August
2001
Page
1 of 11
The
kids who run barefoot down "Hope Street" have
bloated bellies from malnourishment and are covered
in sores. Its the same on "Victory Street"
and all the other dirt tracks that criss-cross a sprawling
shantytown known as Nelson Mandela City, on the outskirts
of fabled Cartagena de Indias. Downtown Cartagena, a
Spanish colonial-era walled city, is the jewel in Colombias
tourism crown. But none of the Europeans and North Americans
who still come to the regions sun-soaked beaches,
or the handful that fuel the booming trade in child
prostitution, ever venture into the shanties.
Almost all of Nelson Mandela Citys 50,000 inhabitants
have been forced to flee from their homes in rural backwaters
for fear of being caught in the crossfire of Colombias
increasingly dirty war. Nobody here cares too much about
the politics of the conflict. Some have been driven
out of their homes by right-wing paramilitary gangs,
others have been forced out at gunpoint by one of the
countrys two main Marxist guerrilla forces.
"When the gunmen arrive you feel defenseless and
can do nothing but bury your dead. Afterwards, you feel
fear and cowardice," said peasant José Vicente
Ortiz, who has been displaced twice. Like his new neighbors,
he now lives in a shack made of cardboard, black plastic,
and a tin roof.
Colombias urban middle and upper classes are also
prey to the countrys 37-year-old civil conflict,
which has been complicated by drug mobs and professional
criminals. Last year 282,000 Colombians left the country
and did not return--fleeing economic stagnation, booming
unemployment, and the intensifying guerrilla campaign
of extorsive kidnap.
"This is like a mini-Chechnya, a war of the mad,
the demented, and the psychopaths," said one policeman.
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Bucaramanga, Colombia,
Juan Elías Uribe holds a photograph of his father,
a dentist who was murdered by paramilitaries. In the
years since his father's murder Juan Elias has become
one of the most articulate leaders of Colombia's Children's
Peace Movement. He was studying law when I met him last
year. Since that time death threats have forced the
family to leave Colombia.
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