Taking Note
R, F
Colombia: Death and the Media The murder of Colombian soccer star Andr6s Escobar as he was leaving a Medellin nightclub this past July 2 set off a circus of semi-informed lamentation in the...
...Colombia's President Gaviria has waged a courageous campaign against the cocaine cartels," wrote State Department Counselor Timothy Wirth, setting the tone in a recent letter to the Washington Post...
...Absent from the barrage of drugs-and-violence stories was the long "dirty war" that the Colombian military-in the guise of combatting a threedecade guerrilla insurgency-has been waging against peasants, indigenous leaders, human rights activists, independent judges, trade unionists, and leftist politicians...
...Don't blame soccer, said sportstalk commentators, life isn't worth a dime in Colombia...
...This is about a society run wild, a society so crazed with drugs and money and power and guns that it enables the wipeout of an athlete who dared represent his country...
...Like the military, the police have a welldocumented connection to the paramilitary squads who regularly engage in political killings and disappearances, as well as urban "social cleansing"-the murder of "undesirables" like street children, petty thieves, prostitutes and homosexuals...
...This lack of context is more pernicious than the simple oversight of overworked journalists...
...This silence, together with the generously funded war on drugs, and the media packaging of a country "crazed with drugs and money," simply feeds military and paramilitary impunity, and heightens Colombia's nightmare...
...He is best remembered for his incisive account of the Chilean coup, Storm Over Chile...
...The sports writers, of course, were taking their cue from the news and editorial writers who, in turn, have been taking their usual cue from State Department publicists...
...Building on the brutal military tactics honed in Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru, this campaign against civiliansdepriving the fish of the seaseems to be an integral part of the government's counterinsurgency strategy...
...press-has remained silent about these abuses...
...During the 1990s, Colombia has become the largest recipient of U.S...
...FR We note the death on July 29 of veteran radio and newspaper journalist, Samuel Chavkin...
...military assistance in Latin America-$227 million between fiscal years 1990 and 1993...
...public, all had a defensive, findme-someone-to-blame air to them...
...Since 1986, over 20,000 Colombians have been killed for political reasons...
...The United States-and the U.S...
...While Colombia's 1991 Constitution upholds the sanctity of human rights, it also grants jurisdiction to military courts-notorious for their ability to cast a timely blind eyeover all crimes attributed to either the armed forces or the police...
...The sports-page stories, coming in the midst of the selling of World Cup soccer to a hooligan-wary U.S...
...Reports by independent human rights monitors, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch/Americas and the Andean Commission of Jurists, all indicate that fewer that 2% of political killings and disappearances can be attributed to drug traffickers, 20 to 25% to guerrillas, and around 70% to the armed forces and paramilitary groups...
...Missing from Colombia coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times over the first six months of 1994 was any mention of the continual violent assault on real political opposition in Colombia-in its most gruesome form, the murder of some 2,500 members of the leftist Patriotic Union since its founding in 1984...
...The Colombian government is portrayed as besieged on all sides by drug traffickers, hired killers and Communist guerrillas-with a growing emphasis on the traffickers...
...press about violence and chaos in Colombia...
...An increasing share-as we might have guessed from Counselor Wirth's maudlin praise-is being funnelled to the Colombian National Police...
...He has put his life on the line, and thousands of Colombian police officers have made the ultimate sacrifice with theirs...
...Colombia: Death and the Media The murder of Colombian soccer star Andr6s Escobar as he was leaving a Medellin nightclub this past July 2 set off a circus of semi-informed lamentation in the U.S...
...This is not just about soccer," wrote New York Times sports columnist George Vescey...
...In its drive to gain control of the countryside, the government's campaign against the remaining guerrillas has produced widespread terror in rural Colombia...
...Colombia is awash in drugs and violence, but lost in the recriminatory prose-on the sports and news pages alike-is any context for the violence beyond Miami Vice-type drug deals gone bad...
...The Constitution also grants immunity from prosecution to all military and police personnel on the grounds of "due obedience...
...He will be missed...
...The army-as documented by independent human rights groups-has pursued victory in the countryside by means of rape, disappearances, torture, burning of habitats, aerial strafing and bombings, beatings, and death threats...
...The news media have created an image of a society so out of control that its only salvation is the iron hand of authority...
...nter the drug war...
Vol. 28 • September 1994 • No. 2
