Customer Reviews

Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

"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

I am on my second reading of the book, and unless you read each page three times, you will need a second reading of the book. There are a tremendous number of characters to keep track of. To his credit, Dudley does reintroduce characters in later chapters as if you've never read about them.

It's obvious this book is a rewrite of a masters thesis, but I'm not sure what Dudley was rewriting it into. It feels as if it was supposed to be (and to some extent is) a story of the authors experiences in Colombia and what he was able to reveal about the Colombian political culture. However the chapters seem to be chunks of a thesis with a new title put on and rearranged text to better fit the title. For example, the "Black Vladimir" chapter contains a great deal of information on the character, however so does the rest of the book.

Having said that, it is a great overview of the tumultuous 80's in Colombia through detailed accounts. This info is essential to understand current politics in Colombia. Also included is a cursory overview of the pre-1980 colombian political situation as well as the 90's. There is an attempt to cover politics outside of the UP, but it struck me as shallow. The 90's, for example, are glossed over for the most part. I also wish there was more information about the more current situation.

Overall, author Dudley has done right in laying open the running sores of the Colombian civil war to public view, a generally engrossing - and gross - account of chicanery, cynicism, and atrocity.

That said, I could not give it more than three stars because of its flawed insistence - in my opinion - of blaming the left for its own destruction in Colombia. At one point he writes of the "startling number of dead" the UP "put in the morgue." Yet the Union Patriotica did not torture, kill, or "disappear" these people, nor force the death squads to do so, and therein lays the book's flawed premise.

By his own admission, Colombia has engaged in political violence against dissidents for decades, and its 1980s death squads were willing to kill virtually anyone they disliked. The UP, then, did not have to be cynically betrayed or manipulated by the FARC to earn this lethal attention - it would have come anyway, regardless of any guerrilla politics behind the scenes. The paramilitaries were out to destroy the left, and the center; the guerrilla politics upon which Dudley lavishes so much scrutiny were a secondary factor at best, and in no way confirm the Colombian military's "analysis" or strategy.

I found the book to be extremely well balanced and it goes far beyond a reductionary two sided 'right vs. left' approach. The book distinguishes between the Colombian Communist Party, the UP, the FARC, the druglords, paramilitaries/autodefensas, the Colombian military, and the politicians that controlled the Colombian military.

Its never a black and white story as each of these groups emerge and develop and their interests and leadership change. (Warning: Spoilers coming up): The autodefensas are at first defensive town militias to protect towns from brutal violence of the FARC, then evolve to slaughter other FARC/UP friendly towns. The state politicians controlling the military at first coordinate the military slaughter of an opposition party, then evolve to attempt to bring this opposition party legitimately into the system and must reign in their own military generals (rather unsuccessfully) to do so.

The FARC are at first are the robin hoods of the populace that strictly forbid drug and arms trafficking and hold only the rich hostage, and evolve to become funded by drug and arms trafficking and hold the poorest of the poor hostage. The UP at first is a recruiting agency for the FARC, then almost evolves to formally break with the FARC and its strategy of "the combination of all forms of struggle" but the party is destroyed by the assassination of its influential leader before this can occur. Throughout the book, the UP largely takes all the casualties for the FARC/Communist Party's strategy of "the combination of all forms of struggle" while it is attempting to enact serious reforms and good works such as economic development. This is mostly because the military refuses to distinguish between the UP and the FARC as distinct organizations and by attempting to participate in the political structure, the UP politicians are extremely easy to kill (while the FARC in their jungles are not). Meanwhile everyone in the countryside is caught up in the violence.

What does one take away from the book--violence begets violence, power struggles mostly inflict casualties on the poorest of the population, and power corrupts--in all of their gory detail, leaving one saddened and torn.

The author invested a lot of effort into the book, and it is courageous and academic for refusing to definitively side with any one group and instead attempting to follow a more "action = re-action" approach between the six groups struggling for power and siding only with a humanitarian morality. This approach leaves many "partisans" of the conflict unhappy.

Mr. Dudley has written a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding how futile, tragic and hopeless this civil war is, a war to end centuries of oppression by creating an alternate oppression. No matter how noble the goals of the militant left are, they have perverted that nobility with resorting to the tactics of the thug right that they despise. Mr. Dudley's extensive interviews with many of the "walking ghosts," many who died subsequently at the hands of the either the paramilitary wing of the Colombian army and narcotraffickers or the FARC, makes this a poignant tribute to their selfless idealism. The cynicism of both sides, coupled with a fatalism that would make Slavs blush, makes for a dreadful toxic brew that can only poison any hope of reconciliation. What neither Dudley or anyone else cares to address is why of all the Latin countries Colombia's insurgency has become so vicious and bitter, even though Colombia's experience with oligharchies or revolutionary movements is no different than any other of its continental or linguistic neighbors. The gist of his book concerns the Union Patriotica, the left wind political party that the FARC intended to manipulate for its own power-grabbing methods. seen by the right as just a front for their arms bearing enemies of FARC, the civilan members of UP became literal sitting ducks, martyrs for a cause that seems as far away from fruition as ever. Assassination became the norm, with the tentacles of the military entwining with the likes of Pablo Escobar and "El Mejicano" Gacha, well known cocaine lords. Dudly barely touches on US/CIA involvement, but their interference in other country's sovereign affairs is well known in any case. Dudley's writing style makes this an easy read from that perspective, but the endless parade of dead men walking became very sobering.

This is a poorly written account of a topic so crucial for the history and the future of Colombia. The author seems biased against the victims of a political genocide a thesis he chose to build on self-contradicting, and in many cases, superficial, almost idiotic, narratives, gossip, cheap propaganda, and a strategically selected "balanced" approach to key events and people.

The author, in a few words, tells us that it was the left's fault that it didn't disarm while it was massacred by the paramilitaries before the state could even guarantee a safe political and electoral environment. And so it is not the drug lords who organized a killing campaign threatened by the UP, it wasn't the psychotic paranoid generals that insulted their heads of state by acting unilaterally and against orders, it wasn't the paramilitaries that started cutting off people with chainsaws before even there was a UP that caused the UP's demise. IT WAS THE LEFT TO BLAME for not cutting their own throats off!

Denial and the recycling of the same mythology for the last 40 years is one of the the reasons why Colombia is stuck in this mud of US-aid, narco-barons, government corruption, occasional genocides, multinational corporate liability, and psychotic narcissistic leaders.

Here is a hint: lessons from Northern Ireland, South Africa, Nepal, Salvador, the PLO, and more have demonstrated that disarmament is not a condition for transition to peace as much as the state's commitment to integrate insurgents in the political process SAFELY. I recommend some serious literature on the topic, such as Militant Nationalism by Cynthia E. Irvin in understanding the dimensions of killing the UP, this horrendous crime against the future of Colombia and the region for decades to come.

Mr. Dudley, please do your homework on peace processes first and then RE-WRITE this book at least so that the enormous work that you have invested in interviewing monstrous criminals such as Baquero, and Landazabal will not go wasted and your contribution will build an understanding and awareness towards a real progress instead of business as usual. I have never read such weight of accusations planted on the very shoulders of the victims themselves of such a significant political crime. Evidently, you have told us everything that you've been told, and presented us everything that you have found, but in exception to that bankrupted theory of placing the gravity of the blame on the victims, you Sir are absent from your own book! And the result of your absence is a caricature of a testament, a patched-up presentation that is confusing and misleading even to the advanced student of modern Colombian political history. In the end all that is left is the overwhelming bad after-taste of bias towards your own initial speculation.

There is a lot of work needed on this material to shape up into a ground braking contribution, but the potential is there. I'd dispose off the "theory" first, study thoroughly the existent theory on insurgency transformation to poiitics, especially from the comparative-theory perspective, and then, even with the existent matterial, I'd give it another try.

I found the character descriptions and events chronicled in this book to assist me immensely in understanding the Colombian political predicament. I was sorely disappointed, however, that the book seemed very "cut and paste." Mostly it seemed like he wrote a variety of papers, then slapped chapters on them and called them a book. I was reminded again and again what "una guerra en todas las formas" meant. Literally **27** times this term is DEFINED. Ok, I got it the first time you told me. Furthermore, he repeats descriptions of people and places even in the same chapter, to a point that is ANNOYING. I don't need you to tell me the same thing 14 times, please edit that out. WHERE WAS HIS EDITOR?? Did he fall asleep reading it? There are so many details and descriptions in this book that are crucial to understanding current Colombian politics, but I have to give it 3 stars based on the fact that he was at times verbose, reiterative (yes, reiterative), and that in all the book seemed like a disjointed set of narratives. Mr. Dudley, please, read your own work from beginning to end and tell me that you realize it needs editing!!

I feel that this a very strong series of stories and history of Colombia and of the FARC. Mr. Dudley has accomplished something few could, by interviewing the FARC, the UP, and the Paramilitaries - his interview with Carlos Castano is just incredible.

The Union Patriotica, a political party created by the FARC rebels of Colombia, appeared to be the last, best chance for the FARC to find political space in Colombia and turn their ideas into something positive for Colombia. Unfortunately, what ended up happenning is that the FARC does not seem to care that by not giving up its war against Colombia, that it ensured the mass murder of politicians of the Union Patriotica. It is astounding that the members of Union Patriotica did not consider breaking off from the FARC - it ensured that they were all killed as well. The other astounding fact is of the amnesty for the paramilitary groups: they did the vast majority of the killing and drug trafficking, and also ruined the chance for peace and the UP. Why they linked with drug dealers to destroy Colombia's chance at peace, it seemed it was all about the money. Yet the paramilitaries come off with a very generous deal from the Colombian government.

In any event: this book is a triumph. The FARC went from being justified, modestly popular, or even wildly popular, and the Union Patriotica, its political party, something that could benefit Colombians, to being one of the most disliked, controversial, selfish rebel groups on the planet, with no other plan other than its own military dominance for dominance's sake, and the vast dislocation of millions of Colombians.