CPTnet
December 31, 2003
COLOMBIA REFLECTION: The cruelest month

[Note: For reasons of security, the names of the writer and the missing man
referred to in the release have been withheld]

If T.S. Eliot had lived in Barrancabermeja, Colombia, he might have said
that December, not April, is the cruelest month. News of assassinations
arrive with every morning's paper. The team discovered three bodies in the
river within the space of a week and even more have been reported. One
community member disappeared and a farm worker was assassinated.

We saw the vultures circling on the river last week. Everyone was silent as
we drew our canoe up along side the bloated body. His pants were down below
his knees. He didn't have a shirt. There was a hole where his nipple should
be, another one in his stomach and, as an appropriate metaphor for the
frequency of unidentified corpses in Colombia, he lacked a face.

We gently pushed him to the side of the river and called the authorities.
We thought he might be a member of one of the rural fishing and farming
communities our team accompanies along the Op