Summer 2002 Research Report Luis Carlos Monterrosa Latin American Studies "The Displaced People of Colombia"

 

Desde Bogotá

I’ve been in Bogotá, Colombia for a little over a month. I came on a Tinker Grant that I received through the Latin American Studies Department at UC Berkeley, where I’m currently getting a Master’s in Latin American Studies. I’m doing field research on the internally displaced peoples of Bogotá, primarily poor peasants from rural areas, who move en masse to the capital, mainly to escape the violence gen! erated by the present armed conflict. This conflict is between armed left-wing guerrillas (the FARC being the largest and strongest), the Colombian military, and right-wing paramilitary groups. I first tried to contact displaced people through NGOs and state-run organizations that, ostensibly, help these populations. However, they were of little help and usually not easy to talk to. The displaced people I have met on the street have told me that they receive virtually no help from government sanctioned organizations and that these agencies offer extremely minimal help. It is extremely sad to learn about their plight as they are generally very humble and honest but are living in the midst of extreme violence and deprivation. I have talked to displaced women, pregnant and with young children, who lived precariously on the streets of Bogota. It is easy to see displaced people as they very often sit near street corners with makeshift signs that say desplazados; relegated to begging for change in order to survive. According to CODHES (Consultorio para los Derechos Humanos el Desplazamiento/The Advisory for Human Rights and Displacement) about 7% of Bogotá’s 6,000,000 population is composed of displaced people. In 2000 about 43,000 displaced people came to Bogotá; this amounts to about 3,600 per month, 119 a day, or, to get real visual, one displaced person per hour.

Although I came to specifically look at the crisis of displaced peoples, by living here I have learned a great deal about Colombian society in general. The harshness of displaced peoples´ plight is extremely compelling and sad but now it seems to me like only part of the puzzle in understanding the causes behind Colombia’s social ills. I have become well acquainted with many people of varying social and economic classes, witnessing very extreme examples of class differences. I live in a poor neighborhood that is about ten blocks from the presidential palace and one block from Las Cruzes, considered a ! dangerous neighborhood. Everyone warns me about not walking outside after dark or wearing a backpack, or trusting people. I took heed for about two weeks. It is difficult to not make every Colombian conversation an interview; every cab ride has become an extended personal seminar on Colombian life as I never miss the opportunity to ask taxi drivers about their lives in Bogotá; they are usually very polite, enthused to converse, and almost always have something interesting to share. How has work been lately? What do you think of the new president? About the armed conflict? How has much do you usually make a day?

Although I’m American, I generally don’t stand out unless I talk. I speak fluent Spanish but my accent and idiomatic expressions are clearly from elsewhere. Prior to this trip, I was not used to speaking solely in Spanish; so much of my vocabulary and facility lacks. I’m sometimes confused for being some kind of Arab. I’m told it isn’t wise to let strangers know I’m American so I often tell people who ask that I’m Guatemalan, which is essentially true I guess. Maybe it’s just the people I’ve talked to but when I do tell them I’m from California their head usually jerks bac! k and their eyes open wide in, seeming, cognitive confusion. At first it bugged me a bit because the reactions were so predictable and uniform; however, later, realizing how extremely difficult life is here while witnessing the images of first-world splendor on television, I can understand why people react how they do. I’ve really gotten a sense of this by dealing with Colombian money, becoming familiar with the conversion of the Colombian peso to the American dollar, which changes slightly every week. Currently the exchange floats around 2500 pesos to the dollar. With the equivalent of one dollar I can eat an OK meal, or catch the bus twice and buy a soda, or use this computer for an hour. And people’s wages reflect this. A few weeks ago I spoke at length with a, presumably, well paid maid who makes 300,000 a month, or about $130 American dollars. She is a 29 year old black Colombian from the Atlantic coast, a Costeña, the name given to people from the coast and also the na! me of the cheapest beer here. She works six days a week as a live-in maid in a luxurious mansion located in one of northern Bogotá’s more affluent neighborhoods. Apparently her wage is pretty good as she tells me that she would only make slightly more than half that amount if she did the same job in the coastal town where she is from. Nevertheless it is difficult for me to not feel very uncomfortable seeing a black Colombian working as a full-time servant for wealthy Europeanish Colombians for only $130 a month; something about this set-up suggests to me that she is essentially a circumstantial slave. But apparently she’s one of the lucky ones. I almost laughed, a combination of disbelief and anxiety, when my friend Jeniffer, a first year university student, told me that her aunt pays a lady about 70,000 pesos a month to be a full-time baby sitter for her two children (about $20!?).

It took me a couple of weeks to get familiar with Bogotá, the streets, currency, lingo, food, vibe, etc. For the first couple of weeks that I was here I very often hung out and stayed with a good friend who I grew up with in San Francisco yet now lives in northern Bogotá. I would get on a bus at 1st street, where I’m currently living, and travel to 109th street. 109 very long blocks.

I always dreaded this trip as it took about an hour and I almost always ended up with a headache— car exhaust, poor suspension, bumpy streets, cramped seats. When I reached 60th street, the street was suddenly not as bumpy and there was a visible improvement in the overall infrastructure; the streets were cleaner, there were much less homeless and poor people ambulating, the buildings became grand and their windows now glossy. These bus rides from el sur to el norte were ! very educational as they reminded me of a metaphor of the journey from Latin America to North America. I hung out with my friend in the north for about two weeks until I realized my money dwindled exponentially in the north compared to the south. By the time I became familiar with the currency, spending most of my cash at restaurants and bars in the north, I found myself impecunious after only about two weeks. This was when I decided that there was no reason I should pay 4,500 p for a beer when I could be paying a mere 700 p in the south. So I went back south and remained.

Everyday I walk about 100 blocks; Its about 20 blocks from the house where I’m living to el Centro where I check emails and write at one of many internet cafes, meet and talk to displaced people on the street, visit the CODHES office (the most prominent NGO that conducts research on displaced people), eat, people-watch, etc. In the evenings or on the way back home I usually go to La Candelaria, a very interesting-looking colonial style neighborhood located on a hill between el Centro and where I live. There are several restaurants and bars here. The streets are narrow and the ho! uses have a very antiquated feel. Every so often you can see a rusty metallic statue of a person on random rooftops, a remnant of colonial times that adds a surreal, Garcia-Marquez-esque dimension depending on your mood. I’ve made several friends in this neighborhood. One of them is a young ex-crack addict and street hustler I met at a bar known for very loud Heavy Metal Music called Escena 13. He’s now (mostly) clean from drugs and makes money crafting very beautiful and elaborate paper flowers which he sells on the street. He grew up in Bogotá (or Drogota as he calls it) and was homeless for a while until he was able to come clean and move back in with his parents. He has practically no formal education but is extremely street-smart, interesting, and fun to hang out with. As military service is virtually compulsory for poor young males, he served in the military for about a year, interestingly he received training in Sinai, Egypt. Everyday he leaves his home with very little or no money, having to sell his flowers, along with many others hustling in similar fashion. He does this most of the day to make enough to eat, drink, smoke, catch buses, etc. We’ve had very long conversations about life in Bogotá and in general. Although he is basically clean from drugs now he often drinks beer and smokes bareta, marijuana, and occasionally consumes cocaine. Although they are widely demonized and illegal, drugs, especially marijuana and cocaine are very accessible and cheap as well as very strong, I’m tol! d. It seems most young people smoke bareta, which you can buy for about one twentieth of the price in the U.S. (You can get the equivalent of a US $20-bag for 5,000 pesos, or about $2, same with cocaine).

Bogotá can be cold, partly due to its very high Andean altitude (2600 meters above sea level), but mostly because of the frigid social climate produced when extreme levels of deprivation combine with violence, crime, drugs, overpopulation, growing unemployment, globalization, first-world television images, armed conflict, raised taxes for war, skyrocketing prices for basic utilities, an ultra-right wing presidential regime, internally displaced peoples, rampant bureaucratic corruption.... As one friend recently told me “En Bogotá no se vive, se sobrevive.” An ex-reporter, he worked for one of Colombia’s most prominent mainstream news outlets, ! El Tiempo, until he was fired for voicing opinions contrary to that of the management. On the news all I seem to hear politicians do is blame everything on the rebels. Most people I talk to, from taxi drivers to professionals, seem to repeat the same platitude regarding the left-wing insurgents; that is, that they ceased being a socially-minded ideologically-inspired movement a long time ago and are now simply an insidious terrorist movement motivated by profiting from the drug trade, kidnappings, and extortions. In Bogotá I have not met anyone that has openly admitted sympathies with any aspects of the left-wing movement. It is clear to me by now that given the palpably extreme right-wing agenda of the present governing regime, that anyone even remotely affiliated with or sympathetic to the leftist armed-movement would surely invite the brutal wrath of the state; nevertheless I felt that peoples´ negative interpretations of the armed leftist groups were on the whole honest,! genuine, and generally informed. However, as the prevailing antagonistic description of the leftist-movement that I was hearing from ordinary people coincides with the mainstream view that is constantly pumped through television stations, and knowing that even the poorest people have television sets on day and night, I feel like here in Bogotá I’m not getting both sides of the reality. To hear the other side of this armed and political conflict, it seems I would have to leave the capital of Bogotá and travel to the mainly rural areas that are controlled by the rebels. As there is constant cross-fire between the rebels, the paras (paramilitary groups), and the military as well as kidnappings, especially of foreigners, this appears to be an extremely dangerous undertaking for which I’m not presently prepared.

As most people who have heard about Colombia’s present economic and political situation, I expected a great level of violence and poverty—so it was not very surprising to see the shanty houses or the chaotic images on TV when on the day of the presidential inauguration rocket-propelled bombs exploded near the presidential palace, killing about a dozen people in the shanty town known as El Cartucho seven blocks from where I live. The longer I’m here however, the more I realize how bizarre it feels to live in such an unstable and precarious context. Everyday I hear and learn more perplexing facts that cast an even more bizarre light on this whole mess. The latest thing I learned is that members of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) have been caught cavorting with the FARC here in Colombia and allegedly have trained them in making bombs, such as the ones detonated during the presidential inauguration. With all of the money, weapons, intelligence, and land that the insurgent leftist army now has at its command and the monstrous military apparatus controlled by the Colombian state, with the US´ economic backing, the degree of violence, destruction, and casualties in the event of a direct confrontation would be a massacre. This confrontation seems inevitable with the new ultra-right wing President Alvaro Uribe. The sinking feeling of impending doom when I look at who is charged with making peace or war in this conflict reminds me somewhat of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Uribe, who’s father was murdered by the FARC, is considered a strong, rather belligerent, politician. Beari! ng a political semblance to Ariel Sharon, Uribe ran his campaign for presidency along promises of crushing the guerrillas once and for all and taking back land granted under peace negotiations. Like Ariel Sharon who condemned the granting of land to the Palestinians after the negotiations between Barak-Arafat, Uribe has come to the scene condemning Pastrana´s granting of immense areas of land (approximately the size of Switzerland) to the FARC and has promised to take bold military steps. In the first week that he took office, Uribe was already talking about his new plan to create an army of secret civilian spies in every major city to report seditious activities of fellow Colombians to the government (kind of reminds me of our Homeland Security). As I walk past military road-blocks, sometimes stopped by soldiers to open my bag and show ID, seeing more machine-guns than I see smiles, I wonder to myself if this is going to become the new Chile under Pinochet or Argentina during the dirty war. But regardless of whether this war fully breaks out tomorrow or not, the violence of poverty is already difficult to stand. No matter how long I’m here, it is still very unnerving to see children sniffing bags of glue on the street.

The longer I’m here, blending into the thickness of the streets, taking in all of the subtle idiosyncrasies and overt polemics, talking to diverse people, poor and rich, and learning about Colombia’s recent history, I’ve realized something very basic but crucial in my understanding of what is going on; that is that Colombia’s social-economic model is extremely unjust and, in real terms, non-democratic, particularly for its poor majority. In this social climate you can’t exactly speak out against the government unless you’re ready to suffer extreme consequences, never mind what the constitution says. Everyone knows this. In many ways the magnitude of the armed-conflict with its highly villain-izable antagonists in the evil narco-guerrillas makes the state-regime impervious to criticism (kind of reminds me of George Bush Jr. after September 11). D! espite this, ordinary people I talk to cannot deny the severity of their economic woes consequent to Colombia’s parasitic political leadership. In recent years, prices for basic utilities, water being the most expensive, have risen so high that they are slowly becoming out of reach for the poor. Most people I’ve talked to, including the family I am living with, have estimated that the average monthly water bill is about 200,000, about $70 let’s say, a hell of a lot for a poor Colombian family. I’m not the most acute-minded macro-economist but something doesn’t feel right about the present distribution of resources in Colombia. In a country that is so extremely rich in natural resources—having access to two coasts—Atlantic and Pacific, every climate zone, oil, some of the most fertile land in the world, and definitely a hell of a lot of water, it doesn’t feel fair that water, which is so basic to every aspect of life, should be priced so prohibitively high. But that seems to be the economic theme here. I’ve come to learn that quality Coffee, of all things in Colombia, is out of the reach for the poor. Buy a tinto, as coffee is called here, at any eatery in Bogotá’s less than elite areas and you’re probably drinking the cheapest of the coffee made from the portion of the coffee beans left over after the best has been funneled for export. Li! ke many of my generation who grew up in the US, as a child Juan Valdez was one of the most recognizable Latino faces on TV (you remember the Coffee commercial with the cheesy Colombian peasant clad in white, his bored-ass looking donkey, and his coffee “…deerekly fram colombeea”). At my wealthy friend’s home I found myself drinking about 2-3 cups of coffee at a time and wondering when I became such a harsh coffee fan. Conversely, at the tintoreria adjacent to the house where I’m living here in the south, I drink half a cup and have had my share for the day. Another example is fuel. Everyday I take a side-street or otherwise circuitous route as long as I can to avoid the excessively nauseating smell of engine exhaust along the main streets of la septima or la decima. On any of these blocks you are sure to see, primarily women, with scarves covering their mouth and nose to avoid the smell (men of course are too macho to be affected by noxious car fumes). I’ve come to learn that Colombians also get the cheapest form of fuel that produces the most and most unhealthy form of exhaust—and they’re an oil producing country! I’m laughing as I write this because that is simply jacked up (unfair, usurious, a robbery). But again that’s just the climate here, the seemingly unacceptable is practically banal. Talking to a taxi-driver yesterday I learned that he works 10-12 hour days and often only has enough left over to pay for gasoline and the minimum quota owed to the cab-company for using the car; in other words, sometimes he works for free. “No, hermano aqui esta dura la cosa” is what I’m often told by taxi driver! s through their rear-view mirrors. And where does all the wealth go? The owner of the tintoreria where I live tells me about Colombia´s emerald mines, which he claims could pay off the foreign debt “mil veces (hermano)”.

US citizens we pay taxes which convert to, into black hawk helicopters, chemical fumigants, and every military state apparatus to crush insurgents or even civilians if necessary. On the surface we are led to believe this is part of the US’s war on drugs; yet, I’d like to cite an interesting AP story entitled “New York Stock Exchange Chief Meets Colombian Top Rebel Commander” (June 27, 1999) which reports that New York Stock exchange Chief Dick Grasso personally flew to the foothills of FARC territories and proposed to the FARC that they invest their drug profits in Wall street; just one of those ironies that make truth and reality so difficult to reconcile. Alas. I’m writing from a computer at a local internet place (1500 p per hour), on a computer in which to get the @ symbol you have to press alt + 64. In other words I hope my writing on this craziness has been clearly coherent in light of the context in which I’m writing, one I’m not accustomed to.

In closing, as US citizens, los gringos, we can at least have the courtesy of being conscious of the tremendous global disparity at which we sit near the apex. Ideally we would all be informed, empowered, and cohesively motivated to create betterment in the world so that there wouldn’t be these kinds of paradigms.

“Colombia no necesita mas héroes. Nos necesita a todos para la construcción de una sociedad civil. Con conciencia de sujeto histórico, para edificar un nuevo paisaje democrático, para espantar la atmósfera de violencia que nos envuelve, para impulsar la nave cuyo destino sea la justicia social y la paz y para que sea posible la locura de vivir.”

Fabiola Calvo, 1996 Madrid.”

Colombian author exiled in Spain