Darwin and IPhones

Darwinism.

Survival of the fittest. Almost like wild animals in the jungle or forest left to fend for themselves and get by without dying. Darwin described human life in the same way. And while it may sound all too exaggerated and histrionic, it does have a ring of truth in our lives while we try to get by and not get crushed by society’s standards, rules, other people’s success and our sometimes-prevalent failures (of the light kind). And so when a man tells Silvana, “Aqui lo que cuenta es la viveza,” it makes sense. When she says, “Here what matters is staying alert, being cunning, taking advantage, surviving,” it catches the eye.

It’s true.

Yes, it does sound as if she’s describing District 13 in The Hunger Games and every other Dystopian society ever to brush our minds, but it does carry on the gist of what it is like to live in Colombia. In Bogota, if you get mugged it’s not some hot-spot news that leaves everyone startled with their jaws slacked on the floor. It’s common. That’s why people usually try not to flaunt their Blackberries or IPhones in crowded streets that might leave a good chance to be atracado. If you’re part of a huge line of cars patiently waiting to turn into a new street, there will be the occasional car that tries to defy the time and cut the line and try to manoeuvre his way between two cars in the front. If you can drive in Bogota, you can drive anywhere. Enough said. It’s not a dangerous clash of guns and hiding citizens, but it is true that to live here you must have some sort of cunning and alertness in your persona. That’s just how it is.

            And yet, that is no reason for someone to say, “ Colombia still petrifies me. I see a potential killer in everyone’s gaze.” Because that means that if you see a very classy and well-dressed old lady, you’re going to automatically think that she is going to kill you. That’s what including ‘everyone’ in that statement does to it’s meaning. And so I’m going to say that Silvana Paternostro is either extremely paranoid, or that she just places extreme words such as the former in sentences to sound more poetic and moving. I’m going for the latter.

            Another thing that she probably exaggerates is when she says, “Barranquilla has one of the snarkiest disparities between rich and poor that the history of human society has every known, as well as a staggering amount of corruption.” But not as much. I wouldn’t know to verify the validity of Barranquilla being one of the most economically unequal cities in humanity (sounds very compromising) but I will admit that in Colombia, Bogota at least, that is very true. While some people can’t even afford a car, some will spend money on four, if not more. She also talks about how “the money allocated for public services vanishes every time.” I’d love to disagree with her, but while money in the government doesn’t vanish every time exactly, it does tend to happen. Sometimes even the money accumulated by taxes is taken by corrupt government officials and kept for themselves.

            One would think there’d be a way to prevent this and stop the corruption withing Colombia, but there is yet to be a full proof system. If Silvana’s said anything tinted by truth, it’s this.

LOL, JA-JA-JA, and Dead-end Jobs

Every time I meet someone who speaks English, or better yet, that doesn’t speak Spanish, and we engage in the act of texting each other, there are the customary things that always occur.

One of those routine things is that we fail to see eye-to-eye in the essence of textual laughter. It is because of this lack of understanding that when I try to be more active in the conversation and not conform to the mundane-ness and simplicity of what is abbreviations like LOL we reach an impasse. Because when I write out “jajajajaja” they somehow understand a harsh “ya-ya-ya” and proceed to question my legitimacy as an educated human being. But then I clear it up and we go on with our lives.

Any who, I’d like to assure you that this short narrative was not due to the pure randomness of my chaotic mind, but more due to Paternostro  describing some Colombian people saying “Aja” and then clarifying that “in English would sound “a-ha”.

So.

Besides that little intro, there is one thing that held my interest while reading. At one point Silvana is in the Barranquilla airport and when she sees one of the luggage men, she says, “I have witnessed this scene since the day I was born. The power of the few and the servility of the many remains unchanged. There will always be those who hover around moneyed pockets like bees around honey. These men are willing to lift more than their body weight for a few dollars.”

For some reason, this annoyed me. (Well, isn’t that new). Which is not to say I didn’t find some parts of the paragraph to be interesting. In fact, I adore the last sentence and I find it both poetic and poignant because of the truth enmeshed in it. The description is so that it creates imagery while at the same time capturing the figurative sense of the extents people will go to in search of money. Which actually strengthens her previous sentences but I think this one does something the others do not. The beginning of her statement makes those people that work dead-end jobs for low pay are pestering little leeches that exist for the sole purpose of sticking to people with cash like greedy hogs. But I find that statement to be such a negative-inclined idea and not factual at all. Of course there will always exist those who do fit in said category, but the latter explains a sad truth in our country which is the poverty that encompasses it. Not only that, but also the fact that so many people endure hard labor and kill themselves trying to earn some extra cash.

That is something that characterizes Colombia and one of the things that, whether it be directly or indirectly, spurts the violence we see today. The poverty.

Sad. But true.

Maybe

And so I persist in engulfing myself in words with meanings that rub me the wrong way. But, for what it’s worth, My Colombian War does have a few redeeming qualities apart form its occasional irritating commentary.

Silvana is on a plane, going back to Colombia, and when says, in her internal monologue, of course, “ To them Colombia might not be at war. But I am at war with Colombia.” Well, obviously she is at war with Colombia, but that’s in the same way someone is in war with seafood. Like I am. The thing is, I have no personal experience with having ever actually tasted it and my conflict is driven by the mere suffocating stench that accompanies its presence. In that same way, Paternostro is at odds with her country due to her complete obliviousness where its concerned. But I’m being biased. In all seriousness, I actually liked her statement and thought it pretty much grasped the theme of the novel. This book isn’t about Las FARC or the corrupted government, or Silvana’s inability to say anything remotely accurate. This novel is not about the physical war that was happening in Colombia at the moment. This is a novel about Silvana’s inner struggle to accept Colombia as her country and feel connected to it in one way or the other. It is an emotional war about her striving to feel like she actually belongs in said country.

And maybe a war to understand her country so as not to write publicized trash to litter everyone’s minds with fallacious waste.

That was uncalled for. I dearly apologize.

So here I was thinking that was compensating for her previous bash-inducing prose, but then, she decided to add this: “I am going back because there is a war, brutal war, a war full of horror. I am going to tell them that each and every one knows it, allows it, and hides it. Everyone has blood on their hands. I want everyone to plead guilty.”

Oh, and she was doing so well. At first this pissed me off. I got the impression that she was emphasizing such harsh statements and pinning them on the whole population. Almost as if everyone was somehow encased in the same tiny bubble where resounding blood and dripping brutality reverberated against its walls, tainting every single inhabitant. Almost as if every single one of us, including the nuns in their secular path to please God without getting near touching distance of sin, were part of this war. And the fact that she sounds so righteous and accusing, as if she has the right to judge makes it even worse. The fact that she decides to leave Colombia behind without a backwards glance and suddenly return playing God, telling everyone to admit their wrongdoings because she sees it so, makes my blood curdle like milk. “Everyone has blood on their hands. I want everyone to plead guilty.” Is she including herself in that ‘everyone’? Exactly.

But then I thought that maybe in a twisted way, she has a point. If she is talking about the actual physical, death-rendering war, it’s true that as a country we’re all a chain of dominoes that see how our country’s fate plays out. Our guilt doesn’t go to the extent she describes, but in a way, there is so much we could do that we just don’t. And maybe when she talks about war and everyone’s guilt, she’s signalling out certain people or events that have affected her a great deal in a negative way. But her use of ‘everyone’ makes me highly doubt that.

Who knows, though? Maybe someone harmed her a great deal to the point where she got mentally scarred and so opened up to the fact of moving away from Colombia. (That sounds like a Hollywood movie). Maybe then this would make more sense and seem less impetuous. Maybe. 

Silvana Paternostro's Authority as a Writer. And a Person.

            If someone were to offer me the chance to have coffee with a published author, I’d take it. If someone were to offer me the chance to have coffee with Silvana Paternostro, I’d thank them and then decline because, frankly, I’d rather bathe in a tub clustered with plugged-in hairdryers.

            A mere fifty pages into her memoir and I already have the urge to teleport into her brain and, very sophisticatedly ask, “What is going on here?” and “Would you please just stop.” Because trying to read this, being a Colombian myself, is hard. Trying to get through the words plastered on this memoir without cringing or questioning her authority is like trying to slide down dry concrete.

            Let’s begin with the fact that the story begins with Paternostro talking about how she left Colombia in 1977, when she was just fifteen years old, and how it felt to be tied down by the ‘green passport’ that weighed her down while traveling the world. Fine. That happens. And moving to the States when you’re young and not visiting for a while might even account for her blatant ignorance of Colombia. I myself moved when I was five, returned when I was fifteen and came back with the Spanish vocabulary of a 5^th grader (what an insult to fifth graders) and less-than-ample knowledge about the political happenings of the time.

But she moved when she was fifteen.  And that’s what makes the upcoming statements even more horrifying.

            She decides to do a story on Colombia with a photojournalist she meets named Max and ends their idea by saying “It was obvious we were curious and attracted to each other.” That comment itself already had me questioning whether her being a journalist derives solely for investigative purposes and not also the intent of acquiring a male companion. She later says “Finally we might do a story, together, in Colombia. Yay!” Notice how she singles out the ‘together’, putting emphasis on its overall meaning, adding importance to the fact that the story is with Max. And the ‘yay’ followed by the exclamation point was just borderline tear-inducing Mean Girls. But that’s just me.

            While talking about the possibilities of doing a story on Colombia, she gets the magical idea of doing a piece on la guerrilla. She mentions a family member’s farm and in her inner monologue says, ‘We would go there, to the region where the farm is, and talk to rebels and paras’ and then proceeds to tell Max, “I’m sure they’ll talk to us. We’re American journalists.” The careless manner with which she says this and the insinuation that being an American journalist as opposed to any other is a somehow almighty and impervious asset astounds me. It’s as if she really has no idea of the implications of actually talking to la guerrilla. In the same way it’s naïve, it is also a condescending. It’s annoying.

            When she talks about calling her dad for information, she says he was “happy and mystified by my sudden interest in Colombia.” Maybe it’s just me, but the phrasing makes it sound as if it is a real wonder that she is asking and that her father views her interest as something that he never expected. Which shows the extent of her lack of knowledge or interest in Colombia to that day. And so the sudden spark of curiosity is suspicious, and I wonder if she really became all that curious about her country, or if it was a means to climb up in her career.

           

            I don’t trust her.  And I’m sorry if her saying “I stared at the map and realized how unfamiliar I am with the geography of my birthplace. I had no idea half of it was jungle,” just doesn’t secure my opinion of her. Seriously? Just the last phrase itself makes me want to…Let’s not go there. She resorts to talk about Bogota as the ‘heart’ of Colombia. “The heart is selective, choosing to let inside only those with sophistication and connection to riches. The men and women that live in Colombia’s heart discuss matters in clubs that aspire to be like London’s. They would like to blackball the paisas, costenos,” etc. Choosing to let inside only those with sophistication and connection to riches? What are we, Gossip Girl? Her lack of accuracy is now taking a myopic look into a narrow aspect of the Bogota population.  In Bogota, 84.7% of the population is part of the “estratos” one, two, and three, and the only “estrato” that fulfils her idea of riches and sophistication is “estrato” six, given the statistical study by la Administracion Distrital done in 2010. And as for the the ostracising of other regions, where I live, people from other regions are widely accepted.

            When Max tells her that Bogota is more brain than heart, she says “I listen because, unlike me, Max went to Colombia after Zaire, and since 1997 he has been taking pictures of Colombia, traveling the roads I only get to see hanging on my kitchen wall.” She is writing this as a supposed Colombian and hasn’t visited since God knows when while she admits to seeing her country’s roads from kitchen photographs? And yet she is trusted to be capable of responsibly talking about Colombia and getting published? Oh, and “The Sierra is another thing I had forgotten about.” She didn’t remember the Sierra Nevada even existed. Enough said.

“I recall learning that they were not even considered states, which in Colombia are called departments, because they were not developed enough to be given such a ranking.” Does she recall Spain having provinces and not states for that same reason? Next time, please study Colombian history before stating such comments and leading people to assume them as facts. She also says “In Colombia, 99 percent of the crimes go unpunished.” Yes, a lot of crimes go unpunished. But 99%? The International Labor Rights Forum said that “The ITUC estimates that over 99 percent of the cases” (against crimes targeting unions) are unpunished. And there she is making an estimate about specific crimes into a generalization of the whole country.

On the plane coming to Colombia, she meets a marine that tells her he volunteered to come to Colombia. She responds with, “You volunteered to come to Colombia? Why would you do something like that? Colombia is dangerous.” After living your first fifteen years in a country, there is no right to sound like the typical naïve, ignorant foreigner who talks about Colombia as a mere dangerous cocaine jungle without ever having visited. That’s how she sounds. And that’s who all the foreign readers that have never been to Colombia are trusting to have a factual glimpse into its inner world.

This memoir has brought me to rethink my trust on everything I read. It is your responsibility to research every single thing that you happen to come across, and this memoir is a prime example of how trusting we are of other people’s works. If I were to read this same type of memoir but with context in Uganda, I’d probably believe every single thing she said. So while I might think this text is worthless in both accuracy and the author’s ability to make me like her even a bit, I am glad that it has made me notice the importance of researching things for myself.

Christian Confessions