To Colombians, He Is the War on Drugs

Dressed in a pale blue sport coat instead of his usual olive green uniform, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, Colombia’s top police officer, stepped out of his helicopter a few yards from the hangar where three U.S.-donated Black Hawks were undergoing the manufacturer’s final inspection.

They were the last of six helicopters promised in 1998, when the Colombian National Police became the first law enforcement agency in the world to fly the military helicopters. Serrano was here to thank the U.S. congressional aides who had delivered them.

He was especially grateful because, as the helicopters were flying here, two more Black Hawks were pledged to the police as part of a $1.3-billion aid package before Congress to help fight drugs in Colombia.

For the general’s congressional supporters, as for many people in the United States and Colombia, Serrano and the police are this nation’s fight against drugs.

Here, polls consistently rank the gray-haired general as the nation’s most popular public figure. Serrano kept U.S. anti-drug money flowing in ever greater quantities even after Colombia’s previous president’s U.S. visa was revoked because of suspected ties to narcotics traffickers, and even while a horrendous human rights record prevented the army from receiving aid.

At a time when U.S. officials trusted no one else in Colombia, Serrano collaborated with the Drug Enforcement Administration to break up the Cali cartel, then the world’s most powerful cocaine syndicate.

But now, thanks in part to the effectiveness of the police, the nature of the drug war in Colombia is changing. The fight has spread from the cities to the countryside. The big cartels have atomized into smaller, more flexible networks that are believed to be run largely from Mexico and Miami.

The success of eradication programs in Bolivia and Peru has forced traffickers to move production of coca--the plant used to make cocaine--into the Colombian jungles. That brings the traffickers into partnerships with the brutal, heavily armed leftist rebels and right-wing counterinsurgents who have been fighting the Colombian government and each other for 36 years.

Police, even with Black Hawks, do not have the equipment or training to fight a drug war that is blurring into a guerrilla war. The proposed U.S. aid package, which emphasizes military hardware for the armed forces, reflects those changes, as well as U.S. confidence in Colombia’s current president, Andres Pastrana.

Serrano and the police are no longer the only representatives of their country’s fight against drugs. At age 57, the general must guide the police into a new role of cooperation with the armed forces and explain that role to his supporters on Capitol Hill, who fear that he is being discarded.

“Now we have to operate more on an international level, to share more information and teach others from our experience,” Serrano said during an interview on his way to the airport and an anti-narcotics seminar in Argentina. In the same week, he had already met with the congressional aides, visited a remote village where guerrillas had killed 21 police officers, attended their funerals and cut the chains of a young kidnapping victim after police rescued her.

Serrano’s ability to anticipate change and respond has allowed him to survive four defense ministers and two presidents during his more than five years as police director. That’s impressive for a kid from the little town of Velez who admits that he joined the police at age 17 because he liked the uniform.

“Serrano is more than a great policeman,” said Myles Frechette, former U.S. ambassador to Colombia. “He also has a natural political instinct and he is patriotic.”

Serrano has demonstrated those qualities by walking a tightrope held on one end by his friends in the U.S. government and on the other by sometimes jealous Colombian politicians. The only safety net is his tremendous popularity.

In his 1999 autobiography, “Checkmate,” Serrano writes that he has no idea why former President Ernesto Samper chose him for director in 1994, skipping over half a dozen more senior officers. He was not Samper’s first choice, or even his second, according to sources close to the decision-making.

However, those sources said, U.S. officials made it clear that anti-narcotics aid hinged on Serrano’s heading the police. Convinced that Samper’s 1994 presidential campaign had accepted $6 million from drug traffickers, the Americans dealt directly with Serrano, ignoring the president and even revoking his U.S. visa.

Their anger with Samper overshadowed what Serrano said is the police chief’s greatest triumph: a two-year effort, ended in 1996, to capture leaders of the Cali cartel. Even then, the United States refused to certify Colombia as a fully cooperative partner in the war against drugs.

Nevertheless, anti-narcotics aid to Colombia--mainly for the police--kept growing, from $85.6 million in 1997 to $289 million last year. And Serrano’s popularity grew with it.

When he visited an army base in Tolemaida last year with the military high command, soldiers politely stepped past the defense minister and armed forces commander to shake hands with the top cop. After lunch, the kitchen staff shyly emerged to ask Serrano to pose for a picture with them.

“It is difficult to provide him with security because people rush toward him to touch him, to take a picture of him,” said Capt. Herman Bustamante, his chief of security and the son of his close friend Hernan Bustamante.

“Fortunately, I do not have to take care of him alone,” said the younger Bustamante. “I have the help of 100,000 police and 90% of the population of Colombia.”

Actually, Serrano’s approval ratings come in closer to 94% in most recent surveys--which, paradoxically, also show that Colombians’ biggest worry is safety in a country that averages eight kidnappings a day.

“Everybody loves Gen. Serrano, but nobody loves the police,” said Maria Victoria Llorente, a crime researcher at the prestigious Los Andes University. “It’s something I cannot understand.”

Her only explanation is that Colombians do not blame Serrano for the lack of public safety because common crime cannot be separated from the violence of this country’s long-standing guerrilla war and drug trafficking.

Serrano said he worries about public safety: “I wish that there were no narcotics and that we could concentrate on crime.”

Colombians appear to accept that reasoning and to respect Serrano’s reputation in a nation crippled by corruption. “The police are riding on the coattails of his prestige,” Llorente said. “It is a cult of personality.”

And Serrano undeniably has a magnetic personality.

“Everyone sees him as their father,” said Jorge Serrano, 23, the youngest of his three children. “He looks like a teddy bear.”

Serrano turns his defects into positives. He unabashedly acknowledges the struggle with weight that deprives him of his favorite sweet, bocayo de guayaba--a candy made in his hometown of Velez. He even published a book of weight-loss exercises.

He is open about his humble origins as the son of a seamstress and a meat salesman. Frechette recalled that Serrano asked him to arrange for a used firetruck to be delivered to Velez, about 100 miles north of the capital, Bogota, through a U.S. program that allows the U.S. military to transport the trucks when there is space on ships or planes.

Serrano is an avid tennis player, known for his ability to put a spin on a ball so that it drops just past the net. A well-publicized tennis game was used to hush rumors of a rift between Serrano and Pastrana last year. “The president chooses him as his doubles partner,” said the younger Bustamante. “It’s better to have him on your side.”

The general is never more human than at the all-too-frequent funerals for officers who have died in the line of duty. Serrano visits the murder scene, often a remote village that has been attacked by guerrillas, and talks with the officers to raise their spirits. He always serves as a pallbearer.

“He takes the loss of his boys seriously,” said a European diplomat.

Because the government provides pensions only for the widows and orphans of officers who have more than 15 years of service, Serrano’s wife, Hilde, runs a private charity to benefit other families.

“He never abandons a subordinate in trouble, neither those who have been attacked in battle or those who have faced accusations,” said Gen. Luis Enrique Montenegro, his second in command. “People are confident that if they are loyal to him, he will be loyal to them.”

The most public example of that loyalty has been Serrano’s staunch defense of Maj. Oscar Pimienta, a hero of the Cali cartel capture who was accused last May of skimming U.S. aid. American officials are still trying to work out how to conduct an audit that will not compromise police security.

When Judge Diego Coley ruled that there was enough evidence to hold Pimienta for trial, he said, he was called to Serrano’s office. He surreptitiously recorded the upbraiding that Serrano gave him, accusing the judge of trying to destroy a brilliant police career and besmirch Serrano’s reputation.

Coley filed a complaint with the attorney general over Serrano’s conduct. When newspapers published the story, radio talk show hosts immediately sprang to Serrano’s defense. Callers to the shows disparaged Coley.

“Instead of hurting Serrano, this incident has increased his popularity,” Coley said. “People think, ‘Yes, the general should put that judge in his place.’ ”

Coley, who was transferred a few days after the ruling, has become disillusioned. “I met him when he was a colonel and he was friendly. Now he is arrogant--all he cares about is his image.”

Serrano does not discuss the incident, but his supporters say he has good reason to suspect attempts to undermine his reputation. In the midst of their operations against the Cali cartel, Montenegro recalled, intelligence agents discovered that drug traffickers had set up bank accounts in the Cayman Islands in the names of Serrano and Montenegro in an attempt to make it appear that the police officials had taken bribes.

Further, corruption is a sensitive issue for Serrano, who has dismissed more than 6,500 officers suspected of ineffectiveness or dishonesty. The campaign began five years ago, when half the Cali force was on the drug traffickers’ payroll.

“Dishonesty makes him angry,” Herman Bustamante said. “He takes drastic measures when corruption is involved.”

Serrano’s anti-corruption campaign has made him enemies among the dismissed officers, who Bustamante said are as much a threat to the general and his family as the criminals he has captured. As a result, the Serranos must travel with escorts at all times.

All have apartments in the same building--the general’s is the penthouse--with police security in the lobby and a roadblock at the end of the street. They have lived this way for more than a decade.

“Our life changed,” Jorge Serrano said. “I had few friends--only those who dared to be my friends. I had to go everywhere in an armored car. With five bodyguards around all the time, a person feels inhibited.”

Even so, they do not feel safe. Jorge Serrano and his family recently joined his brother and sister in exile.

“We understood that we had to make sacrifices,” the younger Serrano said during an interview on his last day in Colombia. “All that he has done for the country is reflected in us. He is a dedicated person who believes that the more he sacrifices, the harder he works, the better things will turn out.”