The Colombia Herald

Yesterday I picked up some of the Colombian blogosphere reactions to controversial writer Fernando Vallejo’s renounce to Colombian nationality. Today appeared two more posts about it which are quite worthy. The first one is from DieGoth, a right-winger writing on centre-left digital magazine equinoXio:

If I spoke about a country filled with:

• Murderer policemen
• Murderer soldiers
• Murderer drug dealers
• Corrupt, murderer politicians
• Murderer kidnappers
• Murderer guerrillas
• Murderer paramilitaries

Vallejo would say it’s about Colombia. But he might also speak about… México. Switch oil for fat? Who gets that? There’s something else in the poison Vallejo spit on Colombia, but I’m not really interested on that. [...]

What would you renounce to if they told you you can’t regret of that?

I, without any regrets, would renounce to be a Colombian if an absurd candidate win the election, were re-elected and there were more people supporting him than rejecting him. Something like renouncing to be a Venezuelan, if I’d live in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, or as it will be called for sure shortly, Socialist Republic of Venezuela. Because you don’t renounce because of a president, but because of a whole people you don’t share from the root with the idea of how things should be done.

El Editor reacted this way at a comment there:

What a little convincing is this harangue against Vallejo signed by a guy as Diegoth who, like Jaime Ruiz [a controversial right-wing blogger], has done nothing but blame certain idea of “colombianness” for all of Colombia’s ills.

I thought, Diegoth, that you’d be happy that Vallejo tore his passport up. After all, that would be the most consistent position regarding the discourse you’ve been maintaining so far.

And then in a post:

[I]f they conducted a survey among the [Colombian] young girls signing on foreign wedding agencies, the unemployed who leave for USA and Spain, the people seeking Canadian and Australian citizenship, and the students like me who go the hell away to another country, you would realize we the rats are hurrying for leaving the ship. You have to see, for example, how Colombian women chase foreigners who land in Colombia. [...]

Let’s change the subject. On Tuesday night, during an interview in pro-Uribe Fox News-like RCN Televisión network, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos (whose family owns the only national newspaper) said that if the U. S. Congress didn’t pass the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, it may “review its relations” with the U. S. No, please, don’t laugh, it’s serious. But the controversial part comes now: he said that as many as 30 Colombian Congresspeople may be jailed for the parapolitics scandal. Reaction was huge. Interior Minister Carlos Holguín Sardi said Wednesday that “everyone is innocent until proven guilty”, Foreign Minister’s office had to clarify U. S. “relevance” and Colombia’s “respect” for the Congressional debate on the FTA, and President Álvaro Uribe ordered Santos to “correct” his remarks. The Vice President sent a letter to Congress and will meet some Congresspeople on Thursday in order to do that. But, what was Santos meaning?

Journalist Felipe Zuleta has an hypothesis:

Pacho [Santos] wants the gringos to argue with Uribe. With it, U. S. government turns its back to the Palace’s mafioso [Uribe] and put him to wander trough the world running away from Americans and Colombian “judiciary”.

His commentators, as Orlando el curioso, support him:

Bogotá’s oligarchy is in frank “rebelliousness” against the Medellín Cartel and it’s not willing to lose its 150-year hegemony because of the drug lords who are now usurping House of Nariño.

What they want is to oust Viceroy Álvaro de Uribe y Vélez (a. k. a. el Patrón [the nickname Pablo Escobar used]) to avoid an eventual presidential victory for [opposition leftist] Democratic Pole in 2010, because of the teflon wear and tear the ‘carriel’ and ‘arriero’ little emperor may suffer.

Pachito [Santos] needs to arrive to the Bolívar’s throne during these last two years of the mafia term in order to design from there the strategy who allows him to put there the candidate supported by the traditional bi-partisanism and stop the Democratic Alternative Pole.

Some even say that candidate would be former president and OAS general secretary César Gaviria Trujillo, currently leader of the centre Liberal Party, who would become an “obstacle” for any leftist political group in Colombia.

Víctor Solano says:

Again, the media are the showcase of the inappropiate remarks made by the high officials of the Colombian government. [...] Mr. Santos: everything you say will be used against you and it doesn’t matter how you appear because even if you wear pyjamas or short pants, [Colombian] citizens will see in your face the Vice President, the government.

*All the pictures featured on this post were taken by Flickr user b.wu

During Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez visit to Washington on Wednesday, seeking U. S. Congress approval for the controversial Free Trade Agreement and more money for the already failed Plan Colombia, demonstrators yelled at him, accusing the leader of the death of aroung 400 unionist and only 10 convictions. The same guy who said he’d be a “guerrilla man” and a “paramilitary” with a gun, not a mediocre one, all the same week, decided to “talk” to them, as the “democrat” he says he is (what a strategy!).

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While Tuesday’s debate on paramilitarism in Antioquia was broadcasted on a national public network on the afternoon, Thursday’s press conference was held on primetime on every national networks, with TV, radio and agencies like EFE, AP and AFP journalists and correspondents chosen by invitation (excluding print press, maybe punishing El Tiempo for its “centred” editorial on the issue, which is “infamous” according to Pablo Escobar’s cousin and presidential adviser José Obdulio Gaviria) and the news that U. S. former vicepresident Al Gore had cancelled its participation at an enviromental forum in Miami the next day for the “‘deeply troubling” allegations by opposition congresspeople. This is bad news, but for him, not for the country, specially after Democrat senator Patrick Leahy “re-freezed” US$55 million for Plan Colombia earlier this week. The same night, earlier, during another press conference with Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, Uribe angrily said “I’m worried because the political friends of the guerrilla, who pose here as political enemies of the ‘yankee imperialism’ go often to the U. S. to discredit Colombian government”. I “covered” the press conference “live” for digital magazine equinoXio.

Uribe’s fanatical supporters claim that Uribe “swept” Congressman Gustavo Petro’s allegations, specially because he was fast at denying his links with paramilitaries, but I think he actually evaded some of the important questions and treated quite disdainfully La W Radio’s Félix de Bedout and Caracol Radio’s Néstor Morales, by calling them “doctors”. He maybe hit well back on the allegations against his family, but some serious things came up. Remember the picture of Uribe’s brother Santiago with the drug-dealing clan Ochoa? Well, Uribe said he was taken a picture with Justo Pastor Perafán, another drug dealing lord currently in a U. S. prison. When AFP correspondent said he was a friend of friends of paramilitaries (that’s true, as you can see by the currently imprisoned congresspeople), he did not answer clearly.

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