INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : Superstar Cinematographer Tom Hurwitz

Cinematographer Tom Hurwitz embedded with troops in Afghanistan during filming for the movie Kansas to Kandahar. Photo courtesy Tom Hurwitz.
An interview with Tom Hurwitz:
Superstar of contemporary 
American cinematography

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / January 23, 2013

“I love going to the movies. Movies are one of the great anachronisms, where collective craft, design, and technology merge with individual talent, as in the building of a medieval cathedral.” -- Tom Hurwitz

I love talking shop, especially with those who work in shops, whether they’re real old-fashioned and gritty or the most up-to-date and sophisticated. Tom Hurwitz, whom I first met in 1968 on the rough-and-tumble campus of Columbia University, is my idea of the ideal filmmaker to talk with about the big glittering shop that makes images and that we all call Hollywood.

Hurwitz is a straight shooter in more ways than one, and a real craftsman -- a versatile cinematographer -- who knows the film industry from the inside out. What other living moviemaker can you name who talks about capitalism and about art in the same breath and who can practically recite all the scenes in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane?

Hell, he’s also the son of the legendary documentary filmmaker, Leo Hurwitz (1909-1991), who was, for a time, blacklisted, and who continued to make films, despite it. His stepmother, Peggy Lawson, was a filmmaker and film editor and stars in Dialogue with a Woman Departed (1981) that Leo Hurwitz wrote and directed and that’s a tribute to her and her work.

Tom Hurwitz made his first picture -- Last Summer Won’t Happen (1968) -- with Peter Gessner when he was 20, and, while he’s taken a few detours in life, he’s followed the script that seems to have been written for him by the gods of cinema. He’s worked on -- to name just a few pictures - Creep Show 2 (1987), Wild Man Blues (1997), Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), and Queen of Versailles (2012) that wasn’t nominated for an Oscar -- damn it! -- but that did win awards at Sundance and from the Directors Guild of America.

Born in 1947 and reared in New York, he’s filmed TV programs such as Down and Out in America (1986), and Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero (2002) both for PBS, as well as movies for the big screen, and has won dozens of awards including two Emmys, along with Sundance and Jerusalem Film Festival awards for best cinematography. Then, too, he’s on the faculty of New York’s School of Visual Arts and a founding member of its MFA program in the social documentary.

For years, I had close friends in Hollywood: Mark Rosenberg at Warner Brothers who produced, with his wife Paul Weinstein, The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) and Flesh and Bone (1993); and Bert Schneider who produced Easy Rider (1969) and Five Easy Pieces (1970), as well as the award-winning documentary about Vietnam, Winning Hearts and Minds (1974). Rosenberg died in 1992 at the age of 44; Schneider died in 2012 at the age of 78.

Tom Hurwitz is one of the few individuals I know who’s still working in film, still very much alive, and still kicking up a storm of ideas and images for the screen. With the 2012 Academy Awards on the horizon, I fired off a round of questions about movies and moviemakers. Hurwitz was about to leave for India to make yet another movies, but he fired back his answers.

Tom Hurwitz, center in shades, during demonstration at Columbia University, 1968. At front right is Stew Albert, one of the founders of Yippie! Photo courtesy Tom Hurwitz.

Jonah Raskin: Too bad your film Queen of Versailles wasn’t nominated for an Oscar.

Tom Hurwitz: I shot the film and I’m very proud to have been part of it. As I see it, Queen tells a Shakespearian story about the decline of values, the dispersion of families, and the bursting of bubbles in this wretched stage of capitalism we inhabit. It tells the story by following the lives of a household that begins in unimaginable wealth.

Was it a fairly straightforward picture to make?

Making it was difficult. You wouldn't think that filming the family of a failing billionaire would be taxing. But when you see the movie, you can appreciate that maintaining the proper documentary relationship over a long time was hard. What was wonderful about shooting Queen was working with the director, Lauren Greenfield. She’s a great still photographer who also has a great sense of story. We speak the same language, and I loved the challenge of working up to her standards, making my motion pictures work with the style of her stills.

What are, from your perspective, the best five feature films of 2012?

Anna Karenina uses the device of the theatrical stage to turn a book into a movie -- always a challenge -- and to surmount the limitations of budget. It takes on a dream-like character with a miraculous effect.

Then there’s Zero Dark Thirty, a film that asks big questions. It felt more real and immediate than any other film this year, with acting, design, direction, photography, and sound all serving a unified end. When the first explosion happened in the film, I was on the floor before I knew it -- and I was in Afghanistan. It says something that the filmmaker, Kathryn Bigelow, cares enough about reality to make the explosions sound more real than in any other film that I’ve seen.

Moonrise Kingdom is an almost perfect product of Wes Anderson's imagination. It’s a fantasy that resides in the twilight land of childhood, in the lives of its marvelously understated characters, in their island world, and in the brilliant design and execution of the film. I kept thinking about it, savoring it like a wonderful meal, or perhaps like a dream.

What about documentaries?

Five Broken Cameras, made by a Palestinian Arab and an Israeli Jew, is seen through the eyes of a villager inside the occupied territories of the West Bank. The film is shot with camera after camera over a 10-year period beginning with the birth of a boy, and as the State of Israel tries to cut off the village off from its fields, and as settlers try to take the land itself.

The residents fight back nonviolently. The toll of the occupation on the lives of the Arabs and on the souls of the Israelis is made painfully clear. The film is told like an historical novel with character development, revelation, and tragedy. It’s the best combination of micro and macro documentary that I’ve ever seen.

Do you watch the Academy Awards?

I only watch them all the way through when a film I’ve photographed is up for an award. I went a couple of times and then I had to sit through them. I usually watch the beginning, get bored, and check the results in the paper or on line.

Are the Oscars mostly a publicity event for the movie industry?

I don't take the awards themselves lightly. For members of the Academy, November and December are crazy because we try to watch all the films in contention, nominate, and vote. I don't agree with many of the choices, but I care that the industry goes through the ritual of holding up its best, as cheesy as the event often is.

The chance to walk down the red carpet -- even though folks like me are shunted down the non-celebrity lane -- is worth the ticket, the limo, and the suit. For five minutes, you walk slowly through a world where shadows are banished, wrinkles and imperfections don't show, and every watching face holds a camera.

Do you actually go to a movie theater and watch a new film?

I love going to the movies. Movies are one of the great anachronisms, where collective craft, design, and technology merge with individual talent, as in the building of a medieval cathedral. Films ought to be appreciated in a social context. Watching a film alone on the screen in my living room, as I often do, isn’t the same thing.

You were part of the anti-war movement and a protester at Columbia in the 1960’s. Are there others with similar political backgrounds in the movie industry today?

I think any sensible person in the industry who is old enough to have been in the 1960's political movements is retired. I usually work with people from 10 years younger to less than half my age. Haskell Wexler, a mentor, was an activist in the 1960’s. He’s more of a die-hard than I am and 20 years older. In my age group -- Connie Field, Barbara Kopple, Deborah Schaeffer, Mark Weiss, and Deborah Dickson -- all spent time in the movement.

Does anyone in Hollywood make what might be called a “radical movie,” and if so how does that happen?

Most of what’s produced in Hollywood now is television. The movie industry, even though some great films were produced this year, is in a huge fog about where it’s going. I don't think narrative film knows how to be radical. It’s not alone. Neither does television -- as good as some of it may be, or the theater.

It's not only that radical art doesn't get distributed, it's that the radical voice is often confused and muted. That may be one of the reasons for the present flowering of documentary films. We may be in a time where reality speaks clearest of all.

What impact does Sundance have on moviemaking today?

Sundance Festival is a great place to see people I know who I would never otherwise get to spend time with. Also, I get to view tons of good, near-good, and occasional great films-- so many that my brain becomes mush. Filmmakers who go there leave inspired by the attention, companionship, and good work. Producers sell their films to distributors there, though I’d hate to have to be part of that sales race.

I have friends who say the last really good Hollywood movies were made in the 1930s. Is that perversity or blindness?

There were great films made in Hollywood in the 1930’s, but to say that they were the last great films is obtuse. Thirties films are mannered, even the best of them, with a set of conventions: visual, directorial, and acting. That the best of them succeed in spite of their rarefied air is a particular kind of grandeur. One might note that the social documentary film was invented in the 1930's in New York, as a way to blow open the closed world of 1930's Hollywood.

Tom Hurwitz shooting in India for Paul Taylor: Dancemaker. Photo courtesy Tom Hurwitz.
What films do you turn to again and again?

I watch a lot of films over and over because I teach graduate students every year and analyze the images. It's another way of appreciating films other than just being inspired by them. I have a list of what I consider perfectly photographed films.

If a director and I haven't already worked together I always try to screen The Conformist (1970), which Vittorio Storaro shot for Bernardo Bertolucci. I talk about the way the image is at once hugely expressive, yet always works at the service of the story and never just calls attention to itself arbitrarily. That is the highest calling of cinematography in narrative and in documentary. I call it the articulate image. Even if we don't want the film to look anything like The Conformist, watching it together starts the best of conversations. Sometimes I see it to make myself feel good about the possibilities of the image.

What movie made in the last, say, 10 years would you like to be able to say, “That’s my movie.”

I’d pick a documentary called War/Dance (2007) made by Sean and Andrea Fine. It’s about children in a refugee camp in Uganda and their struggle to mount a successful team for a national dance competition. The children become characters in their own amazing drama. The cinematography lifts the heart with its beauty and perfectly compliments the story and the subject.

What filmmakers have you learned from?

First and most important my father, Leo Hurwitz, who directed some of the first American political documentaries in the 1930's and one of the greatest ever made, Native Land. It was photographed by Paul Strand, the great American photographer, and narrated by Paul Robeson. I love Native Land because it’s brilliantly shot and structured. It influenced me, of course, and a generation of American documentarians here in New York who moved into television in the 1950's.

Next, there are a group of influential filmmakers who I call my "aunts and uncles": Sydney Meyers, Manny Kirchheimer, Peggy Lawson, Bill Jersey, Al and David Maysles, Ricky Leacock, Haskell Wexler, Owen Roisman, Charlotte Zwerin, Dede Allen, and Bob Young.

And then, more at a distance: Orson Welles, Nicholas Roeg, James Wong Howe, Gordy Willis, Phillip Roussalot, Peter Suschitzky, Peter Biziou, Nestor Almendros, Sven Nyquist, Terrence Malik, Bernardo Bertolucci, Chris Marker, Jean Rouche, Alain Resnais, Wong Kar Wai, Akiro Kurasawa, and I’m leaving out dozens.

You made movies as a 20-year-old. At 20 and 21 did you look into the future and see a career in the movies?

In 1968, when I looked into the future, I was scared shitless, though I had a film, Last Summer Won’t Happen, in the New York Film Festival. I had no more idea of how to make the next film than I did how to write a novel. I hadn't lived, let alone learned my craft.

I went off and organized marines, and then a union local, and then took part in the successful defense of a political prisoner for five years. I took stills, sold some, and began to feel like I could go back and begin a career, which I did at 26, with a full apprenticeship behind me. I moved on from there to become a journeyman.

If you had unlimited funds is there a movie you’d love to make now?

I'd love to make a film about the last free tigers on earth that live in a giant mangrove swamp in South Asia that’s the size of Rhode Island. I want to make it through the eyes of Alan Rabinowitz, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, who grew up to be one of the great protectors of wildlife in the world, and a master of the martial arts. The film about the tigers needs another million dollars in addition to what the producers have already raised, but shooting starts soon in India and Bangladesh.

When someone hands you a script and wants you to read it, what do you look for?

For 15 years I received dozens of scripts to read. They would be disappointing nine-tenths of the time. Sometimes I would have to take one because I really needed the work, and so Creep Show 2 was born. Now, luckily, directors call or email and ask, “Do you want to shoot a documentary about a company of reservists who fly helicopters and are deployed to Afghanistan for a year?" That became Kansas to Kandahar (2006). Or “What about filming a crazy, fascinating, rich family in Orlando, Florida?" That turned into Queen of Versailles. Or, “Would you consider work on the first avowedly gay bishop in Christendom?” That evolved into Love Free or Die (2012). Now, I get to say, which I didn’t at the beginning, "When do we start?"

[Jonah Raskin, a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog, is the author of Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California, and Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War. He is a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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U.S.-Colombia Treaty : Yanks Prepare to Party Down

Top, Chiva party bus Cartegena: Party down. Below, "The Yanks are Coming!"

The new Colombian war:
Nature of U.S. incursion still unclear

The new U.S. air base in Palanquero... will 'expand expeditionary warfare capability' and 'improve global reach' for 'conducting full spectrum operations...'

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / November 17, 2009

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia -- THEY’RE HERE! A scant nine days after the U.S. and Colombia signed a new military pact, I saw the first of Gawd-knows how many U.S. troops assigned to this country, right in front of my pad. I had gone to the local corner store to sit at one of the couple of tables out front, watch the street life, and sip an Aguila, the local Budweiser type of beer.

I saw them coming fifty meters up the block, four of them, with a local young lady who I recognized in tow. They wore U.S. casual clothes, three had well-shined military footwear, and all had the appropriate haircuts. As they drew closer I could hear their hometown English. They were looking for something, swiveling their heads, searching up and down the block. They stepped into the tienda to ask directions. One of them spoke language school Spanish, devoid of idioms, slang or any discernible accent. He asked where they could catch the Chiva bus.

The Chiva is a “party bus." For 30,000 COP (about $15) one can board, get a bottle of cheap rum and a Coca-Cola, a drum or set of maracas, and be toured around the city, accompanied by very loud music and a lot of drunken yelling, for about an hour. The clerk pointed across the street and advised them that the bus comes every half hour. The troops looked like they were enjoying their new status. The newly-inked treaty gives U.S. military personnel diplomatic immunity from arrest by Colombian authorities.

While the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá says the new agreement, providing for expanded U.S. access to Colombian military bases, goes into force immediately, a Colombian court ruling finds the agreement is "broad and unbalanced" in favor of the U.S. Indeed: the agreement puts no limits on the number of U.S personnel to be deployed in Colombia or the number of military bases they could use.

The Colombian State Council said in its ruling that the agreement gives the U.S. the power to decide what operations will occur, gives immunity to U.S. troops, allows access to bases beyond the seven named in the agreement's text, and defers other important questions about military operations to future "operational agreements." The Council reviewed 15 prior treaties and declarations cited by President Alvaro Uribe’s government as the foundation for the new base pact, and found that none offer a basis for stationing U.S. troops or US. use of Colombian bases.

It concludes that the agreement is a treaty, and therefore must be approved by the Colombian Congress and reviewed by the Constitutional Court. Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez, in signing the deal, had said the government would bypass such formalities.

The new U.S. air base in Palanquero, 120 miles north of Bogota, will "expand expeditionary warfare capability" and "improve global reach" for "conducting full spectrum operations,” according to a newly disclosed Pentagon document submitted to the U.S. Congress. The document describes South America as "a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics-funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty, and recurring natural disasters." The document seemingly contradicts well-publicized claims by U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield that soldiers based in Colombia will "never, never, never" participate in armed operations, and that the base agreement doesn't allow operations outside Colombian territory.

The embassy uses the guise of the discredited “drug war” in all of its statements, as if that would add legitimacy to this invasion of Colombia.

President Evo Morales of Bolivar recently criticized this tactic. Morales spoke of his experiences as a coca grower and union leader facing the brunt of U.S. militarization. "I witnessed this," he said, when describing the repression. "So now we're narcoterrorists. When they couldn't call us communists anymore, they called us subversives, and then traffickers, and since the September 11 attacks, terrorists," Morales said. "The history of Latin America repeats itself."

Meanwhile in this country, the war heats up. In Departamento Valle del Cauca, whose principal city is Cali, the ARC Pacific Naval Base at Malaga is one of the bases where the U.S. will build its naval port. On the afternoon of November 10, a firefight broke out in the area between a unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and troops allied with the Bogotá government. Nine Bogotá troops were killed and three wounded. There was no report of FARC casualties. This morning, November 12, the army announced a movement of 2,500 troops to the area. They claim that FARC killed three women and a child as well as nine soldiers.

Also today, Uribe claimed that Venezuela had declared war on Colombia! A check with Venezuelan and international television sources produced no confirmation of such a declaration; perhaps it was just a figure of speech on Uribe’s part.

The army also announced the capture of 19 FARC members in the departmentos of Santander, Antioquia, and Meta. Such announcements are an almost daily occurrence.

Taxpayers: Know your U.S. Columbian properties!


Today’s Featured Base: Palanquero

Palanquero is already one of the major air fields in Colombia. The US is spending $46,000,000ºº right this minute to develop it as a fully functioning 135,000 square meter airfield with runways 10,000 feet in length. It will be administered by the U.S. Southern Command. The Colombian Air Force (COLAF) will base high tech communications intercept airplanes there, paid for, of course, by U.S. taxpayers.

• For previous articles from Columbia by Marion Delgado, go here.

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Furor in Colombia : The Yanks are Still Coming

Venezuela Pres. Hugo Chavez addresses rally in Caracas, Friday, Nov. 13, 2009, protesting U.S.-Columbia military agrement. Photo by Fernando LLano / AP.
The U.S. Invasion of Colombia:
Touching all the bases

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / November 15, 2009

CARTEGENA DES INDIES, Colombia -- The furor over a newly-signed agreement between the U.S. and Colombian governments continues, with denunciation of what was signed on Oct. 30 from all sides.

I must say “what was signed” because as of now it is being called many different things. There is a category four bullshit storm blowing across most of South America. “What it is” seems as much in doubt as “what is in it.” At various times it is described as a U.S. pact, an agreement, the pact, security pact, or as an addendum to an existing agreement; each description is then negated by a critic or a supporter and a substitute term inserted.

Last August, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said, “The United States does not have and does not seek bases inside Colombia." Maintaining that line this week, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters the agreement "doesn't provide us with any kind of bases in Colombia. It provides us with an opportunity to cooperate with Colombia in some issues related to counternarcotics and interoperability in that regard."

However, that doesn’t quite jibe with a U.S. Defense Department document that stated the U.S. military will not only have access to Colombian military bases, but also be able to use major international civilian airports. While we will attach to existing bases, we will build our own sections. This is already started with a $46 million dollar expansion of a runway at Palanquero Air Base in Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca. June 15th the U.S. State Department authorized a contract worth almost a half million dollars to expand warehouses at Tolemaida.

According to reported provisions, U.S. military personnel and defense contractors will also enjoy diplomatic immunity in Colombia. But President Alvaro Uribe's conservative government says there will be "no impunity" for any crimes committed by the U.S. military, insisting the agreement commits Washington to investigate and punish such cases. "The agreement includes such important things [as]… no U.S. jurisdiction or courts martial in Colombia, or that Colombia may participate in investigations conducted against American officials," added Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez.

Immunity for U.S. soldiers in Colombia raises hackles because a U.S. soldier and contractor reportedly raped a 12-year-old Colombian girl inside Tolemaida military base in 2006, dumping her outside the gates in the morning. The two alleged rapists remain free and returned to the U.S. without facing any charges. U.S. soldiers in Colombia reportedly committed 37 acts of sexual abuse from 2006 to 2007.

U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield, one of the signatories, said the pact "updates" and "modernizes" agreements already in place between the two countries, signed in 1952, 1962, and 1974. The new 10-year deal allows the U.S. military to use seven bases in strategically located Colombia, which shares borders with Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, and Panama, and boasts both Pacific and Caribbean-Atlantic ports.

The agreement caused early concern not only among neighboring countries, but among inhabitants of Colombia, because its details were not known, nor was the Colombian Congress consulted. An August meeting of concerned South American countries called the previous U.S.-Colombia agreement “extra-regional interference” and an act of imperialism. The Colombian government refused to give details of the agreement because it was not signed yet and because it was “a reserved matter according its sovereignty.”

After the signing, Bermudez said the exact text of the agreement would be announced in one week, in a letter to foreign ministers of the nations concerned. Well, that was last week’s news; it didn’t happen. Now Bermudez promises to release it to the countries “involved,” this week.

As of November 9, 2009, four Colombian bases had been confirmed as part of the new deal. They are:

1. Apiay Air Force, assigned to Colombian Air Force Aerial Combat Command 2 also hosts members of the Colombian Army and Colombian Navy; it is located near the city of Villavicencio, Departmento (state) Meta, in central Colombia;
2. Malambo Naval Airbase, near Puerto Salgar, Departamento Atlántico, on the Caribbean Coast; South of the city of Baranquilla in Departmento Atlantico;
3. Palanquero Air Base in, Departamento Cundinamarca; half way between Bogotá and Medellín; and
4. The Pacific Naval Base at Bahía Malaga, Departamento Valle del Cauca, equidistant from the borders of both Panama and Ecuador. It is home to the Colombian Pacific fleet.

Three bases yet to be confirmed but strongly suspected by this writer to be included are:

1. Tolemaida, the Army training base at Nilo, Departamento Cudinamarca. You can Google-Earth it and take a look for yourselves 4 degrees 14’ 38” N and 74 degrees 38’ 43” W;
2. Larandia Air Force Base, located in Caquetá, southern Colombia, shared by the Colombian National Army, the Colombian National Police (DAS), and the Colombian Air Force; and
3. The naval base in Cartagena, Departmento Bolívar, home to the Armada Republica de Colombiana (ARC) Atlantic fleet.

The U.S. and Uribe both say the agreement will help Colombia deal more effectively with drug gangs and left wing rebel groups. One problem with that is that Hugo Chavez’ neighboring Venezuela and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are characterized (FARC by the U.S. government; the Venezuelan government in Congress; and both, routinely, by Uribe’s government) as both terrorists and drug dealers.

The FARC has responded to the newly-inked agreement. In a communiqué to Colombian military of honor and the people in general, FARC urges them to defend Colombia’s sovereignty and Latin American dignity, both "deeply tarnished with disgrace, blood, corruption and servility by President Alvaro Uribe."

The group says that, without even blushing, since he lacks any dignity, Uribe accepted the installation by the Empire of seven military bases in Colombia in an act of high treason, “a poisoned dagger plunged into the body of the Latin American Homeland, with its tip hurting the very heart of [the continent].”

The guerrillas add that the only objective of the agreement is to thwart the democratic, pro-integration process of the peoples who, led by the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), have continued the unfinished liberation project started by Simon Bolivar, South America’s Liberator.

Asi es en Colombia hoy...

Also see:

• Columbia Military Pact : The Yanks are Coming by Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / November 4, 2009

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A Special Report : Colombia's Bloody Civil War

A Rag Blog exclusive report...
War and poverty in today´s Colombia
July 15, 2008

The following analysis was presented by a Conscientious Objectors´ group, and edited and translated by The Rag Blog’s Val Liveoak. The presenter´s name is withheld to protect him. Val Liveoak was on the staff of The Rag in Austin from 1972-1975. She works with Friends Peace Teams on peacebuidling in Colombia. Val has worked on projects in Colombia since 2000, and lives in San Antonio.

Colombia is a rich country, with abundant natural resources and occupying a strategic geopolitical position on the South American Continent. Its biodiversity is remarkable: 10 per cent of all the earth’s flora and fauna are found in Colombia, and 22.4 per cent of the planet’s fresh water. This abundance of water alone makes it attractive to transnational and national businesses that need water to produce their products. Colombia has a very youthful population--of the total 43 million inhabitants, 46.5 per cent are younger than 19 years old.

Additionally Colombia has great mineral wealth. Its largest product is coal -- 1,183 metric tons have been mined, about one sixth of the known reserves. Gold is also a major product. The companies which exploit these resources, along with petroleum, nickel, uranium, magnesium, zinc, copper and many others, are mainly US or Canadian owned.

In gold production, for example, Gulf Crown, a Canadian company, takes around 80 per cent of the income generated by its mines. Workers, using 18th century technology and little safety equipment, enter dangerous mineshafts, dig with pickaxes and then carry out ore which they treat with an acid despite having no protective equipment. Then they then transport it by mule-back to the mine’s office and are paid under two cents per gram for partially refined gold, while gold sells on the world market for up to $2.50/gram.

“Despite Colombia’s natural wealth of mineral and biologic resources and our geopolitical importance, or to be exact, because of these interests, it is ironic that Colombia is also a place with great poverty and human suffering.”

For more that 50 years, Colombia has suffered one of the most prolonged and bloody civil wars of the century. The past four administrations in Colombia have tried to diminish or even deny that a war is happening, but there have been over 2,500 military actions annually and deaths of over 3,000 combatants, so it is undeniable that there is a real war in process. (International standards consider an annual total of 1,000 casualties as defining a war.) In the June 6, 2008 issue of El Tiempo, a national newspaper, a survey showed that around 20 per cent of Colombians do not believe there is a war going on, and the other 80 per cent believe there is.

The human consequences of this ongoing war are innumerable. It would not be feasible to try to document in this article all of the effects on Colombians during nearly four generations of war. But we will outline a few of the effects.

Most noteworthy as having affected nearly 10 per cent of the Colombian population is internal forced displacement. Colombia has the second largest population of internally-displaced people (IDPs) in the world, over 3,500,000 according to the UN High Commission on Refugees. And even this figure is considered low, due to IDPs’ fear of reporting their displacement because the report might put themselves or their families at further risk of violence. Both paramilitary and guerrilla groups cause displacement, although paramilitaries are responsible for the majority of displacements.

In addition to the people who have suffered displacement, thousands have been assassinated, kidnapped or have disappeared. To cite one statistic, from 1993 to the first quarter of 2006, the Self Defense forces of Colombia (known in Spanish as the AUC), only one of a number of paramilitary groups, have perpetuated 1,517 massacres of a total of 8,386 victims. According to the Association of Families of the Disappeared, more than 7,000 people have been disappeared since 1977, and we know that the actual total might be much higher because not all disappearances are reported because of the fear of further violence. During the process of demobilization, begun in January, 2007, former paramilitary members´ confessions have led to the discovery of around 800 common graves with 2-18 cadavers each.

In Colombia, according to the Fiscal General (a Cabinet position similar to Attorney General), there were “…more victims of paramilitaries than there were in Chile during the military dictatorship of Agosto Pinochet and in Argentina under Rafael Videla together.” Paramilitary groups are blamed for the majority of disappearances. (Note: Paramilitary groups began appearing in Colombia around the mid 1970s, when Colombian officers began receiving counterinsurgency training at the US School of the Americas -- now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security and Cooperation. They were taught to form groups that could do things the Army was forbidden to do by law. Additionally, large landowners and other business owners began around that time to hire armed groups to “protect their interests” including displacing small farmers from desirable land, and suppressing unions, journalists and judges.)

Kidnapping is common in Colombia, with over 21,000 known victims in the last 12 years, 3,167 of whom remain in captivity. Massive protests of kidnapping, and public demand for the liberation of the victims have received worldwide publicity. During this month, there have been very few days when the media did not mention a victim of kidnapping, or his/her release. The guerrilla groups, the FARC and the ELN, use the ransoms to help finance their programs. (Additionally these groups also blockade and rob travelers on highways—a tactic known as “miraculous fishing,” and are involved in the drug trade.) Other groups also kidnap people for ransom, but kidnapping by guerrilla groups is most loudly denounced.

The psychosocial implications of the impact of constant and innumerable deaths, disappearances, tortures, kidnappings, threats of violence, displacements and aggressions against the civilian population throughout the length and breadth of the country, in addition to the grave implications of entire generations marked by violence are compounded by the economic effects of the war economy that has created the terrible phenomenon of impoverishment throughout the Colombian population.

Currently, according to CEPALC (The Peoples’ Communication Center of Latin American), 63 per cent of Colombians live in poverty on less than $2 a day and of that group, 32 per cent live in absolute poverty on less than $1 daily. At the same time 1.8 per cent of the richest Colombians control approximately 68 per cent of the wealth and capital of the country. (Compare to the US where the richest one per cent controls about 55% of the national wealth.) 6,000 of the largest landowners control 50 million hectares of land while 3 million small farmers (campesinos, literally, “country people”) share around 7 million hectares, an area which is constantly being reduced by the difficulties of agricultural production, violence and the threats of armed groups.

At the same time the current administration is spending record breaking amounts on the war, deepening the critical problems of the country and creating a dangerous economic dynamic around “national security,” which in addition to being onerous is also ineffective at fulfilling the government’s own goals.

Increases in military spending directly correspond to the increases in the rates of poverty among the population. A recent year’s defense budget of over $9.7 billion makes Colombia the country with the third highest military budget (by percentage of GNP) in the world, at 6.3 per cent. (The US, even with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, spends around 4.04 per cent of GNP.)

This increase in military spending is obviously one cause of decreases in spending for health, education, housing, pensions, public services, infrastructure, sports and other vital elements for development. As a comparison, consider that there are five Colombian soldiers for every 1,000 civilians but only one doctor for every 3,800 persons. (“And that doctor is limited to serving only paying patients, so most of us use herbal medicines and other home remedies to keep well. This may be like the US medical system.”) If we take into account that not only members of the armed forces are involved in efforts to ensure “national security,” we also note that of 556,000 public employees, 460,000 are working in the area of defense, security or as police. By the account of the Colombian Defense Department, each soldier costs $7,900 each year (up from $3,500 in 1999) while the Ministry of Education says that each student in public school is budgeted to receive a little less than $900/year.

The US government is supporting this onerous war machine, too, with $320 million as a part of the Patriot Plan (the successor to the first and second phases of Plan Colombia that gave the Colombian government $580 million over the last ten years of both Democratic and Republican administrations.) Additionally, the US has provided over $150 million in technological and logistical assistance and in military equipment (“mostly obsolete”). There are large amounts of military supplies being stored in depots, far more than the Army can currently use.

Why then, cannot the 415,000 members of the Colombian Armed Forces (aided by an estimated 21,000-30,000 paramilitary members) defeat the guerrilla groups FARC (15,000 members) and the ELN (7,500 members)? Paraphrasing Noam Chomsky, “Winning a war is not good business.” Recent events also seem to indicate that the US is nudging the Uribe government into a proxy war with Venezuela. (See below.)


What are (some) Colombians afraid of?

Colombian friends have spoken often of the desire to end the “culture of violence” they experience daily. Although in the capital, Bogotá, life seems pretty normal to most people who do not have contact with the hordes of displaced people who have fled to the slum neighborhoods around the city, there are many reminders of the ongoing war, not to mention the other effects outlined in the article above.

In Colombia, all men between the ages of 18 and 50 (!) are obliged to serve in the military. Most expect to serve around the ages of 18-20, when those who have access to higher education complete their bachillerato, a degree similar to an AB from a junior college in the US. Young men studying for this degree or in seminary, heads of households, handicapped, and some others are legally entitled to deferment, if not exemption from military service, although conscientious objection for religious or moral reasons is not recognized. The Colombian Mennonite Church has led efforts to achieve recognition of CO’s for many years.

One event that affected the group of Conscientious Objectors was a massive roundup of young men for military service in February of this year. While some young men volunteer for military service (daily during the evening news there is a Colombian version of the “Be all you can be” advertisement), most are forcibly recruited -- swept up by the authorities outside movie theaters or in parks, on their way to work, or even outside schools. On February 12, 2008, over 30,000 young men were taken, in the largest dragnet in the history of the country. Some, like a CO we spoke to, had received draft notices to report to a center. When he and some 3,000 others arrived they were processed and immediately sent to an Army camp. He had the assistance of the CO group, and was able, after 12 hours of protesting, to be let go with a citation to return in a few months. Others were not so fortunate, and the CO groups are still fighting in the courts for the release of youths entitled to legal exemptions as well as COs.

But those are not the only concerns the COs expressed. They have heard that these new recruits -- some of whom should never have been taken -- have been sent after brief training to the border areas with Venezuela and Ecuador where many troops are being massed. Although relations with Ecuador have improved after Colombia´s raid on guerrilla camps across the border in March, saber-rattling on both sides of the Colombian-Venezuelan border continues. News stories of Venezuela´s efforts to increase its military might, including its display of newly acquired missiles, are added to the coverage of President Chavez´ defiant statements opposing US military aid to Colombia. “I think there’s a propaganda campaign preparing us to wage a proxy war against Venezuela,” said one CO, “and the troop buildup on the borders seems to point to a possible war as well, not to mention the stockpiling of military equipment.”

While much of the US peace movement’s attention is (rightly) focused on the Middle East, we should remember that US interests are strong in Latin America and that Colombia is the third largest recipient of US military aid. On Sunday (June 8) President Chavez called for an end of the guerrilla war in Colombia and a unilateral release of all the kidnapped hostages. “You in the FARC should know that the war has become the excuse for the Empire to threaten us all. The day there is peace in Colombia, there will no longer be any excuse for a US Empire.” It seems he is also concerned about a possible proxy war.

The Rag Blog

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