COLOMBIA
Forgotten War
19’55”
00:08
Guerillas on Cali streets
Halton:
Cali --a city on edge in a country on edge. The F.A.R.C., the biggest of Colombia’s Marxist guerrilla armies has announced that every mayor in every town in the country will be killed unless they resign.
00:25
Rodriguez gets into armed vehicle
Cali's mayor, Juan Rodriguez, is defiant. He says he won't join the more than 100 mayors who have already resigned. The guards escorting him want to make sure he doesn't join the half a dozen mayors already murdered.
00:44
Rodriguez:
They don't respect the civil life of our country. They don't have a single bit of human decency. They've become animals.
Archival – FARC Guerilla attack
Halton:
Extreme words unleashed by extreme violence. In April, these F.A.R.C. guerrillas in Cali disguised themselves as soldiers, entered the provincial assembly and kidnapped 12 of the elected members. People watch in horror as a real soldier comes out. He’s consumed with rage and grief after finding his commander badly wounded by the guerrillas. 00:57
Music
01:40
Halton:
The soldier goes back to try to rescue his commander – it’s too late. The commander had his throat slit by the guerrillas, by now his body drained of life. Another assault on civil society, another day in Colombia.
Music
02:17
National parliament/Halton to camera
Halton:
It was against a background of a nation sick with violence and insecurity that Colombians turned to a leader who many hoped will be the saviour of their country. In May, they elected Alvaro Uribe as their new president. Uribe had campaigned on the promise of an all-out war against the country's rebel factions, and he cast himself as the leader who would wage that war with unrelenting toughness.
02:44
Uribe arrives with wife to Parliament He looks like a mild mannered Ph.D. student, but Colombians tell you he's a man with an iron fist, a potential autocrat according to some of his critics. Alvaro Uribe says no more concessions, no more fruitless negotiations with the guerrillas – force them to end a civil war that has lasted four decades and killed more than 200,000 Colombians.
03:14
Swearing in ceremony Uribe was sworn in in August in the national parliament, his challenge dramatically underlined by rebel mortar bombs falling just a block away from the ceremony.
The new era in Colombian politics was beginning, against an all too familiar backdrop of bloodshed and panic.
03:42
Uribe quickly declares of state of emergency and promises to restore law and order, by doubling the budget for his U.S.-backed army, by ordering his soldiers to engage the rebels' war aggressively, and by providing the military with a network of a million civilian informers.
04:04
Uribe:
We need to stop violence. If violent groups do not have a government capable to stop them, they won't negotiate.
04:23
Music
Barrancabermeja
Halton:
Barrancabermeja, an oil refining town in central Colombia, a vital crossroads for the drug trade, as well as oil. It's a violent outlaw town – a town of oil workers and drug traffickers and their hangers on. You see a few soldiers and police around but the real power is invisible, except for the tough young men on motorbikes, the enforcers.
05:08
Camera crew board river boat
It's from here that we embarked on our investigation of a region that's a microcosm of Colombia's worst problems, a region Uribe is bent on pacifying. At an isolated army checkpoint on the outskirts of town, an officer checks our ID.
05:40
Soldier checks Halton’s ID
He's not happy that we're headed further up the river. This is the last outpost of the Colombian army for hundreds of kilometres. Beyond here, no go areas for the military.
05:59
View of villages from river
We pass La Rompira where bodies sometimes wash up along the riverbank. We’re entering a zone where the state is invisible, where the guerrillas are fighting another outlaw army, the right-wing paramilitaries.
06:15
Halton to camera
Just 20 kilometres beyond that military checkpoint, you turn into the Cimitarra River, then to one of those vast areas of Colombia where there's no army presence, no police and no justice. It's a region where the paramilitaries and the guerrillas are locked in almost constant conflict and where the civilian population is paying a terrifying price.
06:42
View of villages from river
Twenty-five thousand campesinos live along this stretch of the river, their poverty typical of Colombia's rural population.
Music
06:56
Guerillas on riverbank
Halton:
For the moment, the guerrillas here have the upper hand, forcing the campesinos to provide them with food and taxing them for their illegal coca production. Soon, we encounter a platoon of the guerrillas – some of the 23,000 fighters deployed by the F.A.R.C. and the E.L.N., the National Liberation Army, the second-biggest Marxist movement in Colombia. We talked to the local commander.
07:26
(local commander):
We are fighting for a just and worthy cause. We are the armed peasants of this region. The only option we have is to defend ourselves with guns because in this country there is no other way to fight and to speak in a more democratic and peaceful way. It’s the only guarantee in life we have left, because otherwise, we won't be heard.
07:51
Guerrillas
Halton:
The words and pictures seem frozen in time – guerrillas in an armed struggle long abandoned almost everywhere else in Latin America.
8:04
Archival -- La Violencia
Colombia's guerrilla movement grew out of a period known as La Violencia --
17 years of strife and anarchy that ended in 1965. The two major parties fought each other for the spoils of office, then agreed to share power on behalf of the wealthy elite.
8:30
The guerrillas began to organize, they promised justice and equality to a people who'd seen little of either and were widely seen as the only alternative to a corrupt government in Bogota. Within 20 years, the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, known as F.A.R.C., had become a powerful revolutionary movement, strong in its ideology and strong in its capacity to stage hit-and-run attacks across the country.
9:02
Guerilla camp
Today, militarily, the guerrillas are as strong as ever. The fighters deployed by the F.A.R.C. and E.L.N. control about 40 per cent of rural Colombia. But their revolutionary ideals have faded, corrupted by their dependence on the drug trade, on kidnapping and extortion. In the eyes of many Colombians, yesterday's folk heroes have become today's thugs and narco traffickers.
9:31
Pena:
I think it's very significant that the European Union would include the F.A.R.C. in the list of terrorist organizations, something completely unthinkable just a few years ago.
9:42
Pena at table
Few outsiders know the guerrilla movement as well as Daniel Garcia Pena, a former government appointed peace negotiator. He sees both President Uribe and the guerrillas blinded by illusions of victory.
9:56
Daniel Garcia Penaformer peace negotiator
Pena:
I'm very sceptical that either side is going to be successful in defeating the other side. The tragedy of the Colombian war is that the government cannot defeat the guerrillas through military force, nor can the guerrillas overthrow the government by the use of arms. This is an un-winnable war. And we are condemned, sooner or later, to sit at the negotiating table.
10:24
View of villages from river
Halton:
We’re four hours up the Cimitarra River, approaching the village of Puertomatilda * in a lawless hinterland. The campesinos here live off the export of drugs and off the land. Hundreds of others have fled the area, joining the displacidos, the two million Colombians displaced from their homes by the civil war. Those who stay behind are victims of a different sort – caught in the middle, yet forced to take sides. In Puertomatilda*, the guerrillas are dominant, making everyone a target for the paramilitary death squads operating not far off.
11:04
Guerra:
That's what happened to many people who go and don't come back. They kill them there.
11:13
Halton:
Because he’s a local community activist, Gilberto Guerra is under constant threat. He says he knows hundreds of Cimitarra people murdered, often with savage brutality by the paramilitaries.
11:28
Gilberto GuerraCommunity activist
Guerra:
A 75-year-old grandfather, they cut him all up, piece by piece. We collected him in pieces but we couldn't find his liver, his inner organs and there was a note that said, 'We took his organs so we could fry them up because we were hungry’.
11:55
Barrancabermeja/Murder victims
Halton:
Back in Barrancabermeja, a calm that’s deceptive. Four years ago, the right-wing paramilitaries here began a murderous onslaught, killing more than 2,000 people as they took over what had been a guerrilla stronghold.
Music
12:23
Barrancabermeja
Halton:
It turned Barrancabermeja into the largest town in Colombia to be under the control of the paramilitaries. Because of that, some see it as a preview of a nightmare that could settle over other Colombian cities.
12:39
Alex with Halton
On the outskirts of town, we arrange a meeting with the regional political commander of the paramilitaries, who calls himself Alex. What we aren’t allowed to show you are the dozen thuggish young men behind the camera. The commander says his fighters have brought peace to the town.
12:57
Alex:
What’s it like now? It’s completely different. Anyone can walk the streets of Barrancabermeja at any time of the day. I’ve seen people walking the streets where the guerrillas used to kill people
13:10
de Roux in church
Halton:
Francisco de Roux, a Catholic priest and human rights activist, acknowledges that most people find Barrancabermeja more peaceful now than it was when the guerrillas were here. But, it's a calm, he says, bought at a terrible price.
13:25
Francisco de Roux Catholic priest &Human rights activist
de Roux:
It, in fact, it is more peaceful for human living, but, you see, you have at the same time the destruction of the public space, the destruction of real democracy. The situation is unacceptable.
13:44
Paramilitaries
Halton:
The paramilitaries call themselves the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia.
14:13
This man, a former drug dealer named Carlos Castano forged them into a single movement in the mid-1980s. Their mission was clear: protect the big land owners and cattle ranchers from the guerrillas and defend the drug cartels that serve the insatiable American market for cocaine.
The paramilitaries are responsible for more than 70 per cent of the civilian murders in Colombia, mostly campesinos massacred because of suspected ties with the guerrillas.
14:28
Funeral
But the death list in Barrancabermeja reflects the paramilitaries' favourite target – union leaders, community activists and human rights workers. Father de Roux has seen dozens of his colleagues killed, including a lawyer working for social justice in the town.
14:46
de Roux:
The crime was horrible. They cut down her head, her arms, her legs and they were very specific: 'Yes, we did it and we are going to keep doing it against any person who try to stop our presence in the region.
15:04
Halton with Alex
Halton:
Human rights people we've talked to around here ask why is it necessary to target, and in many cases kill, community workers, community activists, union leaders as brutally as they claim that you do.
15:20
Halton:
After that question is translated, a long silence. Then Alex, the death squad commander, orders us to cut the camera. He confers with the lieutenant off camera, then finally responds.
15:36
Alex:
We would never commit a threat against any leader of any community or any institution. Why? Because our mission is to protect them and to help them and collaborate with them because they help communities.
15:52
Halton:
The commander is more comfortable boasting of what paramilitary rule has done for the people of Barrancabermeja and how he hopes for similar takeovers in other Colombian cities.
16:04
Alex:
Since the authorities are not able to act in some places, we invite other cities with this problem of occupation by the guerrillas to follow the example of Barrancabermeja. They should resist and not let the guerrillas trample them.
16:23
de Roux
Halton:
But that's a big threat to democracy in this country.
de Roux:
It's a total threat to democracy in Colombia. It means the destruction of the possibility of community autonomies, people freedom is indeed very, very problematic.
16:46
Rodriguez on river patrol
Halton:
Major Agustin Rodriguez is the young and ambitious commander of the navy forces that patrol the river near Barrancabermeja. He's happy to have his men put on a show of force for us, but he readily admits that his forces are simply not able to stamp out illegal armed groups in the area.
17:07
Rodriguez:
We have a large, very large territory to cover with the number of people we have. We are doing all that we can, with the forces working 24 hours a day.
17:19
River patrol
Halton:
Rodriguez is less willing to admit that here and elsewhere some Colombian forces secretly cooperate with the paramilitaries against a common enemy, the leftist guerrillas. Critics say the takeover of Barrancabermeja could never have happened so quickly without military cooperation.
17:38
de Roux:
For any person living in Barrancabermeja, this is obvious. Without that, it will be impossible to have all the power the paramilitaries have in the region.
17:50
Rodriguez:
I can stake my career on the fact that that is not true – that I'm sure of. What I can't dispute is that somebody, a peasant whose parents were killed by the guerrillas and later becomes a soldier, a marine, and then sees the paramilitary as an alternative -- well, I can't say that hasn't happened.
18:17
Uribe arrives by helicopter
Halton:
For President Uribe, any serious evidence that the army is still cooperating with the paramilitaries would undermine his credibility, perhaps even his presidency. Uribe is trying to convince the doubters that he'll go after the paramilitaries as aggressively as the guerrillas, with an army that's much stronger than in the past.
18:38
Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia
Uribe: There are places in Colombia where people are assassinated. In the eyes of the army, we need to make our stake, a stronger and completely responsibility to protect our people.
18:57
Cockfight
Halton:
A Saturday night cockfight in Barrancabermeja. In Colombia, it’s a blood sport that’s legal and popular. One more expression of the deep rooted culture of violence.
19:15
The roosters fight to the death, just as the country’s warring factions say they will never compromise – never give up.
19:23
Alex:
In our statutes, it says that we will remain until the last bullet of the guerrillas.
19:36
Local commander:
We know we won’t see victory, but we’re convinced we have to fight for the poor people of Colombia and for the poor people all over the world.
19:51
Pena:
It's amazing that after almost 40 years of war today, the guerrillas are stronger than ever before. The Colombian army is stronger and more powerful than ever before, and the paramilitaries are stronger and more powerful than ever before. We have three mighty war machines that feed off of each other and that will continue to escalate and continue to grow… and the worst part of this is that the prime targets are civilian population.
20:24
Cockfight
Halton:
Cockfights are often the prelude to tragedy in the novels of the great Colombian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The question for President Uribe is whether his strategy of winning the peace by escalating the war will succeed, or whether it will drag Colombia into greater tragedy and a future of even more despair.
20:53
Credits: COLOMBIA Forgotten WAR
Reporter: David Halton
Camera: David Martin
Editor: Bob Schroeder
Producer: Carmen Merrifield
Forgotten War
19’55”
00:08
Guerillas on Cali streets
Halton:
Cali --a city on edge in a country on edge. The F.A.R.C., the biggest of Colombia’s Marxist guerrilla armies has announced that every mayor in every town in the country will be killed unless they resign.
00:25
Rodriguez gets into armed vehicle
Cali's mayor, Juan Rodriguez, is defiant. He says he won't join the more than 100 mayors who have already resigned. The guards escorting him want to make sure he doesn't join the half a dozen mayors already murdered.
00:44
Rodriguez:
They don't respect the civil life of our country. They don't have a single bit of human decency. They've become animals.
Archival – FARC Guerilla attack
Halton:
Extreme words unleashed by extreme violence. In April, these F.A.R.C. guerrillas in Cali disguised themselves as soldiers, entered the provincial assembly and kidnapped 12 of the elected members. People watch in horror as a real soldier comes out. He’s consumed with rage and grief after finding his commander badly wounded by the guerrillas. 00:57
Music
01:40
Halton:
The soldier goes back to try to rescue his commander – it’s too late. The commander had his throat slit by the guerrillas, by now his body drained of life. Another assault on civil society, another day in Colombia.
Music
02:17
National parliament/Halton to camera
Halton:
It was against a background of a nation sick with violence and insecurity that Colombians turned to a leader who many hoped will be the saviour of their country. In May, they elected Alvaro Uribe as their new president. Uribe had campaigned on the promise of an all-out war against the country's rebel factions, and he cast himself as the leader who would wage that war with unrelenting toughness.
02:44
Uribe arrives with wife to Parliament He looks like a mild mannered Ph.D. student, but Colombians tell you he's a man with an iron fist, a potential autocrat according to some of his critics. Alvaro Uribe says no more concessions, no more fruitless negotiations with the guerrillas – force them to end a civil war that has lasted four decades and killed more than 200,000 Colombians.
03:14
Swearing in ceremony Uribe was sworn in in August in the national parliament, his challenge dramatically underlined by rebel mortar bombs falling just a block away from the ceremony.
The new era in Colombian politics was beginning, against an all too familiar backdrop of bloodshed and panic.
03:42
Uribe quickly declares of state of emergency and promises to restore law and order, by doubling the budget for his U.S.-backed army, by ordering his soldiers to engage the rebels' war aggressively, and by providing the military with a network of a million civilian informers.
04:04
Uribe:
We need to stop violence. If violent groups do not have a government capable to stop them, they won't negotiate.
04:23
Music
Barrancabermeja
Halton:
Barrancabermeja, an oil refining town in central Colombia, a vital crossroads for the drug trade, as well as oil. It's a violent outlaw town – a town of oil workers and drug traffickers and their hangers on. You see a few soldiers and police around but the real power is invisible, except for the tough young men on motorbikes, the enforcers.
05:08
Camera crew board river boat
It's from here that we embarked on our investigation of a region that's a microcosm of Colombia's worst problems, a region Uribe is bent on pacifying. At an isolated army checkpoint on the outskirts of town, an officer checks our ID.
05:40
Soldier checks Halton’s ID
He's not happy that we're headed further up the river. This is the last outpost of the Colombian army for hundreds of kilometres. Beyond here, no go areas for the military.
05:59
View of villages from river
We pass La Rompira where bodies sometimes wash up along the riverbank. We’re entering a zone where the state is invisible, where the guerrillas are fighting another outlaw army, the right-wing paramilitaries.
06:15
Halton to camera
Just 20 kilometres beyond that military checkpoint, you turn into the Cimitarra River, then to one of those vast areas of Colombia where there's no army presence, no police and no justice. It's a region where the paramilitaries and the guerrillas are locked in almost constant conflict and where the civilian population is paying a terrifying price.
06:42
View of villages from river
Twenty-five thousand campesinos live along this stretch of the river, their poverty typical of Colombia's rural population.
Music
06:56
Guerillas on riverbank
Halton:
For the moment, the guerrillas here have the upper hand, forcing the campesinos to provide them with food and taxing them for their illegal coca production. Soon, we encounter a platoon of the guerrillas – some of the 23,000 fighters deployed by the F.A.R.C. and the E.L.N., the National Liberation Army, the second-biggest Marxist movement in Colombia. We talked to the local commander.
07:26
(local commander):
We are fighting for a just and worthy cause. We are the armed peasants of this region. The only option we have is to defend ourselves with guns because in this country there is no other way to fight and to speak in a more democratic and peaceful way. It’s the only guarantee in life we have left, because otherwise, we won't be heard.
07:51
Guerrillas
Halton:
The words and pictures seem frozen in time – guerrillas in an armed struggle long abandoned almost everywhere else in Latin America.
8:04
Archival -- La Violencia
Colombia's guerrilla movement grew out of a period known as La Violencia --
17 years of strife and anarchy that ended in 1965. The two major parties fought each other for the spoils of office, then agreed to share power on behalf of the wealthy elite.
8:30
The guerrillas began to organize, they promised justice and equality to a people who'd seen little of either and were widely seen as the only alternative to a corrupt government in Bogota. Within 20 years, the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, known as F.A.R.C., had become a powerful revolutionary movement, strong in its ideology and strong in its capacity to stage hit-and-run attacks across the country.
9:02
Guerilla camp
Today, militarily, the guerrillas are as strong as ever. The fighters deployed by the F.A.R.C. and E.L.N. control about 40 per cent of rural Colombia. But their revolutionary ideals have faded, corrupted by their dependence on the drug trade, on kidnapping and extortion. In the eyes of many Colombians, yesterday's folk heroes have become today's thugs and narco traffickers.
9:31
Pena:
I think it's very significant that the European Union would include the F.A.R.C. in the list of terrorist organizations, something completely unthinkable just a few years ago.
9:42
Pena at table
Few outsiders know the guerrilla movement as well as Daniel Garcia Pena, a former government appointed peace negotiator. He sees both President Uribe and the guerrillas blinded by illusions of victory.
9:56
Daniel Garcia Penaformer peace negotiator
Pena:
I'm very sceptical that either side is going to be successful in defeating the other side. The tragedy of the Colombian war is that the government cannot defeat the guerrillas through military force, nor can the guerrillas overthrow the government by the use of arms. This is an un-winnable war. And we are condemned, sooner or later, to sit at the negotiating table.
10:24
View of villages from river
Halton:
We’re four hours up the Cimitarra River, approaching the village of Puertomatilda * in a lawless hinterland. The campesinos here live off the export of drugs and off the land. Hundreds of others have fled the area, joining the displacidos, the two million Colombians displaced from their homes by the civil war. Those who stay behind are victims of a different sort – caught in the middle, yet forced to take sides. In Puertomatilda*, the guerrillas are dominant, making everyone a target for the paramilitary death squads operating not far off.
11:04
Guerra:
That's what happened to many people who go and don't come back. They kill them there.
11:13
Halton:
Because he’s a local community activist, Gilberto Guerra is under constant threat. He says he knows hundreds of Cimitarra people murdered, often with savage brutality by the paramilitaries.
11:28
Gilberto GuerraCommunity activist
Guerra:
A 75-year-old grandfather, they cut him all up, piece by piece. We collected him in pieces but we couldn't find his liver, his inner organs and there was a note that said, 'We took his organs so we could fry them up because we were hungry’.
11:55
Barrancabermeja/Murder victims
Halton:
Back in Barrancabermeja, a calm that’s deceptive. Four years ago, the right-wing paramilitaries here began a murderous onslaught, killing more than 2,000 people as they took over what had been a guerrilla stronghold.
Music
12:23
Barrancabermeja
Halton:
It turned Barrancabermeja into the largest town in Colombia to be under the control of the paramilitaries. Because of that, some see it as a preview of a nightmare that could settle over other Colombian cities.
12:39
Alex with Halton
On the outskirts of town, we arrange a meeting with the regional political commander of the paramilitaries, who calls himself Alex. What we aren’t allowed to show you are the dozen thuggish young men behind the camera. The commander says his fighters have brought peace to the town.
12:57
Alex:
What’s it like now? It’s completely different. Anyone can walk the streets of Barrancabermeja at any time of the day. I’ve seen people walking the streets where the guerrillas used to kill people
13:10
de Roux in church
Halton:
Francisco de Roux, a Catholic priest and human rights activist, acknowledges that most people find Barrancabermeja more peaceful now than it was when the guerrillas were here. But, it's a calm, he says, bought at a terrible price.
13:25
Francisco de Roux Catholic priest &Human rights activist
de Roux:
It, in fact, it is more peaceful for human living, but, you see, you have at the same time the destruction of the public space, the destruction of real democracy. The situation is unacceptable.
13:44
Paramilitaries
Halton:
The paramilitaries call themselves the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia.
14:13
This man, a former drug dealer named Carlos Castano forged them into a single movement in the mid-1980s. Their mission was clear: protect the big land owners and cattle ranchers from the guerrillas and defend the drug cartels that serve the insatiable American market for cocaine.
The paramilitaries are responsible for more than 70 per cent of the civilian murders in Colombia, mostly campesinos massacred because of suspected ties with the guerrillas.
14:28
Funeral
But the death list in Barrancabermeja reflects the paramilitaries' favourite target – union leaders, community activists and human rights workers. Father de Roux has seen dozens of his colleagues killed, including a lawyer working for social justice in the town.
14:46
de Roux:
The crime was horrible. They cut down her head, her arms, her legs and they were very specific: 'Yes, we did it and we are going to keep doing it against any person who try to stop our presence in the region.
15:04
Halton with Alex
Halton:
Human rights people we've talked to around here ask why is it necessary to target, and in many cases kill, community workers, community activists, union leaders as brutally as they claim that you do.
15:20
Halton:
After that question is translated, a long silence. Then Alex, the death squad commander, orders us to cut the camera. He confers with the lieutenant off camera, then finally responds.
15:36
Alex:
We would never commit a threat against any leader of any community or any institution. Why? Because our mission is to protect them and to help them and collaborate with them because they help communities.
15:52
Halton:
The commander is more comfortable boasting of what paramilitary rule has done for the people of Barrancabermeja and how he hopes for similar takeovers in other Colombian cities.
16:04
Alex:
Since the authorities are not able to act in some places, we invite other cities with this problem of occupation by the guerrillas to follow the example of Barrancabermeja. They should resist and not let the guerrillas trample them.
16:23
de Roux
Halton:
But that's a big threat to democracy in this country.
de Roux:
It's a total threat to democracy in Colombia. It means the destruction of the possibility of community autonomies, people freedom is indeed very, very problematic.
16:46
Rodriguez on river patrol
Halton:
Major Agustin Rodriguez is the young and ambitious commander of the navy forces that patrol the river near Barrancabermeja. He's happy to have his men put on a show of force for us, but he readily admits that his forces are simply not able to stamp out illegal armed groups in the area.
17:07
Rodriguez:
We have a large, very large territory to cover with the number of people we have. We are doing all that we can, with the forces working 24 hours a day.
17:19
River patrol
Halton:
Rodriguez is less willing to admit that here and elsewhere some Colombian forces secretly cooperate with the paramilitaries against a common enemy, the leftist guerrillas. Critics say the takeover of Barrancabermeja could never have happened so quickly without military cooperation.
17:38
de Roux:
For any person living in Barrancabermeja, this is obvious. Without that, it will be impossible to have all the power the paramilitaries have in the region.
17:50
Rodriguez:
I can stake my career on the fact that that is not true – that I'm sure of. What I can't dispute is that somebody, a peasant whose parents were killed by the guerrillas and later becomes a soldier, a marine, and then sees the paramilitary as an alternative -- well, I can't say that hasn't happened.
18:17
Uribe arrives by helicopter
Halton:
For President Uribe, any serious evidence that the army is still cooperating with the paramilitaries would undermine his credibility, perhaps even his presidency. Uribe is trying to convince the doubters that he'll go after the paramilitaries as aggressively as the guerrillas, with an army that's much stronger than in the past.
18:38
Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia
Uribe: There are places in Colombia where people are assassinated. In the eyes of the army, we need to make our stake, a stronger and completely responsibility to protect our people.
18:57
Cockfight
Halton:
A Saturday night cockfight in Barrancabermeja. In Colombia, it’s a blood sport that’s legal and popular. One more expression of the deep rooted culture of violence.
19:15
The roosters fight to the death, just as the country’s warring factions say they will never compromise – never give up.
19:23
Alex:
In our statutes, it says that we will remain until the last bullet of the guerrillas.
19:36
Local commander:
We know we won’t see victory, but we’re convinced we have to fight for the poor people of Colombia and for the poor people all over the world.
19:51
Pena:
It's amazing that after almost 40 years of war today, the guerrillas are stronger than ever before. The Colombian army is stronger and more powerful than ever before, and the paramilitaries are stronger and more powerful than ever before. We have three mighty war machines that feed off of each other and that will continue to escalate and continue to grow… and the worst part of this is that the prime targets are civilian population.
20:24
Cockfight
Halton:
Cockfights are often the prelude to tragedy in the novels of the great Colombian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The question for President Uribe is whether his strategy of winning the peace by escalating the war will succeed, or whether it will drag Colombia into greater tragedy and a future of even more despair.
20:53
Credits: COLOMBIA Forgotten WAR
Reporter: David Halton
Camera: David Martin
Editor: Bob Schroeder
Producer: Carmen Merrifield