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Lara landed in Colombia in that busy political decade of the 70s and early 80s, which would demarcate many of the events in the recent history of this country. And what better than to test yourself with a profile of the revolutionary group of the moment, whose members were few known.
And just as it happened to Capote, with the investigative process of his magisterial work, or to Talese to write ‘Frank Sinatra has a cold’ –true epic reporting adventures–, the young journalist Patricia Lara, aged 29, lived hers in Bogotá , four thousand kilometers away from New York, the cradle of that ‘New journalism’.
Just like other pens of his generation did, such as Laura Restrepo, Enrique Santos Calderón, Heriberto Fiorillo, María Jimena Duzán or Jorge Enrique Botero, when journalism was not dominated by a number of clicks, as Lara herself notes, becoming a threat to the profession and to great reporting.
In-depth journalism needs time and passion, as the journalist explains. Two ingredients that have her journalistic books as a good example: ‘Sow winds and you will reap storms’, ‘Women in war’ or now ‘The sword of Bolívar’. To which are added a countless number of long-term interviews and published reports, throughout 45 years of journalistic life.in magazines such as ‘Nueva Frontera’, ‘Alternativa’, ‘Proceso’ (Mexico), ‘Cromos’, ‘Cambio 16 Colombia’, ‘Cambio’ and in newspapers such as ‘El Espectador’ and EL TIEMPO, among others.
Hence, the adventures of Simón Bolívar’s sword –which have not been few as Lara recounts in her book–, from when it was stolen by the M-19 in January 1974, had as background those that the author herself lived in 1980. That year, the Bogota journalist managed, exclusively, a secret meeting with the top commander of that group.
For this reason, as the journalist notes, “this book is not only the history of Bolívar’s sword, but also the history of the M-19 and part of Colombia from the early 1970s, when that movement was born, until shortly after of the possession of Petro as President of the Republic”.
‘The sword of Bolívar’ is published by Planeta.
The crazy encounter I had with Bateman who, at the time (September 1980), was the most wanted man in the country. He was in the Carulla parking lot on Park Way, at ten in the morning. They had told me that they would pick me up there. I arrived in my car, alone, without telling anyone, nervous. I parked. At the moment, a guy who was listening to vallenatos in a strong blue Renault, parked near me, opened the window and said: are you Patricia Lara? And I answered: Yes, and who are you? And he laughing, he replied: “I’m Jaime Bateman.” What what? I exclaimed. (This man, with straight, slicked-back hair, combed back, clean-shaven, with glasses and a brown suede jacket, looked like an executive, and had nothing to do with that kind of wild afro and mustache that appeared in the photographs). And where are we going? I asked him. “To your house”, he told me. Are you crazy? I replied. “Then where else?” he insisted. Total, we went to a studio that I had in Carrera 5 with Calle 74; me in my car; Bateman in his. We park in the garage of the building; and there we lasted about ten hours, wrapped up in a very interesting interview.
As Álvaro Fayad says in my book ‘Sow winds and you will reap storms’, “Bolívar had assumed the war of independence as a task of the people in arms”. And Jaime Bateman, the founder of the M-19, said in that same book: “Bolívar’s sword is worth more than a hundred thousand rifles.” In fact, according to the Eme leaders who were captured, such as Antonio Navarro, they were tortured by alternating questions: “Where is ‘Pablo’ (Pablo was called Bateman)? Where is the sword?
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He says that the theft of the sword was a detailed plan by Jaime Bateman. How minute did that plan go?
The initial idea came from Luis Otero (who led the takeover of the Palace of Justice): one day, on the bus that was taking him to school with his classmate Carlos Sánchez Méndez, brother of the director and actor Pepe Sánchez, he told him: “A pod What must be shocking is stealing Bolívar’s sword.” Later Otero said the same thing to Bateman and doing so became an obsession for him. He proposed the idea to the chiefs of the Farc, where he was a member, but they thought it was crazy. However, Bateman went on about him. Then he, and the main founders of Eme, deserted from the FARC, created the M-19, and the first action they did to make themselves known was to seize Bolívar’s sword. And as I researched, Bateman planned down to the smallest detail.
I once heard García Márquez say that, for him, Bateman would have been a leader of a greater dimension than Fidel Castro. But the problem was that he had died. I don’t know if that would have been the case. But I do know that he was an absolutely brilliant leader, with an enormous ability to summon people. He said that politics is the art of adding (the complete opposite of what we sometimes see on this left, for which politics seems to be the art of subtracting). And in fact, at one point, when Bateman was leading the M-19, an urban and rural guerrilla movement, he had, according to polls, close to 80 percent sympathy.
How many hiding places was the sword in?
I didn’t count them. But my colleague Daniel Coronell, who investigates and verifies everything, says there were fifteen.
Front page of EL TIEMPO, on January 18, 1974.
In 1975, while the security forces had as a priority to find the sword of Bolívar, and the then president, Alfonso López, went to decorate the poet León De Greiff, the sword was a few meters above the head of the Commander of the Armed Forces , since they kept it in the library on the second floor of the teacher’s house, located above the room in which López decorated him. And when the US invaded Panama, El Caimán, an official of the Cuban embassy in that country, received the order to immediately take Bolívar’s sword to Havana, in order to safeguard it. Then she was transported to the airport in an embassy car, driven through streets packed with US Marines.
One of the most recent adventures of the sword was its appearance in the last presidential inauguration. What implicit or symbolic message do you think this event had?
President Petro told ‘Cambio’ magazine that the sword would only be sheathed when there was justice in the country, as Bolívar requested.
That story is masterfully told by Daniel Coronell in the prologue of the book. I am not going to reveal the details that are worthy of Macondo. But I tell you that from the time the possession began to be planned, the new president’s team stated that he wanted Bolívar’s sword to be exhibited at the ceremony. However, Duque’s team put up a whole series of obstacles. Finally, when the obstacles were overcome and there were no more excuses, before the sword was taken away to carry out Petro’s order, Duke asked to be allowed to wield it once more!
How was the research process for this new book? Did you find surprises?
Many… Starting with the fact that, to start the investigation, I called Esmeralda Vargas, Jaime Bateman’s partner and mother of his daughters, Natalia and Catalina, (I dedicated this book to them), and I told her: “hey, I’m going to do an article about Bolívar’s sword. Who had the sword? And she answered me: “I had the sword.” I would never have imagined it. And that’s where the investigation began.
Clear! It turns out that in the early 1980s, former President Carlos Lleras Restrepo, with whom I was very close (we had founded the weekly Nueva Frontera together), was president of the Peace Commission and wanted to speak with Bateman. I had just published Sow Winds…. He asked me if he could help him with any contact. So I called Esmeralda and she talked to Bateman. We organize the appointment. Lleras asked me to come at 6 pm I picked him up at his house, in my car. He came out wearing a long, cream-colored trench coat. “I put on this trench coat and asked him to go in the dark so they wouldn’t recognize me,” he told me, and he pulled up his collar. I laughed. “Where are we going?” He asked me. “To my house, Doctor Lleras,” I told him. “How!” he exclaimed. We got to my house. Esmeralda was waiting for us in the living room, reading The Book of Good Love by El Arcipreste de Hita. Then both engaged in a long conversation about Spanish literature from the Middle Ages, a subject in which both were experts. I understand that, later, Esmeralda and Dr. Lleras met a couple more times, in the library of her house. They always talked about literature, and some politics. But the meeting between Bateman and Lleras never took place because, if I remember correctly, the government at the time did not authorize it and Dr. Lleras resigned from the Peace Commission. Perhaps Colombia would have saved many deaths if these two men had sat down to talk.
Very good. I love reporting, literary journalism. Gabo said that the report is a literary genre. And a good report should be read like a novel. How about News of a kidnapping? Have you seen a better report? Or Truman Capote’s Cold Blooded? Or the profile that Gay Talesse wrote about Frank Sinatra?
(In addition: This is how ‘How to make good things happen to you’ was born, the best-selling book in Colombia)
Do you stay with this genre or would you return to the novel?
A journalistic novel is starting to spin in my head.
What reading do you have of journalism that is done today compared to what you lived when you started in this profession?
Unfortunately, great reporting, that is, good journalism, has been badly damaged in this era of social networks and clicks.
Have you had the opportunity to see Bolívar’s sword in front of you?
I went to meet her at the Casa de Nariño when she was finishing the book. I tell that in the epilogue.
And that sword, will it be Bolívar’s?
Whoever wants to know, read the book.
CARLOS RESTREPO
EL TIEMPO CULTURE EDITORIAL
