Colombia's Hell : Fear grips a nation

National Review, Dec 6, 1999 by Anthony Daniels

Scientific socialism may be dead, but scientific extortion is very much alive. In Colombia, information technology has transformed kidnapping from an art into a science.

When the guerrillas there hold up a car or a bus, they tap the names of the passengers into the laptop computers that are now as essential to their operations as their automatic weapons. A database, using information taken from bank records or from tax returns in the Ministry of Finance, informs the kidnappers who is worth what. Let the ransom fit the assets! Ranging from $60 to $1 million, the revolutionary tax, as the guerrillas call it, is steeply progressive: so steeply, in fact, that the guerrillas derive as much from it as from the cocaine trade. They are the richest guerrillas in the world.

The revolutionary tax is also known as la pesca milagrosa, the miraculous catch. The guerrillas believe that the road to heaven is paved with intimidation. And since the end justifies the means, all the pious sentiment in the world-such as that expressed recently when millions of Colombians took to the streets to march in favor of peace-will not deter the guerrillas in the slightest.

I was told that foreigners in Colombia are eminently secuestrable- kidnappable. As the dirty war in Argentina introduced the world to the concept of passive suicide (for example, "X was suicided last night at police headquarters"), so the conflict in Colombia has enriched the world by the notion of kidnappability. Blue eyes alone, I was told, were sufficient to render their possessors vulnerable-for one was thereby recognized as being either a member of the Colombian elite or a rich foreigner. Who says now that biology is not destiny?

The use of kidnapping is criminal, of course, but it does not follow that those who perpetrate it are mere criminals. They are more important and dangerous than that: They are political utopians who use (as all such utopians eventually must) the methods of bandits. And these methods are proving very effective indeed, for they are fast reducing the status of the constitutional president of Colombia to that of mayor of Bogota. His writ runs only in the cities of his country, and even in the rural areas nominally under his control the influence of the guerrillas is strong and growing.

So insecure has Colombia become that it is now unsafe for anyone with tangible assets to leave any city by land. None of the major cities is securely accessible from any other by road. All but one route out of Bogota have been attacked, trapping the middle classes in the city and inducing a state of paranoid claustrophobia among them. If they want to go anywhere, they have to fly-but not long ago, an Avianca flight from Bucaramanga to Bogota was hijacked, and some of the hostages have not yet been released. The entire congregation of a church has also been kidnapped-the whereabouts of 150 people are still unknown-and likewise a pleasure launch on the Pacific coast. No one knows where the kidnappers will strike next-and there are so many government soldiers in the political heart of Bogota that it has the atmosphere of a city awaiting a final assault by a besieging army. Outside the railings of the presidential palace, soldiers with semi-automatics stand guard at intervals of three feet.

If the cities of Colombia are under siege, their citizens are doubly so: Common crime, responsible for 80 percent of the murders in the country, flourishes in the shadow of political insecurity. The visitor to Colombia is soon reduced to a state of incipient psychosis by the advice he receives from well-meaning Colombians. For example, do not, on any account, show your identity papers to a policeman who asks to see them. He might not be a policeman; but even if he is, he might very well fail to return them in an attempt to extort money.

To hail a taxi in Bogota is no longer a simple matter. On no account should you hail one in the street: It might be a false taxi, whose driver is in league with criminal gangs, on the lookout for victims. And even if it is a real taxi, the driver might succumb to the temptation to make extra money by delivering you not to your destination, but to criminal acquaintances of his.

No: You must telephone a trustworthy company. Because criminal gangs intercept the radio messages of taxi companies, however, and send false taxis around to waylay unsuspecting customers, you must note the registration number of the taxi that is being sent to you and refuse absolutely to get into any other. And the taxi driver will also ask you for the last two digits of the telephone number from which you called, to ensure that he is picking up the right passenger and not someone who will take the opportunity to rob him.

The Colonial Art Museum in Bogota is the only art gallery I know where the custodians carry guns. Throughout the city, uniformed security guards proliferate like private armies, soldiers stand guard outside fashionable apartment blocks where prominent secuestrables live, and there are many training schools for security staff. In the old part of Bogota known as La Candelaria, I was told, robbers frequently dress smartly to deceive their victims. Distrust in Colombia is now mutual and multidirectional. The general rule is, Suspect everyone of everything, do not assume that anyone is who he appears or claims to be, impart the minimum amount of information to as few people as possible, and maintain your vigilance at all times. This advice is all the more striking because everyone you actually meet is helpful and agreeable. On the brink of disaster, manners are maintained.