by Rusty Young
‘Don’t listen to him, Pedro,’ said Camila, shrugging out of Palillo’s grip. ‘If my father was going to snitch, he’d have said something to us first.’
Camila was a year younger than us and as magazine-beautiful as always, despite a hangover from the previous night. While Palillo made it his mission to stir up my life, Camila worked to reassure me. She had a magical way of protecting me from the world without criticising anyone else.
‘They’re staring at you, Pedro,’ Palillo insisted.
‘At all of us,’ I countered.
I was prepared to accept my share of blame for the previous night’s party, although it was Palillo who’d demanded we drive down to the rope-swing tree, and Palillo who’d produced a bottle of Cuban rum and pressured Camila to skol ‘just one more shot’ six more times.
‘They’re probably trying to figure out who buried Farmer Díaz,’ Camila said, using her thumbs to smooth out the creases on my forehead. ‘Or discussing the new priest’s sermon. Wasn’t it pathetic?’
She continued speculating. I continued frowning. I knew Camila’s father held me in begrudging esteem. So long as I respected his curfews and his daughter’s chastity, he would tolerate me.
The trouble was, I hadn’t obeyed last night’s curfew. Palillo had insisted Camila would be fine; they’d lined their stomachs with milk. He said he would take personal responsibility. But come ten o’clock, I was the one left with an inebriated girlfriend and battling a dilemma: drive her home on time but stumbling drunk, or wait until she was at least somewhat sober. From his window, Señor Muñoz had watched me pull up two hours late.
‘Busted,’ gloated Palillo, leaning right into my face and tickling my cheeks with his long, black fingers.
‘Fuck it!’ I said, slapping his hand away. ‘I’m going over.’
‘No fucking way! They’ll crucify you.’
‘Yes fucking way. Watch me!’
I hated people who refused to confront things. I strode towards our fathers, emboldened by the fact that Camila was watching.
‘Good morning, Señor Muñoz.’ I greeted Camila’s father politely, shaking his hand.
‘Pedro.’ He nodded and forced a smile.
‘Is something wrong, Papá?’ I asked.
‘We’ll discuss it later, hijo.’
Both men now stared at me without blinking. Although vanquished by the adults, I returned victorious to my peers, who looked at me questioningly for my conclusion.
‘Camila’s father knows she was drinking but he didn’t snitch,’ I stated confidently.
‘Told you!’ said Camila.
‘What exactly did they say?’ asked Palillo flatly, folding his arms. I couldn’t tell whether he was unconvinced or simply disappointed.
‘It wasn’t anything they said. I can just tell. They were discussing town business. It was political.’
Papá signalled that it was time to leave. I kissed Camila goodbye and drove us home. Mamá was with us, so Papá still couldn’t mention what was wrong.
Papá’s conversation with Señor Muñoz on the church steps that day was merely the latest in a series of warning signs that had begun gathering like slow-circling vultures over an injured animal. First, the 3.30 am cylinder bombs that had rained down on Llorona’s main street a month earlier. Second, the clandestine night-time burial of Farmer Díaz, who’d been kidnapped and then murdered by the Guerrilla. And third, the bullet through the church’s stained-glass window that had prompted the old priest’s transfer to Bogotá for reasons of personal safety.
It was all big news. It was all connected. And it was all leading up to something bigger.
2
I’M NOT SURE how my parents managed to keep the war from me for so long, but they did.
Of course, I had a vague awareness of what was going on from rumours I heard at school, late-night gunfire that my parents claimed was thunder, and the strain in Mamá’s farewell every time I rode my bicycle into town.
I knew that the Guerrilla existed. And I knew they fought the government army. During primary school recess, we played soldado and guerrillero, using sticks as guns and rocks as grenades. We drew blades of grass because nobody wanted to be a soldier.
According to my classmates, the guerrilleros were the good guys. In the countryside, they kidnapped wealthy landowners and distributed the ransom monies to peasant farmers. In cities, they tunnelled hundreds of metres underground into army stores to steal weapons and they hijacked milk trucks, whose bottles they dispensed to people in the slums.
I did my best to feign comprehension, but really, I didn’t know what either side was fighting for. To me, the war was like the front-page headline of El Tiempo, the big-city newspaper that Papá read: although bold and important, its underlying events reached me from a great distance and only involved people I didn’t know. It wasn’t until my late childhood that I realised the war was all around me, and always had been.
Llorona was a small but prosperous river town set in a gentle valley in the Colombian province of Vichada. Further south was the Peruvian Amazon and further east, the mountains and jungles of Venezuela and Brazil. I’d lived there since the age of four when we lost everything and moved from Armero.
Llorona had a church, a bullet-pocked police garrison and a dusty football field that doubled as the primary school yard. The central plaza had four inward-facing wooden benches where old men sat feeding pigeons and playing checkers. Family-run stores were located along Avenida Independencia, the main street and the only one that was sealed. It was a small town, but a magnificent town, at least to my innocent eyes.
When I was ten, I tripped during a weekend game of soldado and guerrillero with Palillo in full pursuit. I sat rocking back and forth on my haunches, hugging my scraped shins and staring at the blood. Then I began picking the dirt out, cursing Palillo for causing the fall.
Papá intervened.
‘Leave it!’ he said. ‘Stand up, hijo.’
As I stood, I pointed my favourite gun-stick at Palillo. Papá grabbed its tip and diverted my aim away as though it were a real weapon. He explained that war was not a game. For over a decade, he said, the Guerrilla had controlled the three river villages to the south of Llorona. The army controlled Garbanzos, the nearest major town. But Llorona was different. The army patrolled inside the town’s perimeter; the Guerrilla controlled the surrounding countryside. Over the years, the warring sides had reached an informal truce: the Guerrilla didn’t attack Llorona and the army didn’t go looking for them or their camps. Our finca, or farm, was four kilometres from the plaza. As such, we lived in the grey area on the border between two enemies and had to contend with pressure from both groups.
After Papá’s explanation, I began seeing things properly. I’d always thought the soldiers who crossed our land were from the army’s battalion in Garbanzos. Some of them were, but others were members of the army’s enemy, the communist Guerrilla. The army and Guerrilla looked similar. Both had short haircuts, wore green camouflage uniforms and hats, and carried rifles. Papá, who’d always told me to go inside whenever they came, now kept me next to him.
Up close, I learned to distinguish between them; the army soldiers wore shiny black leather boots whereas the Guerrilla wore rubber rain boots and were younger, and their squads included women. But both groups acted similarly. When an army patrol arrived, they would ask, ‘Have you seen the Guerrilla?’ When a Guerrilla patrol arrived, they would ask, ‘Have you seen the army?’ Both sides wanted to know the number of enemy troops, what weapons and provisions they carried, and what their commanders looked like.
When I was eleven, during spring cattle sales, I saw my father arguing with the Guerrilla finance commander, Zorrillo. I arrived for the end of the dispute and kept my mouth shut as I’d been taught. It ended with Papá handing over cash.
‘Are they working for you?’ I asked when Zorrillo’s twelve-man squad had departed.
‘Other way around,’ he responded dryly. When angry, rat
her than yelling, Papá became sardonic.
He told me the Guerrilla requested that every farmer and business owner pay them a special tax to support their revolution, which would overthrow the corrupt government and replace it with a communist regime. They’d even enshrined it in their Guerrilla tax legislation, calling it Law 002. Unofficially, they referred to the tax as a vacuna, which literally means ‘vaccine’.
‘What are they vaccinating us against?’
‘Their own bullets,’ Papá replied.
It was from Papá that I inherited my sarcasm. Padre Rojas, the town priest and Papá’s best friend, often said my father was a devout Catholic with the cynicism of an atheist.
Witnessing Papá being forced to pay the Guerrilla vacuna was an important moment for me. It was the first time I’d seen him back down. After that I snapped my gun-stick and stopped playing at war, and Papá no longer hid anything from me. I was already very close to my father, but our deep bond grew deeper as the Guerrilla expanded their territory, bringing them closer and closer to our farm.
During my last year at Llorona primary school, the Guerrilla made us attend a community meeting at which Zorrillo – the commander who’d forced Papá to hand over cash – pontificated on government corruption, social justice and equal rights for everyone.
‘Llorona at least has phone lines and electricity,’ declared Zorrillo. But five kilometres further south, in Puerto Galán, he reminded us, the lines stopped suddenly. There was no garbage collection. No police station. No courthouse. No hospital. Just dirt roads and wooden shacks with tin roofs. Another ten kilometres south, in Puerto Princesa, Guerrilla soldiers were forced to stand on street corners and arbitrate disputes. Across the river in Santo Paraíso, there were not even dirt roads. Only mud, donkey trails and a thriving cocaine industry.
Mamá didn’t like me talking to the Guerrilla soldiers who crossed our land. She’d been protective of me ever since my older sister, Daniela, died in a mudslide when I was four. I don’t remember my sister much; however, according to Papá, Mamá never got over it. She rarely mentioned Daniela – and she’d taken down the framed photos since they were too painful a reminder – but sometimes I’d find her in the kitchen, standing stock-still and crying for no apparent reason.
The best policy for dealing with the Guerrilla, according to Mamá, was simply not to see anything, not to hear anything and certainly not to say anything. This was known as La Ley de Silencio – The Law of Silence. It prevailed in Llorona and most Colombian villages. The army had a similar name for it. They called it the Law of Shakira, after her pop song ‘Deaf, Dumb and Blind’.
Papá disagreed. Some day I’d have to talk to them – better if I learned now. Besides, things were never as simple as Mamá wanted them to be. The army and the Guerrilla knew every family along their patrol routes. They asked questions about your neighbours – seemingly innocuous questions, like the last time relatives had visited them, when they’d picked their harvest, or how many shopping bags they brought home. And although it was tempting to respond ‘I don’t know’ to every question, if a neighbour answered differently, one of you was a liar.
So it was best to be definite on facts but vague on details. In rural Colombia, definite vagueness was a full-time occupation. Papá advised me to always tell the truth, but to pause and think before answering. Because if you didn’t pause before an easy answer like your name, then your pause after difficult questions would be more noticeable.
Both the army and the Guerrilla would ask if you had milk, rice, sugar or cooking oil to spare. Sometimes even water. They were extremely polite about it.
‘If it’s not too much trouble …’ they might begin. As if compliance were voluntary and it was okay to refuse. But there is nothing voluntary about a favour when the man asking it is brandishing an AK47 with his finger tapping the trigger guard.
If you said, ‘Sorry, I have nothing to spare,’ they might search your property and prove you were lying. But if you gave them something and your neighbour snitched, the other side could accuse you of collaborating with the enemy.
Traitor if you do, liar if you don’t. Either way you were completely jodido.
That’s what you foreigners and people from the big cities don’t understand. No matter how hard you try, you can’t remain neutral. Eventually, you have to pick a side. And if you don’t, one will be picked for you. As it was for me.
3
ON THE CHURCH steps, when Camila had mentioned the secret burial of Farmer Díaz, I’d struggled not to reveal that I knew who’d buried him.
A week earlier, Papá had tapped lightly on my door at midnight.
‘You awake?’ he whispered.
‘Sí.’
‘Get dressed quietly! Don’t wake your mother.’ Although sleepy, I leaped out of bed at his next words. ‘I need your help.’
Danger and adventure didn’t appeal to me as they did to Palillo. However, assisting Papá and sharing a secret with him did.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, trying to sound casual.
‘To do some work.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘The work of other men.’
Papá never criticised people directly; he said it was unchristian. Instead, he became cryptic. I had no idea what he meant by ‘the work of other men’. It was only in the garage, when he placed a blue tarpaulin, two torches and a shovel in the tray of our Mazda utility truck, that I guessed what was happening: we were going to bury Farmer Díaz.
Our main industries in Llorona were agriculture, cattle farming and river trade. Fertile ground, strong rainfall and a semitropical climate made it ideal for bananas, granadillas and guanábanas. Llorona was a wealthy town, although, if you judged by appearances, no one had any money. Fear of kidnapping and extortionate ‘vaccines’ by the Guerrilla meant even millionaires pretended to be poor.
Wealthy landowners wore old, tattered clothes and patched holes in their shoes rather than buying new ones. They rarely spent money, not even on their families. Bank statements were sent to alternative mailboxes. Wives’ jewellery could not be worn outside the house. Their adult children lived in large city apartments, drove luxury cars and attended private universities while they themselves drove rusted tin cans that broke down frequently in full public view. To prove how poor they were, they neglected to fix leaks in their roofs and then performed a wailing show for repairmen when handed a quote. In Colombia, hiding wealth was a national art form long before cocaine traffickers perfected it.
In certain individuals, like our neighbour Humberto Díaz, the threat of kidnapping brought out their inner miser. Although Díaz attended church, Papá had little time for him. He owned a thousand hectares with seven hundred head of cattle, but even before Guerrilla vacunas he had a reputation for adding dirt to potato sacks to increase their weight and using hollowed-out weights on his scales. When his labourers demanded their pay, he’d shrug and say, ‘There’s no money.’ When they quit, he’d simply hire new workers and do the same.
Foolishly, Díaz maintained he couldn’t pay the Guerrilla vacuna. As a compromise, they offered to accept livestock or crops instead, but he refused to hand over even a single calf, declaring that his cattle were mortgaged to the bank. The Guerrilla discovered that he was lying and sent a squad to surround his property.
‘Commander Botero wants to talk to you,’ said the squad leader, frog-marching him from his finca. ‘Let’s go!’
Jorge Emilio Botero was Zorrillo’s official alias, which he used in written communications and when dealing with civilians. Zorrillo was his apodo, or nickname, used by his group and by brave locals behind his back.
Humberto Díaz wasn’t even allowed to pack a change of clothes. That night the Guerrilla phoned his wife, Eleonora, to say they would hold him until she paid. Although Papá abhorred kidnapping, he said the Guerrilla had no choice. If enough people followed Díaz’s lead, an unintended social class would be spawned – the nouveau poor – whose members deliber
ately understated their wealth for the sake of social appearances. Then where would we be?
Padre Rojas was right: for a serious-minded Catholic, Papá could be very sarcastic.
The Guerrilla started the bidding at a million dollars. Ransoms were often in US dollars. Although communists hated North Americans, at least their currency was stable. Rumours spread that Eleonora Díaz had refused to pay that amount, instead countering with one hundred thousand – further proof her husband’s poverty was a sham. Usually, the Guerrilla would have kept him longer to negotiate a better price. Once holding a hostage, they were never in a hurry. But this time they responded by executing Díaz.
The Guerrilla normally buried their victims and told the family where to look. However, on this occasion they dumped the body and refused to say where. The army performed multiple searches. Finally, a fisherman spotted Díaz on the riverbank at the S-bend one kilometre up from the rope-swing tree. Everyone knew where he was, but no one went to retrieve him. His two adult sons, Javier and Fabián, were too scared.
When Papá heard the news, he stopped making jokes. He sat glumly at the dinner table, shaking his head. In a decades-long conflict, we had reached a new low: neither side had ever obstructed the burial of the dead.
Alive, Humberto Díaz was not a man whose company my father sought. Dead, however, Papá had no choice but to help him. His religious principles forbade him from leaving a member of the congregation unburied. So that’s why we were driving to the river after midnight, armed with two torches, a blue tarpaulin and a shovel.
We found Díaz at the S-bend, where the fisherman had indicated. He was covered in flies and maggots. I wasn’t squeamish, having slaughtered cows and seen dead bodies before, but I was disgusted at what the Guerrilla had done.
‘Why not bury him here?’ I asked as we rolled Díaz in the tarpaulin and dragged him back to the truck.
‘Without proper Catholic burial in consecrated ground, a man has no possibility of entering heaven.’