It used to be easy in Bogotá. There were only a few places where embassy and military types would go drink, and if you saw another American, he was bound to be FBI, CIA, DEA, Marine, Special Forces, private contractor, or something you don't wanna know. It didn't take long to figure out how to spot them. Mostly, they'd be pretty cool guys with interesting stories and I really enjoyed hanging out with 'em, but every now and then I'd strike gold and find a real douche.
The most popular news show in Colombia is probably Septimo Dia. I've never actually seen it, but I understand it's not quite "60 Minutes." The host of the show called up my friend Fin, looking for help on a story about US military types who come to Colombia, knock up the local bimbos, and bail. The host wanted Fin to wear a hidden camera and ingratiate himself with some military types and get them to talk, well, how they talk about the local girls. Pure tabloid stuff.
Fin's from Australia – he could maybe go undercover "Point Break"-style with a band of bank-robbing surfers, but he's about as far from US military as it gets. "No, mate, I'm not the right guy for that," he said. "But I know who is."
"I'm your boy," I told the host, "but I'm gonna need two hot models to go with me to act as bait."
And that's how I found myself getting paid to go drinking in high-end bars with models, hunting for dumbass gringos. It's great when a hobby becomes a profession. It would've been all fun and games except for the third-world hidden camera system: a mid-90s vintage Sony Handycam tucked into a ridiculously oversize fanny pack, with wires running out the side and up the back of my shirt to a cheesy baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses perched on the brim. Yeah, slick.
The show had hired out for the hidden camera. Of course, the hidden camera contractor was the boyfriend of the show's producer, 'cause that's how this works down here.
"I'll wear this because it's funny," I told the camera contractor, "but you do understand how ridiculous and suspicious this looks, right?"
He didn't. "How so?"
"Well, first, no American wears a fanny pack, not unless they're fat middleaged tourists from Nebraska. Or unless they're trying a little too hard to prove their gayness."
"Seriously?"
"Oh, fuck."
"What about the hat?"
"Yeah. Baseball cap with sunglasses on the brim and cords running down the back of the neck. Because Americans always wear that to go out clubbing at night in a city that's cold and overcast anyway."
"But you think it's OK?"
"Dude, in no way is this 'OK.' I look like a gay redneck. No way is this gonna blend in with military types. The serious guys are gonna know right away something's weird. Only chance we have is finding some Marines, 'cause they'll be the only ones too dumb to notice."
"But you'll still do it, right?"
"Yeah, as long as you'll still pay to get my teeth replaced after I get curb-stomped."
Deal. Hell, Hunter Thompson got his ass beat for Hell's Angels, and this seemed way funnier to me.
The models were good, wacky fun, and we had several fine nights out. We usually met some military types, but unfortunately, none of them were Marines and all of them were really cool. I didn't record any of them. Honestly, it made me feel pretty relieved, in this case, that dickhead gringos were so hard to find. We met lots of private contractors and mystery types, including one guy who'd been here 14 years ago.
"14 years ago… around the time they got Escobar," I'd worked out. The guy looked at me sideways and said yeah, exactly. Ah. Gotcha.
One night the producer spotted a group of embassy-type gringos going into a bar, and I tracked them down - four guys with three Colombian women. I caught one of the guys off-guard while he was playing with his cell phone.
"'Scuse me," I said, "you're from the embassy, right?"
He cocked his head and looked at me like, what the fuck, who wants to know.
"No, no, it's cool, it's just, you wouldn't happen to know a Marine named Tony, wouldja? Black guy, shaved head? I told him to meet me here, but he hasn't shown and his phone is off."
"No, we're not Marines," he said.
"Oh, obviously – you're not acting like complete fucking idiots." I know enough to know that if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's making fun of Uncle Sam's Miserable Children. The guy loosened up.
"What's his name? I can look up anybody's phone number from the embassy right here."
Whoop, forgot about that - they all have everybody else's cell phone number pre-programmed into their phones. Think fast, change the subject. "No, I already tried, his phone's off or something. Probably banging some girl. So whadda you do here?"
He looked at me with an arched eyebrow. I laughed. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I don't wanna know."
"That's right."
"Well, shit, listen, I don't think this guy's gonna show - I'm here meeting a couple of models I want to hire for my business, so I've got an extra chick here if you're interested. They're kinda dumb, but… models."
"Oh, well, hell, bring 'em on over!"
He grabbed the bait…
"Just ease off on the blond, all I ask – I might be interested in that one."
"Hey, it's all fair game here, buddy!" he joked.
… and then I yanked on the line. Bring out their competitive nature - yeah, steal the blond model off the dork in the stupid hat and fanny pack.
The guys moved to another club to meet up with an even larger group of gringos who all worked for various agencies with three-letter acronyms. They were more standoffish than usual, which I chalked up to my absurd outfit. They all seemed like pretty decent fellows, until I finally decided we wouldn't get anything worthwhile and went to retrieve my two models. When I approached the girls, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and some black American guy was leaning in and saying something.
"What?" I yelled over the music.
"LEAVE," he said. "Get the fuck outta here."
"No worries," I smiled, "I'm leaving, I'm just taking these two girls home with me."
He looked shocked. "Wait, they're with you?"
"Yes. They. Are. Good luck, buddy."
The guy fell over himself apologizing. He'd just assumed I was disrespecting his boys, trying to poach their meat. That was as close to dickhead as I found, and you really couldn't blame him, especially me wearing the stupid getup.
One guy did talk to me that night, though. Very cool guy. He did something secretive and financial, and he seemed a bit drunk, so I had to ask him about the big hostage rescue that was all over the news.
"So there's a rumor," I said, "that the US and France and Colombia paid twenty million dollars to the FARC in exchange for the release. That true?"
The guy looked at me, a bit surprised, and said, "no comment."
"Oh, come on… are you telling me you can neither confirm nor deny reports of a payoff? For real?"
"Listen, man," he grabbed me and leaned in close to speak over the music, "you and I both know that shit you see on CNN isn't the way the world really works."
I'd asked the TV producer what she thought about the hostage release. She'd spent a lot of time with the FARC. She just harrumphed and said, "anyone who believes the official story doesn't know my people." True enough. She also told me about a recent story they'd worked on, about how you can hire an ambulance in Bogotá to deliver an important package or to get you to an important meeting. Brilliant - I love how the corruption extends beyond even my imagination. I need to hire an ambulance one of these days.
I met a guy who worked with the Colombian diplomatic mission in France and was heavily involved with the media and the Betancourt family during the rescue. When I asked what he thought about the $20 million rumor, he looked away for a very long time and said nothing. Finally he turned back and diplomatically said, "I think it's true."
But I actually liked the official story of the hostage rescue. Very amusing, I thought. The FARC even came out and denounced the guerrilla leader who was captured along with the hostages – they called him a traitor. The $20,000,000 rumor probably assumes that the money was paid to this guy, but if you look at the photos after his capture, his face black, blue and grim, it's a guy who just got the shit kicked out of him and is about to be extradited to spend the rest of his life in a US prison, not a guy who just made himself twenty million dollars. I figure the reality is that the top FARC leaders took the twenty million and arranged the hostage rescue, and then blamed the poor schmuck who got captured... which may not be as clever a story, but certainly more appropriate for here.
The Plaza Bolivar during the July 20 FARC protest. Most people wear a white shirt, except me - I wore gray.
The FARC have had a tough 2008. It started off with a hostage release negotiated by Hugo Chavez, joined by Oliver Stone, who I used to adore, but now can go fuck himself for supporting the FARC. What a stupid asshole. The FARC had originally struck a deal for the release of three hostages, but it got called off at the last minute when they realized one of the three hostages, a young child, had been turned over to the custody of the government years earlier. This might have seemed odd, but completely plausible if you know how disorganized, inefficient and downright incompetent everyone in this country is… and then it's just hilarious.
Still, Chavez did pull off a hostage release, and in response, a couple of Colombians organized a protest march against the FARC and Chavez through Facebook that turned into the largest protest march in living memory. It was a massive, unexpected and impressive show of solidarity that told the FARC and the world they have no support among the people, thus discrediting the whole concept of a "people's army."
Shortly after, the US military tracked a satellite phone call from the FARC's number two guy, Raul Reyes, to Hugo Chavez, and the Colombian military blew him up. The FARC camp happened to be over the jungle border in Ecuador, which sparked Chavez to mouth off, but at least the number two guy is good and dead.
Shortly after that, the FARC's founder and number one guy, Manuel "Tirofijo" Marulanda, apparently kicked off from natural causes.
And then another of the top FARC leaders got wacked by his own bodyguards, and they turned in his severed hand for the reward money. At least, that's the official story – according to rumor, it was the military who offed him. But whatever.
The FARC have a seven-member secretariat, their top leadership, and in the space of a few months, three of them were taken out. And then there's the desertions – even one of the leaders of a FARC front, a vicious, well-known woman, turned herself in to the government and made TV commercials begging her former comrades to do the same.
But here's some really far-out speculation on my part: at least another two members of the secretariat might be working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency. A Colombian general bragged after the hostage rescue that they had infiltrators at the highest levels of the FARC, and who knows, in all the excitement around the event, he might've slipped up and actually said something truthful.
Cut to Viktor Bout, the most notorious arms dealer in the world. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Viktor managed to commandeer a couple of Antonov cargo jets and worked his way up to being one of the most wanted men on the planet, selling any kind of weaponry to any kind of group, anywhere. You know the movie Lord of War with Nicolas Cage? That movie was inspired by Bout.
Bout was finally captured in Thailand in March by the DEA, set up in a sting operation arranging a deal to airdrop surface-to-air missiles to the FARC - a narco-terrorist organization, which explains the DEA's involvement. I happened upon his arrest warrant one night online. It's a good story, but there's one sentence in particular that's fascinating:
"SMULIAN also indicated that BOUT had shown SMULIAN photographs of all the senior officers in the FARC and asked SMULIAN to identify CS-2 and CS-3 from the photographs."
Smulian was Bout's right-hand man. As Bout is too wanted to leave Russia easily, Smulian was the guy flying around the world arranging arms deals for him. Smulian met with two guys who claimed to be from the top leadership of the FARC, but were actually working for the DEA – these two guys are called CS-2 and CS-3 in the arrest warrant.
So Smulian goes to meet Bout in Russia to work over the details of this FARC deal. Bout pulls out pictures of "all the senior officers in the FARC." Smulian is then asked to pick out the two guys he's been meeting. If Smulian looks at the photos and says, nope, the guys I'm meeting with aren't any of these guys, then Bout knows something's wrong, that Smulian hasn't, in fact, been meeting with genuine FARC leaders, and it's all a setup. But if Smulian points to two of them and says, sure, it's this guy and this guy, then Bout knows he's been meeting with genuine FARC leaders.
The arrest warrant doesn't explain what happened, but the fact is, Bout moved forward with the deal and went to meet the two FARC leaders in Thailand, where he was finally busted. Would Bout, who's been in this business very successfully for a very long time, continue with such a risky deal if Smulian wasn't able to pick out CS-2 and CS-3 from the photographs? I mean, it's the whole point of the test. Why do the test at all if you ignore the results?
Mother Jones magazine ran a more detailed story about the Bout arrest, and apparently Smulian failed the test yet managed to convince Bout to move forward with the deal anyway. Which I'll wager is very probably true, and CS-2 and CS-3 were just random DEA guys. But maybe the Mother Jones writer was fed some disinfo, and CS-2 and CS-3 really were top FARC leaders working with the DEA.
Which, if true, would suggest the FARC is about to fall apart. As the organization collapses, it makes sense for the leadership to take what they can and get out. My guess is the $20,000,000 rumor is true, but it was paid to these top guys in exchange for not just releasing the hostages, but also for Bout and who knows what else. But with the release of their most valuable hostages, and as they continue to bleed leadership, membership and territory, indications are the longest-running, most powerful rebel army in Latin America is coming to its end.
Even Chavez recently pulled a sudden public about-face and called on the FARC to give up. "The guerrilla war is history," he said. "At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place." It may only be a statement for public consumption, but on the other hand, who knows, Chavez may actually feel this way. And if Big Daddy Chavez pulls the plug on his support for the FARC, that's one big nail for the coffin.
What I expect to happen will be the official demobilization of the FARC, and the smaller ELN will likely follow. This will officially end Colombia's civil conflict and open the country up even wider to tourism and foreign investment. Foreign investment will be of particular strategic value as Colombia has a whole lot of oil that has, up until the near future, been off-limits due to guerrilla activity. It may even be the last place on earth with cheap, easy-to-get oil that hasn't been exploited yet.
Unofficially, the FARC will likely follow the AUC model – demobilize as an umbrella organization and break up into smaller, quieter independent groups, focusing their efforts mostly on the production of cocaine. The Colombian police and army will take a larger share of the production as well, and as long as there are mountains of cash to be made from drugs, all these groups will continue to fight over it and not that much will ever change. But for Uribe's government it'll be a spectacular achievement, and Colombia will be portrayed as a tremendous success story.
The changes will come even faster, but it will always be Colombia.
Melgar is a dirty little scumhole of a town a few hours south of Bogotá, the only Colombian town I've ever seen that I actively dislike. It's an army town, built around a big military base and helicopter flight school. The town is hot and filled with the equivalent of white trash.
Manuel Teodoro, the host of Septimo Dia, invites me to Melgar with his crew and a model, continuing our hunt for douchey military guys. I try to explain that our best shot at finding douches is finding the Marines, and there's no Marines in Melgar… but they want to take the shot anyway.
We roll into the central plaza of Melgar. The sun is overwhelmingly bright, and I forgot to bring good sunglasses. Within an hour, my eyes are fucked – red and puffy and watering, and I can barely see. Seems like everybody who passes recognizes Manuel. He introduces me as a gringo who's looking for his child – the story we invent on the fly is that I'd gotten a girl from Melgar pregnant three years earlier, and I'd just now returned to find her. I'm the good gringo, the redeemer, come to set things right. People come out of the woodwork to help look for women with children from deadbeat gringos. We find three within the hour.
One of the women has a ridiculous hourglass shape, so exaggerated it seems impossible. She wears fashionista sunglasses and too much makeup. She tells her story, but Manuel and I agree she's a predator. After her interview, she asks the crew about me – obviously one deadbeat gringo wasn't enough.
The other two women tell heartbreaking stories. One of them brings her daughter, a toddler who's far too adorable. My blond model stands with me and asks what's wrong when I walk away muttering. I can't watch the interview. The kid's too cute and the story too fucked. I'm feeling more righteous in my undercover gringo-hunting, that the least I can do is expose a few assholes.
We go hunting in the clubs of Melgar that night. Pollo, Manuel's cameraman, picks up another girl with an impossibly hourglass shape and they help us hunt. Since my vision is fucked, the blond acts as my seeing-eye model. We don't find any gringos at all and we call it an early night, so everyone can get properly trashed and laid. It's the Colombian way. The next morning Manuel comes to my room, and then Pollo, and then the model and the driver and everyone else, and Manuel leads a round of hilarious, naughty confessions about the previous night, which for some of us is still ongoing.
On the drive home, we decide we're not likely to ever get any useful footage – go figure, a douchebag drought. We had some fun, though. In the end, the producer tells me she'll call me to explain about submitting the invoice for my time, so I can get paid.
But it's still Colombia.
I never get paid.