ZeroZeroZero

by Roberto Saviano

  Together they devise a military plan. They divide up the region on a map, assigning surveillance and patrol duties for each area. The farmers communicate via radio, so they can report suspicious presences and have military escorts whenever they make a move. Their experiment in self-defense takes off, and Salvatore’s prestige grows even more.

  But he never loses sight of the larger goal. His work follows him home every evening. And one evening he gets some bad news: While defending a group of contras under attack, Major Fratini’s helicopter was shot down, and Fratini was kidnapped by the EPL—the Popular Liberation Army—one of the many Colombian guerrilla groups. His body is found the next day: He’d been tortured to death. Unforgettable images. Images that deepen the ruts in Salvatore Mancuso’s path.

  • • •

  The very blond girl who appears on bars of soap and school notebooks all over Colombia has become, now more than ever, a friendly presence in her hometown, offering gaiety and comfort. To the rest of the world it seems that Medellín has lost the one person who had made it famous—Pablo Escobar. But for those who live there, Natalia’s shining star attests to all things good and beautiful and eases the anxiety created by the death of Colombia’s lord and master. Yes, because if on the one hand there’s a sense of relief, on the other there’s a sense of fear. Fear of a vacuum. Not of the vacuum itself, but rather of who and how many will step forward to fill it. Pablo Escobar was killed in the same year as Major Fratini, Monkey’s fraternal friend. Now that the king is dead, all those who were his enemy can try to elbow their way in. The guerrillas come forward, Cali gains ground, and a vigilante group calling itself Los Pepes, for Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar, or People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar—which seems like a sarcastic response to MAS—puffs out its chest. The rival Cali cartel had bribed Los Pepes to get rid of Escobar, and Los Pepes’ members had sown terror primarily in his own fiefdom. Now what will they do, these men trained and equipped for killing? Will they leave? Will they want a slice of territory to manage? The only thing people know for sure is that there’s no hoping Los Pepes will simply fade away. Irregular armies don’t simply dismantle themselves.

  The government shares the people’s concern. The state’s major antagonist is dead, but the breeding grounds of conflict are multiplying, which is a problem. A problem for the Colombian people, naturally, but also for a leadership hoping for an image boost after the demise of the country’s most famous antihero. Instead it looks as if civil war might break out again, worse than before. Colombia’s presidents, one after another, are aware of the limits of their own power. The best they can do is aim for a balance of forces. They need the counterrevolutionaries to check the guerrillas, but the vigilantes need to be curbed somehow as well. They think they’ve finally hit on the right strategy with Salvatore Mancuso’s approach, which a growing number of hacienderos are imitating. Self-defense needs to be legalized further so that even those groups born as armed wings of cartels—the most ferocious and best equipped formations—will be interested in banding together. So, in 1994, a decree is issued to regulate private vigilante groups and their collaboration with the army, extending the military’s exclusive use of certain weapons to groups that now call themselves CONVIVIR—Cooperativas de Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada, or Special Vigilance and Private Security Services. Mancuso is the head of the Convivir Horizonte, expanding the original cadre by ten or so men armed with pistols, rifles, and machine guns.

  Now that he has the full right to do so, Salvatore wants to prove his worth and to avenge the friend who initiated him into the use of weapons. Accompanied by an army battalion he walks in the forest for thirty days, surviving on canned goods so as to avoid lighting a fire and alerting his enemies. In the tract of Cordillera that separates Córdoba from the northern tongue of Antioquia they come upon a mountain. The overhanging rock cliffs terrify the men, many of whom turn back. But, urged on by the Monkey, enough of them make it to the top to make a surprise attack on the region’s FARC stronghold. Shooting breaks out, but Salvatore and his men come out alive.

  • • •

  A private army is operating in the same area as Mancuso, the Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá, or the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá. The army renamed itself in light of the law on CONVIVIR forces, so as to legally provide armed protection to farmers and breeders. It belongs to the Castaño brothers, who have a long history of implacable hatred for guerrilla fighters and who were born into money. Wealth is what has defined their lives. The sons of Don Jesús, a breeder so highly regarded as a politician and so convinced of landowners’ rights to rule that he was one of the first men whom the FARC came after on his finca, in order to teach him a lesson. It seems like centuries have passed since that day thirteen years ago, since that interminable wait, till that moment when the brothers finally knew for sure that, despite the ransom they’d paid, their father would never come home again. The black hole of their existence. They’ve been at war ever since, a war that—on principle—takes no prisoners. They fought on their own, hiring a hundred or so men willing to do anything. They sent them into the area where Don Jesús had been held hostage and had them kill, impale, and chop to pieces every human being they could find there to teach the people who supported those villains a lesson. They developed a good relationship with Pablo Escobar, and had Carlos, the youngest Castaño brother, join MAS, which educated him in every conceivable method of dirty war.

  But then the Castaño brothers broke with Escobar, who, in his megalomaniac paranoia, had had some of their friends killed. Realizing that he planned to have them killed as well, they accepted the invitation of the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers of the Cali cartel and formed Los Pepes. They became the pack of dogs in the hunting party out to get their former ally, whose partners and relatives they murdered. So now they’re practically right back where they started: a vigilante group bigger and wealthier than the others.

  In the last decade the Castaño brothers have grown even wealthier. The cocaine lords have paid them extremely well. They’ve also paid their enemies well. The Castaño brothers would have already crushed FARC and all the other communist bastards, would have already destroyed all their support networks, if the guerrillas’ anticapitalist insurrection had not been financed by cocaine money. But it costs money to maintain a permanent war, and that’s why the insurgents have entered the drug business as well.

  When the Castaño brothers invite Salvatore to join forces, he takes his time in answering. He’d prefer to just carry on as before, knowing, perhaps, of their long-standing ties with drug trafficking. But then one day, on his way home with his wife, his first-born, Gianluigi, and his second son, who is barely two years old, he runs into a roadblock between Montería and his estate: a FARC ambush, a kidnapping attempt. He hides his agitation so as not to scare his children even more, but a few days later he tells Martha that he can’t keep going it alone. He agrees to merge with the Castaños. And then, when his first arrest warrant for murder arrives, he leaves Campamento for good. From that day in 1996 he stops being Salvatore Mancuso. Now he is only El Mono, the Monkey, El Cacique, Santander Lozada, Triple Cero, and all his other adopted battle names. He is no longer a rice grower and horse breeder but an underground warlord.

  When the Monkey, now about thirty, is making the third decisive move of his life, beautiful Natalia is just over twenty. When her mother sees her in bed, in her knit pajamas and surrounded by her stuffed animals, when she wakes her up to get her ready for school or to take her to a morning meeting and watches her, still sleepy, stumble sulkily to the bathroom, she tells herself that she still seems like a little girl. Because Natalia will always be her little girl, just like for every mother. But also because nature has been kind to Natalia, passing on her mother’s genes, giving her a body that resists time. A lighthearted girl, naïve and happy. And this is because Lucia Gaviria knows how to protect her daughter’s other nature—her inner nature—from the fa
ngs of time. The money she has earned has made her even more lighthearted, which is as it should be, even though it doesn’t always work that way. To the sea of stuffed animals has been added a closet, overflowing with shoes, clothes, creams, perfumes, and some jewelry.

  By now Natalia Paris has gotten used to being a star as soon as she steps out her front door. Used to seeing an army of girls who could be her clones on the streets of Colombia. Used to the paparazzi’s flashbulbs around the corner, used to rebuffing advances with a no that is as sweet as it is firm. Not one of the boys she goes out with has ever made her lose her focus, let alone her head.

  Lucia Gaviria’s fears begin to wane. You can breathe more easily in Medellín now than you could a few years ago. It no longer happens that she has to go to a funeral because her best friend’s daughter has been ripped apart by a car bomb and for a while afterward she can’t find the courage to call her because her own daughter is still alive. It no longer happens that Natalia asks to go to a disco with her school friends and comes home talking about how shooting broke out when they were on the dance floor. Natalia is still frightened, sure, but not nearly as much now. When you grow up in certain places, you end up adapting to the reality around you. Doña Lucia realizes that bell jars are pathetically fragile.

  It’s also true that those early days, when sudden success threatened to upset an adolescent’s precarious balance, are gone. In fact, Natalia’s celebrity was precisely what helped her. A star enjoys less freedom of movement than a normal person. In order to make her life bearable she frequents the same places where, mainly, people learn to pretend not to notice her, to treat her normally.

  And so, a gray area worms its way into Lucia Gaviria’s vigilance. The gym. Keeping in shape is a professional necessity for Natalia, and besides, she really loves physical activity. For the most part she takes classes for women: aerobics and Latin American dance, activities that take the place of evenings at the disco, which, with all the attention she received, had become too exhausting. But now she wants to learn how to scuba dive. Her gym offers a one-week class in Santa Marta, the famous Caribbean tourist city. It’s not the tropical fish that frighten Doña Lucia, or the breathing apparatus and tanks. Sea sharks are far less dangerous than land sharks.

  It must have been an almost mystical experience to watch Natalia remove her mask and fins and peel off her wet suit with a decisive tug. And yet she seemed oblivious to the way everyone looked at her. There was a man in the group who had had the same effect on her, though, ever since their first dive. He took off his equipment, stowed it, and then dove off the edge of the dinghy. She wanted to dive in after him, but didn’t dare. She waited for him to make a move, even the smallest sign, some joke, or a plea for help. He was already an expert diver, already had his instructor’s license, in fact. He’d gotten it in California, where he’d lived for work. The class her gym offered was merely a way for him to get back into his favorite sport.

  This is what he tells her a few evenings later when he takes her to a romantic bistro. Medellín is not like Los Angeles, where, to recharge your batteries, you can ride the waves on your surfboard, go running on the beach, or swim out to the horizon and back. “I’m really tied to my family and my city,” he says, “but I miss the ocean and being outside.”

  Natalia is already deeply in love. But now she’s convinced that Julio is the most extraordinary man she’ll ever meet. She’s comfortable pressing against him in the boat, kissing him, or clinging to him in the water. Love is a triumph that must be flaunted.

  At first Lucia merely thinks that the vacation did her daughter good. But she soon senses that Natalia’s irrepressible happiness can’t be simply the positive effect of the Caribbean sun. There’s clearly a budding romance. It must be a special sort of crush, though, because, oddly, her daughter doesn’t talk to her about it. She feels a pang of anxiety, but represses it immediately. Natalia has always been impulsive, enthusiastic. She’s a Leo, a passionate sign, but sooner or later the fire goes out. It’s better to wait, to trust her. Lucia thinks she knows her daughter well enough to know that she’ll be the one to talk about it first.

  And, in fact, Natalia doesn’t keep quiet for long. When she tells her mother about Julio, how handsome he is, how athletic, how attentive and elegant, her face lights up so much that her mother has to take a deep breath before she can begin asking questions. She is truly sorry to tumble her off the cloud she’s floating on.

  “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know. Thirty, thirty-five . . .”

  “Are you sure he’s not married?”

  “What are you saying, Mami? He was in Los Angeles, he came back to help his family, I think.”

  “And what exactly was he doing in Los Angeles?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “So you have no idea what it is he does, this Julio of yours?”

  “Oh, business of some sort. But he’s rich, family money. He has a fabulous house and some other properties too, a hotel maybe, or a country estate.”

  “Maybe. But you don’t know how he got rich. Or how his family got rich.”

  “No, Mami, and I don’t care! You can’t always think like this, calculating everything all the time, planning. Those things don’t matter at all when you’re in love!”

  Natalia starts to cry and locks herself in her room. Lucia Gaviria stays sitting in the kitchen, devastated. She has an awful feeling; she can barely breathe. To calm down she pours herself a glass of water and finishes up some mindless house chores.

  The only question she dares ask the next day is the last name of Natalia’s beau. She tries to sound casual, but she knows Natalia’s not fooled. With that piece of information she heads to court, as she does every morning. Off to face her tragedy.

  Julio César Correa. A drug trafficker. He got his start as a hit man at Pablo Escobar’s side. His new last name, which replaces his original one, reflects his status as a killer: Fierro, Julio Fierro. All over Latin America fierro—as in Italy,ferro—literally meaning “iron,” means “gun.” In this new era Julio established his independence as a professional killer and got involved directly in the cocaine business, becoming a traqueto, a trafficker. Doña Lucia wonders if he went to the United States because of Don Pablo’s death, to make himself scarce. But now he’s back. Back in time to make Natalia lose her head. She simply won’t listen to reason. She confesses that Julio carries a pistol around town, but then screams: “What’s wrong with that, everybody else does!”

  Whenever she addresses her mother now, Natalia always shouts.

  Doña Lucia establishes peremptory rules and strict curfews, much stricter than when Natalia was under age. But when she’s alone, waiting for her daughter to return, Lucia Gaviria takes to brooding and blaming herself. Why did she let her take that damned diving course?

  The years pass. Natalia’s mother is done in by the war she is fighting in vain. More and more she has long crying fits that are only in part a way of emotionally blackmailing her daughter. Julio tries to soften her up whenever possible, reassure her how deeply in love he is, swears that he will always have the utmost respect for Natalia and those dear to her. And he does seem sincere and polite, quite different from the ugly, vulgar traquetos she comes across in court. But Doña Lucia remains coldly courteous. She must resist; she must break their bond.

  But her daughter is still as crazy for Julio as she was that very first day. And everything Doña Lucia does—cry, threaten, argue furiously—merely pushes her daughter further away. Further into Julio’s arms.

  One morning Natalia comes into the kitchen with a frighteningly serious look on her face, her eyes puffy and red. She’s been even more nervous lately, and has been sleeping poorly. She doesn’t open her mouth until her stepfather, Doña Lucia’s companion who has acted as Natalia’s father since she was little, arrives.

  “Natalia wants to tell you something.”

&nb
sp; “I’m pregnant, Mami. I’m in my fourth month.”

  It’s a catastrophe, and Lucia Gaviria is the last in the family to know. She doesn’t speak to her daughter for a week.

  But she doesn’t hold out for long. She senses that for the first time in all these years Natalia is frightened as well. She no longer lives in a fairyland. Fairy tales don’t exist in Medellín, and Doña Lucia can’t abandon her now. So one day she buys her a pair of sneakers, so she’ll be more comfortable in the months to come, when the baby in her womb starts to weigh on her. She leaves the box on Natalia’s bed with a note that says “God bless you.” They both weep that evening, Natalia in her bedroom, her mother in the living room. But the door is too thin for them not to hear each other’s sobs.

  Natalia is under contract with Cristal Oro for their new ad campaign, but she’ll be in her seventh month by the time the shooting starts. Is Lucia Gaviria supposed to cancel? What excuse can she give them?

  She is more furious with Julio than ever, even though he does everything one could expect from a Colombian man. He says he wants to marry Natalia, that having a baby with her is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to him, that everything will be fine. And her daughter goes along with everything he says. But at a certain point, Natalia’s happiness no longer seems like the other side of fear. She starts sleeping better, and gradually looks more radiant. Doña Lucia attributes the difference to hormonal changes related to her condition, until her daughter talks with her again.

  “It’s all resolved, Mami. We’re going to go live in the United States soon; we’re going to start a new life there!”

  A new life? In the United States?

  The United States is every drug trafficker’s nightmare, so much so that in the 1980s a popular saying among the Colombian narcos was: “Better a tomb in Colombia than a prison cell in the United States.” What’s more, in 1997 Colombia, backed into a tight corner by the United States, altered its constitution so as to reintroduce extradition. Sometimes her daughter is so naïve she seems stupid.