Read an Excerpt

The idea for this book emerged during an eleven-hour
detention I endured at the hands of Colombia’s largest guerrilla
group in August 2006. More specifically, it evolved from
thoughts that washed over me during that ordeal about my
three-month-old son, Owen. I couldn’t stop thinking that if
anything happened to me, either during that detention or at any
other time in Colombia, I wouldn’t be around to explain to
Owen, when he grew up, what sort of work his father did. Sure,
he could read my articles and books and discover my views on
U.S. policy in Colombia. But those writings do not explain how
I conduct my work. They don’t describe the challenges and adventures
involved in carrying out investigative journalism in
Colombia’s remote rural conflict zones. And they don’t depict
the moments of terror or those of inspiration that I have experienced
in my encounters with Colombians from many walks of
life. Most importantly, they don’t shed light on why I do this
sort of work and the path that led me to become a drug war
journalist. Consequently, Beyond Bogotá is the story of my
work in Colombia—a sort of memoir, if you will.
 
Naturally, my story cannot be separated from the larger
drama in which the principal protagonists are Colombians who
are living and dying every day in the midst of the country’s
decades-old civil conflict. Colombia is the world’s leading producer
and exporter of cocaine, and its illegal drug trade has fed
the habits of drug users in the United States for more than three
decades. As a result, we Americans are directly linked to
Colombia’s violent drama, both through ever-rising levels of
personal cocaine use and through the war on drugs that our
government has been waging in this South American country.
 
I have tried to place my personal story within the larger
contexts of the U.S. war on drugs and Colombia’s civil conflict.
I have drawn from my experiences working in various parts of
Colombia over the past eight years in an attempt to portray, as
comprehensively as possible, both my personal story and the
struggles of those rural Colombians who are caught in the middle
of the violence. There are not enough pages in this book for
me to include all of the Colombians I have met or even to reflect
on every region of the country in which I have worked. Therefore,
I have selected those people and places that I hope will
provide the reader with a relatively comprehensive portrayal of
life in Colombia’s rural conflict zones. Woven throughout are
accounts of the most profound and personal of my own experiences
in Colombia. Sadly, for their own safety, I have had to
change the names of some of the protagonists. I have not, however,
altered the names of those Colombians who are already
public figures or visible spokespersons for governments, organizations,
communities, or armed groups.
 
Ultimately, this book is an account of the U.S. war on drugs
and Colombia’s civil conflict as seen through the eyes of a journalist.
Colombia’s civil conflict and the war on drugs are complex
issues, and I don’t for a moment pretend that I fully grasp
all of their intricacies or that I have sufficiently addressed them
x A note from the author
in these pages. What I have tried to do is to recount my experiences
and observations as accurately and honestly as possible.
Beyond Bogotá is not a journalistic work, but rather the personal
story of a journalist’s search for meaning in the midst of
violence and poverty.