Forget a ‘clean-up’, Colombia remains a narco-economy
With Escobar and FARC confined to history, this troubled South American country looks to be getting back on track, but the reality is rather different, finds Federico Varese
Ihave had a life-long interest in organised crime. It started in the late 1980s, when Russia was undergoing a massive, social and economic transformation into a market economy. This interest led me to move to Russia in the mid-1990s and to write my first book.
For my last book, Mafia Life, I have travelled further afield, to Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Burma and Dubai, and back to Russia, as well as to Greece, Sicily, and across the Atlantic, to uncover the shape of today’s badlands.
In my work, I have been guided by the precept brilliantly articulated by the writer John le Carré: “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”
I always strived to go beyond the headlines, and to meet the people. So, when I was invited to a conference in Colombia last year, I took the opportunity to see the country with my own eyes, beyond the glossy picture we get from the Netflix series, Narcos.
The image of Colombia we get from most media nowadays is that of a country which has solved its long-time problems: the murder rate is right down compared with the ’90s, the peace agreement with the Marxist FARC guerrillas is holding, and tourism is growing.
The photogenic fortysomething pragmatist, Iván Duque, was elected president in the summer of 2018, while the narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar has become something of a pop icon. His erstwhile henchmen write books and conduct television programmes. There are even guided tours to visit the places where the drug baron lived – and died. Are we to believe then that Colombia has become a country at peace with itself, where televised soap operas have domesticated a harsher reality and replaced bitter conflict?
As I try to make my way to Del Rosario University, I realise that the whole city has been brought to a standstill by a huge demonstration. A procession of students is getting ready to march on the centre. A youth explains the reason for the protest: the conservative Duque wants
to cut funding for public universities and raise VAT on essential goods. “Colombia is one of the least equal countries in the world: just three people own 10 per cent of the gross domestic product,” he tells me: “This is a country where hundreds of children a year die of hunger.”
Bogotá is crisscrossed by invisible borders, one of which the student demonstration has tried to breach. The residential area, the centre, the gang-dominated poorest neighbourhoods simply do not mix. The extreme inequality creates virtual walls, sanctioned by the power structure. While I was there, I managed to penetrate one of these parallel worlds – in my case the Barrio Egipto.
A tourist straying into the area would surely be robbed and perhaps kidnapped. You have to negotiate your visit, which I did through a social worker who was accompanied by a skinny boy of about 13. Tiny and very dark-faced, he drinks continuously and avoids my eye: he is not interested in making friends but is here to carry out a specific task – to escort me to the appointed meeting with Jaime Roncancio (known as “El Calabazo”– “The Pumpkin”). Jaime is the son of the founder of the gang that runs Egipto. He says more than once “my house is your house”, but I have to admit I am wary and a little hesitant.
For many years the residents have lived in a state of war, mainly against the security forces. Jaime tells me that the children of the barrio might enrol in the gang when they are only seven years old and a typical life expectancy might be no more than 17. There is only one 50-year-old in the whole neighbourhood.
Today three factions are contesting Egipto, two of whom have agreed a truce and are backing local development projects and solidarity tourism, while the third grouping remains on a war footing. When we reach the top of a hill Jaime points to an adjacent street. “Look! If you go down there you won’t come back alive,” he says, indicating an invisible borderline between their two territories.
Jaime is bright, engaging, and speaks about his world with passionate affection. He can’t be more than 30 years old, but he looks 50. He has managed to cure himself of an addiction to a cheap but very powerful drug that’s pervasive in the barrio – “bazuco”, made of cocaine residue, brick dust, acetone and even ground human bones. He has spent several years in prison and shows me the scars of eight gunshot wounds about his body. He says he has left that life behind. He is proud of the mini soccer field he has contributed to making.
I then flew to Medellín to see where Escobar grew up, to find out about his empire, his men, the supply system he set up and the politicians he corrupted.
The man is remembered as much as anything for having rationalised the production and distribution of cocaine in the 1980s. He created a citywide co-ordination structure for the gangs, but contrary to what has often been claimed, Escobar was not the boss of bosses.
He co-ordinated the operations of a plethora of groups who remained independent of each other, setting up informal structures for resolving conflicts.
The “supremo” image derived from American suppression attempts is based on the idea that once the chief trafficker is arrested or killed, the whole system will collapse. As both Colombian and Mexican events would demonstrate, that analysis was flawed: kill one boss and another takes his place.
The centre of Medellín is bustling with shops, market stalls, pickpockets and old men sitting on benches. This is the sort of place where the Western tourist had better stay alert. I go into the Museo de Antioquia, the city’s most important art museum, which houses a large collection of paintings and sculptures by Fernando Botero. I stop in front of a canvas entitled The Death of Pablo Escobar.
It’s unsettling to think that a criminal responsible for thousands of killings and a terrorist campaign against civilians should be mourned, but maybe it’s time to view the recent history of Colombia less through the lens of narcotics and more through one of social exclusion and of efforts to break through them.
Early one morning I finally succeed in meeting one of Escobar’s few surviving lieutenants. He doesn’t want to do a formal interview and risk stepping back into a media storm. He has done a long stretch in prison and hopes to rebuild his life.
He does say that “What I miss most of all from back then is the sense of comradeship, of living and fighting alongside one another. Nowadays there’s no one like Escobar…”
Contrary to the American “boss of bosses” thesis, Escobar’s demise did not put an end to the Colombian criminal economy. In Medellín, which has two and a half million inhabitants, there are some 300 gangs, known as “combos”. They operate autonomously, selling drugs, controlling prostitution, gambling and bootlegging, and extracting protection money from legitimate businesses.
I soon discover that the Oficina, the informal institution set up by Escobar in the 1980s, is still functioning, ensuring that drugs pass unmolested through neighbourhoods like Comuna 13. Anybody in the barrio can seek help from the Oficina – if, for example they are owed money by someone in another district, the Oficina may take up their case, and deliver a “sentence”.
Before leaving, I spend an evening at the occupied University of Cartagena. For me, Cartagena is irrevocably
Children of the barrio might enrol in the gang when they are only seven years old and a typical lifeexpectancy might be no more than 17
the setting for Gabriel García Márquez and his books, the peeling old buildings and the bordellos. But the city I find is a historical amusement park for well-heeled tourists who stay in old villas converted into spas and luxury hotels. The sex industry is flourishing: many discotheques are little more than flesh markets, where demand goes to meet supply.
My destination is the Cloister of St Augustine, the historic seat of the currently occupied university. A student insists that no-one can come in. Worn down by my insistence he finally gives way.
I spot a lecture hall where a do-it-yourself seminar is being held; in another there’s a yoga lesson. A young spokesman reminds me that the military budget is higher than the educational one in Colombia.
President Duque refused to meet the students. Instead of breaking down the social barriers that divide the country, Duque is creating new ones. Cutting university funding will only increase social inequality. He promised Donald Trump that he would step up the “war on drugs”, the military approach to drug trafficking. The US president has found a kindred soul.
Escobar’s narcoterrorist project has failed thankfully, but the narco-economy is thriving. Botero will continue to paint his signature images, of fine and upright citizens with chestfuls of medals and bodies fit to burst, swollen with cocaine profits. I hope that those canvases will one day be invaded by the faces of the students of Colombia and by Jaime and the inhabitants of his barrio in search of another Egipto.
● Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology, University of Oxford, is the author of Mafia Life, Love Death and Money at the Heart of Organised Crime (Profile, £8.99), and will appear at the Boswell Book Festival on 11 May, www. boswellbookfestival.co.uk