Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

At the ceremony, they screened a video filled with eagles and artillery and all of us recited a pledge. We sang our new anthem and once it was done it was said we were American.

Ours was a kingdom of women, with Mamá at the head, perpetually trying to find a fourth like us, or a fourth like her, a younger version of Mamá, poor and eager to climb out of poverty, on whom Mamá could right the wrongs she herself had endured.

Is this typical Colombian cuture? Matriarchy.

Pablo Escobar.

When I asked Mamá who Pablo Escobar was, she sat up. “Pablo Escobar? He’s the one responsible for every shit that happens in this country.”

War always seemed distant from Bogotá, like niebla descending on the hills and forests of the countryside and jungles. The way it approached us was like fog as well, without us realizing, until it sat embroiling everything around us.

Mamá always said—the life she knew was a last-minute tsunami that could sweep away fathers, money, food, and children. You were never in control, so it was better to let things run their course.

Cassandra said those were the rules of politics: you pretended to answer questions without actually answering them.

After all, what were the odds of meeting another woman who was only a torso like you, and who like you, had to get around by doing somersaults?

I was forced to talk to the Counselor after Galán died. She made me arrange blocks into different shapes, stare at ink stains, and make drawings of my family. The whole thing was very uncomfortable.

School psych?

“Amorcitos!

Kidnapping was a reality for many Colombians until 2005 when the practice really began to decline. If they had not been kidnapped themselves, every Colombian knew someone who had experienced it: a friend, a family member, someone at work.

For years the violence in Colombia has been a landscape of victims, corruption, and desperate choices, where the perpetrators are often perpetrated against.