From the Publisher
A disturbing chronicle of the terror and uncertainty of daily life in Colombia's American-funded civil war.The town needs to get 300 coffins ready. Heads Up! The priest better be ready to work overtime.—flier from Colombian paramilitaries announcing their arrival In January 2003, US troops were sent to Colombia to train army units engaged in a bloody civil war, deepening a multi-billion-dollar American commitment that makes that country the third-largest recipient of US foreign aid. Despite the potential for disaster embodied in the US's looming entanglement with another jungle war, America's role in Colombia has received little critical media attention. The interlacing of terror, drugs and oil with endemic political instability makes the country a likely international flashpoint in the near future. In this stunning account of Colombian violence and disorder, acclaimed anthropologist Michael Taussig recounts two weeks in a village under siege by paramilitaries. Routinely visited by autodefensas brandishing weapons and a laptop containing a list of names, victims are rounded up, tortured, and killed, their bodies left on display as a warning to others. In his diary of the limpieza (the "cleaning"), Taussig offers unusual insight into the nature of Colombia's present peril and a nuanced account of the human consequences of a disintegrating state.
About the Author:
: Michael Taussig began conducting fieldwork in Colombia in 1969. He is a professor of anthropology at Columbia University and the author of Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man; Mimesis and Alterity; and The Magic of the State, among other books.
Publishers Weekly
In books like The Nervous System (1992) and The Magic of the State (1996), Columbia University anthropologist Taussing has revealed the spasms of state-sponsored murder, economic devastation and persistent belief in magic lurking beneath the supposed new world order. His latest recounts two week-long forays into several small towns in Columbia to witness the phenomenon of "limpieza," an outgrowth of a seemingly endless civil war between various guerrilla insurgents and the country's fragmented government. Limpieza, or "cleansing," is carried out town by town and involves the seemingly random killing of those who may or may not be contributing to the persistent disorder and violence, and may or may not be sympathetic to the FARC, ELN or M-19 guerrillas. The murders are carried out, frighteningly, by militias on motorbikes with laptops, called, variously and confusingly, paras (for paramilitary), autodefensas and pistoleros, in towns that often welcome their arrival. Taussig brilliantly recounts his own bewilderment in trying to understand, day by day, what is happening around him, and the ways in which the people there experience and talk about it. Taussig's forays take place in May 2001, and he notes in an afterword that the year's totals included 4,000 political murders and untold numbers of kidnappings, with two million people of the 43 million population displaced overall. With cocaine, sugar conglomerates and other First World interests participating indirectly, as Taussig shows, this is a horrifying and immediate first-person look at globalism's dark side, done with humor, despair and sympathy. (Dec.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Foreign Affairs
Raw statistics on human rights abuses and dry policy debates on U.S. assistance fail to capture the pervasive terror that daily confronts ordinary Colombians caught up in the interminable conflict between left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and the Colombian military. Rarely has their story been told as well as it is in this "diary" kept by a distinguished anthropologist over two weeks in 2001 that he spent in a town in Colombia's lush Cuaca Valley as paramilitaries conducted a limpieza — a "cleansing," a word heavy with menace for Colombians, promising the imposition of law and order by selective assassination. The paramilitaries, set up by property owners who found the state incapable of defending them, now number 11,000 and, self-funded with narco-dollars, control large areas of the country. They have long enjoyed the clandestine support of the army and the police. And now, Taussig recounts, their forces also garner the approval of many Colombians fed up with corruption and crime. They arrive in town with SUVs and laptop computers to carry out spectacular massacres — a process that he describes day-by-day in intimate detail. Taussig recognizes that "many Colombians rich and poor now support the [paramilitaries]" and adds that this support must be acknowledged and understood. Still, the consequences are horrific: the homicide rate in this town is 420 per 100,000, 50 times that of the United States. Despite its occasional philosophizing, this is an indispensable book, replete with the stink of death and the resilience of individual human survival.
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