House Cleaning in Colombia

He said that it wouldn’t have mattered to him if Ingrid Betancourt had been among those who died in Colombia’s recent attack on a FARC-EP encampment in Ecuador. There were now twenty less people who could cause problems in Colombia. It would not have mattered if all the FARC’s hostages were there. If they had died, their deaths would have been worth getting rid of the guerillas.

He said that a “limpieza” of Colombia was what the country needed.

It was not the first time I had heard the word “limpieza” from a Colombian. On another occasion I was told that the paramilitaries, whom the Colombian government has supported through the years, were good. “Oh,” the person said, “they have their programs of ‘limpieza’ but those are necessary.”

While speaking to a person who grew up on the Colombia-Venezuela border, he changed the word to “exterminio,” extermination. That brings to my mind rodents: mice and rats and other such pests. If you can see your enemy in that light, it is easy to see why they must be eliminated from your home(land).

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