Colombia: la vamos a tumbal

If I spout about Colombia, I run the risk of overly romanticizing... so call me a Risky Rod the Daredevil.  Nevertheless, I'll try to be fair.  

I fell in love with Colombia because of Tito Contreras, who I met hitchhiking in Chile, and convinced me to come visit him in Colombia.  He took a month off to show me around.  We drank in the nightlife of Bogota, saw endless coffee hills in Armenia, soared to the top of 16,000 foot Nevado del Ruiz, comimos arepas paisanas en Medellin, y fuimos a las playas caribenas de Caragena y las Islas de Rosario.  For three weeks we travelled, hosted by Tito's family friends, going dancing nearly every night.  Doting older women and flashy young beauties taught me to salsa, merenge, y ballenato.  I fell in love on nearly every dancefloor.

Slow mornings drinking tinto (espresso) gave me time to reflect on what I was seeing, and to my happiness, my perceptions of Colombia as a dark jungle filled with drug cartels faded away and was replaced by the realities of a beautiful landscape, vibrant and beautiful people, and an armed conflict that hung on to the national coattails like a nasty burr.  

Every day there were newspaper headlines of violence linked to drugs.  But I didn't see any drugs, or any violence.  The violence is like a backdrop, like a white noise that people have come to accept.  Displaced rural peoples build new lives in suburban slums.  Middle class Colombians talk over beers about mass murders.  Paula's father was threatened, and for five months she had to escorted by bodyguards where ever she went.  Tito worked with kids whose lives had been rocked by the violence.  

And all of this was just a background to their lives of love, gossip, dancing, family, plans for the future.  Tito's priorities where 1) coming out to his family and 2) getting ready to leave for Paris to get his masters degree.

The national government fumigates cropland from planes, private paramilitary forces invade guerilla outposts, and rebel groups claim to be leftist revolutionaries.   These three forces dance round and round, as they have for decades, with no clear end in sight, and on a dancefloor in Bogota I step to the soulful accordion track of a ballenato.