Bill
03-09-2008, 01:46 AM
This is what US aid pays for.
But when we do it, you see, it's patriotism. It's only wrong when someone we don't like does it, it's all right when we do it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/i-fell-in-love-with-a-female-assassin-791978.html
Times of peace have been rare in the country's history. For the past 40 years or so, a Marxist-inspired rebel group known as the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) have been at war with the government, funding their growing army by kidnapping and extortion, and taxing the illegal cocaine trade. Right-wing death squads known as "self-defence forces" have sprung up as a response to the Farc's kidnapping of wealthy landowners and drug-lords. Under the umbrella of an organisation called the AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) these private militias, or paramilitaries (known locally as "paras"), are secretly supported by those high in the government and military, who back their dirty war against the Farc rebels.
This triangular conflict has exacted, and continues to exact, a hefty price from the Colombian people. During the past four decades, over 200,000 have lost their lives and more than three million have been forced from their homes by violence or intimidation. This week, following an incursion by government forces to kill Farc rebels in Ecuador, the conflict was at the centre of a diplomatic crisis involving both nations, together with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
To dismiss all this brutality as a simple war over drugs does the Colombian people a gross injustice. Its roots are buried in the economic and social imbalance that permeates the country, a huge working class living in poverty, lining the pockets of a tiny, wealthy upper class who own more than 90 per cent of the land, industry and business. My goal, therefore, was to meet and photograph members of each of the groups involved, and to attempt explain Latin America's 40-year conflict.
I asked Marylin if she would be prepared to let me interview her about her life and what she had become involved in. Wearing a balaclava and brandishing a pistol, she permitted me to video our conversation.
I began by asking her how she had first become involved with the paramilitaries and why she decided to join them. How she had been persuaded to kill her first victim and how she felt about it. She started hesitantly, but gathered confidence as her story unfolded.
"When I killed the first person, I was afraid, I was scared. I killed the first person just to see if I could. But there is an obligation to kill. If you don't, they kill you. That's why the first was very hard, because the person I killed was kneeling down begging, crying and saying, 'Don't kill me. I have children.' That's why it was difficult and sad. But if you don't kill that person, someone else from the AUC will kill you. After the killing, you keep trembling. You can't eat or talk to anyone. I was at home, but I kept imagining the person begging not to be killed. I shut myself inside, but with time I forgot everything. The superiors always say, 'Don't worry, that was just the first time. When you kill the second one, it will all be OK.' But you keep trembling.
"The second time is only a bit easier, but as they say here, 'If you can kill one, you can kill many more.'
"You have to lose the fear. Now I am still killing and nothing happens. I feel normal. Before, I had an obligation to kill, I was sent to kill. But once I left the organisation, I was not obligated. I now only do the job for money.
All my fears were confirmed as her father, his eyes welling with tears, told me that Marylin was dead. She was 25 years and two months old when she was kidnapped from her home and stoned to death. Her abductors crushed her head with rocks and then shot her.
The next morning, her now six-year-old daughter, Natalie, awoke as an orphan, Marylin's parents had lost a third daughter and her brother so overcome with grief that he was unable to walk, talk, or even feed himself. Marylin was not killed by some local seeking revenge for one of the many deaths that had occurred at her hands during her time as an assassin. She was murdered by her own group in a symbolic stoning for being a sapo ("frog"), which is what Colombians call informers.
Her most recent boyfriend was a government soldier, convenient enough when the paramilitaries and the military were working side-by-side in their war to wrest control of the coca fields of Putumayo from the Farc, but enough to get her killed when that relationship soured and her pillow talk continued.
But when we do it, you see, it's patriotism. It's only wrong when someone we don't like does it, it's all right when we do it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/i-fell-in-love-with-a-female-assassin-791978.html
Times of peace have been rare in the country's history. For the past 40 years or so, a Marxist-inspired rebel group known as the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) have been at war with the government, funding their growing army by kidnapping and extortion, and taxing the illegal cocaine trade. Right-wing death squads known as "self-defence forces" have sprung up as a response to the Farc's kidnapping of wealthy landowners and drug-lords. Under the umbrella of an organisation called the AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) these private militias, or paramilitaries (known locally as "paras"), are secretly supported by those high in the government and military, who back their dirty war against the Farc rebels.
This triangular conflict has exacted, and continues to exact, a hefty price from the Colombian people. During the past four decades, over 200,000 have lost their lives and more than three million have been forced from their homes by violence or intimidation. This week, following an incursion by government forces to kill Farc rebels in Ecuador, the conflict was at the centre of a diplomatic crisis involving both nations, together with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
To dismiss all this brutality as a simple war over drugs does the Colombian people a gross injustice. Its roots are buried in the economic and social imbalance that permeates the country, a huge working class living in poverty, lining the pockets of a tiny, wealthy upper class who own more than 90 per cent of the land, industry and business. My goal, therefore, was to meet and photograph members of each of the groups involved, and to attempt explain Latin America's 40-year conflict.
I asked Marylin if she would be prepared to let me interview her about her life and what she had become involved in. Wearing a balaclava and brandishing a pistol, she permitted me to video our conversation.
I began by asking her how she had first become involved with the paramilitaries and why she decided to join them. How she had been persuaded to kill her first victim and how she felt about it. She started hesitantly, but gathered confidence as her story unfolded.
"When I killed the first person, I was afraid, I was scared. I killed the first person just to see if I could. But there is an obligation to kill. If you don't, they kill you. That's why the first was very hard, because the person I killed was kneeling down begging, crying and saying, 'Don't kill me. I have children.' That's why it was difficult and sad. But if you don't kill that person, someone else from the AUC will kill you. After the killing, you keep trembling. You can't eat or talk to anyone. I was at home, but I kept imagining the person begging not to be killed. I shut myself inside, but with time I forgot everything. The superiors always say, 'Don't worry, that was just the first time. When you kill the second one, it will all be OK.' But you keep trembling.
"The second time is only a bit easier, but as they say here, 'If you can kill one, you can kill many more.'
"You have to lose the fear. Now I am still killing and nothing happens. I feel normal. Before, I had an obligation to kill, I was sent to kill. But once I left the organisation, I was not obligated. I now only do the job for money.
All my fears were confirmed as her father, his eyes welling with tears, told me that Marylin was dead. She was 25 years and two months old when she was kidnapped from her home and stoned to death. Her abductors crushed her head with rocks and then shot her.
The next morning, her now six-year-old daughter, Natalie, awoke as an orphan, Marylin's parents had lost a third daughter and her brother so overcome with grief that he was unable to walk, talk, or even feed himself. Marylin was not killed by some local seeking revenge for one of the many deaths that had occurred at her hands during her time as an assassin. She was murdered by her own group in a symbolic stoning for being a sapo ("frog"), which is what Colombians call informers.
Her most recent boyfriend was a government soldier, convenient enough when the paramilitaries and the military were working side-by-side in their war to wrest control of the coca fields of Putumayo from the Farc, but enough to get her killed when that relationship soured and her pillow talk continued.