original photo shows some very sinister looking characters onto whom the viewer may project any manner of nefarious conversation. When I thought back to that night, this was the photo that best captured the sense of sinister designs buried beneath the surface and figures protruding from an inner (psychological) darkness. Well, without further ado, here is the text I have been introducing:
Tonight Sr. M. wasn’t available to drive me back to the apartment here, so I left my camera and wallet in A’s room and began to walk back. It was sometime after eleven when I left her house. This is a good neighborhood though, and I feel quite safe here. But something happened tonight that changes that opinion, though I do feel safe, in the conventional sense, I feel a profound sense of the uncanny when I think back over what happened to me between A’s house and here (as I write these words in my apartment). When I first arrived, about two weeks ago, I felt as if I were in a dream. Whether I was the dreamer or just a character in the dream of another, I couldn’t tell, but the sensation of unreality was overwhelming. I can’t quite explain why, because I have felt tropical weather before, I had already been in Bogotá for several says, and small-town Costa Rica or the suburbs of San José aren’t so terribly different from what I have seen of Santa Marta. But actually being here, in Santa Marta, was a singular and incomprehensible sense of being in a dream state, like I had never felt before—until tonight, that is—and which compels me to record tonight’s “events”, if I can even call them that.
I had been walking back to the apartment when I decided to take an extra turn. I can’t say why, beyond just the simple fact that I felt compelled to wander. I carried nothing of value to interest thieves though and I’m not an easy target for any lightly armed thief (or group of them). I’ve come out on top of several muggings and “knife fights” and though I don’t want to lose any more blood, the thought doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it should. I feel confident in most places, and more so here. So when the urge struck me, I turned to the right and then turned again and again, until I had begun to take random turns and wander the streets in the warm night air. There was no chill in the air tonight (as I’m sure there isn’t now, as I write this) and that fact only added to the dreamlike unreality of what happened to me next.
The first shock that I had was when I noticed two animals on the sidewalk in front of me, exposed to the light while the rest of the street seemed to be in shadow. It was a cat and a dog and the dog, a small breed (I don’t know much about dog breeds) was furiously copulating with the cat. I could hear the dog panting and the sound seemed almost as if it were amplified. It thrust itself into the cat with a rhythmic violence that trapped my eye for several seconds longer than was necessary. I was startled from my voyeuristic trance by a yowl from the cat that sounded frighteningly like that of a small child crying out in pain and anguish. My flesh crawled and my breath caught in my throat, as it is again now, on this warm tropical night. A chill ran down my spine as the cat’s eyes suddenly shined in the light and it let out another cry. I was suddenly aware of how deserted the streets were at that moment and how alone I felt. The streets seemed darker there than on my normal route home. I crossed the street to avoid the cat and dog that sounded, for all the world, like a child being tortured and crying out in pain.
No more than ten meters farther down the street and I began to hear voices coming from one of the houses. That fact was nothing remarkable by itself but the fact that the voices were in unaccented English was astonishing. I have not heard any such English since I bumped into the English teacher in Bogotá, almost two weeks ago. It was difficult to make out what exactly was being said, but I could discern maybe half a dozen voices inside the house. The other gate was open, as was the door to the house. Were they having a party? Why were there Americans here, in the middle of this quiet neighborhood in Santa Marta? I stopped walking and just listened in the street to those eerily familiar tones and snatches of phrases from my native tongue. I stood in the street and strained to understand what was being said, but it was impossible and I could only pick up words or phrases here and there. I moved closer to the gate, hoping I could hear better and understand what was happening. I can remember thinking, strangely enough, about the differences between the sound of English and the sound of Spanish. It is as though each language, and each dialect and subdialect of each language, has its own flavor. Yes, I thought of it as a flavor in that moment, and the metaphor seems just as appropriate now, hours later. In this case, it was the flavor of home and just as we never forget our mother’s cooking and will always long for a few dishes she made, so too I was caught by my desire to hear these English words. But also like a flavor, the effect of this conversation was intoxicating, almost like a narcotic. When I heard a voice inside the house call me by name and ask me inside, also in perfect and neutral English, I responded by walking into the shadowed interior, still unable to see who had spoken.
The house had high ceilings that were hidden in a shadow, as were the interiors of several rooms that I passed on my way deeper into the house. I turned several times as I tried to follow the source of the English words that grew almost imperceptibly louder as I moved deeper into the house, winding my way through its maze of corridors. I was no longer sure that I could find my way out again, and I wasn’t sure of which of the doors behind me I had passed through originally. It was at that moment that I found myself in a room bathed in deep shadow into which my eyes strained to see figures seated in a loose arrangement around the edge, near what must have been the walls. The sense of being in a dream intensified yet more. I honestly could not believe that what I was experiencing was real and I felt almost certain that I had walked into a dream, somehow, and that I was already home in my apartment. That belief is in doubt now though as I lie here recording my memory of the events of earlier tonight. How could it have been a dream if I am here now, awake, writing all this down?
There were multiple conversations occurring all at once, intersecting, overlapping, breaking apart and crashing into one another again, like the ripples from stones dropped into still water. I was at a disadvantage for having arrived late and not having been previously acquainted with the characters. To my right, two young men and a young woman talked about hiring a sicario to kill someone in Bogotá and this somehow intermingled with a discussion of the indigent population of Medellín. The financial consequences of the political rift with Venezuela washed over me from the front and this broke upon the shores of a disagreement between a young woman who thought that the Chávez, though a petty dictator in his own right, had value as a South American antipode to US influence while a young man thought that this opposition was counter to the interests of Colombia and that any project for unity was bound to fail if it was based, as its core principle, on opposing the US. From the left came a long and complicated explanation of a Catholic ritual, the veneration of saints, the counting of rosary beads and the eating of the flesh of a god then mixed with voices on the right who were again talking about a murder. Had it happened already? Was it someone they knew or were they describing a news story? The descriptions seemed somehow too vivid for the account to be secondhand and the bodily mutilation of the victim crossed and mixed with the bizarre Catholic ritual that now seemed more pagan than Christian and from the deep shadow in front of me in the room came a thread of the conversation that seemed to suggest that the natives who lived in Santa Marta before the Spanish arrived knew of a secret that is carried in the blood. The blood is the inspiration of the red that Chávez has taken for his coat of arms, as it was of the Communists of Lenin’s era and it is the blood that runs in the jungle in the “Red Zone” in the south of Colombia and it is the wine that becomes blood at the Catholic mass and the mutilated man in Bogotá bleeds into the street, his perforated body bleeding from deep within. The shadows are suffocating, but I imagine that I can smell blood. At first it is more like the faint suggestion of blood but soon I am overcome by the smell of blood, as if there were rivers of it running around my feet and clouds were floating in the air around me, loaded with red droplets of liquid life.
There was a woman standing behind me and she pressed herself lightly against me as she grasped my forearm from behind. She was tall, very tall, and I had the impression that she was unnaturally thin. She leaned in close to me and whispered into my ear from behind. She told me that I was very lost, very lost indeed, and that I would not make it out of this labyrinth alive. I remained perfectly still. I was not certain if she was referring to the house or some other labyrinth. I asked simply, “Where am I?” and she again whispered into my ear from behind. She told me I had made this place. She told me that there was only one way out. I turned to face her. She was taller than any Colombian I had seen in Santa Marta and incredibly thin, like a vision of starvation. Her face was hidden partially in shadow. She took my hand and I let her. She pulled my hand to her and I touched her hips. There was no flesh there, only bone. Just dry, rough bone where flesh should have been. At that moment, I imagined that her face, still hidden in shadow was that of a skull. I looked for her eyes but found only empty blackness.
The voices behind me in the darkened room were no longer conversing and I could hear just short, clipped phrases and single words, each more unsettling than the last. Profanities, curses, vulgarities, mutilated genitals, viscera, eyes gouged out, maggots, shit covered wounds, a sharp blade across the throat, poison in the brain. The air was suddenly colder and I quickly pulled my hand back from the boney hips of the tall woman, just as one might pull back from a hot stove. The room was cold now. So cold. I knew I had to get out but I didn’t know how. I rushed past the woman and through the first open door. I hurried down a corridor and took another door which was open and the air was warmer. I followed the warm air closer to the exit, turning again and again and choosing again the warmer of the doorways until at last I was outside in the warm night air, but the gate was closed. Running to it, I found the key still in the lock. It turned and I frantically opened the locking mechanism and the gate. I didn’t look back until I had shut the gate behind me, but when I did I saw only a darkened house, like any other on the street. The feeling of dreaming, of the unreal, was beginning to fade but much of it still remains even now as I pen my recollections of the events of tonight.
Did I really experience what I remember so vividly or was it some trick of the mind? Did I stumble into some strange gathering that I simply misinterpreted and misunderstood or was it something else entirely? I can only assert that I have no idea what the truth of the matter is and can only record the events as accurately as I remember them, no matter how unreal they may appear.
I have been back from Colombia for several weeks now and I have some writing to share with you. I have written quite a lot this summer, but little of it is appropriate for this space, so what you will see here will be a selection. I began to write a longer and more scholarly piece about the nature of money: economists's understanding of money (with a particular focus on the French school of economic thought in pre-revolution France and its focus on the value of agriculture), my early musings on money conceived in the framework of Newtonian physics, commentary about how the debt based currency system that we have now makes my previous views obsolete, and a brief look at the consequences of our modern, and thoroughly broken, system. I began to write it three times and I still have parts of the third edition, with some citations. But I have decided not to post it now. My focus has shifted for the time being and I may or may not come back to that piece. If I do, I will post it here.
A coworker of mine asked me several months ago what type of music I liked. Another asked me last week. Both of them followed their initial question by asking me if I like Metallica or not. Of course, considering the persons asking the question here, it is a loaded question which can only be answered in the affirmative. Some of Metallica's music is very nice but much of it, in my opinion is not. Their album done with the San Fransisco Symphony Orquestra was particularly nice. Here are two songs from that concert (No Leaf Clover and One):
Metallica is not my favorite band, but they deserve respect. The first man who asked me the question also asked if I liked rap and I fell into his trap and answered honestly. He commented that he had forgotten that I am only twelve (I am olde than twelve, really I am). I can understand why he would say this though. Rap and hip hop have become Soulja Boy, Little Wayne, Jazy-Z and the hundreds of other instantly forgettable, no talent celebrities who pretend to rap and sell millions of copies of their songs because of the power of marketing. Thousands of songs are now produced that repeat the same three or four lines through the entire track and which invariably tell the same simplistic story of drinking, clubbing and, making music and crude sexual inuendo. When I say I like rap, I do not mean this. I will share with you some rap songs that do not fit the template of what most people know as rap now. The songs are dark though and they contain explicit and violent subject matter as well as foul language. Be forewarned, this is not PG13 rated material in this post.
The first I will mention is Jedi Mind Tricks and their album Violent By Design in particular. It is dark, violent, and lyrically smooth for English rap. Their imagery is viceral, sometimes crude and other times suggestive of something more. It lacks the depth of Roughman, Immortal Technique, Nach, or even Cartel de Santa, but it is a good introduction to the genre. Here are three songs from that album to start with.
Switching continents now, the next rapper is a transplant from Somalia to Canada but he raps about Somalia. His name is K'naan. He brings an African sound to his rapping, just as Immortal Technique, though a New Yorker rapping in English, brings his Peruvian background and Spanish into his rapping. K'naan has two songs that I will feature here. The first describes his hometown of Mogadishu and seems to be a form of one-upmanship with American gangsta rappers who rap about gore and violence (because he has seen the worst of what the world has to show). The second is a sadly hopeful song about Africa.
Returning to American rappers, Rugged Man, a rapper who colaborates with Immortal Technique and Jedi Mind Tricks and whose work appears with them has produced a haunting rap about the American War in Vietnam based on his father's experience. This song is extremely tight and fast and the lyrics, rhythm, and flow is the best I have ever heard in English rap (some Mexican and some Spanish rap can challenge him for flow). This song touches me. It is difficult to catch all the subtle detail the first time through and it takes a few more times to just appreciate how he rhymes and flows. Enjoy, Uncommon Valor: A Vietnam Story:
Immortal Technique has powerful spoken word tracks (with a song in the background) that aren't raps as well as some that I won't post here because of their content. His noteable albums include Revolutionary Vol. 1 and Revolutionary Vol. 2 with 1 being the better of the two. He is political and he seems to see himself as a liberation minded musician/philosopher. Some of his songs are weaker in lyrical quality or flow, but this is usually when he is reaching politically. Immortal Technique is linked with the group Jedi Mind Tricks (raps with them and on his own). The two songs here are examples of his political rapping while the third is more personal. For a glimpse into his darker work, search for the song titled "Dance with the Devil"--I won't post it here, but you have been warned.
Next up: quality rap in Spanish (i.e. NOT Daddy Yankee). Noteable examples: Cartel de Santa, Nach, Cuervo Rolo.
