Natural, Man-Made Horrors : ‘Black November’ Leaves Colombia in State of Shock

Juan Gaitan is getting better, but he is not there yet. His muscles twitch, his mind wanders, his large brown eyes flicker.

There are a lot of people like Juan Gaitan in Colombia today, shell-shocked victims of man-made and natural horror. “Black November,” as it is called here, has mercifully passed but it has left behind a numbed people, a weakened government, a weary, hard-luck president and an uncertain future in a nation stalked by violence.

“Our pain is like no one’s pain,” President Belisario Betancur said the other day. “We have been the victims both of terrorist delirium and the blind force of nature.”

‘Disastrous Days’

The Bogota newspaper El Tiempo described November as “the 30 most disastrous days in Colombian history” and went on to say:

“While the country suffered its worst natural and institutional tragedies, more than 100 Colombians died in subversive actions or common crimes; the kidnap industry revived, and the citizenry grew alarmed at the terrorist threat.”

From his bed in the Bogota hospital where he had applied for a job only a few weeks ago, Gaitan, a 31-year-old surgeon, personifies the tragedies of Black November.

He returned to Colombia recently after four years of postgraduate study in East Germany, and on Nov. 6 he dropped off his resume at City Hall and wandered like a tourist through the Palace of Justice in downtown Bogota. A half- hour after he left the building, Marxist guerrillas shot their way in. The army came. Before the battle ended 26 hours later, almost 100 people had been killed, including 11 justices of the Supreme Court.

Went to Armero

Gaitan and his German wife, who is pregnant, decided that Bogota was too violent for them. They went to his parents’ house in the prosperous farm town of Armero.

On the night of Nov. 13, a huge wall of mud from the volcano Nevado del Ruiz struck Armero. Gaitan watched his mother and father die in the wreckage of their home. He lost sight of his wife and his brother as the torrent carried him away, an arm broken and a huge splinter in his chest.

The next morning, as he lay trapped face up in the mud that had claimed 23,080 lives, two men fought their way to Gaitan. They stole his watch, his wedding ring, and a crucifix on a gold chain around his neck. “Die, you bastard,” they said, and left him bleeding in the mud.

Later, Gaitan says, he made his way to safety by scuttling across planks and cadavers to dry land. A helicopter finally came.

“Now,” he said, “people call me here in the hospital. They say if I pay them money they will tell me where my wife is. What do you expect? This is Colombia.”

Wounds Cruel, Deep

Like Gaitan, Colombia faces a long and painful recovery from Black November. The wounds are cruel and deep.

Among the most severely wounded is Belisario Betancur. A vigorous democrat, he has worked hard for peace in the face of a Marxist insurgency and for jobs in the face of economic distress.

In the aftermath of Black November, his well-intentioned policies are in tatters and he is a hard-pressed lame duck. A poll of Bogota residents published here last week showed that 85% of them think Colombia is in a “great crisis” and 68% said the country is unraveling.

In the closing months of a four-year term to which he cannot seek immediate reelection, Betancur governs in the glum realization that Virgilio Barco, the opposition Liberal Party candidate, is the favorite to win the election next May over Alvaro Gomez, the candidate of Betancur’s Conservative Party.

Dealt Costly Blow

Economically, Nevado del Ruiz dealt a costly blow, destroying not only lives and a town but also hard-won schools, roads, bridges and hydroelectric plants.

Betancur must oversee reconstruction while simultaneously defending his government against critics and investigators who charge that the government was negligent in monitoring the volcano’s threat and inept in dealing with its onslaught.

Politically, the consequences of the Palace of Justice tragedy are even more costly, challenging the institutional integrity of the government.

“Did military pressure not permit a dialogue with the guerrillas in the palace?” asked former Foreign Minister Alfredo Vazquez Carrizosa, a Conservative.

“Was there a vacuum of civilian power?” asked newspaper columnist Enrique Santos Calderon. This question is asked on all sides in Colombia today, and it is usually answered, “Yes.”

No Clear Answer

As the bodies were being carried out of the blackened Palace of Justice, Betancur confirmed that it was he who had ordered the all-out military assault. Others, though, say the army took matters into its own hands, leaving Betancur and his civilian advisers no choice but to agree.

There is no clear answer, and even the continuing investigations may not produce one. Thoughtful Colombian analysts, however, lean toward the army-in-charge theory--”a 26-hour coup,” one of them called it.

The circumstantial evidence is strong. Betancur has an international reputation as a political leader who thinks it is more civilized to talk than to fight, yet he ignored frantic telephone pleas from the trapped Supreme Court president for a cease-fire that might have permitted a dialogue.

For their part, the guerrillas who seized the palace, members of the movement known as M-19, never expected a counterattack of such sustained ferocity, spokesmen for the group said at a clandestine press conference. The intention, they said, was to put Betancur “on trial” for shortcomings of his peace plan and then, in Latin American tradition, to release their hostages in exchange for safe passage out of the country.

All-Out Assault

The army, bloodied regularly in low-level skirmishes with guerrillas over the past 30 years, did not attempt a rescue operation at the palace. Instead, it mounted an overwhelming assault. Court President Alfonso Reyes was one of the victims, apparently slain by the guerrillas.

If the Palace of Justice tragedy has ruined the reputation of M-19, which used to be the most high-toned of Colombia’s various insurgent forces, it has also weakened the government.

As with the volcano, critics charge that the government neither prevented disaster--with better protection for the court building, for example--nor responded well once the alarm bells began ringing. Either the president who worked so hard for peace would not negotiate when the chips were down, or was not allowed to. Either way, the image of civilian authority suffers.

Army’s Position Stronger

By contrast, the army, obedient but restive at Betancur’s overtures to the guerrillas, emerged strengthened, even if the coup-for-a-day theory is wrong. From the army’s perspective, taking the palace was an essential mission accomplished in good order. Among Colombia’s guerrillas, there can now be no doubt about the army’s disposition to fight.

Although civilian governments have ruled Colombia uninterruptedly for nearly three decades, the armed forces have great political influence. Like many Colombian rightists, the army leadership believes that there can be no reasoning with guerrillas.

After a three-year effort, Betancur reached agreement last year on an armed truce with four guerrilla bands, including the urban-oriented M-19 and the rural-based Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The FARC is the military wing of the Moscow-line Communist Party of Colombia and is the oldest and largest of Colombia’s insurgent movements.

Had Wooed M-19

Betancur assiduously wooed M-19, a Castroite band with a genius for publicity, and in August, 1984, obtained its agreement to the truce. However, M-19, formally called the April 19 Movement after the date of a supposedly fraudulent election in 1970, renounced the agreement in June, accusing the government of violating the cease-fire and reneging on promises of agrarian and political reform.

Two other Marxist groups have also formally renounced the truce and are back to fighting openly, leaving the FARC as the sole remaining official participant in Betancur’s sagging peace effort.

Despite frequent clashes between that faction and the army, both sides have agreed to extend the truce, and the FARC is sponsoring candidates in next year’s elections. Jacobo Arenas, its presidential candidate, is still underground. The group’s legislative candidates are campaigning openly, but more than a dozen of them have been killed, presumably by right-wing death squads.

Last weekend, as Betancur attended an outdoor Mass for volcano victims, the army battled M-19 guerrillas in the provincial city of Cali and other guerrillas in northwestern Colombia.

An uncertain December succeeded Black November. The new fighting left mourning Colombians with another three dozen bodies to contemplate and the likelihood of more major violence as the election campaign heats up in an already badly overheated country.