|
Saturday
night, March 24
For the funeral parlor La Fondería, it was a typical busy
Saturday night. Attencia’s body lay on the table in the white-tiled
morgue. A police forensic autopsy established the cause of death
as six bullets, fired at short range. Behind a rickety table, police
investigator Oscar Díaz typed out his report, a small machine
gun slung over his shoulder, ammunition clips in his vest.
"This is Colombia," announced Díaz. "Where
else on earth must a district attorney never part from his UZI?"
The phone rang at La Fondería. Undertaker Rubén Darío
picked it up. Two more dead bodies in the outskirts, he told his
assistants. They left in the station car to pick up the victims.
The funeral parlor has to retrieve the dead because the authorities
do not dare to venture into the most dangerous neighborhoods.
Outside La Fondería, life went on as usual. As on every Saturday
night, the main boulevard of the city center was closed for traffic.
Salsa music boomed in barrooms, couples strolled hand-in-hand, and
teenagers sped by on roller blades. Roller blading has gained tremendous
popularity since Barrancabermeja hosted the 2000 World Championship
in an effort to improve its image. A series of wagons hitched together
and painted like a caterpillar rolled through the streets, filled
with laughing children.
"This is a human slaughterhouse," undertaker Darío
said, when his assistants returned with the bodies of two men in
their late teens. Díaz lit another cigarette and rolled a
new sheet of paper in his typewriter. Sobs reverberated against
the tiles of the morgue as a young girl bent over one of the victims.
Outside, a dark blue armored police vehicle rumbled through the
street on its way to the outskirts, "to restore peace and tranquility."
"Seven deaths so far this weekend," said Díaz.
"It is starting to become a massacre." For Colombians,
the designation of massacre requires at least nine victims, he explained.
"We don’t have the means and time to carry out a decent
investigation," Díaz sighed. "The United States
gives the Colombian army Black Hawk helicopters. But at the district
attorney’s office, we have a shortage of paper clips. Nine
investigators share one computer. We lack the technology to start
a fingerprint database. Often we can’t visit the crime scene
for danger of being shot. Witnesses are too scared to talk. All
that remains is a superficial ballistic evaluation. Most of the
time, all we can do is determine the type of weapon used."
Human Shields
"Ninety-nine percent impunity," commented activist Henry
Lozano, behind the bulletproof windows in his office of the human
rights organization Credhos. "It is a public secret that the
army and paramilitary have close ties. The army disarms the guerrillas,
turning them into cannon fodder. The paramilitaries step in and
clear the neighborhoods of the guerrillas."
|
|
