This might be the most relevant and important entry to this Blog, and the one I worked the hardest to be able to write (although I suffered the most for the entry on Pico’s, that’s for sure!). The following will scare the shit out of you, and then you might be surprised at my conclusion that perhaps for the first time since the 80’s, the Sierra is Climb-able.. this is a news flash potentially worthy of National News in Colombia.. the problem is, or the good part is, that I might be the only person not in the Military who has put this piece of info together, and the Military isn’t in the business of climbing mountains recreationally. My conclusions are derived from personal exploration and a series of conversations with sources within the Brigada (Brigade, which in Colombia can be as many as 10 Batallions, and they currently have defined geographic areas of Operations that I think cover the whole country, but tend to put their units on road blocks and in little fire bases close to Guerilla wildernesses with their headquarters usually in the biggest town around where they have a garrison that locals call ‘El Battalion’)responsible for about 2/3 of the Sierra, with the last third being the western side that has been pacified the longest, which is headquartered I believe in Fundacion on the west side of the Sierra.
The Theme Song for this Entry is One Night in Bangkok, that cheesy 80’s song from the play Chess, because, in Colombia ‘You can feel the Devil walking next to you’… The sad difference between Colombia and Bangkok is that in Asia, the Devil knows he is the Devil and plays his part amiably, and with humor, but in irony deprived Latin America (Mexico and Argentina notably excepted), the devil is either so cunning or so convinced of his own righteousness that he has forgotten or never knew he was the Devil.
If you ask a Colombian Policeman, as I apt to do on occasion, donde estan el FARC-EP!? (where are the Revolutionary Army of Colombia Peoples Army !?) they will give you the standard answer first: Todos Luageres ( Everywhere!) but then, if they feel like being helpful, which is usually, they will either point a finger in the direction of a neighborhood, or tell you “pero no preocupes, es seguro aqui”.. (but don’t worry, it’s safe here… ). For whatever ways in which traveling is somewhat easy in Colombia, pretty low stress, this is a habit of asking this question I have developed that has in fact influenced my itinerary more than once. War has been a fact of life in this country since it’s establishment now 197 years ago (although the revolution began 202 years ago, it almost feels like it never ended, and in a way it didn’t, because the divisions between Santander and Bolivar were the dynamic until the 80’s, when cocaine came along and just added a new even less idealistic player).
For some background, there are 5 human elements to worry about in Colombia. To keep things simple, I am not going to blur the distinctions between these 5 groups, although trust me, things are blurry!:
The FARC
The ELN
Right Wing Paramilitaries
Narco-Trafickers
Petty Criminals
The Military have emerged as the good guys, after again, a blurry past of corruption, then overzealous pursuit of their goals, to include massacres and rampant collusion with the Paramilitaries, and two scandals now entering history, both around 2006, of a commando unit killing for narcos, and another where they killed civilians, perhaps accidentally, then re-dressed them up as FARC to avoid prosecution. But when I see a colombian soldier today I see a friend. I see Operation Jaque and just good people tired of pretending that Colombia will get a better state from Revolution. They have emerged as a professional military in the way that the British Army did in Northern Ireland, kind of a tough extension of the Police, with some protocol skills to boot.
The National Police Force is largely friendly, professional, and what you would want police to be on the street level. I fear cops in the US way more than I ever feared any cops I met in Colombia. They are usually young, friendly, good at giving directions, and are shifted between locations nationwide about once a year to avoid corruption, and again, usually have good people skills. They have a kind of city side with guys sporting pistols, and a kind of almost army side you see in some of the tougher locations.. they can be distinguished from the army by their plain green BDU’s as opposed to the pixellated camouflage of the Army and slightly different ones of the Marines (Naval Infantry). Corruption may exist, but again, when you meet them on the street it has been for me 98% a good experience. The Nationalization was a reform by Uribe and apparently successful, and maybe a good step for Mexico as well.
The famed M-19 no longer exists, they demilitarized years ago after some funny acts like stealing Simon Bolivar’s sword and some not so funny acts like taking the Supreme Court at the behest of Pablo Escobar to stop extradition to the US of Drug lords, with a loss of over 100 lives. The current Mayor of Bogota is a former M-19 member, to show how much they are in the past like a kind of Colombian Weathermen Underground.
So making this relevant to the Sierra, let me remove a few more groups from the Pan-Colombian equation. The ELN’s power base is around Norte De Santander, a department maybe 100 miles south of the Sierra, in the Cordillerra Oriental along the Venezuelan border, and, surprise, surprise, a good area to grow Coca.. it’s a funny theme in Colombia that the People’s Revolution is usually deemed most ripe for success in places that for some strange reason happen to be the mid mountain slopes that make for good coca.. if I wasn’t trying to focus on the sierra, I could expound on this theme quite a bit. Back to the ELN, their Low Thousands if not less strong revolution, a kind of ‘me too’ kid brother to the FARC, is kind of too far away to be of worry in the Sierra.. they have distinct turfs, have battled between each other before, but they have bigger problems and better revenue sources these days than to bother each other.. the ELN has recently made headlines by trying to join the ongoing peace process in Havana, and also returning some recent kidnappers as a sign of good will, although not the two german guys that wandered into Norte De Santander on their Truck trip through South America, but I promised this would conclude in good news!
The Paramilitaries, whom I could smell the stink of all over Valledupar, like if the football players in your high school started picking up guns and killing everyone who made trouble in the halls.. part of you didn’t mind seeing the bully, the FARC, get his, but they often would kill his mom and his girlfriend as well.. it got very ugly… and as I might have mentioned it got very ugly in the Sierra as well. Between Guatepuri and El Atanquez, a battle raged in 2002 that killed 200 people, everything from combat to executions on suspicion of collaboration was to blame.. not to freak you out more, but there were even killings of suspected FARC prostitutes with cans of Bug Spray by the Paramilitaries, not that this is a good way to make the sierra seem attractive, but it was rough for years in Valledupar, which as a cattle ranching town, the home of the Cattleman’s music, Vallenato, kind of a Colombian Austin or Bakersfield musically, was ripe for Paramilitary formation and action. They demobilized in 2006 under an amnesty that tried to wrestle the war back into the hands of the military after it almost went off the skids in the previous 4 years, most notably in somewhat distant Cordoba and Antioquia, although the famed leader of the AUC there had no doubt influence on events in both the Sierra Nevada and La Guajira, Carlos Castano and his two brothers, Vincinte and Fidel, now being immortalized in the somewhat intelligent Caracol Network miniseries Los Tres Caines, the Three Caines. Like Future President Uribe, also from Antioquia, their father, Jesus, had been kidnapped by the FARC and they vowed a revenge that became a national movement. But the paramilitaries are no longer any issue in the Sierra. They are an issue in smuggling in parts of the country, as kind of re-hashed gangs like something out of a bad mercenary movie, and in places where land reform is occurring (one famous group in this instance is called the Black Eagles)..all these areas are in the North of Colombia, but it’s a big country, so nowhere close to the Sierra, thankfully.. all-righty.. so who is left on our rogues list.. ah..
Narcotraficantes.. well, drugs do in fact leave from the Caribbean coast of Colombia still, although I don’t think in the same volume as the Pacific coast and Mexico bound, as Mexico, mostly the Zetas and Sinaloa Cartels, have taken over world distribution, a bit like DeBeers, turning Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia into somewhat decentralized resource suppliers after their previous heydays (first Peru before anyone even knew it was a problem in the 50’s, then Bolivia and Colombia in the 80;s through the rise of Mexico in the last decade or so… Mexico’s Banana Republic’s..oh how the world turns!) These guys work quite silently, but a big group in La Guajira was busted recently, all at a beach party of all things! The Local Gangs shut down Santa Marta on New Years of 2011 as a sign of respect.. no one could party without being killed that year, in kind of the Waikiki of Colombia.. so they are still strong, but they want nothing to do with the high sierra nor climbers nor indigenous would be my guess. the Busted Group seems to have been the newest incarnation of the North Coast Cartel. The production of Coca paste is kind of decentralized, so although the FARC, ELN, or Paramilitaries will control these areas, these guys just buy raw material like any middle man. The big names now in Colombia are Los Rastrejos, and Los Urubanos. They are the heirs of the Cali Cartel. Something called La Officina de Envigado seems to be on the decline, which is the heir of the Medellin Cartel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Rastrojos
In the Hay-Days of the FARC, from 1998 when the FARC went on the offensive but before the election of Uribe in 2002, the 19th front which controlled the Sierra Nevada numbered 800… today: One Squad of about 15 operates in the eastern Sierra in coco growing areas fairly well clear of any areas you might access to climb the mountain.The closest being Guatepuri, and the two valley’s option, but likely still a two day hike for them if not more. I don’t know if they consider themselves the remnants of the 19th front, or are the 59th front I will mention later. I was told by the military that around Guatapuri east you might see 2 or 3 of them at a time, occasionally, but they are merely looking, snooping and pooping as it’s called in the US Army. Guatapuri, with it’s platoon, also feels safe I was told, there has been no FARC action anywhere in the area since 2009. Above Guatapuri, a few people did warn me that in the prior months they had seen the FARC come through, that it was a semi regular occurance, but I had not received the previous information to whittle down whether they come through in force or just to say hi. The Colombian Army actually has pictures of about a 3rd of them on the wall, like yearbook shots.I recently met a Nun in the Anthropology Museum of the Hermanas de Laura (The Sisters of Laura, Laura being a beatified Colombian nun who’s work began with the Embrerra in Choco and western Antioquia about a hundred years ago, and her order spread to looking after and converting natives all over colombia and now other countries) on the west side of Medellin, and I asked her where she had lived.. after a long list she mentioned the Sierra, and I believe their Convent was over in the area I am describing, the mountains above Riohacha. She said that they once threw her off a donkey, but no harm came to her. This is somewhat inconclusive, but the military found it incomprehensible that the FARC would mess with anyone in the Sierra these days.
When the FARC wanted to take over the whole country, the Sierra was a piece of a larger puzzle of taking over all of Colombia. They also see themselves as defenders of the Indigenous, who tolerated and even occasionally assisted them. These days the Sierra has relevance as a short cut from Venezuela to Santa Marta for the dwindling FARC urban presence, perhaps as a trafficking route, but this is the conventional wisdom twice voiced to me why any Guerrillas would be up there..other than protecting so Coca bushes in the east of the range. It is this question that creates the what if? What if two or three did happen by… what if 10 go by headed to Santa Marta?
Who else might be trekking through is the group on the Venezuelan Border. It is now documented fact from a successful cross border operation into Ecuador a few years back that Hugo Chavez for years aided the FARC and even gave them 300 Million USD at one point. There is another group of FARC living on the other side of the Valley in the Sierra Oriental, the Eastern Mountain Range of both the Andes and Colombia. It’s kind of neat that you drive from Maicao and watch the Andes bein as little hills to your left, and by Valledupar there is a 12,000 foot mountain, Painted Mountain, to your left, within maybe 3 hours of the first hill, but that prettiness, like usual in Colombia, comes at a price of them being a bit.. well.. dodgy, 150 strong FARC 59th Front Dodgy.. and mildly active… again, they seem to just be guarding Coca production and smuggling routes (into Venezuela to go to Cuba or elsewhere in the Caribbean, or out of Colombia via the coast to go to Mexico I am speculating). These guys live up there and go hang in Venezuela when Uncle Hugo likes to have a Bar B Q for them to forget his cancer troubles, and they have committed a few attacks, but against specific targets. It was documented that in 2011 they tried to mess with the rails of the coal train, and they killed a policeman. I don’t know what if anything happened in 2012, although I heard of nothing my first month in Colombia, I hadn’t quite acquired the ear for it yet, still figuring out what was good to eat and where to go. In the 3 months I have been here, to signal the end of the ceasefire they had called for the Havana Negotiations that have been ongoing for a few months, right on a road I had come down weeks earlier, near the junction between the roads to Uruba, Maicao, Riohacha and Valledupar, about 3 miles east of Maicao, they ambushed and killed three policemen, which was national news along with a string of other attacks that all happened to signal that cease fire termination, which was a bit of a negotiating tactic. The few hostages taken that day in other parts of the country, mostly the south west,were released within a week or two as a result of the negotiations. The FARC has, by the way, claimed they are no longer interested in taking hostages, kidnapping as you might call it, in a move that might be seen as a plea for legitimacy to go with these negotiations and a growing feeling of malaise in the country after 50 years of the crap I am writing about.
So the last is petty criminals.. I felt pretty safe with about everyone I met once I was into the Sierra.. there was the Dignity of mountain people.. the Kogui will get drunk and hit you up for cash, claiming it’s for their sick kid, but it’s for a Club Colombia, but I never saw any evidence of crime internally or between the tribes, even though there is a spirited rivalry and distrust between some of them, and of the Mestizos. The Arawaku’s came across as too dignified for such activities, although I once left some gear by a river, and it disappeared, and as I had thought, a few kids had taken it. I found a Mamo, a kind of chief figure, who was a nice measured wise old guy, and he appreciated what likely had happened as I did, asked around and came back with it, although I had to pay a kind of 2 dollar fee which I think they put towards cell phone minutes, but it earned me an offer to stay in their house that night for free, which I took up both out of good nature and curiosity. I didn’t get much of a read on the Wiwa’s although they came across as more patient Kogui’s. The Kancuamos that are basically mestizos now seemed pleasant enough, they party a bit like other modern Colombians but I saw no special tendencies towards delinquency. And no one lives above 7500 ft.. I could see some of the natives being fascinated by modern camping gear and climbing gear, but I doubt you would see them by chance by the time you got the the base camp. I have a friend who wandered up into the sierra two years ago above Nabusimake, and he told me of being quite impacted by Altitude and Malnutrition which was more a condition of his life and inexperience than anything occurring in the Sierra, but a Kogui happened along and insisted he mount his donkey, nursed him for a bit and helped him down the mountain.
video that shows what the sierra was like maybe 10 years ago:
Video on hostage taking nar Santa Marta, but it appears tobe just a criminal thing:
PResident Santos visits an indigenous village in the Sierra, and the Governor’s of all three adjoining states are interviewed.
A police video about taking some doctors to a village to work with the Wiwa’s, someplace on the Santa Marta Side, likely above Minca..
recent attack on 3 cops on read to Maicao: