I chose the last option — or at least I made the effort — deciding to let nobody, whether a figure in a dream, an ambassador in the midst of a breakdown, or a good-hearted former nun, stand in way of my mission in Colombia. To salve my conscience, I would give 10 percent of my salary to Señora Lopez for her shelter. I would also exercise my discretion as head of the aid section to allocate Canadian government aid money to pay for the addition to the shelter.
As soon as I reached my office, I sent the following message to Longshaft:
I have the honour to inform you that I arrived in Bogota on November 18 and reported for duty at the embassy. Ambassador O’Connor welcomed me to the mission and gave me a free hand to prepare political and economic reports on Colombia as I saw fit. A week later, I followed up a lead and called on Rosario Lopez, a former nun who is the director of a shelter for street children, located on the fringes of a large barrio in the southern outskirts of the city.
We established excellent personal relations although I was surprised to learn she blamed the Devil for the atrocious behaviour of so many Colombians in recent years. She also provided her views on the roots of discontent in the country and, significantly, she proposed exploring the possibility of arranging a meeting with the revolutionary leader Diego Rojas the next time he visits Bogota from his camp in the countryside. Apparently he is interested in establishing contacts with diplomats to provide the world with his perspective of the “revolutionary struggle.” Although the chance of a get-together is not high, I accepted her offer since an opportunity of this nature might never happen again. I am well aware, however, that the Colombian authorities might object on the grounds such a meeting would constitute prima face, interference in their internal affairs. Should he find out, Ambassador O’Connor would likewise not be pleased and seek to cancel my posting and send me home.
I should be grateful for your guidance on how to proceed. Should you prefer I not follow up, I would find an acceptable reason not to meet Rojas. I repeat, however, that such an opportunity is unlikely to happen again.
That night I slept fitfully until seven. The next morning, looking out the back window of the car on the way to the embassy, I pretended the gamines were only unfortunate children, no worse off than the homeless Canadian youth in downtown Ottawa who wash car windows in traffic jams to earn a little cash to top up their welfare cheques — but I knew I was lying to myself. And when later in my office I heard the howl of the mob, I blocked out the sound with loud music and felt terrible.
The return telegram read as follows:
I was gratified to receive the report on your visit to the barrio and on your meeting with Señora Lopez. There is considerable interest in the Task Force in the possibility you might meet Rojas. Should such a meeting take place, you should seek an invitation to make a fact-finding visit to him at his camp and report back. I appreciate that such action might be considered to exceed the normal limits of diplomatic conduct, but the Task Force would not want you to forgo the opportunity to obtain insight into the mindset of the ELN.
6: Saint and Devil
The following week I bought myself a new Volkswagen Beetle — something to blend inconspicuously into the traffic and not attract the attention of car thieves or the secret police. Henceforth, I would be able to travel wherever I wanted without relying on Alfonso and the embassy car. Although I knew the way to the shelter, I made practise runs late in the evenings to get a feel for how long the trip would take should the call come. The rest of the time, I remained close to my desk, worrying about whether I had embarked on something too big to handle. Whenever the telephone rang, I picked it up, hoping Señora Lopez was on the line, only to be disappointed. I tried to keep busy by reading the local newspapers and carrying out routine paperwork, but couldn’t concentrate. To make matters worse, the ambassador started coming to my office in the mornings around nine-thirty (after he had scanned the overnight messages from headquarters), and until lunchtime told me story after story about his life in the navy during the war, the important people he had met in his postings, and to rant on about the stupidity of the people at headquarters. In the afternoons, he would reappear and monopolize my time doing the same thing. Apparently he had nothing better to do with his time.
The call, when it finally came late one mid-December afternoon, was anticlimactic. The telephone rang. I picked it up. Señora Lopez said “the package has arrived” and hung up. No hellos or goodbyes. Real spy stuff. The ambassador, who was settled into a chair on the other side of my desk, asked me who it was. I said it was a wrong number and found an excuse to leave the office early to prepare myself mentally for my meeting. My goal remained to extract an invitation to visit the ELN camp. If I succeeded, accelerated promotion, maybe even a cross-posting to another embassy with enhanced responsibilities, might result. But if I failed, and I spent the night holding inconclusive heart-felt discussions on Liberation Theology and the inequities of Colombia’s class system, Longshaft would think I had squandered an opportunity, and I would have to find some other way to contact the ELN … otherwise my career might suffer.
At the appointed time, I was sitting in front of the shelter in in my darkened car, its motor and headlights off, waiting for Señora Lopez and Rojas to join me. There were no streetlamps, but the light from the city reflecting off low lying clouds illuminated the neighbourhood. Off in the distance, drifting in from the nearby barrio, came the sounds of babies crying, children playing, music from transistor radios, people laughing, singing and calling to each other, and, from time to time, voices raised in anger. I opened the car door hoping to hear better and in the process lit up the interior with the dome light. Before I could step outside, Señora Lopez, accompanied by someone I assumed was Rojas, came out of the shadows, and hurried toward me.
“I wasn’t certain it was you, until you opened the door,” Señora Lopez said. “This is my friend Diego. I won’t be going with you — you’ll want to speak privately to each other.” Rojas joined me in the front seat and directed me to a nearby church shrouded in darkness. “I used to preach here,” he said, as he pulled out a key and opened a side door. “The churches in Colombia are sanctuaries which the secret police don’t violate. We can talk in peace in here for as long as we want.”
After waiting a minute for our eyes to adjust to the murky interior, Rojas led me to a pew in the rear, asked me to sit down, and slid in beside me. For the first few minutes, we sat in silence, looking straight ahead, neither one of us wanting to begin. Finally, he turned and said, “This is the first time a diplomat has asked to meet me. Foreign representatives are terrified the Colombian government might object if it was to find out. But you, what’s your reason? Is it curiosity? Is it personal? Did your government ask you to contact me?”
“Diplomats meet with leaders of opposition groups in countries all around the world, whether host governments like it or not. I wanted to see you since I’m new here and there’re a lot of things about this country I don’t understand.”
“And so you wanted to consult a priest?”
“Not just any priest.”
“You wanted a defrocked priest who’s taken up arms against his government?”
“The most reliable source for what’s going on, don’t you think?”
“That depends what you want to know. And why did you pick me?”
“Because Señora Lopez suggested I meet you. I also wanted to ask the priest why ordinary people in this country chase and beat gamines to death in the streets. And I’d like to know what the revolutionary leader is fighting for.”
“I think about those issues all the time. They’re tied to others, such as why God permits suffering to happen in the first place. But before we get into such deep matters, let’s first get to know each other. So why don’t you start by saying where you’re from and why you wanted to be a diplomat in Colombia.”
I made the mistake of saying I was from Huronia.
“Huronia!” he said, becoming agitated. “You mean the Huronia o
f St. Jean de Brébeuf! The place where the Jesuits tried and failed to establish the Christian Kingdom of the Wendat! I’ve always wanted to visit Martyrs’ Shrine to pray at the site where the priests were tortured and killed.”
I was surprised that anyone in Colombia would know about this footnote to history. But before I could answer him, Rojas launched into a passionate speech on the Jesuits.
“They were revolutionaries before their time. They respected the dignity and culture of the Indians as they converted them. They established a Christian Indian state in Paraguay with its own army and social welfare system that lasted almost two hundred years. They were trying to do the same thing in your part of Canada when the Iroquois came and scattered the Hurons and their priests. I had the Jesuits in mind when I joined the ELN. I just hope our revolution doesn’t end in failure like the one in New France.”
“I thought Karl Marx was your hero, not Ignatius of Loyola.” I said, thinking he might laugh at the comparison.
“They both are,” he said, ignoring my attempt at a joke. “And so are Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and Abraham Lincoln — all the great revolutionary leaders of history. But the Jesuits occupy a special place in my heart because I’m a Christian.”
He then returned to the Jesuits, going on non-stop about his heroes and role models. From time to time, I interrupted him, trying to steer the conversation back to today, to the ELN struggle in the countryside. But he paid me no attention and carried on talking into the early morning hours. Then suddenly — it might even have been in mid-sentence — he asked me what was going on in Quebec.
Taken by surprise, I temporized, asking what he meant.
“Comrades from the FLQ came to see me not so long ago, They’d been to see the Cubans and came here to consult the ELN on how to turn Quebec into an independent communist country. They said they were planning something big, something spectacular that would shake the confidence of the English oppressors and change the political consciousness of the masses.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I said. “You know I’ll have to make a report.”
“I’m telling you so that if the FLQ manages to pull off something dramatic in Quebec, Canada won’t blame the ELN. We have enemies enough in the world without adding Canada to the list. Besides, I don’t believe French Canadians are being oppressed by anyone. I know all about the Quiet Revolution.”
Now that he had passed his message, Rojas wanted to drop the subject of Quebec and move on to other things. I asked him why he had become a priest and then a revolutionary.
“One day when I was a teenager, I was called by Christ to become a priest and was a seminarian in the 1950s, when Pope John XXIII was head of the church. He brought in the reforms of Vatican II allowing priests to celebrate the mass in the language of the people and to reach out to those of other faiths. Here, in Latin America, we had great hopes he would make the church an instrument of social justice, but by the time I was ordained, he was dead and the old guard was blocking change.”
“Then why did you take your vows?”
“I would never have renounced my vocation and wanted to continue the fight. After the Vatican turned its back on reform, we launched the Liberation Theology movement to fight for the poor.”
“How could that stop oligarchs from taking the lands of campesinos and killing Indians?”
“You asked me a little while ago why ordinary, otherwise law-abiding Colombians chase and beat gamines to death in the streets of Bogota. They do it because of sin — sin planted in their hearts by the Devil. The Devil is to blame when we Colombians never forget an insult and never forgive a wrong. The Devil is the reason why we always avenge an injury done to a member of our family even if the hurt was inflicted generations ago. The Devil is looking over the shoulders of the rich, making them want to monopolize the resources of our county, at the cost of exploiting and manipulating the poor.”
“I’d like to ask the priest why God allows the Devil free reign to cause suffering in Colombia in the first place,” I said, hoping to calm him down.
“Excuse me, Señor Cadotte,” he said, stroking his beard, “I don’t know the answer to that question. “But I do know,” he said, speaking rapidly, “that almost three hundred thousand people have been massacred in this country in my lifetime alone. And I was born just thirty years ago. The people who carried out the killings, manipulated to slaughter others by competing political parties controlled by the oligarchy, were the neighbours of the murdered, friends who had lived in nearby villages for centuries. That is why so many millions of people fled to the barrios of Bogota. It wasn’t just to find a better life. It was to escape the slaughter in the countryside. And when they came to Bogota, they infected others with the plague of evil they brought from the countryside. That’s why there are more thieves, prostitutes, drug dealers, and killers-for-hire in Colombia than any other place in South America. That’s why I rededicated myself to my life as priest, to be able to work with the poor and combat the Devil who is alive and thriving in the souls of our people.”
“When you speak of the Devil being alive in the souls of the people, I assume you are speaking metaphorically?”
The words had barely left my mouth when Rojas leaped to his feet, shook his fist at me and cried out, “Get thee behind me Satan! Get thee behind me!”
I recoiled, wondering what I had done or said to enrage him, making ready to get away if he were to turn on me. But his passion spent, Rojas collapsed back onto the pew, bowed his head in prayer, and muttered what I took to be some sort of invocation.
“The Devil was with us in the church and took possession of your soul,” Rojas quietly told me when he finished praying. “But I drove him away.”
This man is insane, I thought. Everyone in this country is crazy. “I think we should be going,” I said. “It’s late.”
“No, no, no, no,” Rojas said, grasping me by the arm. “We can’t leave yet. We have too much to talk about. I’m sorry if I frightened you, but it was for your own good. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”
When I made no reply but stayed put, Rojas told me about his efforts to introduce Liberation Theology to Colombia. “To help the poor and combat the Devil, I went into the churches and called on the oligarchs to share their wealth and their political power with the people. I called on the clergy to go into the barrios and work with the people.”
“Like Jesus driving out money-changers from the Temple?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“What was the reaction of the church hierarchy?”
“They were terrified the oligarchs would blame them for my actions, even though they were from the same class. They banned me from preaching in the churches but I went to university campuses, public parks — anywhere at all to call for a revolution in thinking among all sectors of the population. Whenever I spoke, huge crowds — not just the poor, but members of the middle class and students, professors, and artists — gathered to hear me. Then the archbishop called me in one day and formally ordered me to stop making speeches. I refused and he excommunicated me. I then left Bogota to join the ELN and to fight with an AK-47 in my hands. The ELN gave me command of one its units and we’ve been battling government troops for the past year.”
“But how can you reconcile your role as a priest, even one expelled by the Church, with taking up arms. Did you lose your faith? Is that why you’re able to kill policemen and soldiers?”
“My faith is strongest when I must kill. It is written in the Gospels that Christ said, ‘I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword.’ In taking up arms on behalf of the poor, I am carrying out his will and fulfilling my ordination pledge to serve as intermediary between God and man.”
“Does that mean you’re prepared to kill campesino conscripts forced to join the army for the sake of the revolution?”
“That’s right — God will forgive me for taking lives in a just cause.”
“Don’t the oligarchs
and the church hierarchy claim God is on their side and you — not them — represent the forces of evil in Colombia?”
“They do, but they’re wrong. God is always on the side of the weak. It’s written in the gospels.”
“But how can you expect a few hundred men scattered in a region as big as France to overthrow a country like Colombia with its tens of thousands of soldiers, helicopters, fighter planes, and American advisers?
“That’s illusionary strength. We follow the teachings of Che, who said a few committed revolutionary fighters supported by the masses could overthrow a country whatever its size — provided the conditions were ripe.
“But look what happened to Che in Bolivia — hunted down and killed by a Ranger battalion trained by the Americans.
“But Che was not supported by the campesinos of Bolivia. Here we have their support.”
“Are you supported by the Cubans?”
“Yes of course. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro are our heroes. I’ve been to see them in Havana. The Cubans help us as best they can, flying arms and equipment into remote airstrips — but Cuba is a poor country and its aid is limited.”
“But Castro and his followers are communists. They’re atheists. How can you accept aid from atheists?”
Taking me by the hand, Rojas led me to the front of the church and lit a candle to illuminate the sanctuary. “See,” he said, pointing to a painting of Christ, a crown of thorns on his head, nailed to the cross, with blood oozing from his wounds. “The gamines beaten to death on the sidewalks, the Indians hunted and killed by paramilitary forces, the families starving in the barrios — all those who are ground down under the oppression of the oligarchy — are the suffering Christ. I’m worshiping Christ when I help them. The Cuban comrades are doing the same, even if they don’t know it. I may call myself a Christian, and they may consider themselves communists and atheists, but we’re all worshiping Christ in the suffering people.”
Exceptional Circumstances Page 8