PBH / colombia (travelguide, pictures) / post

On Nov 20 Diane Rehm interviewed this so called Colombian "Journalist"

http://wamu.org/programs/dr/07/11/20.php#17309

If you have the patience to listen, w/out grinding your teeth, scroll to the 11:00 am interview. This girlie remainds me of the colombian-version of the California "Valley-Girl".

So Silvana Paternostro wrote this gem-of-a-book "My Colombian War" described on the site as: "A journalist born in Colombia returns to the war-torn country to try and understand and explain her nation's violent past and present."

A senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, this barranquillera left when she was 15 in 1977, then she gets an itching to go back and by osmosis she becomes an expert, and declares "I realized that Colombia had become a society in crisis" ... "so I went back to try to illuminate the conflict" WOW!!

Much better would've been to interview Sonia, in US custody.

I will give Silvana credit for trying to embraze an impossible subject, if maybe in a somewhat a presumptious way. I did like her outlook on the "bullet-proof automobile" owners.

Neonovo

By Neonovo on Dec 18, 2007, 22:32 in Politics & the war.

juancegomez says on Dec 19, 2007, 08:31:

I haven't actually read the book, only a couple of reviews. From that rather limited angle, it doesn't seem to impress me much, so I'm not in a hurry to find and read it at this time. If I happen to run across it I will, but that's that.

The interview itself is still fairly interesting, since she's indeed in a relatively unique position and makes a few good observations, even if there were indeed teeth-grinding opportunities, questionable generalizations and/or several statements that would deserve to be debated. A lot of mixed feelings and ideas, all in all.

Interviewing "Sonia" (or many other individuals in different positions) could have been "better" in a sense, although it's admittedly an entirely different animal.

Piedad Córdoba could talk to "Sonia" while she served as mediator, in the presence of several U.S. officials, but I don't know if just any journalist would be given that possibility. I'm not sure how relevant U.S. laws work...but I imagine that people who are in jail, especially after being sentenced, generally shouldn't be available for interviews, though of course that sometimes still happens (evidently, in Colombia itself).

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Sr Tertius says on Dec 21, 2007, 11:14:

I like Diane Rehm, though. The woman is a tough cookie.

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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