Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia [Hardcover]

Steven Dudley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2003 | ISBN-10: 041593303X | ISBN-13: 978-0415933032 | Edition: 1

"An authoritative work of modern history which is also a nail-biting page turner...Dudley writes with an appealing blend of passion and honesty and his book is absolutely riveting." - Jon Lee Anderson, "The New Yorker". "Essential reading for anyone who wants to fully understand the causes of Latin America's longest-running civil war. A brave and unflinching book." - Joseph Contreras, "Newsweek". Faced-paced and beautifully written, "Walking Ghosts" presents a window into one of the most fascinating and deadly conflicts of our time. Steven Dudley unpicks the complicated conflict between the Colombian government and FARC, the country's largest and most powerful guerrila group. He focuses on the compelling stories of key actors - politicians, drug kingpins, revolutionaries and killers - in this struggle that has plagued Colombia for the past fifty years. Dudley has seen this war up close: dead bodies, paramiltaries, victims, guerillas and survivors. He has witnessed political parties grappling for power by any means necessary, spoken to all sides and asked the tough questions to deliver this definitive new account.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Dudley has written for many national periodicals, and his dispatches from Colombia have been heard on National Public Radio. His five years in that war-, drug-, and assassin-torn country are fodder for this extremely revealing volume of reportage. Infinite patience and concentration will be needed to navigate the author's encyclopedic exposition. Careful readers, though, are rewarded with a cast of characters so colorful that if the venue were shifted to the U.S., they could only reside in New Orleans. A country with one-seventh the population of the U.S. experiences some 30,000 murders per year, 75 political assassinations per week, and 10 kidnappings per day. (Kidnapping in order to elicit funding for political fronts has been perfected to a high art.) So deadly are the country's politics that the author had to flee the country and still fears for his life. But he was impelled to chronicle the story anyway in this thrilling and informative read. Includes impromptu photographs that assist in humanizing the myriad rebels, guerrillas, drug kingpins, and politicians who populate this quagmire. Allen Weakland
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

A brave, meticulously researched story of missed opportunities, treachery and revenge, and the burden of history on a country that has rarely known peace. Steve Dudley has visited more of Colombia's harsh venues, and sat patiently in them longer than any other foreign journalist, to understand the forces that have propelled Colombia's conflict for decades and decades. What he has produced is a passionate narrative, rich with the characters and landscape of a remarkable country, that explains why Colombia's confounding war continues to resist all attempts to stop it. -- Scott Wilson, Andean bureau chief of the Washington Post
Steven Dudley's haunting account of the rise and blood-soaked fall of Colombia's Patriotic Union (Union Patriotica) party is essential reading for anyone who wants to fully understand the causes of Latin America's longest-running civil war. A brave and unflinching book
. -- Joseph Contreras, Latin America Regional Editor, Newsweek
This insightful look into the Colombian insurgency will be valuable for scholars, policy analysts, and citizens who need to know about the next major battlefield. It's drugs, civil war, class struggle, and more U.S. intervention woven together into a very readable story
. -- Saul Landau, author of The Pre-Emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom and The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can Reverse the Trend
With verve and compassion, Dudley tells the riveting story of a political genocide that has cost Colombia thousands of lives. No one else has written this history so well and with so much first-hand access to its protagonists. It is a painful, complex, funny, and provocative read, and goes to the heart of how modern Colombia really works
. -- Robin Kirk, Senior Researcher, Human Rights Watch-Americas Division and author of More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia
Through honest, vivid, and scrupulous reporting, Dudley gives a superb history of the Patriotic Union in the mid-1980s, which continues to haunt the country's politics. His sensitive account is a significant contribution to understanding the Colombian enigma, and should be required reading for policymakers convinced they have all the answers to help produce an enduring peace
. -- Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue Institute
It is rare to find an authoritative work of modern history which is also a nail-biting page-turner, but in Walking Ghosts, Steven Dudley has done just that. In this account of one of the bloodiest dramas of modern-day Latin America, Dudley writes with an appealing blend of passion and honesty, and his book is absolutely riveting. -- Jon Lee Anderson
Dudley brilliantly captures the political complexity and moral ambiguity of the country's ongoing internal war. His tale is not one of heroes in white hats with clean hands fighting the just fight against the dark forces of unvarnished evil. It is a story of intrigue and betrayal, of torture and murder, of bloody sacrifice and loss on all sides of Colombia's fratricidal violence. It has no false happy ending. It is the tragic story of Colombia today
. -- Bruce Bagley, Department of International Studies, University of Miami
Never has it been so important for Americans to understand Colombia's decades-long civil war, now that the United States has decided to give billions of dollars of aid, in Plan Colombia, to combat the drug trade and left-wing guerrilla insurgency. In Walking Ghosts, Steven Dudley combines the research skills and analytic talents of a historian with the acquisitive energy and storytelling instincts of an investigative reporter to provide an engrossing, sometimes hair-raising account of Colombia's bloody, overlapping conflicts
. -- Roane Carey, The Nation
This is an extraordinary work by a man who fled to Miami recently, fearing he'd be killed for writing it.

. -- Ike Seamans, Knight Ridder Newspapers
...the author writes with verve and authority...Along the way he took great risks tracking down FARC higher-ups and paramilitary warlords to flesh out his investigation. And by shining light on a little-known tragedy, Dudley provides insight into why the FARC keeps fighting even though nearly every other rebel group in Latin America disbanded years ago.
-- John Otis, Houston Chronicle

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (December 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041593303X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415933032
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,107,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Violencia y fatalismo en Colombia, March 2, 2004

By 

Kevin Monahan "kevimon" (Kanazawa Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (Hardcover)

Excellent! This is hardearned and very readable reportage and history. Mr.Dudley is to be commended for physically braving the treacherous terrain of Colombian politics and the guerrilla conflict there. If life is as expendable in Colombia as it appears to be, the author must have had more than a few frightening experiences. The Colombian propensity for violence is exceeded only by the fatalism necessary to endure it and, perhaps, he made use of its dubious benefits.'Walking Ghosts' is very informative: it gives an objective history of the 'elimination' of the 'Union Patriotica' reform party by government supported paramilitary death squads as well as providing a knowledgeable background and perspective on the corrupt enterprises that are the present FARC, AUC, and Colombian government and military. Mr. Dudley weaves personal histories into larger themes, in particular following some doomed and shortlived careers of UP members while not neglecting some of the tough customers of their deadly opposition. The UP was unfortunately caught in the maw of Colombia's ongoing 'violencia' as the cocaine trade expanded and forced its dynamic on Colombian politics. The FARC is portrayed as less than honorable and only marginally less married to 'violencia' in the scheme of things. One is left with few illusions and, sadly, little hope for the future of Colombia; reconciliation and forgiveness would seem hard to come by after such viciousness. Perhaps the 'fatalismo' of the Colombians could serve them in eventually effecting a peace. Again, a very well written and engaging history of a misunderstood conflict that could well involve the US military (you! your son or daughter!) in the years ahead.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone with interest in Latin America, May 7, 2004

By 

"byt1985" (Miami) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (Hardcover)

This book is excellent, and that's coming from a jaded college student at the end of the semester. It is extremely readable, especially given that it is historical non-fiction, and very informative. It tells the story of the Unión Patriótica, a political party founded by the FARC, a Colombian guerrilla front, by telling specific people's stories to get that aspect of the controversy. For the most part the story is told chronologically, but by changing the point of view about every chapter, Dudley keeps the reader interested. His prose is light enough to be readable without losing information, and by tying in interviews, research, and stories, he justifies his leftist tone and fills many gaps in official dialogues.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning journalistic account of political genocide, January 15, 2004

By 

Bert Ruiz "Author" (Pleasantville, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (Hardcover)

"Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia," by Steven Dudley is a stunning journalistic account of political genocide. To this end, the author has very likely crossed a dangerous line in Colombia's Civil War and has exposed himself to enormous danger. Because by bravely documenting the links between Colombia's ruthless narco-paramilitary death squads, the Colombian armed forces, the Colombian National Police, powerful landowners and corrupt members of the two-party political establishment...he has made many bitter enemies.

This book is about the tragic rise and fall of a Colombian political party called the Patriotic Union(UP). Dudley painstakingly interviews the key political actors in the Colombian Communist Party and senior members of the FARC guerrilla organization who were responsible for the establishment of the UP. At the beginning there was much hope that the UP party could break the rigid chains of Colombia's two party system and foster a reform minded peace. However, Dudley's impeccable research demonstrates how powerful members of Colombian society were not prepared to accept a political party (that was officially sanctioned by the government) because it was sponsored by the Communist Party and a revolutionary guerrilla army (FARC).

Consequently, a sinister dirty war was conducted. The government intentionally fell silent while the Army and well-financed paramilitary death squads exterminated the UP. The body count was horrific. A total of 111 members of the UP were murdered in 1987; 276 were assasinated in 1988; and 138 were butchered in 1989. Within ten years thousands were slaughtered. The dead included UP presidential candidates, Senators, Mayors and members of Congress. Half-way through this book one will certainly question the wisdom of the Colombian government. Because by allowing the murderers to go free (97% of crimes in Colombia go unpunished)...many segments of Colombian society lost faith in the State.

This book is well written. It is hard to put down. But please be warned...the violence is brutal. Dudley objectively portrays the terrifying bloodshed inside the borders of Colombia and it is very ugly. He also diligently documents how paramilitaries brag of military and political support. Moreover, the author honestly hints how the United States $1.3 billion Plan Colombia funds may be helping paramilitary death squads led by Carlos Castano.

This is a groundbreaking book. Dudley is a former human rights worker and polished journalist who takes the moral high road to expose Colombia's dark secrets. The author sadly admits that there is not enough room in one book for all of Colombia's victims of paramilitary violence. Overall, the reader will conclude that Dudley is a dedicated journalist. He openly dares to question how the current Colombian government is audaciously trying to forgive the murderous paramilitaries (grant amnesty) and allow them to keep their drug trafficking fortunes. Without a doubt, Colombia needs a human rights truth commission like that of Peru and Guatemala to end its culture of denial and sanitize its armed forces. However, after finishing this book one will conclude that the political elites in Colombia will never allow this to happen. Highly...highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz