Jaime Garzon

Jaime Hernando Garzón Forero (Bogotá, October 24, 1960 - Ibídem, August 13, 1999) was a lawyer, educator, comedian, actor, broadcaster, Colombian journalist, politician, activist and peace mediator. He served as Minor Mayor of Sumapaz, town no.), and did social work commissioned by the National Government during the administration of César Gaviria Trujillo (1990 - 1994).

His entry into the national media would make him a recognized character and the pioneer of political humor on Colombian television. He played an important role in the peace processes of the 1990s and in the release of hostages in power of the FARC-EP.

On August 13, 1999, he was assassinated in Bogotá by two hitmen near the Radionet radio station studios where he worked. On different occasions, Garzón had expressed that he was the victim of death threats. During the judicial process, the defense argued that there were deviations in the investigation by the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), a former state security agency, in agreement with well-known politicians and members of the Military Forces.

For the murder of Jaime Garzón, until 2017, only the paramilitary commander Carlos Castaño has been convicted, while the former deputy director of the DAS, José Miguel Narváez, was linked to the investigation in 2011. In July of that That same year, the Garzón Forero family filed a lawsuit against the Colombian State before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), for the participation of public officials in the homicide and for the inability of national justice to prosecute and punish all those responsible. in a reasonable period of time. Today, it remains a debt of justice to the family of Jaime Garzón and the country to fully establish the chain of command that operated behind this crime. In 2016, the crime of Jaime Garzón was declared by the Colombian Prosecutor's Office as a crime against humanity, due to the participation of state agents in the homicide along with paramilitary groups, within the framework of a plan carried out in those years to eliminate civilians. that promoted the defense of human rights and ideological positions of the left. In this way, this fact does not run the risk of going unpunished by prescription.

In August 2017, the National Pedagogical University posthumously awarded him the Honoris Causa Doctorate in Education for having been a "trainer in peace and human rights".

In 2018, the channel RCN Televisión presented a high-definition television series production about his life called Garzón vive, a production with which his relatives did not agree.

Biography

Carnét de Jaime Garzón como estudiante de Derecho en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Jaime Garzón was the third of four children, born to Ana Daisy Forero Portella and Félix María Garzón Cubillos, his brothers: Jorge; Alfredo, who is a cartoonist for El Espectador,; James; and María Soledad 'Marisol' Garzón Forero, educator, communicator and writer, who published the books "Jaime Garzón: my soul brother' and 'Jaime Garzón: Lea pa que hablamos N°1'".

They lived in the central neighborhood of Bogotá, San Diego, on 29th Street with Carrera 5. Félix María Garzón Cubillos died on September 23, 1968 when Jaime was 7 years old. seminar where he showed a lot of impertinence and little respect for the authorities.

Alleged Militancy in the ELN

According to journalist Álvaro García; In 1978, at the age of 18 and before entering university, Garzón joined the "José Solano Sepúlveda" Front, an urban PJ network of the ELN, where he was active under the alias of Heidi. There was also the journalist Hernando Corral and others, who later retired and founded a group of intellectuals called "El Rotundo Vagabundo".

It is not known that he ever participated in combats or other violent acts typical of a guerrilla movement. and he had no skill with weapons. Journalist García says of this time:

His performance as a military strategist, a disaster. So Garzón became a sort of innocent and despoiled guerrilla troubadour. One night, watching television in a cloak box with Gabino, he spent the Heidi children's show. Jaime started singing "Once you tell me..." The guerrilla chief looked at him and said, "...what happens to you is that you believe the mountain girl." From that moment on, his name was Heidi. He never participated in military operations and the most important mission he accomplished was to take care of the group's money. The silver was buried and its work was to get it out twice a day to prevent the bills from being lit by moisture. During those weeks on the mountain he understood that the matter was not resolved by casting lead. After four months he retired from the guerrillas, he made clear his motives and returned to his home, in the heart of his Bogotá.

The group of intellectuals El Rotundo Vagabundo, was formed at the National University where it was actually given the nickname Heidi since one day she whistled the musical theme of the homonymous series, discarding the myth of his militancy.

Training and studies

He began his pedagogical training career in 1975 at the Normal School of Paz, then studied Physics at the National Pedagogical University, which he did not conclude, later he studied law at the National University of Colombia

and received the posthumous title in 1999 and subsequently honoris causa en educación by the National Pedagogical University.

Minor mayor of Sumapaz

Garzón joined Andrés Pastrana's campaign for Mayor of Bogotá and on January 18, 1988, he witnessed the moment in which a commando from the Medellín Cartel, led by Jhon Jairo Velásquez alias Popeye, kidnapped the candidate in campaign headquarters in Bogotá. Garzón told the kidnappers: "Take me too, don't you see that I am the tour manager?" to which one the captors responded by kicking him. Then the search for Pastrana began by the authorities who managed to free him a week later and after his victory in the elections he appointed Garzón minor mayor of Sumapaz.

To a telegram in which he was asked to notify the authorized brothels in the area, Garzón replied: "After a visual inspection, he reported that the only whores here are the FARC". This response was understood as that the minor mayor had created a brothel in the region, however, after the mayoral and council elections in 1990, Garzón as minor mayor was in charge of opening the polling stations in his area. He opened the first and because he arrived late at the second, separated by three hours of trail, he was absent from his post, in addition to looking for food for people who had not had lunch that day, which, along with other eccentricities that did not were well regarded by the central administration, led to the government secretary, Volmar Pérez Ortiz, signing his dismissal in 1990.

Garzón sued the Pastrana administration for this, a lawsuit that ruled in his favor in 1997. Two years later, under the mayor's office of Enrique Peñalosa, one day before he was assassinated, an act of redress was to be held where Garzón would symbolically take possession and receive compensation for the incident since it was proven that the information about the brothel was false. During the year that Garzón was mayor of the town of Sumapaz, he built a health center, improved the school and paved the only street in town.

Role in government and in the Constitution

Between 1990 and 1994, he worked at the Casa de Nariño during the presidency of César Gaviria as coordinator of the translations of the new 1991 Constitution into indigenous languages and unofficially as a communications advisor to the presidency. The President Gaviria himself testifies to this experience:

"(...) It also touched me, in particular in the Presidency, to meet the compromised Garzónin the solution of the problems of Colombia: its daily commitment to the PNR, to the 1991 Constitution, with the translation of the Constitution into indigenous languages. Those were the facets of an exceptional and irreplaceable man."

Trajectory in the media

Officially, Jaime Garzón's first appearance in the media occurred when he was interviewed by the National Newscast as one of the witnesses in the kidnapping of Andrés Pastrana. On December 5, 1988, when he was minor mayor, a A journalist from the Noticiero de las Siete went to interview him in Sumapaz, in what would be his second appearance on television.

Zoociedad

While working at the Casa de Nariño and making columns and cartoons for the newspaper El Espectador, he began his definitive foray into the media that would make him popular, due to his brother Alfredo's friendship with Eduardo Arias. His first program was Zoociedad (1990-1993), produced by Cinevisión for Canal Dos. In 1992 the program went to Channel One (then called Cadena 1) of Inravisión. It was broadcast at 21:00. It was a social and political parody of the country as well as the country's security situation and the drug war experienced at that time in Colombia when the Medellín Cartel sowed terror in the cities of Colombia and the constitutional reforms of 1991. It soon acquired high tuning levels. The central character was Emerson de Francisco, a very original news presenter alongside Elvia Lucía Dávila (she was on the program between 1991 and 1993).

Whoah! The Newscast

Between 1995 and 1997 he worked on the production of ¡Quac! The R.T.I. Colombia with actor Diego León Hoyos. The latter played the role of María Leona Santodomingo. Characters like Néstor Elí, the watchman of a building called "Colombia" that it was the simile of the national reality and its political actors; Inti de la Hoz, a frivolous and modern girl; a left-wing student named 'fellow' John Lenin; the 'reporter' William Garra, inspired by the journalist William Parra, a famous reporter from the 80s and the ultra-conservative lawyer and politician Godofredo Cínico Caspa. In this program she made satires and mocked the political crisis of then President Ernesto Samper Pizano and the 8000 process. They also made complaints about the paramilitary expansion in Colombia and the public order situation in Uraba.

Owl and CM&

After the newscast ¡Quac! was closed in 1997, Garzón joined the program Lechuza, produced by Caracol Televisión for the UNO network, the Radionet station and the CM& newscast with his latest and most popular character, Heriberto de la Calle, a shoeshine boy who interviewed various famous people and who he played until his death in 1999 and curiously created from the almost total extraction of his teeth due to his poor oral hygiene, which had caused him periodontitis. On August 13, that year he was going to the Radionet studios to work, when he was assassinated.

Programs and characters

Peace Manager

On the holiday of March 23, 1998, a group of 200 FARC-EP guerrillas from fronts 52, 53, and 54 kidnapped 32 people who were returning from the Department of Meta to Bogotá, including five foreigners.

On March 27, a commission authorized by the anti-kidnapping czar, Rubén Darío Ramírez and led by Jaime Garzón, authorized by the then Governor of Cundinamarca Andrés González Díaz and at the request of both the governor himself and the United States ambassador to the Miles Frechette allowed the release of nine abductees.

On May 6, 1998, General Jorge Enrique Mora, commander of the Fifth Division of the National Army of Colombia, asked public opinion and the anti-kidnapping czar to investigate Jaime Garzón's participation in the release of the kidnapped . On June 4, the anti-kidnapping czar, Rubén Darío Ramírez, highlighted the journalist's work as a humanitarian action. Garzón tried to contact the General, but he did not want to receive him. Finally, the journalist sent him a telegram:

"General, do not seek enemies among Colombians who risk life on a daily basis for building a worthy, great and peaceful homeland, as I want and for which you fight".

Some time later, General Mora publicly recognized Garzón's humanitarian work at the same time that the journalist launched an accusation, involving members of the National Army and the National Police of being involved in kidnappings in Bogotá and of selling hostages to the same warfare. Said information was annexed to the process against soldiers active at that time for the kidnapping and murder of Israeli businessman Benjamin Khoudari by the 13th Brigade of the National Army, which occurred in January 1999, months before the tragic event. This kidnapping together with the discovery of a group called Los Calvos, made up of officers and agents of the National Police that kidnapped civilians in Bogotá and took them to the town of Sumapaz to sell them to the 51st Front of the FARC. -EP, at that time headed by Commander Miller Perdomo.

In May 1999, Garzón commented at a cocktail party in front of several personalities, including the United States Ambassador Myles Frechette, that General Mora was accusing him of being a collaborator of the FARC-EP. On May 25, Senator Piedad Córdoba was kidnapped and accused by the paramilitaries under the command of Carlos Castaño Gil of being a collaborator of the guerrillas. Castaño also mentions Jaime Garzón, whom he nicknamed "Betún" for his character Heriberto de la Calle, accusing him of being an intermediary and profiting from extortion money from kidnappings organized by the guerrilla. Once released, Córdoba would communicate the fact and the risk to the journalist.

Participation in processes for the release of kidnapped by the guerrillas and the intentions of creating peace talks, brought with it a series of threats, which did not intimidate the journalist and of which he did speak openly. But the most serious threat came from the top leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), paramilitary chief Carlos Castaño Gil.

Between the years 1998 to 1999, the issue of the release of the kidnapped in the country increased political tension to the point that President Andrés Pastrana vetoed the entry of the German priest Benjamín Stelin to Colombia, arguing that his management gave international guerrilla propaganda. Both the priest and Garzón himself worked hand in hand on the same theme and were officially authorized by the anti-kidnapping czar. During that time, two human rights defenders who worked with them were assassinated.

Murder

Monument to journalist Jaime Garzón Forero in Bogotá in his character "Heriberto de la Calle".

During the week of August 4, Jaime Garzón had been contacted by members of the 54th Front of the FARC-EP, in order to communicate the death of the Bogotá lawyer Enrique Márquez (A lawyer who was kidnapped in Bogotá by the guerilla 7 months ago and for whom Garzón was negotiating his release) and to manage the arrangement regarding the delivery of his mortal remains. Journalist Jaime Garzón was in the municipality of Mariquita on the weekend of August 7 and 8, 1999. During that week he intended to make contact with Carlos Castaño in Antioquia.

On Tuesday, August 10, he visited Ángel Gaitán Mahecha, another paramilitary chief, and Jhon Jairo Velásquez, alias "Popeye", head of hit men for the extinct Medellín Cartel in La Modelo Prison in Bogotá. both they were able to make an appointment with Castaño that should take place on August 14 in Córdoba. Avianca plane and in a few weeks he had prepared to travel with a Red Cross commission to Acacías Meta to collect the remains of lawyer Enrique Márquez.

On the afternoon of August 12, Garzón gave what would be his last interview to the Peruvian channel América TV where he called for peace under the phrase

"When they give up, they have to sit down, when they get bravos again, they have to sit back, they don't get up until there's an agreement, because when they break down, it's worse; but dead...".

That same Thursday, Garzón confessed to his makeup artist: "They are going to kill me, I have a deadline to live until tomorrow". At 5:45 in the morning on Friday, August 13, when Garzón was heading to the Radionet studios in Bogotá in his gray Jeep Cherokee truck and after turning south from 26th street, at the height of the Quinta Paredes neighborhood on 22F street with carrera 42B, in front of Corferias and a few meters from the radio station, stopped at the traffic light waiting for it to change from red to green. He was then intercepted by two individuals who were riding a high-cylinder white motorcycle with hidden license plates and, after calling his name, shot the journalist five times, causing the journalist to accelerate his jeep, crashing it directly into a utility pole. public lighting. Garzón died on the spot. Yamid Amat, a personal friend of the journalist who was passing through the site, witnessed the scene together with Néstor Morales and he immediately broke the news. He was 38 years old.

The crime spread rapidly throughout the country, after his own Radionet colleagues were the first to break the news to Colombia. Hundreds of people took to the streets to fire him; The traffic chaos worsened when a pedestrian bridge located at Calle 122 with Autopista Norte collapsed around 4 in the afternoon, due to the weight and alternate movements of 50 people who were mistakenly waiting for the funeral passage from there. There were three deaths and 30 injuries.

On the night of Friday, August 13, 1999, the day of his murder, his colleague César Augusto Londoño, presenter of the sports section of the news program CM& in which Heriberto de la Calle, one of the journalist's characters had his interview section, said goodbye to his friend with a bitter tenor at the end of his section and said:

"(...) And here the sports... Fucking country!".

His assassination occurred in the midst of a systematic extermination against academic, legal and media figures recognized for their opposition stance against the establishment and state repression and for their well-known defense of Human Rights, which took place during the mid-1990s. 90. In 1995, student Humberto Peña Taylor, a well-known law school student and prominent student of Garzón's, had been murdered inside the National University of Colombia; In 1998, the renowned lawyer and human rights defender Eduardo Umaña Mendoza had been assassinated inside his apartment in the northwest of Bogotá. Four months before Garzón's murder, the renowned professor at the National Pedagogical University (Colombia) Darío Betancourt Echeverry had been disappeared in Bogotá and later murdered on the outskirts of the city; likewise, the anthropologist Hernán Henao Delgado was shot to death at the INER (Institute of Regional Studies) headquarters in Medellín in May; and the economist Jesús Antonio Bejarano, Garzón's classmate, was assassinated some time after the humorist's crime.

Investigation process

According to Judge Julio Roberto Ballén Silva, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) would have reacted against his participation in the negotiations for the release of hostages, making arrangements between the guerrillas and the relatives of the captives. Castaño had apparently tried to contact him to schedule a meeting the day after his murder, leading to speculation that the meeting was a set-up. Since his murder, numerous Colombian media outlets have published articles questioning the investigation process into his death., since there is no detainee and the only accused and convicted was the late Carlos Castaño.

The same day Garzón was murdered, the authorities reacted to guarantee the capture of the two hit men who participated in the assassination. Four people participated in the first investigations as key witnesses to the murder: María Amparo Arroyave, Wilson Llano alias El Profe, Maribel Pérez and Wilson Raúl Ramírez.

On January 6, 2000, the Medellín Police arrested Juan Pablo Ortiz alias Bochas. According to the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), he would be one of the hitmen and who is recognized by María Amparo Arroyave after apparently recognizing him even with a helmet and from a building not far from the scene of the crime. However, on January 21 Following this, the Public Ministry was the first judicial organization to question the veracity of Arroyave's testimony and ordered a careful examination of her data, from an inspection of the place where she says she saw the hitmen to an optometry exam.

On April 24 of the same year, Carlos Castaño is formally accused of being the mastermind of the journalist's crime and on June 6, he declares himself an absentee prisoner.

On September 24, 2001, the Police arrested Edilberto Antonio Sierra in the municipality of Belén de Umbría as the other hit man who was driving the motorcycle in the crime. On the following January 3, the closure of the investigation was made official and the request of the civil party to leave it open to carry out tests on the exposed hypotheses was ignored.

In October 2002, Reporters Without Borders and the Damocles Network questioned the veracity of Wilson Llano, who presents himself as a "DAS informant", provided photos and information of aliases "Bochas" and "Toño ” and convinced his girlfriend, Maribel Pérez, and his neighbor, Wilson Raúl Ramírez, to make statements against the two implicated. Likewise, both NGOs also publicly questioned the lack of speed and constant hindrance both in this case, as well as in the case of the kidnapping and rape of the journalist Jineth Bedoya that occurred in May 2000, in which both organizations denounced at the time that both cases were part of a systematic attack against critical journalism in Colombia.

On March 11, 2004, the VII Specialized Criminal Judge of Bogotá, Julio Roberto Ballén, acquitted Juan Pablo Ortiz and Edilberto Antonio Sierra of the accusation of being the hit men who assassinated Jaime Garzón. The judge's sentence opened the investigation process to agents and false witnesses who manipulated the investigation in its first phase. The court also concluded that Carlos Castaño was the co-intellectual author of the crime and sentenced him to 38 years in prison and a fine of 790 million pesos. In April of that same year, the paramilitary chief died, apparently due to disputes between the paramilitaries themselves, and was assassinated on the orders of his older brother Vicente Castaño.

Military involvement in crime

Statue of Jaime Garzón on the Avenue of Esperanza, Bogotá.

On August 19, 1999, Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramírez and commanders of the National Army made a strong statement rejecting the suggestion made by a local newspaper columnist that responsibility for the crime rested with superiors military.

Such an accusation had been supported by the then editor-in-chief of the newspaper El Tiempo, Francisco Santos Calderón, who affirmed in a column written on August 15, 1999, two days after the murder of Jaime Garzón, affirming the participation of high-ranking military commanders in said crime.

The first statements that support this hypothesis were given by members of the criminal gang "La Terraza" in December 2000 during an interview with the local news program Informativo de Antioquia. In these declarations they affirmed that they had perpetrated the crime by express order of General Jorge Enrique Mora during a meeting held in Valencia, Córdoba, in which the leaders of the gang, Carlos Castaño and General Mora, were present. They also declared that Carlos Castaño was not the top leader of the AUC, but an insubordinate of General Mora as well as of General (r) Harold Bedoya. The Prosecutor's Office determined that those responsible for Garzón's murder were Yeimar de Jesús Arboleda Suárez, alias 'Yilmar'; Alexander Londoño, aka Alex 'Sanpedro'; Helquin Sánchez Mena, aka the 'Negro Elkin' and Ángela María George Torres 'Ángela'. It was concluded that Londoño was the man who fired the weapon that killed Garzón and Yeimar de Jesús Arboleda Suárez, as the person who drove the motorcycle that was used to transport the murderer. As for "Ángela", the Prosecutor's Office determined that she was in charge of logistics and "Negro Elkin" who led the group.

This group of people arrived in Bogotá days before the murder of Jaime Garzón. According to the Prosecutor's Office, they were received at their home by Colonel (r) Jorge Eliécer Plazas Acevedo, who served as intelligence chief of the XIII Brigade in Bogotá. The officer is supposed to have welcomed them and gave them guidelines to commit the homicide. So much so, they had sketches and maps of the follow-ups that were done to the comedian. These documents, according to the prosecutor Iván Lomabana, were recently found in a raid in the XIII Brigade. Which would be proof of the alleged participation of the Armed Forces in the homicide.

The band "La Terraza" was a hitman organization born from the networks of hitmen from the extinct PEPES group, which had been in charge of carrying out commissioned work for Carlos Castaño, maximum leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) until the year 2000, when they found themselves confronted with this the latter due to problems caused by a settling of scores within organized crime in Medellín, for which most of its members were assassinated in a two-year war period, including those truly implicated in Garzón's assassination. According to the words of the same members of the gang, as well as investigations carried out by the Human Rights units of the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation and Human Rights Organisms, the gang would have also perpetrated other crimes of greater magnitude, which, as in the case Garzón would have been commissions made mainly for high-ranking officers of the National Army, such as the murders of the married couple and investigators of the Center for Research and Popular Studies (CINEP) Mario Calderón and Elsa Alvarado in 1997, of the director of the Standing Committee for Defense of Antioquia sectional Human Rights and criminal lawyer Jesús María Valle and the defense lawyer for Human Rights Eduardo Umaña Mendoza in 1998, of the kidnappings of Fabio Valencia Cossio, Piedad Córdoba and four researchers from the Popular Training Institute (IPC) of Medellín between April and May 1999, as well as the failed attack against the then Bogotá councilwoman by the Parti do Unión Patriótica, Aída Avella in 1996 and the murders of twelve investigators from the Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) in Medellín between 1997 and 1999.

On May 11, 2008, Diego Fernando Murillo alias Don Berna, a demobilized paramilitary member of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), stated in an inquest that Garzón had been murdered by members of the criminal gang "La Terraza& #34;, which was under the orders of paramilitary chief Carlos Castaño. In October 2015, Murillo confirmed his statements and assured that Colonel Jorge Eliécer Plazas Acevedo, then head of Intelligence of the 13th Brigade, was key in carrying out the crime. In other statements Don Berna declared that the former deputy director of the DAS, José Miguel Narváez, instigated Carlos Castaño to assassinate Jaime Garzón. In other inquiries Don Berna also stated that he had witnessed a meeting held in September 1999 between Castaño and Narváez where there was an altercation between them initiated by Castaño himself where he had reproached Narváez, assuring in the paramilitary chief's own words that &# 34;What was the use of the deaths of Manuel Cepeda Vargas and Jaime Garzón if things continued the same".

In June 2008, the demobilized paramilitary Jorge Iván Laverde, alias El Iguano, declared, under the Justice and Peace Law, he ratified what Don Berna had said about Narváez's participation in the Garzón crime, A month later, in In July, the also demobilized Ever Veloza, alias HH, handed over to the Prosecutor's Office a USB memory that would belong to Castaño and in which there would be evidence that he ordered the La Terraza gang of hitmen to murder the journalist and that, according to Veloza, the The paramilitary chief had said on several occasions that Garzón's crime was a mistake and that he did it to "listen to some friends from the National Army".

In October 2009, former paramilitary member Freddy Rendón, alias of "El Alemán," told Justice and Peace judges that Carlos Castaño ordered the murder of the journalist at "express request of high military commanders of the time". In other statements, the ex-paramilitary affirmed that Carlos Castaño felt sorry for ordering the crime, since after that he recognized his humanist work, accepting as true what he denounced in his parodies.

In 2010, an investigation by the Hollman Morris television program Contravía showed indications of the participation of agents from the Administrative Security Department (DAS) in diverting the investigation by using false witnesses.

On February 5, 2021, the Court confirmed the 26-year sentence against former DAS deputy director José Miguel Narváez for the murder of Jaime Garzón after more than 21 years of the crime.

In popular culture

TV series

• Three Cains (2013) Interpreted by Colombian actor José Manuel Ospina under the name Jairo García.
• Garzón Vive (2018) Agenda Interpreted by Darío Cifuentes (Garzón Niño), Sebastián Gutiérrez (Garzón Joven) and Santiago Alarcón (Garzón Adulto).