Vale nods, her eyes on mine. “Why didn’t you save them?” she says.
“The helicopters were part of United States’ Plan Colombia, and the rules then were that we could only use helicopters for counternarcotics missions. FARC columns were moving in to surround Bogotá, peace negotiations were breaking down. We’d plan counternarcotics missions so that we’d end up in a firefight with guerrillas. It wasn’t hard to do. The FARC was fighting to gain control of the coca regions around their despeje. If we headed into the same territory and ended up fighting guerrillas because we were moving in on their drug zones, that was fair. The Americans could pretend, and we could pretend. But three hundred guerrilla attacking a police station? A mission like that was clearly military; we couldn’t pretend. And if we’d used the helicopters for a mission like that, the U.S. would have taken our helicopters back. So we all sat and listened over the radio as fourteen of the bravest police officers in Colombia slowly lost hope, and then we let them die.”
Valencia takes that in, and I sip my tea. Ginger turmeric, good for the digestion.
“These are the kinds of choices you have to make in a war,” I say. “In 2001, the U.S. sent us Black Hawks, a much better helicopter. And then, after 9/11, the restrictions were lifted. The narcoguerrillas became narcoterrorists, and as terrorists, the Americans decided they were fair game.”
“Are you saying . . .”
“What I’m saying is . . .” I sigh, putting the tea down and putting on my serious face, the face I used to use to deliver punishment when she was a girl. “What I’m saying is that there were other restrictions, too. Uribe was professionalizing the army, starting with special units like mine. No massacres, no drug trafficking, no working with terrorist groups, and the U.S. declared paramilitaries like the AUC to be terrorist groups right around that time. Also, any air mobile unit with documented links to them would have lost their helicopters. That was one of the conditions the Americans gave. So you think I would risk my unit by working with the paramilitaries? We didn’t need them, like my father did. Like other units did at the time. We had helicopters.”
I cannot read Valencia’s face. Perhaps I was too aggressive. She’s not a naughty child, she’s a young woman. She’s going to be a lawyer, she has thoughts and opinions. I can’t expect her to simply accept what I say.
“My professor said,” she begins, then stops, reconsiders what she was about to say, and then continues, “that the original Plan Colombia, the one we asked for, was for development of the countryside. Roads, schools, and aid to get the farmers to switch from coca to wheat. But the Americans wanted it all to be military.”
“The Americans were right,” I say, “in that, if not in many other things. You need a functioning army before you can have a functioning state.” I feel like I’m lecturing. I don’t want to lecture. I want to be honest with my daughter. I want her to know who I am and know the decisions I’ve made, and I want her to continue to think well of me after my death, after every secret has been uncovered.
“Listen,” I say, “you want me to tell you I’ve never done anything that would cause you shame. Maybe you want me to tell you that about your grandfather, too, but you know he was fired by Uribe, and you know why.”
“I know grandfather . . .”
“Lived in a different time, and came up in a different army, and a different Colombia.” I stand up, put my book back on the shelf, and turn so that I’m looking down on my daughter. “Men are weak. Don’t ask if they’re good or bad. We’re all sinful. Ask if they’re better or worse than the times they lived in. Your grandfather was much better, and deserved much more than he received.”
She nods. There’s not a hint of judgment in her face, but it must be there. What type of person would she be if it wasn’t there? She’s lived a safe life, Sofia and I have made sure of that. The decisions she’s made have nothing to do with the cold logic that rules my life, or the even colder logic that ruled her grandfather’s. Safety teaches a weaker sort of will. Maybe one day, Colombia will be so much better that my daughter will look at me and, surrounded by the thick walls of civilization, staring out through semiopaque glass into the chaos of the past, see a bad, violent man. And beyond me, deeper in the wilderness, she’ll see her grandfather, a monster, a general whose unit was implicated in some of the worst abuses the human rights mob likes to hurl at the army. I suppose that would not be the worst thing. If her generation were ever so safe that they could look on mine with disgust, that would only mean that my life’s work had been successful.
3
MASON 2005
People told me I’d never understand sex until I’d done it, never understand combat until I’d been in it, never understand life itself until I was a father. But when the day arrived for each of those things, I didn’t find myself with any new wisdom. Just a girl I thought I loved. The anxious thrill of being alive. A fragile life I could hold in one hand. And no
