My Colombian War: A Journey Through the Country I Left Behind

by Silvana Paternostro

A timely, evocative account of a reporter's reckoning with her homeland's volatile past Growing up in the coastal city of Barranquilla, Colombia, Silvana Paternostro indulged in the typical concerns of a privileged young friendships and parties, school and family. But soon it became apparent that life in Colombia would not go on as usual. Strange planes appeared overhead, the harbingers of the marijuana drug trade that would explode into cocaine wars over the next decade, and soon after, a disputed election would lead to demonstrations and kidnappings targeting the affluent landed elite--including Paternostro's family. A revolution was brewing, and the social inequalities reflected in her life would boil over into the most violent, most protracted, and most misunderstood civil war of our time.
In My Colombian War , Paternostro journeys back to the place where her family and her closest friends still live, weaving authentic experience into a history of this ongoing conflict. Through interviews she allows us to witness the treacherous war zone that Colombia has become, projected on the daily lives of its citizens. Paternostro's book is a stunning, comprehensive narrative of Colombia's past and present.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

323 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 2007

Reviews

[Cassy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-researched, insightful and approachable book about Colombia and its internal conflict - told through the personal tale of an expat Colombian journalist returning to her country and asking “what the heck is going on down there” and “how do I feel about my Colombian heritage”. Yet it is admittedly also a slow book to trudge through.

I am fairly well versed in Colombia’s situation. And I still learned from this book. She does an admirable job giving a sweeping look at the problems in Colombia. It’s all there. Guerrillas, paramilitaries, drugs, American involvement. Deficiencies are largely due to the fact that a great deal has happened since the book was published. And I applaud her for steering clear of exaggerations or dramatizations. The truth is shocking enough.

Yet this book goes beyond the already well-expounded facts of Colombian politics and conflicts. She offers something new: an accurate view of its people and culture. I kept nodding my head as I read.

Between the bits about Colombia’s conflict and culture, she captures the great illogicality – how can such a fantastic country have such monumental and unique violence? Why does the violence never seem to end? And how do the Colombians cope with everyday life? How do they keep faith and pride in their country?

It is time for full disclosure: initially I gave the book three stars, because my interest in this book ebbed in and out. It took me an unusually long to time to finish. I agree with fellow reviewers that the book seemed disorganized. And it can feel overly dense and essentially plot-less. She dissects her every emotion, every reaction, every confusion while posing these huge and sometimes philosophical questions. I did appreciate her candor and ambitious goals. And she approached Colombia just like her average American reader would – with skepticism, which should help readers identify with her. But sometimes it was just too much. I wish she had lightened up more often (instead of seeming tightly-wound even with her immediate family) or occasionally let the reader draw their own conclusions.

And honestly, when I first started reading, I didn’t like her at all. I thought she was ungracious and indecisive with a seriously condescending tone (with statements like “servants are just servants”). Yet, in the end, I went with the four-star rating, because the more I read, the more I began to understand and (kind of) like her and to engage in her story.

On a minor note: for essentially being a memoir, there are no pictures! I really wanted those few glossy pages in middle of the book showing her standing on the family farm and such. Instead, I was reduced to googling her name to find her headshot.

If you want to learn about Colombia but are not interested in reading dry academic text, this book is a good choice for you. But be forewarned that this is not a fast or uplifting read.

[Professor Weasel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed reading this book and found it really interesting. Made me think a lot of my childhood. I can understand why people would criticize this book and call the author "self-absorbed," but I found her focus on herself and her relationship with her home country really honest and straightforward. I mean, the book is called "MY colombian war," emphasis on the "my"--so she's really not pretending to be providing an objective account here. That's what made the book interesting and unique to me, her focus on her conflicted feelings. I also liked the insight into the life of extremely well-off, upper class wealthy Colombian families. Pretty wild stuff.

[Willer Daza · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content of the book is very good. Paternostro compiles very well many of the main elements characterizing the Colombian conflict (and also Colombian culture). Still, the writing could have been a lot more synthetic. Sometimes I found myself being dragged in circles around facts that, in spite of interesting, could have been well explained in fewer lines. That made the book less enjoyable... Try to find something else if interested in Colombian history.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me think, think, think about my own relationship with Colombia: why, after spending a good portion of my growing-up years there, I just ignored what was happening in the country for so many years, except in relation to my parents while they were still living there; how wonderful it was to return in 2003 not just to visit but to contribute a little to one community's efforts to stay out of the armed conflict; how wonderful it has been as well, more recently, to return for personally nurturing visits with old friends & treks with my siblings to old haunts, & to hang out with my daughter, who is now living in her birthplace, & to dream about retiring there (it's really one of the most beautiful places on earth) . . . & what it is about Colombia that remains off-putting, appalling, in the midst of my rekindled love.

It's the violence, of course, & the social inequalities that Paternostro explores in this book, & the mafioso ways that things have been done for so long. And the plastic surgery craze (I don't know if it's still happening, but some time ago I was told that some parents would give boob jobs to their daughters as their quinceañera gift--sick, horrifying); Paternostro doesn't go into that particular excess, just mentions that there are lots of expert surgeons. Colombia is bedeviled by unhealthy excesses.

I am appalled by many aspects of US culture as well, but I won't go into that here.

I'm glad I read this book, & it does provide a LOT of info about Colombia's history & current struggles. It's a very regionally divided country, & I hadn't had a chance to become acquainted with Barranquilla (though I visited once) & the area northeast of it. And I've never actually known wealthy landowners or people who choose to plant African palm, so it was interesting to get glimpses of this in Paternostro's family. And the extended communication with a US marine who volunteers to go nail the drug traffickers--fascinating.

But it was badly in need of good copyediting--there are lots of little grammatical issues, & some sentences meander & get lost. And the chronological back-&-forth of Paternostro's personal account can get really confusing, though the dates on some chapter openers help. And I was disappointed in her ending: she just gets tired of Colombia's mess & doesn't find in herself any lasting desire to stay connected & involved. Of course it's a very different route from the one I've taken. But I also don't have an extremely affluent upbringing to move on from. I wish that she had gotten connected with some of the grassroots organizations that are working for social change. She does meet up with the journalist Hollman Morris & learns from him, but otherwise that piece is missing from this book. With a little research, she would also have learned how terribly damaging African palm is to the land, & how it has been closely linked to paramilitary violence. So despite the book's sprawl, it doesn't feel complete.

[Mojavejen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Paternostro reminds us throughout the book that she doesn't feel at home in her Colombian homeland, but this book reads as though she hasn't ever even set foot there. This is one of the least insightful non-fiction accounts I've ever read, and it seems totally unedited from a random brain dump state. She spends her first 200 pages sitting in her grandmother's house in Barranquilla watching TV reports from which she extrapolates her theories about Colombia's situation. This time is also spent waiting for her uncle to take her on a totally anticlimactic trip to her family's finca in a rebel-heavy area. She really wants us to believe her safety is in jeopardy during this short trip, yet fails to remotely convince us. For a reporter, she is alarmingly loath to ask questions, even of her own family members (who come across as total strangers to her in this book). A typical "interview" in this book involves her not asking any relevant questions for no apparent reason, then deciding it didn't matter as she knew the answer anyway: "I didn't ask X; I imagine she would have said Y."

[Erma Odrach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a journalist's struggle to understand herself and her country of birth. Paternostro, immigrating to the US in 1977 at the age of 15, returns to her native Colombia on assignment for the New York Times. She chronicles Colombia's violent heritage (civil war, drug wars, kidnappings...) as well as her family's.

I found the work insightfl and honest, and though I can appreciate the extensive research put into it, I felt at times there was a lack of clarity, even continuity. But still well worth the read.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the personal insights in this book, and thought the way the author handled the complexity of the guerilla/paramilitary/government/drug trade was helpful as she didn't try to paint anyone as a "hero" or take a particular side. She doesn't shy away from complexity, and challenges her own assumptions throughout the book. She starts out having idealized left-wing views from her time in university, and dives into how that conflicts with her relatively well-off landholding family and some of the naunces that arise in real life. She doesn't shy away from critizing her family, but she also presents them as very human. I think many of us who try to apply the academic theories we learn in school to the real world can relate to the trouble she ran into and the way she had to re-examine what she thought she knew.
At times I found her very judgey (which at first annoyed me) but I came to appreciate this as she is being honest about her thought process and we can see the development of how she views Colombia.
The stars I removed are for the organization of this book - while I appreciated the personal insights, at times they felt super repetative which made the book a bit of a drag. I also found myself wishing so many times that she would challenge people or ask more questions so we could hear other persepctives - I didn't get the point of some of the meetings she went to with other journalists as she didn't ask anything even when the person they were meeting was giving very canned answers! I wanted her to challenge people. Also, I couldn't help but wondering what happened to Billy's Colombian girlfriend who gave birth to twins?? What happened to her while Billy was going around Vegas being all tortured?? Paternostro doesn't shy away from critizing macho culure in Colombia, and while her description of Billy wasn't sympathetic per se, I would have liked her to find out more about the woman he so carlessly described. I appreciated having the unfiltered perspective of Billy that I could judge for myself, but also wanted to know what happened to the women and not just Billy!

Overall, as someone who has spent some time in Colombia but is not Colombian, I did appreciate the insight into the land-holding families of Colombia and the complexities of the armed conflict. With some good editing, this would be a great book. Focusing on some of the key interactions that shape her reflections rather than meandering through so many moments would make this book so much more readable.

[John Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very conflicted book and I feel somewhat conflicted in how to rate it. The book is a mix of a memoir and reporting on trying to understand Colombia's war-torn (conflicted?) nature. I think the second part works well but the memoir part can become frustrating. She grew up in Baranquilla and attended an American school there, similar to the one I taught at for three years in Medellin. She comes from a long line of wealthy land owners, but turned into a social liberal in the United States. She heads back to Baranquilla and takes part in all the social activities with her family, but feels very conflicted about her feelings towards Colombia. At times, I was shocked by how little she knew previously about her country. The book gives a good feel for life in Colombia. I liked the exploration of her own identity as she neither seemed to claim her US or Colombian identity. An interesting book, but the weakest of her three books.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a lot to admire here, but this book could have used some much-needed editing to come up with a bit of a more cohesive narrative...

[meredith]

The author’s extremely privileged, apolitical view is one of my biggest pet peeves, and I don’t wish to stay in that headspace any longer.

[Uuu Ooo Bbb · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is very little of value in this book other than the author's memories of growing up as a member of ruling class family in Colombia and her impression of what a life of such family looks like now.
The author is a daughter of a Conservative government minister on one hand side and a large plantation owner on the other. She often mentions how this conflicts with the values she learnt in a liberal US university, and how it makes her account partial, but never does anything to overcome this.
Most of the interviews are with members of her own family. When she speaks to working class people, it's almost always workers loyal to her family whose livelihood depends on them. There are some interviews with people from the left towards the end of the book, mostly urban middle class people involved in politics, but also one former guerillerra who runs and an NGO and one political representative of the guerillas. They are very brief.
There is a very extensive account of letters by a US marine who was involved in counter-narcotics operations but went rogue. He loved Colombian steak and women. Not a very good source of insights for the conflict really.
Author's visits to Colombia are almost exclusively to Baranquilla where's she's from, or Bogota, the capitol. Only once she goes to her family farm with heavy armed escort. There she speaks to one farm worker who is somewhat not against the FARC.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote something; my computer stalled as I posted it, and it never did go up as a review, so, I'll try again. My Colombian War is is an extremely informative and insightful journal about Ms. Paternostro's (former) homeland. I didn't find it disorganized at all as another reviewer commented. Paternostro's story is very personal yet examines broader complicated issues of a country rampant with terrorism and a population with the ability to function anyway. The AUC, FARC, paras, rebels, costenos, bogotanos, USAID --- so much to learn, so little time. Paternostro is the leading Latina journalist of our times. GO BLUE. For those of you who never heard of her, she's a U of Michigan grad and was associate producer of the recent film Che!

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Colombian journalist living in New York revisits her homeland to try make sense of the violence. Though I found the writing about her family and her past to be self-absorbed (I guess that was the point of the book), I did actually gain some insight into the historical divisions that have led the country to where it is today.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting personal story of the author's return to her homeland of Colombia. It also provides a great deal information on the country's violent past and present, and how conflicts have affected a family and the Colombian people.

It reminds me of the film "Traffic" in the way that it examines the "War on Drugs" and how it relates to international relations, class conflicts and violence.

[Richard McColl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a personal account and therefore if you are not familiar with Colombian customs and the geography of the country, not to mention the engrained class systems, it will be a learning experience. That said, Paternostro's experience is hardly unique and is very well told, although, she is one of those who benefitted from the familial wealth to be able to get out and indeed write about it.

[Natalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

To a Colombian who also grew up and lives abroad, Paternostro's expatriate angst rings true. That said, it's a bit over-dramatically stated, and the book as a whole is somewhat disorganized. Definitely worth a read though.

[Meg - A Bookish Affair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It's the true story of a woman journalist who was raised in the U.S. who goes back to her homeland of Colombia to cover the wars there. It's an interesting story of trying to find oneself while reconciling with the current situation raging in the homeland.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting read, if slightly disorganized.