August 2001

In this issue of The Magazine, we turn to Colombia, a nation on the verge of implosion after decades of convulsive violence. "This is a war of the mad, the demented, and the psychopaths," a Colombian policeman told one of our authors. Our expert contributors cut through the madness to analyze the root causes, unlikely alliances, and institutional failures that caused, and continue to foment, the conflict.

Owing to the multiple facets of Colombia’s emergency, we expanded our usual number of article commissions. And, for the first time, we have translated the entire contents of The Magazine: the Spanish edition can be found on our website under the title, El tráfico del terror.

• The issue opens with Karl Penhaul’s overview: On the political left, guerrillas support their insurgencies with drugs, extortion, and kidnap for ransom. On the right, the paramilitaries serve their landed, moneyed backers through terror and massacres, land seizure and drug money. Every group has unlikely alliances. They all compete for children to serve as soldiers. In Penhaul’s vivid reporting, this is war without end, until the government really helps the poor.
  
  
• Ana Carrigan reports with extraordinary depth on the paramilitaries who, in the last twelve months, have committed over 80% of the political murders and massacres. Her rivetting account documents that, in this presidential election year, the paramilitaries have increasing civilian support as they insinuate the agenda of their far-right sponsors into the political mainstream.
  
  
• Until recently, the crisis of internal displacement was all but hidden. Hiram Ruiz exposes the dimensions of this emergency, in which 32 percent of displaced families are headed by women, and 45 percent of the displaced are children, and a disproportionate number are indigenous and Afro-Colombian. Why are these peasants running for their lives? What can be done to save them? Ruiz has provocative answers.
  
  
• As Arturo Carrillo elucidates, every party to the conflict is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and therefore subject to the provisions of international human rights treaties and to the strictures of international criminal law. This may prove crucial in ending the conflict and fostering accountability.
  
  
• In our Forum on U.S. Policy, Daniel García-Pena argues that U.S. involvement exacerbates Colombia’s war; Michael Shifter and Victoria Wigodzky believe that, while Washington’s policy is misguided, Colombia needs an active U.S. presence.
  
  
• Day-to-day life in the towns and villages can be hallucinatory. Teun Voeten’s photo-essay takes us to the heart of darkness in "Barrancabermeja: The Murder Capital of the World." Donna DeCesare shows us grassroots peace programs that survive, against deadly threats, in the most dangerous corners of the country. It is striking that the residents of both Medellín and Barrancabermeja insist that their town has more murders than anywhere else.
  
  
• Doris Salcedo, Colombia’s most important contemporary artist, is impelled to bear witness to her country’s ordeal. Based on the testimony of survivors, her installations have given the war in Colombia international cultural resonance. Normally hesitant to give interviews, Salcedo conversed at length with the Cultural Supplement to The Magazine and agreed to a cyber-exhibit of her work.

The articles in this issue are especially hard-hitting, and we look forward to your responses, which should be sent to: [email protected]