New travel series about the search for peace in Colombia: ‘Most people are good, even there’

She was just four days old when Barbara Smit was on a plane to South America. You can go anywhere, but not to Colombia, her parents had said. It was 2001. She went to Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Twelve years and many trips to Latin America later – she lived in Nicaragua for five years – she would finally visit Colombia. By this time, the Ministry of Tourism was promoting the country with the slogan: ‘The only risk is that you want to stay there’. Another three years later, the peace agreement would be signed between the government and the guerrillas of the FARC. Does Colombia’s story have a happy ending? Or is this just the beginning of a long recovery?

Smit (1983) then visited Colombia several times as a researcher for VPRO travel programs, and the idea for a series about the country under reconstruction slowly grew. It became The voice of Colombiacan be seen on NPO2 from January 5. It is the first time that Smit is not behind the camera but in front of it. But she is emphatically not ‘the presenter’, she says in the VPRO building in Hilversum. It shouldn’t be about her: “It’s about the people and their stories. I don’t talk into the camera, I don’t stand there to explain to the viewer: this is how it is in Colombia. I spoke to people for the first time when we started playing. So I’m doing what I always did: speaking to people I’ve never spoken to before, in places I haven’t been before.”

For more explanation of the stories, there is ‘the Voice’, a wooden puppet made by puppeteers from the Colombian capital Bogotá. Together with directors Stef Biemans and Jorne Baard, Smit looked for a way to bring the past to life. “We didn’t want to do too much with archives. Then the idea of ​​this doll was born, which we could dress up as different characters: a father, a farmer, a soldier, a murderer. We thought: the doll could be one of the storytellers.”

Contrasts

The series emphasizes the many contrasts that make Colombia what it is: beautiful and cruel, soft and hard, musical and bloody, partying and crying, innocent and guilty. The contradictions also lie in the people Smit speaks to. Gang leaders calling for a violence-free weekend. The mother of a murderer who brings her son’s favorite food to prison every Saturday. A soft-eyed former paramilitary whose unit was responsible for gruesome massacres.

The images are also about contrasts: we see the Colombia of today, full of warm colors, sympathetic characters and sun-drenched squares. Meanwhile, Smit reads from witness accounts, such as the massacre in the village of El Salado in 2000: a ‘blood festival’, a macabre scene of rapes and executions, accompanied by music that the paramilitaries made with instruments they found in the village. Smit: “The contrast is also in the last episode about the Cauca, a river that has been declared a legal entity and official victim of the armed conflict in the context of the peace processes. It seems like paradise there. Until you find out what happened: bodies were dumped in the river.”

The contradictions were what attracted her so much, says Smit. “That energy and that incredible resilience of the people is so contagious. But you cannot ignore the violent past. We wanted to see: how do you move forward as a country, as a village, as a community, after years of conflict? And there is still a lot of violence. But we hope that there is resilience between the lines. We can learn a lot from that in the Netherlands.”

That energy and the incredible resilience of the people is so contagious. But you cannot ignore the violent past

Are Colombians so resilient because they have been through so much? Or was it always a lively people and has it remained so – despite the violence? The series plays with these questions, without giving a clear answer. In the episode about Mother’s Day – one of the most violent days of the year in Colombia – an officer suggests that part of it is culturally determined: the Colombian is particularly emotional, during Mother’s Day the emotions come to the surface and in combination with heavy drinking, this leads to that causes unrest. Smit: “Many holidays start fantastic, until they become grim. And then there is the emotion that the mother evokes: there is now one man in the episode who starts to cry when he talks about his mother, but four others who were cut out also all started crying. It became almost unbelievable. ”

That violence is anchored in culture is certainly not what the series wants to suggest, Smit clarifies. “What matters is that violence creates violence and how few opportunities the young people who grow up in poverty have. One of the mothers says: ‘You can raise your son as well as you want, but as soon as he goes out onto the streets here, you can’t stop what he comes into contact with.’” A bitter contrast to Smit’s safe bubble in the Netherlands, the series seems to want to say, by showing how Smit makes video calls with her son. Her biggest concern: which primary school will he go to? And yet, the mother’s feelings are universal, as a viewer you understand.

Truth

“Without justice there will be no peace. It is high time for the truth,” says one of the relatives of the massacre in El Salado, in which an estimated 100 people were killed. Has Smit found a piece of that truth with her program? “Providing answers was not the purpose of the series,” she says.

Why violence has flared up again in recent years, which armed groups have emerged from old paramilitary units and how they are now blocking attempts at peace, for example by murdering ‘social leaders’, none of this is discussed. Explaining that dynamic in four episodes simply became too complicated, says Smit. “We are above all storytellers. But when I look at what has been achieved since the historic Peace Agreement with the FARC at the end of 2016: all kinds of peace processes have been initiated, of which, for example, the gang leaders I speak to in prison are also part of.”

Convicts can be released earlier if they cooperate in the peace processes, says Smit. In episode two she speaks to a former paramilitary. He seems sincere in his regrets and good intentions. “This Amaury, leader of the unit that carried out the terrible massacre in El Salado, had never given an interview. So I had my doubts: why would he want that now, for Dutch TV? I think it is part of such a reconciliation process, he also teaches in prison, in human rights of all things. Things like that can get you out sooner. The fact that he said yes to us, I suspect, is also part of that. He is a changed man, he says. At least he believes it himself.”

There is still a lot of violence, but we hope that the resilience of the people is also visible

No narcos

Although the country’s violent history is the common thread in the series, there is no separate episode about the narcos. “After the trailer came online, a Colombian responded: finally a documentary that is not about narcos. We could have gone to a coca plantation and watched it being destroyed by the army, but that has been done so many times before. The violence is often drug-related, and the gang leaders I speak to are of course leaders of a drug gang. But we didn’t have to retell the well-known story.”

Episode three is about a child murderer, the largest serial killer ever in terms of number of victims. When Smit comes across a newspaper report from the late 1990s in a Colombian archive – Garavito has claimed his 140th victim – she asks the archivist: why such a short message? “After years and years of violence, this no longer affected us so much. We had gotten used to it,” he answers. Garavito’s victims were also poor children, who often lived on the streets. Nobody cared about them, says the detective who eventually tracked him down and who speaks with Smit in the episode.

“Garavito passed away just before we started recording. But we didn’t want to give him a stage either.”

In other episodes, Smit does speak to perpetrators, but that felt different, she says. “That paramilitary leader was part of the conflict. This was a psychopath who tortured, raped and murdered little boys.”

Why then an entire episode about this figure? “Because it says something about what was going on in Colombia.” The fact that he was able to do his thing for so long has everything to do with the conflict, Smit explains. “His heyday was the eighties and nineties.” The country, in a war that had been raging for decades, had so much to hide that a serial killer was simply not a priority. The authorities were overloaded.

“There are two more Colombians in the top 5 serial killers. Then you come back to the question of whether violence is in the culture. But there really are no more psychopaths living in Colombia than in Vietnam or the Netherlands. It is the impunity that allows someone to continue.”

There are more good guys than bad guys, says a street vendor in a suburb of Cartagena: “Somos más los buenos que los malos.” Smith: “And that is really true. Most people are good, even there.”

Trauma therapy

In addition to providing context to the viewer, ‘the Voice’ has another function: puppetry makes it easier to broach delicate themes. And so more play therapy-like elements are introduced, in addition to the puppet, a model of an old crime scene and cuddly toys for mothers who lost their children in the conflict. Smit: “They call them hugging dolls, muñecas abrazadoras.”

The series also shows how people are re-appropriating things that have been tainted by the violence. For example, children in the traumatized village of El Salado are given music lessons after the paramilitaries used the typical drums from that region for a long time.

The relationship with the Cauca must also be restored by the population, Smit explains. “For a long time, people saw that river as something dirty or ugly.”

Restoration of the relationship between people and nature is an explicit part of the peace process in Colombia, De Stem explains in the latest episode. That is why the river has been officially declared a victim. That is a symbolic step, but a crucial one, according to the bill that made this possible: “Only when humanity understands that mountains can talk, rivers can cry and forests can whisper, will humanity be ready to stop waging war. ”

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