Reflection on There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia by Maria McFarland Sanchez Moreno

               There Are No Dead Here is about the history of paramilitary organizations in Colombia, who are the right-wing equivalent of guerrillas, like FARC, M-19, and the ELN. This book traces their roots back to “La Violencia,” a period of bloody civil war between liberals and conservatives in Colombia that broke out when the presidential hopeful Eliecer Gaitan was assassinated. At the end, with 200,000 dead (one in sixty Colombians), the Conservative and Liberal Parties made peace, forming the National Front, agreeing to alternate their time in power. However, some Liberal groups refused the offer, claiming it favored the Conservatives. They continued the war under the banner of the “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC).

               Under the command of “Tirofijo” (straight shot), FARC continued to fight the war and was joined by other guerrilla groups mentioned above. For a time in the 1980’s, the war was overshadowed by the drug war, as the Cali and Medellin cartels did battle in the streets of the country’s major cities. However, they were only one small aspect of the greater war that Colombia had not stopped fighting. In fact, cartel members joined that war when M-19 kidnapped the daughter of one cartel member, creating a paramilitary group called MAS- “Muerte a Secuestradores” (Death to Kidnappers). As guerrillas continued to kidnap the wealthy and landed, they needed way to defend themselves, much like the cartel leaders had done. In 1994, the government legalized the formation of “Convivirs,” which were sort of private militias.

               These got out of control. Soon, the paramilitaries formed for defense became a new type of gang. They sold drugs, massacred whole towns full of people, and stole land from others. It became a way for the wealthy to form private armies that would go on taking over their rivals’ land. Attempts to investigate them, heavily detailed in the book, were made nearly impossible by assassinations, threats, and blackmail carried out by paramilitaries against their investigators. Colombia had always been corrupt, but it got bad enough that the major security and investigation agencies were corrupted, as they ended up in the hand of the paramilitaries. It didn’t help the situation that they found an ally in Alvaro Uribe, first as governor of Antioquia, then as President of Colombia, and today as one of Colombia’s foremost senators. Uribe and his family have been tied up in mysterious ways with the paramilitaries for a long time, publicly supporting laws of amnesty for their crimes, and privately doing who-knows-what behind the scenes.

               As president, Uribe was immensely popular, as he took a side in the war (the paramilitaries) and essentially won. He freed hostages and defeated guerrilla groups, most notably FARC. He left office as the most popular president in Colombian history, as most people were willing to forget massacres by paramilitaries that would kill dozens if it meant that the war would come to an end. Peace was made by his successor, Juan Manuel Santos, but Uribe bitterly opposed it, saying it treated FARC to kindly, which a very narrow majority of Colombians agreed on.  However, peace was made anyway, ending the war with FARC, which left 220,000 people dead, millions forcibly displaced, and hundreds of thousands “disappeared.”

               This is a really good book about the situation in Colombia and I think is good for Americans to read since it shows the reader how Pablo Escobar is really just a small part of the story. It reads like a crime thriller as you are taken through the lives of the investigators of paramilitary crimes. I was particularly impacted by the fact that many places described in the book are places that I have personally visited, for example, I have been to San Juan Nepomuceno, where there is a monument to the “El Salado” Massacre, where dozens where killed by “Jorge 40,” who lived in Valledupar, just a 2 and a half hour drive from me. The book also mentions El Dificil, a town just an hour away, describing voter fraud that was occurring there as recently as the early 2000’s. In sum, this is a really good education on modern Colombian conflict and an eye-opener for anyone who thinks that Pablo Escobar is the end-all be-all of Colombia.