Seven years ago Laura Restrepo (Bogotá, 72 years old) decided to settle down and settled in an old farmhouse near Borredà in the Pre-Pyrenees of Barcelona. She lives there with her son Pedro, 42, and two dogs: Azul and Dante. They restored the house room by room and renamed it Lejanías. The writer, who has just published the novel The Song of Old Lovers (Alfaguara), will leave Mexico and Colombia for two months. Delighted by Gustavo Petro, who took office as President of his country this Sunday, she often interrupts the interview to ask what her son, the photographer or the editor think.
Questions. You’ve lived your life outside of the city: Mexico, the United States, Italy, Spain several times… Is this your permanent place?
Answer. When Pedro was nine years old, he put up a sign in his room that read, “I don’t want to go anywhere.” He had to live in the jungle, pack his bags from one day to the next, run away… It was a busy time, but it bore fruit.
P With Petro as President?
R. He and I are part of the M-19. Until the end, during the campaign, I was afraid that he would be assassinated. As they had previously done with all left-wing candidates with a chance of winning. A former guerrilla president? Wonder.
P You took part in the peace processes of the 1980s.
R by correvidile I was 33 years old. He went from the guerrilla camps to the presidential palace. Belisario Betancourt opted for peace with great enthusiasm, but the ruling class and the military turned against him. And they started killing those who handed over their guns. I told him it was a bloodbath and he replied “I can’t do anything, I have nobody”. “He has the people,” I replied. And he said a sentence to me that I will never forget: “He who has the people has no one.”
P Is that different now?
R Petro has Francia Márquez, a social leader. He will have to deal with those in power in Colombia, who are usually treacherous, but they guarantee him the support of the people. With the power of the road, it’s possible for them to hold on. If they manage to stop the violence, it will be a lot. There is talk of nine million victims.
Pablo Escobar sent a hitman to kill me for writing an article
P Weren’t you afraid?
R (His son joins in laughing) What’s the matter! She took the risk and I overcame the fear.
P But he had to go into exile.
R To Mexico. And there I continued to work to get the peace process going again. Now Colombia has lost its fear.
Detail of the notes of the writer Massimiliano Minocri
P As?
R Pablo Escobar was a whole school. With him, nobody’s life was guaranteed: they blew up shopping malls, shot down planes… No TV series ever understood him because, given his great intelligence, you had to understand him. He said he liked his money but not him. One of his most powerful sentences was: “I will make this country cry.” And he did. He had an army dedicated to making us suffer. We lived from that. And we learned to live.
P He threatened you too.
R Because I wrote the first article in Semana magazine about killers who killed on motorcycles. Nobody knew who they were. I went to the communes, I spoke to them, to their friends, to their mothers. They were 12-year-old boys trained by Escobar. It was a social, humanistic article. It was a phenomenon in Colombia.
P How did you take it?
R Given the success, the magazine sent a reporter to speak to police who pointed out people. And Pablo sent me to a human rights activist to tell me that he didn’t like the article: “He gave the order to kill you.” I replied that the second one was not mine, that if they killed me, they would do it for the one I signed. The mediator left with the message and I took the child to my mother because you think nothing can happen to him with his mother. He came back after a week and told me “Pablo understood, but he sends you to say that the bike is already gone and has no radio phone.”
We broke with a colonial situation towards Spain. Now we must break with neocolonialism
P And what did he do?
R We drove to Miami for three months until they stopped the killer. But here I am. The number of journalists killed is uncountable. Despite everything, Colombia is not just that.
P Do you think it’s the theme that survives in Spain?
R People treat us with great affection, but we don’t stop being sudacas. It is not easy for the Spaniards to recognize themselves as republics that have become independent. It was seen when the king did not rise when Bolívar’s sword passed into Petro’s possession. I see a lot of paternalism, but we are not just backwardness and violence: we are worthy people who managed to break through a colonial situation. We must break with neocolonialism.
Laura Restrepo, this Tuesday at her country house Massimiliano Minocri
P Dignity is key in his latest novel, an extreme journey to Yemen and Ethiopia.
R It is based on a trip I took with Doctors Without Borders. It was visiting the end of the world. It’s a humanitarian drama, and yet the women said to me, “I have nothing, but my lineage is that of the Queen of Sheba.”
P Did you go through the same emotions as your narrator: pity, compassion, enchantment, anger?
R We get tired of bad news. We see it with the war in Ukraine.
P Does life in the mountains give you strength?
R That too is the end of the world. I’ve gotten used to living in the wind, but this is where stability is built. I travel a lot and the one who says so is Pedro. The difference is that now I always come back.
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