COLOMBIA: DEATH AND THE MEDIA
TAKING NOTE: A critical analysis of recent media coverage of the murder of Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar on July 2 which set off a circus of semi-informed lamentation in the press about violence and chaos in Colombia. It sets the record straight on what's really happening in Colombia and how U.S. military assistance has supported Colombia's military reign of terror.
By Fred Rosen
The murder of Colombian soccer star Andrés Escobar as he was leaving a Medellin nightclub this past July 2 set off a circus of semi-informed lamentation in the U.S. press about violence and chaos in Colombia. The sports-page stories, coming in the midst of the selling of World Cup soccer to a hooligan-wary U.S. public, all had a defensive, find-me-someone-to-blame air to them. "This is not just about soccer," wrote New York Times sports columnist George Vescey. "This is about a society run wild, a society so crazed with drugs and money and power and guns that it enables the wipeout of an athlete who dared represent his country." Don't blame soccer, said sportstalk commentators, life isn't worth a dime in Colombia.
The sports writers, of course, were taking their cue from the news and editorial writers who, in turn, have been taking their usual cue from State Department publicists. The Colombian government is portrayed as besieged on all sides by drug traffickers, hired killers and Communist guerrillas–with a growing emphasis on the traffickers. "Colombia's President Gaviria has waged a courageous campaign against the cocaine cartels," wrote State Department Counselor Timothy Wirth, setting the tone in a recent letter to the Washington Post. "He has put his life on the line, and thousands of Colombian police officers have made the ultimate sacrifice with theirs."
Colombia is awash in drugs and violence, but lost in the recrimmatory prose–on the sports and news pages alike–is any context for the violence beyond Miami Vice-type drug deals gone bad. Missing from Colombia coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times over the first six months of 1994 was any mention of the continual violent assault on real political opposition in Colombia–in its most gruesome form, the murder of some 2,500 members of the leftist Patriotic Union since its founding in 1984. Absent from the barrage of drugs-and-violence stories was the long "dirty war" that the Colombian military–in the guise of combatting a three-decade guerrilla insurgency–has been waging against peasants, indigenous leaders, human rights activists, independent judges, trade unionists, and leftist politicians. This lack of context is more pernicious than the simple oversight of overworked journalists. The news media have created an image of a society so out of control that its only salvation is the iron hand of authority.
Enter the drug war. During the 1990s, Colombia has become the largest recipient of U.S. military assistance in Latin America–$227 million between fiscal years 1990 and 1993. An increasing share–as we might have guessed from Counselor Wirth's maudlin praise–is being tunnelled to the Colombian National Police. Like the military, the police have a well-documented connection to the paramilitary squads who regularly engage in political killings and disappearances, as well as urban "social cleansing"–the murder of "undesirables" like street children, petty thieves, prostitutes and homosexuals.
Since 1986, over 20,000 Colombians have been killed for political reasons. Reports by independent human rights monitors, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch/Americas and the Andean Commission of Jurists, all indicate that fewer that 2% of political killings and disappearances can be attributed to drug traffickers, 20 to 25% to guerrillas, and around 70% to the armed forces and paramilitary groups. While Colombia's 1991 Constitution upholds the sanctity of human rights, it also grants jurisdiction to military courts–notorious for their ability to cast a timely blind eyeover all crimes attributed to either the armed forces or the police. The Constitution also grants immunity from prosecution to all military and police personnel on the grounds of "due obedience."
In its drive to gain control of the countryside, the government's campaign against the remaining guerrillas has produced widespread terror in rural Colombia. Building on the brutal military tactics honed in Guatemala, EI Salvador and Peru, this campaign against civilians–depriving the fish of the sea–seems to be an integral part of the government's counterinsurgency strategy. The army–as documented by independent human rights groups–has pursued victory in the countryside by means of rape, disappearances, torture, burning of habitats, aerial strating and bombings, beatings, and death threats.
The United States–and the U.S. press–has remained silent about these abuses. This silence, together with the generously funded war on drugs, and the media packaging of a country "crazed with drugs and money," simply feeds military and paramilitary impunity, and heightens Colombia's nightmare.
