My Colombian War: A Journey Through the Country I Left Behind

by Silvana Paternostro

Overview

"Intimate, emotion-saturated portrait . . . the flavors and the colors are vivid . . . [A] compelling picture of contemporary Colombia and the roots of its problems . . . a gift for the rest of us."—William Grimes, The New York Times

Growing up in the coastal city of Barranquilla, Colombia, Silvana Paternostro enjoyed a privileged childhood, a comfortable existence marred only briefly by fleeting encounters with the social inequalities and burgeoning drug trade that threatened the country's security. Soon, however, these shadowy threats intensified, boiling over into the most violent, most protracted, and most misunderstood civil war of our time.

In My Colombian War, Paternostro, now an acclaimed reporter, journeys back to the place where her family and closest friends still live, weaving authentic experience into a history of this ongoing conflict. Drawing on interviews with family members, rebel and paramilitary leaders, and a singular young American marine named Charlie, Paternostro portrays all sides of the conflict. Blending superb reportage with poignant personal stories, she offers a stunning, comprehensive narrative of Colombia's complicated past and present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805088601
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/02/2008
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Silvana Paternostro is a Colombian-born journalist. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and Time, among other publications, and she is the author of In the Land of God and Man, a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. In 1999 she was selected by Time/CNN as one of the fifty Latin American leaders for the millennium. A senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, Paternostro lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

The Maps     1
Book 1
Miami International Airport, May 2002     21
Shelter Island, June 1999     29
Barranquilla, August 2001     41
Seeing You Again     45
My Birthmark     54
The Rebel Years     64
Making Plans as a Journalist     72
Researching My Story     80
Tricky, Tricky     88
Asking the Tough Questions     96
Kidnapping, Inc.     103
Running in Riomar     107
The Best in All the Land     112
High Times in Barranquilla     120
Need Help from Allegra     133
Book 2
Who Is She?     147
My Grandmother Explains Kidnappings     157
Memory Threads of El Carmen     165
Ma Cris and Her Cousin Describe a World of Peace     172
Guillermo's Terrace     183
Juana's Smell     196
Agustin Explains the Rules     200
Seeing You Again, September 10, 2001     206
Body Language     224
Book 3
How Did I End Up Here?, March 2002     241
Meeting the Rebels     254
Wrong Music     262
Can't Stay Away, Miami, May 2003     270
Needing to Report Again     277
Our Colombian War     290
Epilogue     299
Bibliography     306
Acknowledgments     309
Index     311

Editorial Reviews

The gifted journalist Silvana Paternostro confronts her own past, her family's past, and Colombia's past, in this indispensable guide to the drama currently being played out in the Latin south: a drug-haunted, tangled drama of feuds, rival warlords, criminal mafias, kidnappings, and endless civil wars. An intensely personal memoir, it demonstrates at the same time a firm grasp of the political, economic, and social realities that provide the background against which the headline news of Colombia in 2007, and 2008 and succeeding years, will continue to unfold. It makes fascinating reading.” —David Fromkin, Professor of International Relations, Boston University

“In this elegant and riveting exploration of Colombia, Silvana Paternostro journeys back to her homeland to confront the country that has long held a hypnotic hold on her psyche. My Colombian War offers not only insight into the troubled legacy of Colombia, but presents a beautiful portrait of a woman's heartbreaking journey to understand the meaning of home.” —Danielle Trussoni, author of Falling Through the Earth

“My Colombian War cuts far deeper than the typical work of an international journalist, while at the same time, by tying Paternostro's quest to rediscover the country she left as a teenager to the violent yet moving history and culture of that nation more generally, achieving the status of something altogether superior to simple memoir. This is personal history writ large, a moving, admirably objective, and deeply courageous examination of how Colombia has arrived at its present troubled state, sometimes with the aid of outsiders, sometimes all on its own; and it could only have been written by someone with Paternostro's unique personal history, gift of observation, and record of laying bare the myths of Latin America. An absolute must for anyone who either aspires to an understanding of what is happening in the region, or who simply wants to read about a life that has been genuinely fascinating.” —Caleb Carr, author of The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians

“In this intensely honest and revealing memoir, Silvana Paternostro takes us on her own Rip van Winkle voyage of return to her beloved, violent homeland. It is a compellingly bittersweet chronicle, with touches of great beauty, much like Colombia itself.” —Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life and The Fall of Baghdad

“Revelatory . . . a moving, highly memorable take on how a country lost its moorings.” —The Atlantic

“Paternostro's stunning, nononsense prose truly lets you into her mind and the country's history.” —Marie Claire

From the Publisher

In this intensely honest and revealing memoir, Silvana Paternostro takes us on her own Rip van Winkle voyage of return to her beloved, violent homeland. It is a compellingly bittersweet chronicle, with touches of great beauty, much like Colombia itself.

author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life an Jon Lee Anderson

My Colombian War cuts far deeper than the typical work of an international journalist, while at the same time, by tying Paternostro's quest to rediscover the country she left as a teenager to the violent yet moving history and culture of that nation more generally, achieving the status of something altogether superior to simple memoir. This is personal history writ large, a moving, admirably objective, and deeply courageous examination of how Colombia has arrived at its present troubled state, sometimes with the aid of outsiders, sometimes all on its own; and it could only have been written by someone with Paternostro's unique personal history, gift of observation, and record of laying bare the myths of Latin America. An absolute must for anyone who either aspires to an understanding of what is happening in the region, or who simply wants to read about a life that has been genuinely fascinating.

author of The Lessons of Terror: A History of Caleb Carr

Toward the end of My Colombian War Silvana Paternostro hits on the perfect Spanish word to express her sense of dislocation. She is desubicada, which she translates as "difficult and kind of ridiculous, and always out of place." It shows, even to her family. "The stork dropped her in the wrong country," her father says. For a journalist it sometimes helps to be a little ridiculous and out of place. Alienation imparts a sense of urgency to Ms. Paternostro's intimate, emotion-saturated portrait of the homeland with which she cannot come to terms, a sentimental journey undertaken after decades living in the United States and working as a journalist in New York. Her confusion, and her often astounding ignorance of her own country, ends up being an asset, as she reconnects with her family and tries to sort out how Colombia developed into an international Wal-Mart for cocaine and marijuana, and a world leader in several major crime categories, including murder and kidnapping.
—The New York Times

William Grimes

In this disjointed memoir, Paternostro describes her return to war-torn Colombia, which she left in the 1970s as a teenager. A member of a wealthy, landholding family, Paternostro attended American schools and universities and made a career in the U.S. as a journalist, while giving little thought to the country she left behind. Yet the crises of cocaine and civil war draw her professional attention and an assignment from the New York Timesallows her to return to her coastal hometown of Barranquilla. Once there, she discovers how much her conservative family's life of privilege is at odds with her own romantic left leanings, and how the danger of being kidnapped is only matched by her countrymen's refusal to acknowledge the civil war around them. All the elements are in place for a fascinating story and yet the memoir lacks essential clarity. Although Paternostro addresses various aspects of Colombian history, she doesn't illuminate them to any great depth, and the lack of a narrative through-line leaves the book adrift. Revealingly, Paternostro writes: "I go around without contact lenses; that way I cannot see too much. I think otherwise I would not be able to smile, to talk, to sleep, to stay here." Ultimately, the author's decision not to see clearly leaves the reader as confused as she is. (Sept.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

A Colombian-born journalist returns to her homeland in an attempt to reconcile her own past and her country's chaotic present. Paternostro (In The Land of God and Man: Confronting Our Sexual Culture, 1998), a reporter and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, turns her pointed journalistic skills inward to examine her own identity in the larger context of her roots in Colombia, a place revealed here as "a beautiful country with an awful history and a terrible present." Although the author left the country in the turbulent 1980s, her identity now as much American as Latin, Colombia haunts her as she stares every morning at a map and imagines it as a corporal entity, assigning a divided body part to each of the country's disparate regions. Paternostro takes assignments that suit her "personal inquisition," traveling to each region to pursue stories of kidnapping, drug-running and the politics of rebellion. These, however, are mostly missions of convenience, as the author adopts the subjects of her stories for comparison against her own experiences of the country. The voices that emerge-ranging from an American soldier in the drug war who goes native, to the everyday citizens who have learned to accept gunfire and kidnapping as a part of life-are vivid and compelling characters in the author's introspective history. There is something of a dichotomy between the Paternostro's remembrances of her fortunate childhood as the daughter of an acclaimed economist and her reportage of the country's violent civil war. Because of that split, her overarching themes occasionally become muddled by the accounts of current events. Yet her poetic descriptions of the country's cultural conventions andfractured consciousness do much to enliven her account of a Colombian war that is, in the end, "brutal, sad, incoherent, and rarely resolved." While some of these labels certainly apply to segments of the book, its graceful melancholy and conscientious reporting elevate it beyond the customary journalist's memoir. A conflicted memoir of bodegas, bullets and a country tearing itself apart from within.

Kirkus Reviews