Colombia Books

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw

Mark Bowden

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Total reviews: 175 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Readers of Black Hawk Down know Mark Bowden can tell an exciting story about as well as any writer at work today. Killing Pablo is further proof. It describes the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, a notorious Colombian drug lord who became one of the narcotic trade's first billionaires. Pablo--Bowden refers to him by his first name throughout the book--started out as a petty thief and wound up running a massive smuggling empire. At his height in the 1980s, he owned fleets of boats and planes, plus 19 separate residences in Medellin, each with its own helipad. Violence marked everything he did: "He wasn't an entrepreneur, and he wasn't even an especially talented businessman. He was just ruthless." He bought off police, politicians, and judges throughout his country, and killed many others who wouldn't cooperate. The Colombian government tried to capture him, but without much luck; he evaded them time after time. "Now and then the police achieved enough surprise to catch him, literally, with his pants down. In [1988], about one thousand national police raided one of his mansions," writes Bowden. "Pablo fled in his underwear, avoiding the police cordon on foot." He got away, again, but his days were numbered. He was making powerful enemies in both Colombia and the United States. The final straw probably came when Pablo's men murdered a popular politician and, three months later, planted a bomb on a plane, killing 110 people, including two Americans.

The bulk of Killing Pablo describes what happened when the U.S. government put its resources behind the hunt for Pablo. Bowden describes the search in gripping detail, from the massive electronic-surveillance effort to bureaucratic infighting between rival U.S. agencies. This is an outstanding work of reportorial journalism, too: in the epilogue, Bowden drops tantalizing hints that it was an American--not a Colombian--who delivered the killing shot to Pablo in 1993. Readers looking for a real-life thriller--or any kind of thriller, for that matter--won't do much better than Killing Pablo.

Between Legitimacy and Violence: A History of Colombia, 18752002 (Latin America in Translation)

Marco Palacios

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Between Legitimacy and Violence is an authoritative, sweeping history of Colombia’s “long twentieth century,” from the tumultuous civil wars of the late nineteenth century to the drug wars of the late twentieth. Marco Palacios, a leading Latin American historian, skillfully blends political, economic, social, and cultural history. In an expansive chronological narrative full of vivid detail, he explains Colombia’s political history, discussing key leaders, laws, parties, and ideologies; corruption and inefficiency; and the paradoxical nature of government institutions, which, while stable and enduring, are unable to prevent frequent and extreme outbursts of violence. Palacios traces the trajectory of the economy, addressing agriculture (particularly the economic significance of coffee), the development of a communication and transportation infrastructure, industrialization, and labor struggles. Palacios also gives extensive attention to persistent social inequalities, the role of the Catholic Church, demographic shifts such as urbanization and emigration, and Colombia’s relationship with the United States. Offering a comparative perspective, he frequently contrasts Colombia with other Latin American nations. Throughout, Palacios offers a helpful interpretive framework, connecting developments with their causes and consequences. By thoroughly illuminating Colombia’s past, Between Legitimacy and Violence sheds much-needed light on the country’s violent present.

Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia

Steven Dudley

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Walking Ghosts, Steven Dudley, a journalist who lived in Columbia for five years, expertly chronicles the life and death of the Patriotic Union (UP), the party established by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia's largest guerrilla group. Through stories of the politicians, drug kingpins, revolutionaries, and mercenaries who play key roles in Colombia's civil strife, Dudley maps out the complicated and murderous absurdity that is present-day Colombia, where daily life has devastating consequences: 30,000 murders per year, 75 political assassinations per week, 10 kidnappings a day. As the conflict gets bloodier, international pressure and influence mounts: Worried about the FARC's strength and its role in the drug trade, the United States has sent close to three billion dollars in aid to help the Colombian government fight the FARC.

Steven Dudley seeks to make sense of this complicated conflict by focusing on the stories of key actors in the struggle, from the earliest days to the present. He has seen the civil war up close: dead bodies; paramilitaries; guerrillas; victims; and survivors. He has witnessed political parties grappling for power by any means necessary, and he's spoken to all sides and asked the difficult questions. Fast-paced and informative, with a new afterword by the author, Walking Ghosts presents a window into a conflict likely to shape the politics of this hemisphere for years to come.

Colombia and the United States : War, Unrest, and Destabilization (Open Media)

Mario A. Murillo, Jesus Rey Avirama

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Hard-hitting facts 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Colombia is a complex nation and is often misunderstood, according to Professor Mario A. Murillo. Moreover, "the nature of Colombia's internal conflict has been completly distorted by the prism of drug-war politics," he adds in the opening chapter. To this end, the author provides hard-hitting facts to support his claim that United States aid to Colombia, "is very often used by the Colombian political and economic elite to promote its own agenda."

Murillo does not stop there...he exposes Colombia's feeble legal system. "In Colombia, the Constitution and its laws are often ignored and rarely enforced, either because of a lack of bureaucratic capacity on the part of the state to do so, or because of an absence of political will on the part of the ruling elite to execute those laws that are designed to protect the public," he reports.

The author has few kind words for President Alvaro Uribe. Murillo attacks the politically motivated violence "by the state and its paramilitary apparatus." He also is critical of the corruption of the traditional political parties, run predominantly by elites..."who compete for the spoils that serve as an incentive for cycles of generalized corruption."

The origins of the conflict, the myths behind Colombian democracy, the principal actors in today's conflict and the many views in the United States are studied in detail in this text. The analysis of the paramilitaries in Colombia is brilliant...particularly in respect to the millions of displaced people and the terrible treatment of Afro-Colombians.

Still and all, the best part of this book is the call for change. Murillo slams Alvaro Uribe's unconditional support for George W. Bush and worries that the impunity of the violent actors in Colombia will continue to fuel the civil war. In conclusion, the author clearly states that a pure military solution is impossible and that only true democratic reforms can stop the violence. Recommended.

Bert Ruiz

Editorial Review:

Every year, the United States spends millions of dollars to help the war--ravaged country of Colombia. But help it with what? In Colombia & the United States, Mario A. Murillo and Jesus Avirama explores the devastating impact that misdirected U.S. military "aid"-under the banner of "the war on drugs"-continues to have on the people of Colombia. They argue that the conflict in Colombia is not about drugs, nor guerillas, nor "terrorism," but rather about the unwillingness of the country's elite to open up spaces for truly democratic development.

Mario Murillo is the author of Islands of Resistance: Puerto Rico, Vieques and U.S. Policy.

Jesus Avirama, a member of the indigenous Kokonuco people, is a longtime activist.

Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia

Ingrid Betancourt

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Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

VIVA BETANCOURT! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This book reads not only as an autobiography, but also as a political testament from a truly courageous woman. No matter what your political leanings or philosophy may be, you have to be impressed with Betancourt's integrity and character. Reading this book has given me an interest into why Colombia is in the dire straits that it's in today.

Ingrid Betancourt's quest for a peaceful, reformed Colombia may seem quixotic. But it is reassuring to know that there are politicians like her in the world. Let us hope that she will be freed unharmed so that she can again stand up for what Colombia needs today: peace, stability, progress, and social justice.

Editorial Review:

In 2002, Colombian senator, anticorruption crusader, and presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped by leftist guerrillas. She was their prisoner for more than six years. Until now.

Until Death Do Us Part is the deeply personal autobiography of an extraordinary woman who gave up a life of comfort and safety to become a political leader in a country slowly being demolished by terrorism, violence, fear, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness. A memoir that reads like a fast-paced political thriller—at once poignant, chilling, and inspiring—it is a story of a reformer, a mother, a patriot whose love for her country and faith in democracy gave her the courage to stand up to the power that has subjugated, intimidated, or corrupted all those who opposed it . . . and ultimately paid an unimaginable price for her commitment.

Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America

Michael Taussig

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

An excellent and creative application of theory 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 23 people found this review helpful.

This is doubtless Taussig's clearest and most straightforward book -- if you think the text here is convoluted, try "The Nervous System" or "The Magic of the State" on for size. Both of these works, as with all of Taussig, are outstanding in their own way, but for the beginning reader in anthropology, this is certainly where to start if you want to explore that realm of anthropological wisdom known as the World of Uncle Mike.

The issue is very simple. Capitalism is deconstructed as a form of Western European "local knowledge" by throwing it into relief with indigenous notions regarding the flows of wealth, labor, and ultimately power. Within the local meaning system, the metaphysical capitalist ideal of accumulation is likened to a demonic force; correspondingly, the wealthy persons in the colony (from whom the poor farmer must borrow money or otherwise "strike a deal" in order to survive) are likened to the Devil. The whole thing really makes a heck of a lot of sense, whatever your precise stance on Marxism.

Another interesting aspect of the book is the way in which Taussig explains what, to the modern individual, is the ludicrous social solidarity found among miners (and by extension, other groups who engage in extremely dangerous occupations). While we modern readers wonder why miners and others love their jobs and co-workers so much, Uncle Mike explains that solidarity is the only strategy of overcoming the darkness and peril of such types of work. Communitas among the workers becomes a moral issue -- this idea resonates throughout the book.

All in all, an intelligent person looking for a clear and insightful read in economics and ethnology will find themselves grinning from ear to ear when they read this book. Unlike Taussig's later works, you don't have to have read everything from von Humboldt to Benjamin to Timerman to appreciate the thesis, argument, and flashes of brilliance sprinkled throughout.

More Terrible Than Death: Drugs, Violence, and America's War in Colombia

Robin Kirk

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Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Death and destruction in Columbia. 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

A very good book about Columbia and the ongoing civil war in that country between the government, FARC-UP, and AUC. Kirk describes the history of violence in Columbia from the assassination of Gatain in 1948 until the present time. Not only do you have right wing paramilitaries (AUC) and left wing radicals (FARC) along with others, but you have a people that mostly just want to stay out of the way of either. They are prevented from doing this by the combatants who insist on getting all involved. They say "Either you are with us or against us". The poplulation pays the price. Throw in illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin, with lots of cash to purchase arms with and you have the making of a very violent society.

Kirk's focus is that the consumption habits of American society for drugs, and the U.S. government's commitment to prevent a FARC victory result in the Columbian people being subjected to these forces who are loaded with weapons. Death rates are worse than any inner city in America. All combatants, along with those involved in the Narco trade increase the violence in this society.

I would have loved to hear what Kirk wants the U.S. to do. Americans still consume illegal drugs and a FARC victory would not lead to a peaceful society. Even if the drugs were not present, this society has degenerated ever more so to violence.

Columbia is a beautiful country and Columbians are very engaging. When I was there, I saw more military and police than any country in Latin America. This book is a good read for those interested in this very interesting and troubled country.

Editorial Review:

The only contemporary history of Colombia and the drug war and "a vividly written and often mesmerizing first-hand account of the violence" --The Wall Street Journal

More Terrible Than Death is a gripping work that maps the dramatic new relationship between the United States and Colombia in human terms, using portraits of the Colombians and Americans involved, the author's experiences in Colombia as a writer and human rights investigator and an insider's analysis of the political realities that shape the expanding war on drugs and the growing U.S. military presence there. Looking at the war from the ground up, interviewing and profiling human rights activists, guerrillas, and paramilitaries to explain how it has changed their lives, Robin Kirk gives depth and meaning to the headlines that leave unexplained the intimate dimension of the U.S./Colombian relationship.

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

Peter Dale Scott

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through al liances with drug-trafficking proxies. The result has been a staggering increase in global drug traffic. Thus, the author argues, the exercise of power by cover t means, or parapolitics, often metastasizes into deep politics - the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy ini tiators. Scott contends that we must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded n ot just in military and economic superiority but also in so-called soft power. W e need a soft politics of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is e mbroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.

War, Evil, and the End of History

Bernard Henri Levy, Charlotte Mandell

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Connects 9/11 to Long Era of Imperial Deceit & Predatory Looting 4 out of 5 stars.
21 of 30 people found this review helpful.

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to connect to more recent books.

There are some gems in this book, but it is *not* anywhere near the kind of blindingly brilliant, deeply philosophical work that the publicists would have you believe. He is a talented and very wealthy (inherited wealth) Frenchman of the Jewish faith who could be called the Bill Gates of French philosophy, fwith irst-rate marketing.

The author is clearly a courageous and inquisitive individual, and I would rank him third, after Robert Young Pelton and Robert Kaplan, in the "journalist-philosopher-adventurer" category. He has been to all of these places, he has seen with his own eyes, and he writes thoughtfully, if often tediously, about what he has seen.

The real gem in the book is the connection he makes between 9-11 and our deliberate ignorance of the many wars, genocides, crimes against women and children, torture, corruption, etcetera that we in the West have manifested. He writes with conviction and insight about the "meaningless war" across Africa, South Asia, around the globe, where entire regions have descended into a chaotic hell of kill and be killed, work and die, slavery or death, rape then death. His point, which I like very much, is that history does not end, it recycles, and in 9-11 and the global war on terrorism what we have is a "homecoming" of all these wars to America and its Western allies.

This is not, however, completely original, in the sense that the "Map of World Conflict & Human Rights" that I have been handing out to my adult students (thanks to Berto Jongman in The Netherlands for creating it, and to the European Centre for Conflict Prevention and Goals for Americans Foundation, among others, for funding its creation) ably documents all of this is a single compelling document, and many books in the 490+ that I have reviewed cover all aspects of these "ungovernable regions" in great detail.

The author is half absurd and half correct when he condemns the United Nations for its zealous pursuit of Israel as a racist and terrorist state, while the United Nations largely ignores the many genocides taking place from Russia and China to Indonesia and Brazil and Central America and onwards. He is absurd on the first count, correct on the second.

The book is fully worth four stars, definitely worth purchasing, for its articulation of a European view on "the heart of darkness" as it exists today. I was especially taken with his discussion of Buddhist versus Hindu terrorism and extremism and the use of child soldiers in Sri Lanka, since it makes the point that other religions, not just Islam and Christianity, spawn cycles of terrorism and ethnic violence.

The book concludes on a note worthy of the greatest philosophers, a reflection on the death of memory within Western civilization, the death of *moral* memory. Having just returned from Denver, where I was privileged to observe a two-week Office of Personnel Management course on National Security, a first-class endeavor, I was struck by the recurring theme, across virtually all of the world-class lecturers: "morality matters." Morality has a tangible value in helping nations, organizations, and individuals "get it right." The last two pages of the book are the best, and conjure up clear and frightening pictures of billions of dispossessed swarming over the European and US cities, bringing the despair we have ignored to our doorstep. Ignore history, ignore evil, and it will eventually, inevitably, come to your doorstep. We--or perhaps even more sadly, our children and grandchildren--will pay for our moral cowardice and our historical blindness. In these final reflections, the author does demonstrate a brilliance that requires us to attend to his future reflections.

More recent books supportive of this author's insights:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy

Editorial Review:

Based upon original reporting and theorising about the world's 'forgotten war zones', this book features essays by novelist-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who is given the kind of adulation in France comparable to pop celebrities in other countries. Included are Levy's reflections on massacres in Burundi and Angola, female suicide bombers in Sri Lanka, and death and destruction in Algeria and Sudan. In the spirit of Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, Levy analyses contemporary conflicts from a European perspective. First world/third world relations are shrewdly assessed in these clear-sighted and accessible pieces.

Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing

Michael Taussig

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Much more than a simple ethnographic investigation... 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Arguably one of the most accomplished anthropologists working today, Michael Taussig provides an intensely individualistic bricolage of literary, historical, and ethnological interpretations of his many years of fieldwork in the Upper Amazon. One of the most detailed and poignant accounts of shamanism in its cultural context - will very soon be regarded as a classic.

Editorial Review:

Working with the image of the Indian shaman as Wild Man, Taussig reveals not the magic of the shaman but that of the politicizing fictions creating the effect of the real.

"This extraordinary book . . . will encourage ever more critical and creative explorations."—Fernando Coronil, [I]American Journal of Sociology[/I]

"Taussig has brought a formidable collection of data from arcane literary, journalistic, and biographical sources to bear on . . . questions of evil, torture, and politically institutionalized hatred and terror. His intent is laudable, and much of the book is brilliant, both in its discovery of how particular people perpetrated evil and others interpreted it."—Stehen G. Bunker, Social Science Quarterly