Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25179
bumpers in the back seat and drive off. Where are the chainsaws and Mac lIs? The dull pop of gunfire? The trendy bars and restaurants in Bogota have outside tables, crisp margaritas and great music. But there are no armed guards. Still, I keep my back to the wall and watch the street carefully. Only helpful waiters, dark-haired girls and passing college students assault me. Resigned to tedium, I walk back to my hotel at 3 AM and even at this hour, the locals insist on waving and wishing me good evening. The next day, cabdrivers (who some people had warned would drive me straight to waiting kidnappers for a quick finder's fee) diligently look after my luggage, make exact change and wait patiently while I set up meetings with various military, police and rebel groups. HERB, SMACK AND BLOW. UNKRISPY COLOMBIAN TREATS Colombia produced about 580 tons of coca (the raw material used to make cocaine) last year, making it the world's largest source of coca. Roughly 75 percent of Colombia'S coca ends up in the US (accounting for 80 percent of the cocaine in the world). Colombia also supplies about 65 percent of the US' heroin and is the world's third largest marijuana producer. According to a US Congress report, worldwide sales of cocaine and heroin add about US$4 billion to Colombia's GDP, topping oi l's contribution of US$3.7 billion . The big Colombian drug organizations, such as the infamous Medellin and Cali cartels, surfaced in the 1970s after Mexico cracked down on its illegal trade. After Colombian authorities gunned down Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellin cartel, the modern, fragmented drug trade in Colombia began to evolve. My goal is to get to the front lines and experience the war firsthand. My first meeting is not with some military flunky but with General Fernando Tapias, the head of the Colombian military. Within minutes, his aides are scrambling to get me out to the fighting. That was easy. Assistants and adjutants are dispatched to set up my itinerary. With in a day, I have a smiling military attache fussing over me and I am scheduled to visit every major combat zone in Colombia. The police are even more cord ial and efficient, inviting me to join them that night to enter the thick of Bogota's criminal underworld. They even seem to want to compete with the military for my time. "Yes, absolutely, you will experience fi rsthand the conditions in Colombia." They slot me into a big drug raid to take down 83 coca fields that will involve over 300 cops, a dozen Vietnam-era Huey and two Blackhawk hel icopters. When I accompany a dozen armed policemen on an early morning raid to an urban guerrilla hideout, one policeman politely knocks on the door and requests that someone open it. A man they apprehend as a terrorist is exceedingly polite about the origin of the bullets, backpacks and balaclavas found in his possession. On another ra id, the undercover police wear crisp black suits and calmly take loaded pistols out of people's pockets without a single expletive. On one lightning-fast takedown, the police politely mention that I shouldn't take photos just a few inches from the thief's face and directly in front of where their guns are pointed. After all , they explain, I might get injured. They bring the thief coffee and joke with him while he fills out his "How was your arrest7" paperwork. The trip is shaping up to be ... well , dull. I decide to go pay the rebels a visit. Otherwise, I might have to write about the beaches after all. CAQUETA REGION "Pull up. Pull up. Pull up." A monotone digitized female voice drones from the cockpit of our twin engine turboprop. I am sitting in the first row behind the open cockpit door peering out my window to see how close we are to impact. There is nothing except low, wet clouds and dark shadows flicking by. The computer voice tries to warn the pilot one more time but instead of pulling back on the yoke, she pushes the stick forward. We go into a dive, hurtling over the edge of a ridge and down towards the green rolling cattle country that drops again to the Amazon basin. At least, that's where I'm supposed to be going. But right now it appears I am flying into the side of a mounta in. Outside the window, dark patches of jagged mountains rip through white clouds and bam! we are in bright sunshine coming in for final approach above the rich green countryside. We land with a welcoming chirp of the ti res in San Vicente del Caguan, 185 miles south of Bogota, the newest and most visible headquarters of the FARC. This is just a regular flight on the military-run airline that services this tiny town in the rebel-held Zona de Despeje, or the "Cleared Out Zone" roughly translated from Spanish. In a move that shocked many Colombians, President Andres Pastrana simply handed over 15,000 square miles to the FARC rebels and baSica lly asked for nothing in return . The idea was to see if a constructive peace process could be created in a large no-fire zone. Revolution is just another way of life here. Today, the FARC fights a four- way guerrilla war against the police, the military, the paramilitaries and the people. It controls over a third of the countryside but has little popular support. Perhaps you don't need popular support when you are the oldest, biggest and richest rebel group in the Western Hemisphere. The FARC's wealth and the attention paid to capitalism by Marxist rebels scares the bejeezuz out of the US government, American companies and the Colombian government. Although the FARC leaders promote themselves as Che Guevara-style freedom fighters, the group is meaner, more efficient and, some say, wealthier than the Colombian government forces pitted against it. The FARC means business. And business is ultimately wilat it is all about, despite its agrarian roots and Marxist propaganda. The group began in 1948 when 18-year-old Manuel Marulanda Velez (aka "Sureshot") was forced to flee into the Marquetalia region to escape political turmoil. 36 Marulanda organized a guerrilla band made up initially of 14 comrades to fight back against the Conservative party. Over time, Marulanda recruited guerrillas to join him. There wasn't much ideology back then, just the concept of survival. With the help of the US government, the Colombian government solved most politica l problems by eliminating the competition: they bombed the rebels as they hid in the jungle. The government's counterinsurgency methods were effective and soon there were only 48 guerrillas left in Sureshot's group. He recruited another 350 peasants and created the Southern Bloc. On May 27, 1964, the force changed its name to the FARC. It adopted a socialist agenda and weapons courtesy of Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union. Its goal was to replace the few, very wealthy ru ling famil ies with a more equitable mix of small landowners and local government. That goal was as impossible then as it is now. SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN The only sign that I am in "FARClandia," or rebel territory, is a limp banner hanging from the airport control tower. Two armed rebels lean against the walkway to the parking lot. A way-too-eager, thin, mustachioed man who identifies himself as Nilo grabs my bags out of my hand and introduces himself as the official greeter and guide for the rebels. True to his word, his red Honda Accord is festooned with Nueva Colombia (New Colombia) stickers, pennants, window shades and dangly doodads. I wonder who has the merchandising rights to the revolution, but I don't ask. Our first stop is the FARC office in the main square near the brown, swollen Caguan River. There are squatters on the side of the road. There are more banners and signs proclaiming the New Colombia, which is a polite, neat place full of happy signs and slogans. No crime, no gunshots. Just a town populated by wary people watched very careful ly by armed rebels in rubber boots. In clandestine conversations with nervous villagers, I learn that when the rebels leave San Vicente del Caguan, there will be much killing by the para militaries who will execute those they believe to be rebel sympathizers. I learn that even the FARC fighters fear for their future, and worst of all, that life for the residents of San Vicente del Cagui'm is no better now than it was before the FARC. They are-as they have always been- helpless players in Colombia's agony. Meanwhile, the rebels use the region to protect the growing and transporting of drugs, to recruit young volunteers, rest their troops and to conduct on-again, off-again peace talks. The demise of the Soviet Union forced the FARC to find other sources of income. It also broadened its view of Marxism. Its control over remote jungle regions provided income through "war taxes" and kidnapping until the very lucrative business of protecting coca fields began to generate mil lions of dollars annually. The demand worldwide for cocaine in the 1980s and the destruction of the high profile drug lords provided the perfect opportunity for the FARC to change from a peasant army of 5,000