In That Time of Our Life

One night into my assignment to La Plata, Huila I was reading by the dim light of a 40-watt light bulb a banned copy of La Violencia en Colombia. I was riveted by its 1948 description of the lunchtime assassination of Jorge Gaitan, the liberal leader, at a sidewalk restaurant next to the country's leading newspaper, El Tiempo. As its principal author, Orlando Fals Borda wrote: "it was a lone act which stripped with a single bullet the thin veneer of civility from an entire society". La Violencia then goes on to detail a country's descent into anarchy. By nightfall, Bogota was in flames. The country's elite troops were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, rank upon rank, on the steps of the Ministry of Justice, firing volley after volley into the madding crowd. They had long given up on leg shots and were now firing into upper torsos and heads, to no avail. Cali went up the next night, and city after city, town after town, followed in a wild melee of collective murder and unsheathed angst.