When Doublespeak Is the National Language

Don’t be envious if a Colombian tells you he’s been on a “millionaire cruise.”

Nor should anyone mistake the “miracle of the fish” for a religious experience.

Both phrases describe events that Colombians wake every day fearing, a reality that they can neither fully accept nor completely ignore in a country that has both Latin America’s highest kidnapping rate and its longest-running guerrilla war.

Instead, they talk about their deepest dreads in an informal code that is turning Colombian Spanish--once considered the purest form of Castilian spoken in South America--into a language of terror. “Colombian reality is so bizarre that it is starting to be reflected in the language,” linguist William Salazar said. “People develop codes--that includes new language necessary to express what they are living through.”

So, similiar to the pattern in other cultures marred by violence, Colombians have invented expressions such as “millionaire cruise” for a taxi ride that turns into a kidnapping. The victim cruises the streets with armed abductors who force him to use ATMs to empty his bank accounts and withdraw cash advances that charge his credit cards to the limit. It ends up being an expensive drive.

Guerrillas set their nets--or roadblocks--across highways and wait for the fish--or kidnapping victims--to multiply. Such expressions and dozens more are increasingly becoming a part of the way Colombians talk.

“It is language that represses values, that hides what it names,” said Jorge Bonilla, a communications professor at the respected Javeriana University here. “It diffuses the violence of war by using euphemisms to talk about crude realities.”

For Colombians, it’s a kind of coping mechanism. When they discuss whether “road conditions” will prevent them from going to the country for the weekend, for example, they’re not wondering about rockslides or highway repairs. They’re worried whether their route will coincide with the guerrillas’ newest fishing hole.

“It has to do with our capacity as Colombians to not confront what is destroying us,” Bonilla said. “We use language to keep from drowning in the daily horror. It’s like taking an aspirin.”

Just as aspirin numbs pain, linguists are concerned that some euphemisms are contributing to the numbing of this violence-weary nation. sit Salazar has recorded 26 different expressions that mean “to murder,” ranging from “fumigate” to “organize” to “clean.” The victim, who is a “doll” or “cold one,” has “marked a skull” or “failed a grade.”

Part of the reason for using such metaphors is to prevent someone who might overhear from being absolutely sure that he has listened to a confession of a crime, Salazar said. Colombia’s urban slums are crowded mixtures of Marxist guerrilla militias, assassins contracted to right-wing private armies, the minions of drug traffickers and common criminals, as well as law-abiding citizens.

Amid such a potpourri of interests, it’s best to be discreet.

The custom of calling a rose by another name dates to the days when the Roman Catholic Church imposed severe taboos, Bonilla said. Colombians developed a sort of parallel language of metaphors that poked fun at church morality without confronting it directly, he said.

Analogies became ingrained in Colombian humor. At the same time, during the 18th and 19th centuries, Bogota intellectuals maintained close ties to Spain and prided themselves on their clearly enunciated Spanish. They didn’t drop letters or add sounds or alter verb conjugations the way other post-colonial Spanish-speaking societies did. For example, in many coastal areas of South America, Spanish speakers swallow their “n’s” and substitute “l’s” for “r’s.”

“The best Spanish spoken in Latin America is what is spoken in Bogota,” said Salazar, insisting that the statement is a linguistic evaluation, not mere chauvinism. But outside the capital, Colombian Spanish has always been less Castilian, he acknowledged.

Colloquial expressions began to permeate the language when, in the middle of the 20th century, Colombia was immersed in a civil war so all-encompassing that it became known as simply “The Violence.”

“People will tell you, ‘The Violence killed my father’ or ‘The Violence drove me from my farm,’ ” Bonilla said. And everyone understands, without the need of saying so directly, that the father was probably hacked to death in front of his family and that the person’s crops were burned and he was brutally threatened.

About that time, he said, people began to refer to paid assassins as “birds” because they hung around street corners waiting for their victims, the way vultures wait for carrion.

From there, other expressions have blossomed, spread in part by newspapers and radio looking for snappy expressions to draw attention to horror that has become mundane. Not even the Catholic Church is powerful enough to stop the widespread use of an expression it deems offensive.

“The priests complained when the media started to use the term ‘miracle of the fish,’ ” linguist Jorge Pardo said. “They tried to get them to say ‘diabolic fishing,’ but nobody understood that. They could not change it.”

In contrast, armed groups--from the military to Marxist guerrillas and right-wing private armies--have been quite successful at getting the media to change their terms, in turn influencing the expressions used in everyday conversation.

“Combat is not an ‘ambush,’ ” Bonilla said. But Colombian army news releases call every confrontation initiated by the insurgents an “ambush,” and that term has become part of popular language.

“They call the guerrillas narco-bandits and terrorists, and the newspapers print that,” Bonilla said. “There is a lot more fear of calling the actions of the [right-wing] paramilitaries illegal than to say that about the guerrillas.”

That may be because prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for self-proclaimed paramilitary leader Carlos Castano in the slaying of several journalists. “It’s a lot less dangerous to say that the guerrillas are narco-guerrillas than to say that Carlos Castano is a terrorist,” Bonilla said.

Nevertheless, the insurgents have also made their contributions to Colombia’s double language.

Insurgents, for instance, collect money by issuing threats--a practice traditionally called extortion--but refer to the proceeds as “taxes.” Colombians who refuse to pay are “retained,” otherwise known as being kidnapped.

“Kidnapping is a violation of international human rights,” Pardo said. “What’s in play here are millions of dollars in aid that the guerrillas hope to get from international institutions if they are recognized as a belligerent force. But to get that recognition, they have to respect human rights. Whether they are complying becomes a matter of semantics.”

Tricks of language that were once invented for humor have become ways to disguise reality, linguists said.

“We find a way to make a joke of everything,” Bonilla said. “I don’t know whether it’s a national treasure or a way to turn our backs on reality.”

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Coping, in So Many Words

Colombians have developed euphemisms to talk about the terror that invades their lives:

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Spanish: Pescado milagroso

English: Miracle of the fish

Meaning: Guerrillas set roadblock and kidnap drivers

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Spanish: Paseo millonario

English: Millionaire cruise

Meaning: Taxi passenger is kidnapped and forced to empty his bank accounts at ATMs

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Spanish: Pajaro

English: Bird

Meaning: Assassin

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Spanish: Muneco

English: Doll

Meaning: Dead body, usually murder victim