Bernard-Henri Lévy

A LETTER FROM JESUS GUERRA, BERNARD-HENRY LEVY’S FORMER FIXER IN COLOMBIA, TO LILIANE LAZAR.

Dear Professor Lazar,

I am not a writer.  I don’t write for newspapers.  But I am the man who accompanied Bernard-Henri Lévy when he came here, to Colombia, to tell us, without blinders, everything that was wrong here.  He needed no assistance in telling of the adventure we shared in an excellent report for the journal Le Monde as well as other newspapers.  But since I was what Anglo-Saxon journalists call his “fixer» the whole time he was covering this story, I would like to make a few additional points.

Concerned as he was with his combat for truth, what Bernard-Henri did not describe were the incredible conditions of our trip along the Rio Sinu accompanying three peasants returning to their village, which had been burned by the FARC and the paramilitaries, to recuperate their belongings.  I saw Monsieur Lévy sleep in the open air with just a blanket, with his jacket as a pillow.  He ate the same corn tortillas we did.  He wasn’t afraid, any more than we were, when the villagers along the way warned us of suspect groups nearby.  And when we arrived, I saw the tears in his eyes, and then, trickling down his cheeks, when we came upon the ruins of the houses and the stench of the dead all around.  Bravo for your physical stamina, Monsieur Lévy, and thank you for your feelings.

He did not tell the whole story of our trip to the FARC fighters’ encampment at San Vincente del Caguan, where I also accompanied him.  He did not mention, for example, that we were in the most perilous of areas, right near where Ingrid Betancourt would be kidnapped.  And he did not tell how our plane was hijacked, on the return trip, by four peasants of Caguan who threatened us, forcing us to take them on board.  Since the maximum capacity of the plane was that of four people, you understand, there was a problem of weight.  And, what’s more, since a storm broke out halfway to Bogota, and since, even worse, the pilot suffered from cardiac problems and became ill during the trip, we owe our salvation to an idea that came from Monsieur Lévy—to speak in the pilot’s ear of what he had understood, on the trip there, to be his favourite subjects:  sex and the future of his children.  That is what kept him awake (the pilot).  And that is why we ended up landing in Bogota without incident.    Monsieur Lévy murmuring in the ear of an agonizing pilot, telling him stories about whores and the education of his children.  Alternately.  And the pilot, who survived!

And then, there was the most important thing.  Monsieur Lévy and I talked about it a lot.  I wanted to tell about it, but he felt it just wasn’t done, and he had promised the person involved to keep it confidential.  Now, ten years have gone by.  And, with his permission, I’m telling all.  No one asked, when Lévy’s article was published, how he made contact with the chief of the paramilitaries at that thime, Carlos Castano, a man no one approached, that no one had interviewed before, because he was the invisible man of Colombia.  Well, I’m going to reveal it today.  It was the «Defensora del Pueblo», the woman the State designated to be in charge of human rights, who was the intermediary.  Unbelievable, but true, the chief of human rights leading us to the chief of the killers.  She did not come in person, of course, because she would have risked getting her patent leather pumps dirty.  But she transmitted the request.  She was a beautiful blond, from a family of finqueros.  She was married, but she was also acquainted with someone in Castano’s entourage.  And so she relayed the request.  She implied that, given his well-known stance against Fidelism in Cuba, Monsieur Lévy was on the same side as they were.  And it was she who, since she liked Monsieur Lévy, and he chatted her up a bit, obtained the rendez-vous.  She was transferred after that, though I don’t think one had anything to do with the other.  Nonetheless, only in my confounded country would things be mixed up like that, so that the person ostensibly in charge of human rights would take on the responsibility of bringing a Frenchman with balls to meet the most wanted criminal of Colombia.  Monsieur Lévy didn’t blanch during the entire journey.  They blindfolded us so we could never tell where the criminals were hiding.  But I was there, and I can tell you he never lost his composure.  Not then and not afterwards, when we arrived in the encampment where the criminals were hiding, and where he dispassionately interviewed them.

Monsieur Lévy’s work caused a good deal of talk in Colombia.  It’s the first time someone went to encounter, physically, both sides.  And said that it was THE SAME THNG.

Jesus Guerra.

Translation by Janet Lizop

Photo 1 : Mobile Unit Arturo Ruiz, one of FARC’s most feared groups. (c) D.R.
Photo 2 : Carlos Castano, right, with some of his men in northern Colombia in 2001. (c) AP