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A book about the 'nobody' who made war in Colombia

2020-02-27T22:42:07.974Z


X The rebel sniper, from Spanish Jose Fajardo, honestly approaches the history of the Colombian conflict through a question and a family history


X: The rebel sniper (Tusquets) is a question book. Not only is the story of an anonymous man who made war in Colombia, an immersion into the life of a former guerrilla who defected from the FARC, but also the vehicle to narrate the uncertainty that the Andean country is experiencing after thousands of men delivered their weapons.

Using his gaze as a journalist and foreigner in Colombia - and mocking her permanently -, reporter José Fajardo wonders how a boy somewhat younger than him and with whom he shared a taste for punk ended up in the Colombian jungles like a sniper. He needed to know - he says in dialogue with THE COUNTRY - the reasons that lead a person to take up arms. “He needed to know why he abandoned his teammates and decided to defect. And, above all, I was worried to know how I was after returning to society. ”

But history allowed Fajardo to close his own family circle. He had arrived in Colombia for love and, once in the country, he decided to look for the story of his uncle, also called José Fajardo, who lived in Colombia in the 80s, ended up enrolled in the M-19 urban guerrilla, he wrote a book about a commander and died in unclear circumstances in Brazil. He was immersed in that search when a young man he had met in a journalistic coverage at the 10th FARC Conference, the Woodstock of the guerrillas, and with whom he had created a friendship bond, wrote to ask him to tell his story. With a single request: do not disclose your name.

"Colombia has been the country of no one, who kills and does not want his name to be known, who dies and nobody remembers. This reflection is from the chronicler Alberto Salcedo Ramos. It occurred to him when I told him I was writing this story one day we had lunch together. The protagonist of this book from now on will be X, because the dynamics of war imposes it. Violence in Colombia turns its citizens into anonymous people. Putting their lives at risk makes no sense. "

Hence the story of X, an honest story in which the reader discovers the questions and doubts that the author has and puts on the 170 pages. His look on bureaucracy, elites and other aspects of Colombianness as well as the self-criticism of "journalists and their ego." “I don't believe in journalists with great truths who are portrayed as heroes and in this case in a foreign country. Colombia is a very complex country, I would not have dared to make a portrait of this country, that has already made it great as Salcedo or Alfredo Molano. But I do try to make an approach through the character ”, the author tells this newspaper.

And although two voices predominate: that of Fajardo and that of X, it is a choral book that tries to show the diversity of the voices of the war in Colombia. And that is one of the most remarkable things in the book. He talks with his psychologists, with his family, with government and military experts who for years were the enemies of X, with other journalists. "In the context of polarization that the country is experiencing, I think it is important to find diverse voices and that the word can be claimed, that saying anything is much better than using weapons."

While telling the story of a sniper can be controversial in a context of such a long and painful war, far from being an ode or a frost on a sniper, try to address it in its most complex dimension. While showing his role as a murderer and calculator, he approaches a person who falls in love and suffers. And that's when the author throws himself with a crucial question in the book, can X also be a victim?

“It was another point I wanted to explore in the book. And it was to pose how it is that this boy who was considered the executioner and who carries a stigma in Colombian society, could also be a victim in some way. I was interested, at least try to understand his circumstances and explain what led him to do what he was doing and what consequences that has had, ”adds Fajardo. Do not see answers. “Everyone has to give them, about the need for violence in such an unequal society, about who is the victim and executioner. For me, the only certainty is that there are no absolute things in such a long conflict, ”says the journalist who was looking for the ghost of the past that was his uncle and met Colombia's past.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2020-02-27

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