My Colombian War: A Journey Through the Country I Left Behind (Hardcover)

by Silvana Paternostro (Author)
Key Phrases: pretty bird, kitchen map, New York, United States, Simón Trinidad (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this disjointed memoir, Paternostro describes her return to war-torn Colombia, which she left in the 1970s as a teenager. A member of a wealthy, landholding family, Paternostro attended American schools and universities and made a career in the U.S. as a journalist, while giving little thought to the country she left behind. Yet the crises of cocaine and civil war draw her professional attention and an assignment from the New York Times allows her to return to her coastal hometown of Barranquilla. Once there, she discovers how much her conservative family's life of privilege is at odds with her own romantic left leanings, and how the danger of being kidnapped is only matched by her countrymen's refusal to acknowledge the civil war around them. All the elements are in place for a fascinating story and yet the memoir lacks essential clarity. Although Paternostro addresses various aspects of Colombian history, she doesn't illuminate them to any great depth, and the lack of a narrative through-line leaves the book adrift. Revealingly, Paternostro writes: I go around without contact lenses; that way I cannot see too much. I think otherwise I would not be able to smile, to talk, to sleep, to stay here. Ultimately, the author's decision not to see clearly leaves the reader as confused as she is. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Colombian journalist Paternostro's autobiography chronicles two wars: the bloody, decades-long battle between leftist rebels and the Colombian government and the author's own struggle to embrace her Colombian identity while making a life for herself in the U.S. Raised in a privileged, conservative household in the Colombian coastal town of Barranquilla, Paternostro moved to the U.S. to attend college and later wrote for magazines, including Time and Newsweek. She returned to Colombia to chronicle the waves of violence that hit the country during the latter half of this century, newly aware of the hostilities that daily put her family in danger. Her interviews, interspersed with Colombian history and her own childhood memories, reveal the precariousness of life in that South American country, where selling a kilo of cocaine or maintaining a position of power is, at times, judged more valuable than anyone who might be standing in the way. Boyle, Katherine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (November 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805076050
• ISBN-13: 978-0805076059
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #765,856 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #26 in	Books > Travel > Latin America > South America > Colombia
  #80 in	Books > History > Americas > South America > Colombia

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I Plowed In The Sea, January 25, 2008

By	Walter Crabtree (Pikeville, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I worked in and out of Venezuela and Colombia off and on from 1957 to 1963. So after finishing "My Colombian War", I contrasted my experiences of decades earlier to those of Ms. Paternostro's more current memoirs. I n addition, from time to time I chat with friends still living in Colombia and it seems that conditions remain more or less the same and only the magnitude of corruption varies. Much like the stock market, it goes up and down in the short term, but over the long haul, unfortunately, trends ever upward.

Ms. Paternostro's unique motives for attempting this piece of journalism are her own and I cannot criticize them. However her methodology and the presentation of her story are ripe for examination. It seemed to me when she realized that her assignment was not going to be a lark, and when confronted with the cold reality of going to the streets and back roads to gather firsthand the stories of la gente, and possibly be endangered, she demurred and choose to watch the work of other journalists on television and sit in the clubs and construct her "Colombian War" over guava juice and old family photos.

Maybe I would have done the same as there is little motivation for me to feel obligated to inform the world concerning Colombia's tortured past and present. Consequently her ersatz story of her birthplace's anguish lacks the thoroughness of hard journalistic field research and therefore has little professional quality in my opinion. Her original intent was admirable yet amazingly naïve, as in refusing to wear her contact lens and thereby not having to look clearly and cleanly at her Colombia. Her story narrative constantly peaks out from behind the skirts of her family. At times this is charming, but mostly annoying as a theme too protracted. Yet it is her perspective and I believe there is value to the reader in being exposed to this cultural attitude. Nonetheless, for me, the final product was shallow, and finished like it began; all about Silvana.

In the early sixties my wife, a graduate of El Rosario University, practiced law and was a federal judge in an area south west of Bogotá called Usme, an area of great agrarian strife in those years. She was the only hope of the campesions for settling peacefully their disputes of agrarian reform. She left after a year, discouraged and fearful, but still in love "con su patria". She understood that the grinding poverty and fraudulent governments was an institutionalized culture from centuries earlier. A mere handful of cruel and psychopathic conquistadors, blessed by the church, designed and wove their implacable tapestry of violence over all the Latin Americas and maintained it by their greedy descendents who assured its continuity. In my opinion there is no value in attempting to salvage selected strands of that social drapery to explain and correct Colombia's contortions and so it might be better to bury the entire clothe and begin anew.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read, February 24, 2008

By	C. Townsend (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

A wonderful, insightful book about Colombia. What makes the book transcend the ordinary new-journalistic look at a country is the fact that Paternostro maps not only the contours of Colombia's current conflict and its historical and socio-economic roots, but also wonderfully charts her own conflicted relationship with the place and her efforts to come to terms with it. In the end, then, the book is fascinating for the view it provides on Colombia but it ends up being about so much more; the honest look at an expatriate's relationship to her homeland is compelling and enlightening.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest and Brave Memoir and History of an Amazing and Frightening Country, January 13, 2008

By	Andrew J. Miller "millerand" (Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Just finished Ms. Paternostro's book last night (January 2008) and felt that this book really filled a void, at least for me, bridging the distance between historical characterizations of Colombia and what that history actually looks like within the lives of real Colombians. For the most part, this book is filled with fascinating stories - such as the author's description of Simon Trinidad, the businessman and landed elite turned FARC rebel, and how history itself interfered with his interest in moving Colombia ahead - he couldn't possibly create an avenue for peace if the people he was scheduled to meet were murdered the day before his meeting. Or the author's storytelling of Barranquilla's transformation by gringos and Guajiros, who all seemed to persuade these coastal people that living large, richly and dangerously was a more important obligation than improving the future for a larger percentage of the Colombian people. Ms. Paternostro brings to life these unfortunate tradeoffs - of building great plantations and epic lives - funded by efforts, land, or drugs - without building more stable lives for the Colombians that worked on those plantations - are the kinds of decisions that infuriate her. As a criticism, sometimes Ms. Paternostro repeats or reintroduces elements in her book that appear elsewhere in the book, but even those reintroductions serve a larger purpose of developing a more layered, deeper description of what Colombian war and history look like within her own life and family. This is a living history, and it is certainly a worthy one. Ms. Paternostro's attitude towards the subject could be best described as conflicted, but even here I think it's impressive that she finally makes peace with her Colombian war.

Ms. Paternostro is a great voice on Colombia and Latin America. I hope she keeps bringing color to a region that deserves the deeper look that she continues to give in her thoughtful writing.