By now Saturday evening was upon us and all we had to show for our trip to Colombia was the interview and photo with :Lucero and scores of photos of the local road-works. Frustrated and depressed, I agreed to join Danny and Trent for a night out on the town. In the ‘Loaded’ article I might have written, ”But when ‘Loaded’ journalists’ backs are against the wall, they only know one way to react. They go out on the piss”, but the truth was far more mundane. I had specifically asked Danny to hold back on the little tin whilst we were working. I didn’t want Trent getting so off his face that he couldn’t take a photo. Now that I had wasted their time dragging them down to San Vicente I might as well let them go and enjoy themselves for a night. And even though I didn’t drink due to a stomach condition, rather than sit in the hotel room, I might as well go out and get some fresh air.
As we wandered from bar to bar, Danny explained about the Colombian culture of drinking. There was a local, highly potent drink brewed out of pure cane spirit, called ‘aguadiente, which roughly translated as ‘fire-water’. Each area of the country was proud of the potency of its local ‘aguadiente’ and there was great competition to brew the most potent drink. As was to be expected, San Vicente claimed that their’s was the strongest.
I had been listening carefully to all this, trying to discern which of my many allergies the ‘aguadiente’ would affect. But whilst the fomented brew would do little to improve my yeast infection, at least it wasn’t made out of anything that would trigger an allergic reaction. Reluctantly at first, I joined them, but soon I was matching them drink for drink.
Carrying a couple of bottles of the stuff we staggered down a particularly ill-lit street and came upon a funfair. It was rudimentary in the extreme compared to English funfairs, but in a Colombian jungle town it was a rare treat, only made possible by the fact that today was one of the local fiestas.
By now the three of us were quite drunk. Not falling-down-drunk or slurring-your-speech-drunk, but sufficiently affected to stagger from time to time and generally talk nonsense. We staggered out of the funfair and into the darkened street again and towards what would be a pivotal moment in our whole trip.
Suddenly, around the corner of the narrow street, came a sight that was both amazing and incongruous in the extreme. To the accompaniment of whistles and bells ‘El Gusanito’, or ‘The Little Worm’, thundered out of the darkness. ‘El Gusanito’ was a kiddies’ ride in the shape of a giant worm.
The head or engine that pulled the rest was a green, plastic construction in the shape of a Disney’s worm’s head, complete with large bulbous insect eyes and waving antennae. The construction completely obscured the farm tractor that it was mounted on. Behind it were eight, two-wheeled cars, again covered with bright green plastic, that made up the worm’s body. The whole ride was festooned with multi-coloured, flashing lights and, every so often, a loud, mournful siren would sound over the clamour of the whistles and bells.
Of all the things we might have expected to encounter in the darkened streets of San Vicente this was in the outer ranges of improbability. The three of us stood there, literally with our mouths open in surprise.
As it drew close we saw that several of the cars were occupied by young children. Almost before I knew it, Danny and Trent had grabbed me by the arms and pulled me into one of the little cars with them. As we thundered off along the street I suddenly discovered another aspect of the ride. Rounding the many sharp corners of the narrow street, the children would lean out of the cars, wave their arms and scream at the startled passers-by. Other children and the occasional dog ran out of the darkened hovels we passed and howled after us.
This was something less than dignified behaviour for supposed serious, international journalists. Drunk or not I couldn’t help but feel slightly ridiculous. Danny and Trent were suffering no such qualms. Urging me to join them, they leaned out of the cars as we rounded the bends and screamed enthusiastically at the unsuspecting towns-folk.
By now I was caught up in the moment too. We rounded one particularly sharp bend and the three of us leaned out and screamed in unison at the three startled pedestrians standing on the corner. It was only as we flashed by that we noticed the jungle fatigues and automatic weapons. It was a three-man FARC patrol. In the event, they were more surprised that we were. I still have a clear picture of their startled faces as we disappeared into the darkness.
The central square acted as a terminus for the ride and that was enough for me. Danny and Trent expressed their intention to visit the town’s only brothel, somewhere up in the impenetrable blackness of the hills above San Vicente. It wasn’t for me for a whole host of reasons, not the least of them being the almost palpable presence of the vengeful spirit of Marsha. I staggered off towards the hotel and oblivion.
The following morning, at breakfast outside the Yokomo Café, Danny and Trent regaled me with details of their visit to the brothel. In keeping with the rest of San Vicente, this seemed to be a bizarre establishment too. According to their account it was run by a bearded trans-sexual and had only two whores. Danny and Trent had monopolized these to such an extent that they had provoked a mini-riot, with outraged and impatient fellow customers banging on their room door and demanding access to the whores.
Sitting bleary-eyed and somewhat the worse for wear in the early morning sun, I was aware of a growing feeling of embarrassment. What would FARC think of us? Every bit of credibility we might have had must surely have vanished. Would they even speak to us now?
The reality though was completely the opposite. Guerilla after guerilla came up to our table, laughing and slapping us across the backs. Mauricio was effusive and the normally taciturn Nora could be seen laughing behind her hands. Lucero larked about with Danny and he had them all laughing uproariously as he re-enacted events from the night before. It was intimated that they had been very suspicious of us previously and had thought that we might be spies. They had been watching closely everything we did.
In retrospect, our night out on the piss was probably the smartest move we could have made. No doubt the CIA and MI5 train their operatives to keep a low profile. So for FARC, whatever we were we definitely weren’t spies. The only misgivings I had about that was that they might also conclude that we weren’t serious journalists either.
However, over the next couple of days we got everything we could ever have hoped for. We were taken inside FARC’s office, a place that had been strictly off limits to us before. There, under a large poster of Che Guevara which would surely have been a cliché in any other circumstances, we had FARC’s ideology fully explained to us. The access-to-the-office-bit was definitely a strategic mistake on FARC’s part, as after that we were hardly ever out of the place.
We went on river patrol with Mauricio and three heavily armed guerillas in a massive iron canoe. Afterwards we went on township patrol. FARC definitely seemed to be popular. Everywhere we went people rushed out of their shacks to greet them effusively and discuss whatever problems they had, and, considering the degree of poverty, they certainly had plenty of those. It was all a visual feast for Trent, who was snapping away frantically in the background.
We were introduced to FARC’s graffiti artist, a callow youth who would surely have been a social menace in any other society. It was he who was responsible for the literally hundreds of revolutionary slogans and icons plastered all over San Vicente. Purely as an acknowledgement to whom we were working for we got him to spray ‘LOADED’ in big’ yellow letters on a nearby wall.
Tuesday saw a major press conference at FARC’s local HQ, just down the road at Los Pozos and we were invited. The Colombian national press had arrived in force. TV crews in vans mounted with satellite dishes thronged the main square and nearby streets.
The star of the show was Raul Reyes, a small, elderly, bearded guy in jungle fatigues, who was number two in the guerilla High Command. He looked slightly bemused as he was first introduced to, then photographed with, the three English journalists from ‘Loaded’. The copy of the magazine had been deliberately left behind and I had instructed Danny to keep it as vague as possible, but still I saw Comandante Raul mouth the word ‘Loaded’ a couple of times with a quizzical look on his face.
It was my first real experience of a press conference, but, in the circumstances, I was a quick learner. I watched and listened as the representatives of the national press first introduced themselves and their media group, then asked their question. Comandante Reyes sat at a small table cluttered with microphones as dozens of heavily-armed guerillas scanned the surrounding countryside.
I just couldn’t resist it. Clutching a piece from ‘The Independent’ of a couple of months previously in which General Jose Serrano, the Colombian Chief of Police said, “The S.A.S have given us great help in recent times”, I framed my question. Or rather, the Colombian TV presenter who had agreed to help us did.
“Norman Parker, ‘Loaded’”, he said, live on Colombian national TV, as he acknowledged me standing next to him. “Bearing in mind the human rights allegations against the Colombian Army, what evidence does FARC have of the British SAS training the Colombian military?” he continued.
Comandante Reyes confessed that he didn’t have such information to hand, but promised to seek it out as a priority. I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. Robin Cook, our current Foreign Secretary, was forever wittering on about an ‘ethical foreign policy’. Sheer and utter hypocrisy, of course. I just welcomed a chance, however small, to embarrass him for a moment.
I also took full advantage of the close proximity of so many leading Colombian journalists, as well as several from other South American countries. Speaking off the record, they were a rich source of information. On the subject of who profits from the drugs trade, the overwhelming consensus was that every party does, FARC, ELN, the paramilitaries, the cartels and the Colombian Army.
One informed me that the former President had resigned amidst claims that his election campaign had been financed with drugs money. Another told me that the wife of Colonel Hiett, the officer in charge of the 200 U.S. troops officially fighting the drugs war in Colombia, had been jailed recently for smuggling cocaine through the diplomatic mail. Another six embassy staff were under investigation.
All claimed that the U.S. had its own agenda beyond that of drugs. “The last thing the U.S. wants is a Marxist Colombia”, said an Argentinian journalist. “The Panama Canal has just been handed back and there is a nationalist, reformist government in Venezuela.”
“FARC are incredibly strong”, said another, “they even have Stinger missiles. The Colombian military won’t be able to cope and the U.S. will have to send in troops. That will polarize the whole of South America and could well turn Colombia into another Vietnam.”
It was all heady stuff, but I didn’t kid myself that ‘Loaded’s’ city-boy readership would pause for a milli-second before doing their next line of Charlie. However, wars are fought with information as well as bullets and I had managed to fire a few shots.
Everywhere we went now, FARC patrols waved and swapped jokes with us. We were on first name terms with many of the towns-people. However, time was running short. We had to be on the plane for Bogota the following day. And ignore it as I might try, the logistics dictated that I would be back on Marsha’s birthday, but not until about nine in the evening.
Needless to say, I had neglected to mention that unfortunate fact in the daily phone calls I had made to her. To add insult to injury, her parents had flown in from their home abroad to be with us both on her birthday. Finally I had to confess the awful truth.
There was a long moment’s silence as I awaited the tirade that I knew must surely come. In the event it was short and succinct. Of all the phone lines in the world to have a private conversation on, the line from the guerilla capital at San Vicente was not the one. The C.I.A., M.I.5 and Colombian military intelligence closely monitored every call. So together with all the other information they had gleaned about me over the past week they now knew that I was a “fucking wanker”, just before Marsha put the phone down on me.
It was a sad parting between us and FARC. As a token of gratitude we had a cake made in a local shop. It was a creamy confection with ‘To the FARC Thanks for all your help Danny, Trent & Norman, ‘Loaded’”, iced upon it. We presented it to them in their office. It was an emotional moment. Lucero especially looked on the verge of being overcome. She recovered manfully though. Scooping a handful of cream from the top of the cake she slapped it in Danny’s face and a food fight ensued between the pair of them. An enduring memory is of the big blob of cream that ended up right on Che’s nose.
As we took off from the airport the following morning, FARC patrols waved goodbye from the perimeter. I reflected that not only had it been a successful first foreign assignment, it had also been a great adventure.
Back in London, ‘Loaded’ were delighted with the results. I was thankful that we had so many photos to back our story up, because at times they looked decidedly skeptical. And I had to confess, if I hadn’t experienced it myself, it would all be hard to believe.
The article was featured prominently in the August edition and I was relieved to see that they had edited my story only slightly from the original. My final line might have been pure ‘Loaded-ese’, but in the circumstances it was rather apt. It went, “So the next time Sara Tara Whatever snorts a line of Charlie off the bonnet of her daddy’s Roller, she might actually be doing something quite positive. Namely subsidizing civic reconstruction in some Colombian shanty town.”
THE END