So why so long.. in so many countries,maybe it’s Yuppie ambition, a chance to prove the leisure pursuits of your society, but it’s rare a mountain that is a superlative in a place goes unclimbed for too long. Heck, I once climbed the highest mountain in East Timor, which is a country of 1 million, but it had infrastructure to get to the top and a trail. A guide was 10 bucks for a half day affair.
The Highest Mountain in the United States and North America, perhaps in part due to the 7 Summits phenomenon launched by the Texas Billionaire Bass Brothers with their endeavor and book by the same name back in the 80’s, is called Denali or Mt.McKinley, and it has 5 guide services plus independent parties from all over the world attempt it, usually about 1300 people per year attempt, and annually about 500 make the summit, sometimes dragged along by their guides, but nonetheless successful. Such infrastructure exists all over the world, from the Himalayas to the Alps to the Rockies, and in South America in places like Aconcagua, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, and in Colombia supposedly in Bucaramanga.. so why not the sierra…
Well, i’ll toss out a first casual reason, not the two I plan to explore in greater depth in a moment, but it’s an 18,000 ft mountain, 5700 meters, and that is about 1000 meters or 3000 feet past anything an armature would want to polish off in a day or two.. it’s up there in a realm that puts it amongst the biggest things on earth, and even though it is in a tropical zone, it’s high enough to be very tough from the perspective of altitude, the possibilities of HAPE and HACE, and the sun in punishing.. It’s not in the much vaunted ‘Death Zone’, the stuff of Men’s Health and Outdoor Magazine tabloidal legend, which lies about 26,000 ft.. in fact, I’ll legitimize all the hype with an actual Wikipedia Article about it..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_high_altitude_on_humans
but it’s high enough that it isn’t a Colorado 14er on a weekend.. not to be, well, tabloidal,but you can die at these altitudes from exposure and altitude issues alone, even if preserved from the additional hazards of alpinism. But these reasons enough haven’t prevented people from climbing many a similar and higher mountain in thousands of places around the world.. so what is it preventing people from going up there?
Two Buzz Words..Sacredness, and the FARQ.
For the uninitiated, Colombia has been engaged in a Civil War for some 50 years, and longer if you delve into what is a long national history of fratricide, driven by a theme that will be familiar to many Americans, two political parties, one of the landed gentry for a long time, and the other of the lower class and intellectuals, basically the conservatives and liberals, a bit more complex than this, but the conservatives drawing their lineage from the beliefs of the National Liberator, Simon Bolivar, and the Liberals believing in the somewhat more law based opinions of his main rival, Santander.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Paula_Santander
To place them in another context, in Mexico, Santander would be Benito Juarez, and Bolivar some combination of Cortez and Porfirio Diaz, or in the US, Santander as a vindictive Thomas Jefferson to Bolivar’s somewhat less restrained George Washington. All this to say, that at some point, the followers of Santander and a more extreme group that started to consider itself communist, broke off after an incident in a place called Marquetalia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquetalia_Republic
and began waging a war against the government organized as a group called the FARQ.They fully embraced a communist ideology supposedly in 1980 at their 7th congress. There were two other significant Left wing insurgent groups in Colombia, M-19 and ELN, but the FARQ and the Colombian Army are the Major Role Players in the Sierra Nevada, and the paramilitaries were but are no longer a significant factor that I could find, other than as a persistent memory for some.
As the FARQ expanded, financed by some assumed combination of cocaine revenue, protection rackets, and support from Soviet Block countries and perhaps even the Peruvian and Venezuelan Governments at times as has been alleged, they opened what they called Fronts around the country in Rural Areas. The one in the Sierra Nevada De Santa Marta, Front 59, at one point had more than 800 members I was told. I will reveal the present disposition in a post entitled Current Security Situation.
In 2002 there were major combat operations, with the military moving into the sierra to displace the FARQ. They removed them from many a town, including Pueblo Bello without a fight, but between La Minah and Guatapuri, 200 people were killed in everything from Executions to Infantry Combat. The people there are relaxed enough, but there is a way in which they can be comically indifferent which seems to be a defense mechanism against the trauma, and this behavior just a few valleys away on either side of the Sierra was not evident. The Operations were ordered under the NEw Administration of President Uribe, who got elected promising to take down the FARC, who amongst other things had killed his father when he was younger in rural Antioquia. The FARC at it’s high point literally administered to some degree 10% of the municipalities in Colombia, and it wasn’t all in once place, they were all over, including Guatepuri, Pueblo Bello, and i have even heard they ran Palomino to some degree, and definitely the villages above it. I have seen the same phenomenon at work in the Darien Gap, where the FARC are the de facto big brothers of the Indigenous groups who live closest to the colombian border, away from Panamanian infrastructure. The Sierra Marta was a FARC territory, and they liked and treated the Koguis quite well from what I have been told, but killed more than a few Arawaku and Kancuamos, and I would assume they treated the Wiwa’s similarly to the Koguis.. I have had Arawaku’s and Kancuamos tell me they were quite pleased to have the Army come in 2002, although it has accelerated the forces of westernization in some of the towns, the Koguis and Wiwas are blissfully indifferent to this, and the Arawaku’s have a sophisticated combination of ways to deal with maintaining their lifestyle while working with the outside world. Like I will describe later, the Kancuamos have been westernized since long before the FARC came around.
All this to say, that as nice as the FARC might have been to some, most mountain climbers tend to be from the Elite or Bougoise, and these are not people who should be messing with the FARC, it’s like a mouse teasing a cat, and it didn’t happen. There was one famous exception, a group headed to the Ciudad Perdido (Lost City of the Tayrona Culture, the predecessor culture to the present day indigenous groups which peaked and fell in pre colombian times, rediscovered in the 70’s, and a popular tourist trek from near Santa Marta and Minca), which seems to have continued tour operations even as the war raged in some sort of truce, were kidnapped by a combination of the FARC and ELN in September 2003, no doubt when the Uribe ordered offensives were creating pressure, officially as a protest of alleged human rights violations by the military and paramilitaries. The last of the 8 individuals was released after 3 months. There was paramilitary involvement in the incident as well. Tours resumed in 2005 to the ciudad perdido. I haven’t looked too hard, but I haven’t heard of any other incidents between the Guerrillas and Climbers.
But now I must introduce the Sacredness concept. Many of these tribes will argue that the Mountains are sacred, and cannot be visited by outsiders. This is a tricky ball of wax… Sometimes when I hang out with an indigenous group, i sometimes wonder how much of what I am being told is what they think I want to hear, how much of it might be regurgitated hooey that NGO’s and occasional hippies that come begging for validation from the Mamo’s, because their dad was some businessman prick who didn’t teach them about spirituality, the local term for Religious Leaders or Shamans. Hang out in traveled areas of The Sierra a bit, and you will see these guys, hippies from Bogota looking for answers and a mouth full of Coca focus. Every time I heard this term, I wondered if the whole Sagrado thing was pumped up by outsiders, which the Arawaku’s seem to take seriously on occasion, or was it an excuse to keep people from getting kidnapped by the FARC which would create hassle for everyone. You will notice in Colombia that a lot of people are quite more disposed than would normal in a lot of places in the world to putting up with problems, since for 50 years anyone who complained ended up with a bullet in their head. This sacredness thing gets tossed about a bit.. oh, the Koguis up there won’t let you to the snows, it’s sacred.. oh, well, you’ll never get permission for that particular spot, it’s sacred.
When i hang out with the Arawakus, I feel like if I made a strong enough argument, proved the FARC were gone, and offered to involve them in an ascent, I could get through. With the Koguis around Guatepuri, I feel as if a little help from the military in terms of conversation with the leaders to say there is no danger, maybe even an escort, the Alcalde (the municipal government) and a little money in the local leaders pocket might get me access as well. One Soldier told me i could get up there through Minca, but I am not sure if he was confusing the Ciudad Perdida with the High Peaks region, but I kept hearing the sacredness thing, and I wonder how true it really is, how much they would hold to it, and what combination of gifts, involvement and logic might break through this barrier.. I have some hunches…