COLOMBIE
In 1999, I accepted a shoot for “Present Times” with the FARC in Colombia, mainly because we were invited and especially accompanied by a negotiator between the guerrillas and the government.
We landed in Florencia and finally disappeared from the map to arrive in the middle of the Amazon jungle.
As we were shown our place in the camps, the negotiator was humorously offended that for the press, the guerrillas had set up wooden beds with roofs and a mosquito net.
Whereas he usually slept on the floor.
The first night, I woke up for a pressing need, I put on my shoes and as I began my walk there appeared in the light of my torch, a guerrilla girl standing guard, her Kalashnikov across her chest. Surprised, I said to him in my bad Spanish: Donde el bagno?
She waved me off in the opposite direction.
I set out, but I knew that the toilets were located 300m outside the camp and difficult to find during the day. After about twenty meters. I turned off my lamp and relieved myself.
When I met her on my return she had a big smile on her face and I could read in her eyes “you didn’t dare go there” after having interviewed General Marulanda whose goal was to take power in Colombia to return the land to the people, we traveled 300 km by boat on the Rio Caguan, one of the tributaries of the Amazon, to arrive in the fields.
We arrived in the coca production fields, we went to the market to film the transactions, we slept in the villages depraved by the gold prospectors.
As we left FARC territory, I was the first to climb the ramp that went up from the river to the dock.
As I arrived at the top, a Colombian soldier pointed his gun at me –
I tell him :
– No habla espagnol
And I point the journalist to him. The discussion was lively, the guard wanted to see inside the journalist’s bag, he opened it and above it was the biography of General Marulanda!
After long minutes of discussion, the soldier let us go to our great relief.
“Colombia the law of gunpowder”
