NGK Cultural Bridge Fellowship 2006

Apparently when you enter another decade, the Colombians refer to it as arriving at the next floor.  This week I had the pleasure of arriving at the third floor!

To celebrate, a group of us met on Friday night for a few Australian wines (not easy to find here!) and then went to a restaurant on the outskirts of Bogota called Andre’s Carne de Res.  People had mentioned that this was a not-to-be-missed experience but I was really unprepared for just how much fun it was going to be.  The place doubles as a restaurant and bar, and is full of different Colombian objects and people (literally thousands).  We were served fabulous Colombian arepas (tortillas made from maize, with cheese, ham, avocado or mushrooms on top) and vast amounts of bbq meat.  The food was then cleared away and everyone danced on the tables until well into the morning.

I got up early the next day (feeling my age!) and was picked up by Carolina and her family who I was put in touch with by my classmate Laura Ardila.  It was a long weekend in Colombia (the fourth long weekend in my five weeks here) and we headed out to their farm near Viota, a couple of hours from Bogotá.  It was also the weekend of the Festival of San Pedro in Viota which meant that there were parades of horses, the throwing of flour, a beauty pageant and lots of music and dancing. 

It also turned out to be the birthday of Carolina’s father and so we had a joint celebration consisting of an afternoon bbq and then relaxing in the pool or in one of the hammocks.  In the evening, a band arrived, fireworks were set off, and we danced barefoot by the pool until midnight.  A group of us then headed into town and kicked on in the streets for a couple more hours.

It ended up being a wonderful weekend with really great people and lots of typical Colombian food and activities.

I was also able to have some really interesting conversations with Carolina and her family about their experiences with the guerrilla and paramilitary groups.  Apparently Viota was one of the first locations where the guerrilla was active and has always been considered a particularly strategic part of the country because of its proximity to Bogotá (an ideal location for holding people who had been kidnapped in the city). 

A few years after purchasing the farm, the family was approached by members of the FARC who demanded an extraordinarily high amount of money in exchange for their keeping the peace in the community (and for not otherwise kidnapping family members).  The father in the family arranged a meeting with the leader of the FARC to negotiate a more feasible amount, but was then repeatedly harassed for more money by both members of the FARC and general delinquents.  The situation became unbearable and there was a period of six years when no member of the family was able to visit the farm.  Most of the local institutions were also thought to have become connected to the FARC in some way or other and the local economy and the general quality of life were effectively paralyzed.

Apparently towards the end of these six years, a paramilitary group was able to enter the region and assassinate members of the community who were thought to be supporting the FARC (which itself was based in the mountains surrounding the town).  Without a solid communications network in Viota itself, the guerrillas were soon defeated.  Unlike many other regions where similar confrontations have occurred, the paramilitary group also moved on and was replaced by a more significant police presence.  People have started to return to the town and it was certainly buzzing this weekend.

It appears, on the face of it, that it has been a relatively successful transition to a more peaceful environment.  The conflict and each guerrilla or paramilitary group are, however, heterogeneous across regions and similar strategies have led to disastrous results elsewhere.  It is also incredibly difficult to try and weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of what would surely have been a brutal means of dealing with the problem compared with an on-going guerrilla presence in the town. 

The more I learn about the conflict here the more questions I seem to have!