ARTURO ALAPE
Cali, November 3, 1938 - Bogotá, October 7, 2006
REPORTS AND PUBLICATIONS
in "the country" and the magazine "Number"
IN THE COUNTRY, December 29, 2006 Offprint
"Nostalgia 2006" p. C-3
Click on images to enlarge.
Text:
THE twentieth century chronicler.
OCTOBER 7
Arturo Alape has been recorded in the history of Colombia, for the vast legacy he left to devote to depict in his book versions of Colombian history of the twentieth century, many of them hidden both discover that risked his own life. Although born in Cali
his life turned to a passion for discovering what happened in Bogota on April 9, 1948, in the hours that followed the assassination of Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan.
'The Bogotazo', the fruit of his research book on the subject, put it in the forefront of the lyrics, the historical study and even national political reality.
later became Colombia's most know for the life of Manuel Marulanda Velez, 'Sureshot', the guerrilla fighter who founded and still commanding the bloody guerrilla group FARC. Alape drew the most complete biography of known subversive.
In his last work published during his lifetime, 'The corpse unburied'; Alape returned to the theme of bipartisan violence during the Twentieth Century.
This latest work, reported after his release, he worked more than three decades.
had desires to complete before the leukemia was winning the battle, to fulfill a promise to the court reporter Philip Toledo one of his best and closest friends. Although Arturo Alape
is the name that you knew the country, its true is Carlos Arturo Ruiz.
His final fight against leukemia took a full decade.
lost the battle on Saturday October 7 at 11:00 pm ., One week after being admitted to the Clinic Corpas Jorge Oliveros, in northern Bogota. As he wished, only close friends and family gave him a last farewell. ARTURO
ALAPE
Real Name: Carlos Arturo Ruiz
birth: Cali, 1938
Death: Bogotá, October 7, 2006
Affiliation Politics: She was active in the Communist Youth
Books published: 'The Lives of Pedro Antonio Marín, Manuel Marulanda Velez ("Tirotijo') ',' The Bogotazo ',' Memories of Oblivion ',' Diary of a Guerrilla ',' The unburied corpse, "among others.
--- Expanding the photo published in EL PAIS
+ + + PUBLICATION IN THE JOURNAL "NUMBER" No. 51, Dec. 2006
TRACES OF DEATH ON THE BACK This text, one of the last written by the artist Arturo Alape, recently deceased, is a gripping chronicle of the life of a man committed to his time and with a sense of social existence. Testimony of an era, of a generation.
recently participated in a conversation with a group of young people from Sons and Daughters, an organization that seeks to rescue the history of their parents missing or killed during the dirty war against militants and leaders of the Patriotic Union (UP), in the end, approached a girl of 22 years and I said:
"I am delighted to meet you. I am the niece of Hernando Gonzalez. Three years ago my grandmother told me about the death of my uncle Hernando. What happened was kept secret for security family. Now I know you. I would like to tell me the story of what happened ...». The foundation of my memory is moved. Maybe tonight, before you count aloud the passage intense experiential Hernando Gonzalez, its history, our history.
That night I went back to my memories to Havana in the years of my first exile between 1987 and 1990. I remember the conversation I had an afternoon with Juan Gelman, the great Argentine poet, twelve years of exile to his country slopes:
"I think that is a harsh punishment that the exile. For the Greeks the exile was a harsh punishment worse than death. Do not know if it's exactly like that, but yet you know it and it is feeling ...». His words became images frozen in time of great pain. Leo
the end of his beautiful poem "Open Letter" in which the poet addresses her missing son:
"deshijándote much / desuckering / or are looking for you for your suavera / step father only you / to the secret voice weave / ', speaks in his poem which will check their deaths, the day only to find "their bodies ...». His son, his daughter; news of his granddaughter is alive and that makes family life with parents forged by the military dictatorship.
At this very moment, in Havana, the memories are accurate news images weeded random time lost in the mists of memory. In the distance I glimpse the bloody mountain in the river float hundreds of bodies: work at Casa de las Americas, received news of death to increase the amount of murders of my friends and comrades of the Patriotic Union.
In a Saturday afternoon at the home of Millet, argue with Manuel Cepeda Vargas, member of the Communist Party leadership, a tough and bitter partisan debate. Asked Manuel with full frankness: "Why did the party does not preserve your pictures? In Colombia, they are killing everyone in the trap of the dirty war ...». He said as he used to in the meetings of the leadership of the Communist Youth (JUCO), with conviction in his word for absolute truth: "The game is not exiled ...». I felt, I confess, guilty for my exile ...
Months after that discussion with Manuel Cepeda Vargas arrived in Havana Bernardo Jaramillo, seeking a temporary shelter for their existence. In the late eighties was the most hunted man in the country, for political reasons. With Bernardo talked many times with the speed of premonitions. It was a spirited unstoppable when he spoke. I wrote at the time to Prensa Latina and I did a long interview, now I can not explain why he never published it. As a farewell, at the end of my questions, he reiterated with a wisdom that bordered on cruelty, "Return to Colombia to kill me ...». That said, that I heard. Three months after a young gunman shot him in the Eldorado airport in Bogota. When I returned to the country in 1991 after nearly four years in exile in Havana, I saw on the television archives, to the astonishment deeply painful images of the gunman, 17 years old when he shot at Bernardo Jaramillo: his body bent in an attitude of defense, then the camera would show him as he lay lifeless on the floor. Then the camera would focus the young gunman when he jumped on the body of Bernard, intoxicated by a devilish joy. In his luminous eyes expressed the feeling for the work. He was a professional death had complied with the order given. To try to explain the pain I feel today for the death of many close friends, very slowly reread a text of introduction to one of the chapters I wrote in my book peace, violence: witnesses for exceptions, the sixties:
"They were the years of the most beautiful human tension, when man leaves the individual selfishness and offers everything for a possibly distant ideal. Perhaps we are talking right now on behalf of survivors and in doing so we express a deep feeling of pain in his back. It is a nightmare story that follows. It's just a blink of an eye. Is a sense of urgency inside. Talking about death often brings a sense of guilt. It's true. But we are more aware than ever that this illusion that began in the sixties has not lapsed, and continue to breathe fully, no matter what the years come, come and give us a farewell forever. There are men who complete their convictions to thirty years. "
write or narrate what is on behalf of survivors. The fifties me footprints left on the skin like rubber tree bark. Snapshots that still remain in memory and run free I remember the afternoon of 9 April. A man riding his bike reaches the tenement where he lived as a child, gets out and enters the first courtyard. When I look back, he yelled: "You bloody shirt ...». Man, listen, you faint with terror. For half an hour on his bicycle had been shot in the back. I saw for the first time, back in the country. Another memory of youth was one morning at 1:05, the awful sound I raised a meter above bed, as if the strength of twenty men had raised me, I knew moments after news of the radio had broken seven trucks loaded with dynamite, opposite the train station. They were military trucks. Terrible oversight of the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla. The dead, transients flophouse, cafes, cinemas and houses of prostitution, amounted to two thousand. Hundreds of bodies disappeared in the air like atoms. Now go around the images in hundreds of photographs that I keep in my files: a group of men throwing bodies into a huge common grave in the photographs men, women and children are rolled into tears in the most terrible desolation May 10, Rojas dictatorship falls, turns the city of Cali to the streets literally celebrating the event. The trucks seem crowded tanks. The euphoria is transmuted into anger of the crowd, who directs his hatred of many houses barricaded home to so called "birds," henchmen of the regime. Desencuevan One by one, they take them out to the streets, lynched.
remember the twisted face of "Caracolina 'ointments vendor Valley markets," bird "and a murderer at night in the city, when a group of men to force him out into the street, drag him by the arms and the crowd will hate your body kicks, turns around the block, "Caracolina" cries for his life, cowardice arises from the eyes, is helpless, no weapons in hand, another group of men out of the house a wooden chest, open it and throw away a fortune on air tickets, the crowd calls to burn the money, the men set the fire and shouting the slogan "Down with dictatorship, we are free!" tickets are devoured by the flames, when the small crowd goes around the block with the body " Caracolina ', man had ceased to exist by the terrible beating.
Year 59: Cali comes news of the slaughter of 17 people in the towns of Darien and Restrepo. Among the dead, spoke of two students from Cali. The killings had the work of a group of "birds" still went loose, flying and killing defenseless civilians. Barberena Alfonso, leader of the homeless, Cali brings the corpses and the Casa del Pueblo, located in San Nicolas, offers a tribute to the victims. I was studying painting at the Institute of Popular Culture, and at night, they took the bodies from the coffins and a man and a woman, dressed in white, began to prepare them to hold off until the next day when there would be a manifestation protest. The man opened with pliers the mouths of the dead and the mother stuffed lime: I, feverish, drawing in a notebook every moment of the scene death pain and collective. The next morning, we left in protest with the 17 coffins, heading towards the Central Cemetery. The first race was packed with policemen armed with rifles. Family members ask students to bring their children to the Cathedral, but the police prevented the remaining bodies are veiled there, then would come the unusual: one in the afternoon, scorching heat, the crowd called step to the bodies of people The police attacks with rifles and bayonets clash of forces between life and death, the police will not budge, the crowd either, so people open and half are in a long line facing the Hermitage, the 17 coffins; the right side, the offices of the National Intelligence Service (SIC), on the left, the Teatro Avenida. Rampant and sickening smell of death takes over the streets of Cali. My eyes of a young child and saw it all in the dark decade of the fifties in the city of longing and dreams.
The sixties were for us, those who had experienced violence-stage party that apparently was caught in the nets of oblivion, the beginning of a beautiful illusion that everything would change in Colombia: the dream of revolution. We were of the stature of the dreamers who throw look forward to transform the world. However, for build that dream we should transform ourselves, ignoring the essence of individualism that both the existence and begin gnawing to verbalize the word of the collective. About us, feel and perceive the self in the bowels of us, ie, the soul of the people. A fierce duel, tear between the existence, the ideas and the action itself in the search for an ideal that would show the voice of conscience of the proletariat. A sense of class. Then began the mouth of militancy in the party rested on the brain delirious strength to speak, think, act on behalf of its principles. A definitive change of skin. The skin was hardening in the frantic daily life in the defense of the party line and fundamentals program. Being a comprehensive picture, responsible, persuasive and combative. Create an ethic that expressed deep those roots of the popular. Maintain high moral revolutionary against the enemy: not break the spirit to the evil force of torture. And what is essential: not outrun the face and the presence of death when the mission was in favor. Life was like a kind of wreath at the altar of death. In that game with fire in the blink of an eye, life changed by death. Dace was impregnated with hypnotism atavistic ad of the messianic. We were the carriers. Death as a promise earthly blood as seed to build future uncertain. After our death, would rise thousands of voices in solidarity.
"Life and death as the man who lives' say Kazantzakis. He also wrote: "My life is a constant shadow evocation ...». Surely he thought of his beautiful novel crucified Christ again, made into a film under the title He who must die. Why he must die? The man was destined to die: "The crowd, drunk with the smell of blood, fell like a beast on the body panting, to join some had bloody lips, the old Ladas bit with his toothless mouth throat and struggled Manolios a tear piece of meat. Panayotaros wiped the knife in her red hair and smeared with blood his mug fierce, shouting: "You've torn my heart, Manolios, I've killed. I am avenged! ". On behalf of Christ, the mobs had killed whom they called the Bolshevik ... "The pope Fotis reached out and gently stroked her face slowly and Manolios. "Dear Manolios, you may have given your life in vain," he muttered. I have killed you for taking on our sins, thou hast said, and cried, "I who robbed me who has killed and who has been burned, I, and nobody else and everything to ...!", that leave us us take root in this land ... In vain, dear Manolios, in vain, I've sacrificed ...».
Perhaps in the sixties we were too idealistic and did not find suitable ways to give a picture and make that dream a reality. But it was the awakening of the dawn of a youth who was carrying something very deep that craved and desired as human achievement.
That illusion was closely tied to two events that were definitive. One, that we were witnessing, it fell on me in California, an extraordinary rise of militant mass that had silenced because of official violence in cities. It was a great strike wave of workers Croydon, the first hunger strike in recent decades, "the unions Manuelita of Riopaila, the Guarantee, the newspaper Rapporteur progress Cali Palmira sugar. Similarly, urban movements by the land invasions were visualized on the people who came fleeing from the Cordillera Occidental by the violence and sought shelter in Cali for their lives. The magnitude of social events made us change in attitude and become political agitators of that process.
The other fact was the epic of the Sierra Maestra, who walked with joy by all our experience America as the triumph of the revolution and flying in the face bearded Fidel Camilo, Che. It began then, with all agitation among us, the discussion of whether it was possible to repeat that experience in Colombia, because we come from a tradition of guerrilla warfare, of course, very wide in the Llanos Orientales in the south of Tolima, northeastern Antioquia.
Those who believed that the decisive moment had arrived, there were those who thought that all the conditions to achieve this objective through the arms, began to lay down their lives in a fleeting time, beating well as our deepest longings, because we feel that the best of us are going in the blood that was spilling friend.
One day we received the news of the death of Antonio Larrota, while trying to redeem social and ideologically to a group of bandits to organize a guerrilla war with them and they took it away for five thousand dollars. Antonio was a natural leader, the masses in any public place succumbed to hear his voice. Another day we arrived with the news that the sides of Turbo we had been the life of Leonel Brand and next to him, his partner Gleydis Pineda. We both left without saying goodbye is always someone gets used to decide the permanent absence. Many readings of Neruda, Vallejo and Miguel Hernández, Leonel near the hill of San Antonio. Both speak movingly of the Impressionists and search anxiety the face of Van Gogh. Leonel came from the depths of what they call social darkness and had raised his voice as a poet to become a formidable player in the Library Bonar, where he worked in Cali. Another day, I heard the news in Bogota, came the announcement of the death of Federico Arango territory in the jungles of Vasquez, who had made a mistake similar to that of Antonio Larrota, to organize a group of men and socially broken. Frederick man in his silence, was getting ready each week and sat in his car to go into the jungle, back to town and work hard in preparing for their dreams. The next day we got the mail with the sad news Garnica Francisco that had broken to death in a military barracks in a town in the Valley. Her body shattered life. Francis was a passionate agitator and organizer of conscience.
in the distance Now we analyze what it meant at that stage the slogan that people in the university should drop out to take to the mountains because the university had to nurture the guerrilla fighters. Thought and by the pressing political environment we lived: the National Front, of historical nature, which excluded other voices than the liberals and conservatives.
National University was a fertile seedbed tables should go to the mountain: Julio Cesar Cortes Armando Correa, Hermia Ruiz finished shot by the commanders Vásquez Castaño, ELN, and ideological problems.
One day was Camilo Torres, smiling with her figure, her eyes of good people and a blind faith in his words, and as a biblical prophet in his last farewell left town to go to that mysterious mole is the forest. A few days ago we were reading his paper, will, in the country explaining the reason for his decision. Today we remember as echoes
known names Marquetalia, Riochiquito, Pato, Guayabero, which in turn sparked a supportive environment, and a few times in that time, the guerrilla movement had wide audience in cities and areas worldwide. The country is listening to us, or at least so we thought. Or just heard our voices. Then we had to turn to us, the leaders of the Communist Youth: go to Marquetalia, or any other so-called independent republics, it was an honor of revolutionaries: Hernando Gonzalez broke one day, next day I departed, then march Jaime Bateman. Hernando Gonzalez died in an army ambush in Operation Riochiquito, and Jaime Bateman perish in a plane crash in the jungles of Panama, when he was the commander of the M-19. I am the survivor of the three. I'm alive thanks to a disturbing discussion I had myself, Carare river bottom, mounted on a canoe's harsh living ague, stuck between the power of weapons and the power of words that tell stories, won the power of words and the canoe man I brought in the late sixties to Cali, the city of memory.
But the face of death became urban in the early eighties. Not as much as messianic death, but life with death usually aim to selectively, with the pulse of men adept at looking at the limits of the agony in the man who must die. That death took to the streets of cities with unconcealed arrogance of office who is killing the other. Professionals in office. There was also shot at the other armed and crouched in the forest ready to shoot, but against someone who defended his bulletproof vest with his political thinking: of course I was a helpless being the testicles to the feet and shoulders to the depths of your brain.
Never in the annals of political violence in the country had developed a plan so meticulous and perfect, the accuracy of the culling, day after day, of a political movement based on its leadership, its middle and central management to presidential candidates and the Patriotic Union. Triggered by its strict Machiavellian political-military planning: large-scale mental exercise to physically eliminate a potential political opponent in the arena of discussion of ideas and action of policy proposals, which were beginning to take root deep in popular attitudes. Other policy banks were beginning to open in flight other imaginations. Men were killed, were murdered ideas are plucked in a jiffy a story that was being built and possibly change the pace pachydermal of our recent history: at least it was a distinct air of the stench of decay that has been used our traditional political caste.
were so many accomplices in the slaughter against humanity. The terrible and well-oiled economic machine of drug trafficking and their cleavage in paramilitary self-defense, financial and logistical support to farmers and landowners, the cry of the government of Virgilio Barco, justifying the slaughter of the UP said it was a fight between paras and guerrillas, the brainy academic studies and political scientists today of national security advisers to explain the genocide by the Communist Party's error in applying the combination of the forms of struggle. And perhaps more painful social indifference to many deaths.
What happened to us? Shelter was to hug the helplessness of the public complaint. It responded with fiery words, full of feelings: sum of counting the bodies of members of the UP, statistics deadly, to our astonishment, grew one by one up to a thousand, then two thousand. The data appeared in the press, nothing happened, nothing would stop the deadly onslaught. Finally, death had never made a killing as in the period 1986-1990. It was physical death was the death of the writing of terror.
To survive, resort to black humor. Pardo Leal, with his tousled tic in the right eye, chronicling every day that his life was insured to the testicles. On the street, by the seventh race in Bogota, the friends he saw one the face and then asked, "Do not you killed yourself last week?". Socializing and meeting with friends we did at wakes and in so many dramatic farewell in the Central Cemetery of Bogota. And always the same pain accompanying slogan: "The people united will never be defeated!". But they killed us the best, the cream of our intelligence. They left us orphans so many wonderful men. Then came
exile in Havana. Encounters come Bernardo Jaramillo, Manuel Cepeda, Patricia Ariza, Eduardo Galeano, the poet Juan Gelman, with the whale by Antonio Cisneros, the Peruvian poet. We would talk about life, appoint death and the winds will pull out loud with the joy of living. And in exile come the fall of communism, the defeat, the momentary death of dreams. On my return to the country in 1991, three years later, weep inconsolably at the news of the murder of Senator Manuel Cepeda Vargas. He died in his law of his steadfast refusal to go into exile. His blood as memory is still widespread in the patina of a monument deteriorated and developed by the teacher Edgar Negret. With Manuel Cepeda Vargas we had met in the year 57, when done in Cali the second congress of the National Union of Students. That is, an old friend, despite his stubbornness ideological. In 1958, the sculptor Alfredo Castañeda, a high ridge that gave us after the invasion of the barrio Lleras, installed the monument in honor of students killed in the struggle against the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla. The monument still stands: the concrete has withstood the deafening hiss of memory that lies between us.
traveled the country on foot, had a long experience in political struggle, participated in armed struggle. I was a communist leader and one day, riding in a canoe, I decided my life in the comings and goings of the written word. Before he had lived among the spaces, color and reading the letters to Theo. I think this rack between life and death has been a long experience I will never regret. I'm not bow to man's own faults and sins of others, and then resigned to living in mold and dust of his own ostracism. I'm not a postmodern Nazarene is whipped to a wide audience on television, access to a vacancy as national security adviser. I am part of a generation that the country offered different expectations from other banks, possibly in the world failed as paradigms, but dreams are still as valid as possible utopias.
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Actulización gra / ntc December 30, 2006
