More terrible than death : massacres, drugs, and America's war in Colombia

Robin Kirk weaves personal experience with history in her 2003 book on the fate of human rights in Colombia, More Terrible than Death. She highlights the human side of the conflict using descriptions of personal encounters, narratives analyzing the lives of key figures, and stories that she worked to record and report as a Human Rights Watch advocate. As Kirk writes in her prologue, this is a story of truth, in all its complexity, “a fabric of perceptions and lived experience.” Kirk does not dismiss Colombia as a nation trapped in a hopeless cycle of violence, but she has faith that most Colombians want peace. The story of her Colombian counterpart Josué Giraldo, a lawyer assassinated for his work reporting human rights abuses, weaves through the text as a representation of “all those brave individuals who continue to work for peace and justice in Colombia.” The Colombian government, US government, FARC, cartel, and paramilitary leaders are all approached from a human standpoint that considers each of the decisions that made them who they are today. Robin Kirk draws attention to the root causes of the violence that has constantly threatened to turn advocates of peace into victims or accomplices of violence. She calls for hope in the power of individual choices, quoting her colleague Josué Giraldo, “To give up is more terrible than death.” More Terrible than Death follows the chain of cause and effect leading from Colombia’s civil war in the late 1940s and 1950s (known as La Violencia), to the creation of guerilla and paramilitary groups, to the complex drug trafficking situation of today. Robin Kirk illustrates the roles of all the actors, including the role played by American cocaine consumers and American lawmakers whose actions add fuel to the fire of the Colombian conflict. Colombians have a name for the chains of events that spur on acts of revenge: culebras, meaning snakes. In Colombia, the culebras tend to run back several generations. Throughout the history of the Colombian conflict, the United States has played a role. The stated goal of US action has been to end the violence by defeating rebellions and stamping out illegal activities, but US actions have instead often served to fuel the conflict. The US began sending military aid to Colombia in 1952; US forces provided weapons such as napalm and trained Colombian forces in tactics for eliminating the Communist settlements formed during La Violencia. Brigadier General William P. Yarborough recommended not only material aid to the civilians to win their ‘hearts and minds,’ but also clandestine ‘hunter-killer’ units to target hidden ‘subversives.’ The US support aimed to end the spread of communism, yet Robin Kirk cites the US support for the government forces at this time as one of the reasons why Pedro Marín, who later became the leader of FARC and took on the name Marulanda, transformed his “independent republic” into a mobile guerilla force and declared himself a Communist. In the present day, the US sends military aid to Colombia in the name of the ‘war on drugs.’ The US government began this effort in the early 1980s, targeting the supply side in Colombia and asking for the extradition of Colombian drug lords. Colombia depends upon cocaine for wealth, and Robin Kirk cites many ties between various government officials and trafficking. It is not surprising, then, that the government would seek to label the FARC as “narco-guerillas” in order to use US aid