Colombia Land of Death

I lived from May to December 1999 in Medellín while we filmed Our Lady of the Assassins, which was shot in absolute secrecy. The city of eternal spring, the city where the kindness and courtesy of another time--that of my childhood in Bogotá--lives to this day. It's also a city obsessed with order and cleanliness, a city filled with energy and happiness. There is, of course, another facet to it that can be summed up in figures:

• 5000 documented armed gangs, each having four to 200 members.

• 95 percent of crimes go unpunished--many more than in the Wild West when it was still a lawless land.

• 15 deaths per day, 30 on weekends and holidays.

Everything is played out in the communes, poor neighborhoods created by "invasions." Rudimentary brick buildings, magnificent views onto the rest of the city. The police enter the communes only in cases of dire necessity, and then in droves. The paramilitary and the guerrillas dispute areas of influence by creating or taking control of certain gangs.

I've collected here in chronological order some e-mails--snapshots--I sent once or twice a week to Fernando Vallejo and several friends while on location. (I've left out those e-mails that relate just to the filming and concentrated instead on what I saw around me in Medellín.)

Little Jennifer's Birthday

I have just understood why children start sniffing glue: It staves off hunger. They end up doing it all day long and die within three to four years. There's a party in the streets of Barrio Triste for little Jennifer, who looks 12 years old because she sniffs glue but is celebrating her 15th birthday. It's a Colombian tradition to celebrate one's coming of age with a party and dances, particularly a waltz with 15 successive partners. Those there to dance with her: a little boy sniffing glue, a young professional killer, a policeman, a man who'd had both his arms cut off when he'd fallen asleep drunk on the railroad tracks. Jennifer held on to the stumps, smiling absentmindedly. What a waltz! People gave her as a present a dress and a bag for her glue bottle made of the same cloth.

Holdup

Very first scouting. I'm filming with a small digital camera in Boston Park and at the house where Vallejo was born when I hear yelling behind me. It's my friend Eduardo screaming out a slew of insults: "motherfucker, gonorrhea," etc. He runs and stops in the middle of the street, pretending to load his cellular phone as if it were a black gun. A young, well-dressed man had just stuck a 9mm semiautomatic pistol in Eduardo's stomach while grabbing Eduardo's cell phone out of his back pocket. Eduardo had ripped the phone out of his assailant's hands and was now pretending it was a gun! The young man takes a few steps toward me, people are starting to notice, he puts his right arm behind his back. He wants the camera. I finally see a chance to use my pepper spray. Holding the camera, my arms outstretched, I tell him to come and get it. He thinks it over, turns around and leaves. The thing is, I didn't see the gun. He must have thought he was dealing with two lunatics, that it was too risky. He didn't depart empty-handed--he'd still had enough time to steal our driver's gold chain while threatening her with the gun and telling her everything was going to be all right.

Bogota

There's a new paranoia here about taxi drivers mugging you like in Mexico City, sometimes with the help of fake cops. Avoiding the situation by calling a cab over the phone has not proved to be safe either; gangs intercept the radio messages and send one of their own taxis instead. But that's not the worst of it: Sometimes an accomplice comes from out of the trunk, gun in hand, by swinging open a section of the backseat.

Just driving along the Septima, one of the main avenues, has become a dangerous adventure. Last night, on a stretch of road less than half a mile long, I counted seven large open sewers whose lids had been stolen. They'd been left like that without any indication--gaping open, waiting to destroy a car or kill a motorcyclist.

Father's day

Today I met the mayor of Medellín. He's worried about a new armed gang of FARC dissidents operating in the Pilarica neighborhood and headed by a female doctor who is apparently out of control and bloodthirsty. Four policemen were seriously wounded last night by her gang.

While we were in the mayor's office, he found out that a policeman had died. A little later another phone call: A commando of 17 members of the La Terraza gang (from the Manrique neighborhood) has burst into the San José Hospital to free a terrorist and a very dangerous assassin who had been injured and brought there from the high-security prison.

Last Sunday, Father's Day, there were 34 deaths. That same day the opening of the Poetry Festival drew a larger crowd than any soccer match in the city's history ever had.

The casting's going very well--in just a few weeks we have already found two possible boys.

A Dead Man at the Wheel

Last night I went to eat patacón (fried bananas) at a fast-food place near the Éxito. Leaving the house, I turned left. I stopped when I heard two gunshots and saw two well-dressed women running crouched like soldiers in a war movie, except in high heels. After waiting a moment I walked toward Laureles Park to see what had happened: There was an old car in the middle of the street with a motionless driver, and passersby coming out of their hiding places to approach the vehicle.

When I got back half an hour later, there was nothing left but a small pile of smashed glass from the windshield on the pavement, and I had the impression I'd made it all up.

Another corpse

Last night before dinner, today before lunch. At noon I was walking, like I do every day, with my friend Eduardo to go eat five minutes away from here. Yesterday he had gone to the morgue, and at a red light he recognized the driver and van that picks up bodies. Sure enough, not too far away there was a very young man on the ground surrounded by curious onlookers and policemen.

When I get back less than half an hour later, I again think it was all a dream: No trace of blood, and children are playing right where the body had been.

An hour ago, an intense shoot-out and screaming in my street: Neighbors are firing at a bicycle thief. Without hitting him, I hope.

The violentologist

I got back from Bogotá a day earlier than planned and the Vallejo family had taken advantage of our absence to put up in our house a French violentologist who was reading a paper at the university. Eduardo sounded the alarm when he realized the violentologist was a marked man who had received threatening letters from both the FARC and the paramilitary and that many of his Colombian disciples had been killed over the past few years. He himself had asked not to be lodged with the other professors in another apartment. We unfortunately had to ask him to leave immediately. We are here for months, while he is here for only a couple of days. And we speak French, just as he does. That would be enough to get us killed.

The prince

A few days ago I was having a drink at the Cafe Lebon by Lleras Park in the Poblado. I was chatting with my friend Aleja, a philosophy student who man ages the bar one night out of two. A 30-year-old guy, very expensively dressed, tall, skinny, mustache, a scar on his cheek, dark-skinned, starts talking to me--he has a strong lower-classaccent. He wanted to know where I was from and what I was doing in Medellín. I tried to cut our conversation as short as I could. He left to make a phone call (someone saw him). A few minutes later two black Mercedes arrive with seven scary thugs who take their seats on the terrace. The first guy comes back to talk to me again. He tells me that he's going to France next week and that one of his friends here lives in France and would like to take me out for a drink. He calls himself the Prince. I refuse and go sit on the terrace with two women--friends of mine who were there. They are soon bothered by the insistent stares of these mafiosos I had my back turned to. We decide to go to the Cafe Berlin, right next door, in their car. From the bar, Aleja is horror stricken as she watches the eight guys (continued on page 152)Colombia(continued from page 70) follow me intensely with their eyes. As soon as I get into my friend's car, they all get up at once and jump into their Mercedes. Aleja ran to the phone to warn all my friends, who desperately searched for me throughout the neighborhood with the help of the police before finding me an hour later, calmly seated in a dark corner of the Cafe Berlin. Without realizing it we had taken such an unexpected route to go so close by that no one could have followed us. Or else nobody was following us and the whole thing was an effect of the pervading paranoia.

Manrique

Two scenes in the movie take place in Manrique, a neighborhood that, because of the La Terraza gang, has become one of the city's most dangerous. Papa Giovanni has organized protection for us so we can scout the neighborhood, but I realize immediately that even he is ill at ease. He introduces us to a 22-year-old gang boss, a survivor, slightly fat, crew cut, blue, unblinking eyes. He never, ever looks anyone in the eye. Very calm, his gestures measured. You get the feeling that he is staring at piles of corpses behind the person he is speaking to. He never smiles. Even Eduardo, who's very funny and who is used to this kind of character, can't make him laugh. There's another guy who laughs nervously all the time--the gang leader's henchman, a sicario (hired assassin), dark-skinned and full of tics. In veiled terms, always laughing, allusively, he brags about being bad, something about a chain saw. We wanted nothing to do with it, we wished we'd never met them, we want them to forget they ever knew us.

We go all over the neighborhood. I discover another side to the gangster's personality: He tries to pick up all the girls by giving them orders--"You, come over here!"--or by complimenting them while making lewd noises. Sometimes the killer joins in. The girls, even very young ones, already know it's dangerous to react in the slightest way and keep walking. The gang boss seems extremely intelligent, asks the right questions. He must have graduated magna cum laude from crime school and gets involved only in major hits. In passing, he wants to know how much the film equipment we brought is worth.

We won't set foot in Manrique again and we won't ever ask Papa Giovanni to show us around another neighborhood that isn't his.

As a goodwill gesture at the end of the day we take them for fried chicken to Mario's, the fast-food place in front of Carlos Gardel's house. When it is time for the gang boss to get his wages he tells us in a terrifying tone: "I'm very curious to find out how much you think I'm worth." While Eduardo is writing the amount on a receipt, I say, "I think he's only putting down zeros." Phew! I've finally managed to make him laugh.

As we get ready to leave the restaurant the gang boss doubles back to replace the chairs at our table in perfect order, like a meticulous maniac, as if we had never been there.

The Bomb

I have the awful feeling the country will once again be the focus of world media because of this booby-trapped car filled with 100 kilograms of dynamite that killed 12 people the day before yesterday. Though in fact we weren't in any danger, as the bomb was aimed at a military target we never even get close to. We take detours to avoid passing by police stations. The flower festival began yesterday. The bullring was empty for the bullfight--lack of advertising, bomb-related trauma--and the rejoneador (a bullfighter on horseback) couldn't fight: His horses were kidnapped yesterday on the Bogotá--Medellín highway.

The Frenchman Flees in Panic

A hard blow today, certainly not the last, and I can't help laughing about it. My production manager, who had left for Paris for a few days, has just pulled out; he doesn't want to come back as planned--he was too scared here and didn't dare tell me. He gave me the key to his locker when he left. I have just opened it: practically empty, his treason was premeditated! From now on, I will be the only foreigner on the crew.

Exchanging Money

A weekly ordeal. The Banco Comercial has the best rate and anyone who has large sums of money to exchange goes there. You also always run into at least three motorcycles with suspicious-looking teenagers: clean-cut, American-style, baseball cap, short-sleeve shirt or jacket, blue jeans and sneakers. This often means "ready to kill," and there's also often a policeman who keeps watch over all this and asks them for their papers. We get a cab to drop us off, but it can't stop in front of the bank or next to it as the motorcycles do. It has to go around the block until we exit with the money, which Eduardo (who also has his gun) and I have split evenly between us.

The first person we see upon entering is a uniformed guard with his finger on the trigger of an enormous pistol. Further in we see another guard with a special deluxe shotgun, and finally, right at the back, next to the teller where we exchange the greenbacks, a mini-Uzi held by an utterly motionless guard, his jaws clenched. Like all the others, he has his finger on the trigger.

An endless wait while the cashier counts the piles of bills twice. Right next to us a long lineup for current accounts. Everyone's favorite pastime: to stare and to scrutinize every detail, every gesture of the few people lined up at the dollar exchange window.

When we exit, the tension mounts by a notch. Eduardo waits outside while I stand inside. We're never lucky enough to have our chauffeur (an ex-cop who borrowed a cab) come around at the right time. Again, we have to wait.

But the worst has yet to come. It happens when we drive off, the two of us looking intently out the rear window to spot any suspicious motorcycles. We also have to watch for cars, and then go through a maze of deserted streets to make sure no one is following us before emerging suddenly onto a highway and taking the next exit. But there are motorbikes everywhere. It's not surprising the French production manager left; he had to live through this at least twice. I'll be glad when we have a reliable local production company open an account, something strictly forbidden to foreigners to prevent money laundering.

Anderson Blushes

Eduardo can read people by observing little details. He is in the front seat of the car and feels a thief looking at his Nike watch. That's Anderson, sitting in the backseat beside me. Later, at the restaurant, he catches a glance again that lasted for a fraction of a second and tells him, gesturing as if he were taking off his watch: "You want it?" Anderson turns bright red. Very sexy.

Todo Bien

Two serious problems the day before yesterday. We lost the most important, irreplaceable location--the apartment the film takes place in--and two bikers caught up to our driver and threw a crumpled paper ball into the car, a note that read: Los PP's Queremos al Mono Todo Bien (the PPs want the foreigner, everything's all right). In Colombia receiving a note like this is often a death sentence. On the bright side, we think it's from a gang into extortion and not kidnapping. The dark side: It's only the beginning, something else could follow--like someone firing shots at the car or the house. Today we are meeting with one of the country's top security analysts, who suspects the chauffeur. We are waiting for the results of the writing samples. Anyway, without telling the security specialist (you really can't trust anyone), we have also established discreet contact with the police chief. Starting tomorrow he is lending us two cops armed to the teeth, dressed as civilians, who will follow me in their car as soon as I leave my new home, which will be a true fortress. Officially, I will keep living at the same address. I will never travel twice in a row in the same car; my drivers will also be security guards. On location, starting tomorrow for the outdoor rehearsals, there will always be an armored car ready to take me away.

Bodyguards

I don't enjoy my new life with bodyguards but I maintain my perspective on things; it seems I'm a level-seven risk (on a scale of 10). In any case it certainly impresses my young actor, Anderson, who spends his days and part of his nights with me. My bodyguards are two young policemen, no more than 24 years old. I am in permanent radio contact with them by means of a combination cellular phone, beeper and radio. If someone suspicious like the Prince approaches and speaks to me, I press a little button and the whole security corps listens in on our conversation. My bodyguards carry guns, mini-Uzis and changones (sawed-off hunting rifles).

The first, Reinaldo, is short, dark-skinned and fat, and the other, Lisandro, is skinny, blond and good-looking.

Lisandro has decided to become my friend, and he's very forward. He even went so far as to ask me to lend him my apartment in New York. The day before yesterday he asked me if I like Antioquian food. Only a complete boor would have said no, so I said yes, and besides, I actually do. He then asked me if I wanted to have lunch at his place the following day. He insists I go alone, which has made me experience a horrible inner conflict and led me to think about it in four ways:

(1) It's a trap--every kidnapping story involves a cop.

(2) I have to go--it's the least I can do for someone I make follow my rhythm of no more than six hours' sleep per day.

(3) I have no reason to feel obligated--he's the one who's exaggerating by putting me in this situation.

(4) I'm naturally curious.

Number four eventually won out. A family atmosphere with a dash of paramilitarism. At least five statues of the Virgin. I new know all the technical details about the manufacture of homemade guerrilla bombs.

The Tragedies of Young Actors

Anderson hadn't told us about his recent problems with the law: He's wanted for kidnapping and armed assault. We try to soften up the judge. In one of the cases they'd taken a cabdriver hostage, but the taxi had an alarm system that paralyzed the vehicle after 15 minutes. Anderson and his friends found themselves in the countryside in the middle of the night with a mob of taxi drivers (all communicating through their radios) who were about to lynch them; they were saved by the police, who then filed charges against them.

Execution

Papa Giovanni helps us enter the Diamante commune. Yesterday, just after we parted company, he was having a beer with his friend Olman who in the film was going to play the part of the Attacker. A man slowly passed behind 0lman and shot him in the head. He left just as slowly. The bullet, which could've wounded Giovanni, didn't exit but it created a lump on Olman's forehead before he dropped dead onto the table. Giovanni is deeply grief stricken; he can't get over it.

Shooting Postponed

We were supposed to start shooting this Sunday. We had planned it a bit too tight as the cameras, delayed by Hurricane Floyd, only got here the day before yesterday. The plane was forced to land in New Jersey, and the whole cargo stood idle in hangars for five nights while the town was flooded.

When the plane arrived in Bogotá the papers weren't with the shipment that had been stored overnight in a hangar. The next day the 34 parcels were there but their weight didn't correspond.

When we opened the crates three of them were empty: The two cameras, the large high-definition monitor and all the lenses (the best ones, the ones hardest to find) had disappeared.

Almost $200,000 worth. The insurance will reimburse only 80 percent of it. We might have to use part of the budget to cover the loss. We hope to be able to start next Sunday with lower-quality lenses.

On the bright side: We now have a bit more time to prepare. The mystery: Are the thieves American or Colombian, and what project will someday be filmed with the equipment?

Desechables

An incredible scene last night in the Church of San Antonio: We had 50 basuqueros come in, the local equivalent, but much worse, of crackheads. Some people here call them desechables, or disposables, individuals you can throw away or kill, individuals you can do without. They're wild-eyed and uncontrollable, talking and playing nonstop like small children. They sort of took over and we adjusted.

Before the shoot the wardrobe manager was taking pictures for continuity. One of the basuqueros appoints himself as their spokesperson to tell me they were scared, that they thought we were drawing up lists to have them killed.

Locking themselves in the confessional to sniff glue from plastic bags. Sprawled on the ground to smoke. Candles and incense smoke all around. The camera takes a bird's-eye shot of all this and ends up exiting through the main door to fly up along the facade.

Juan David, who plays Wilmar, came by to see us. He's very religious and cried out that we were all going to be excommunicated.

The church guard was worried that the priests, who had gone to bed at 9:30, would wake up and kick us out. Everything went well and we left the church cleaner than it had ever been. No one can believe what went on last night; it now seems it was nothing but a dream.

The Power of Real Weapons

After using very well made copies, I found out that using real guns puts my young actors into a trance. Their eyes shine, they're much more concentrated and play their roles much more seriously. This, of course, complicates the security issue but in some cases it's worth it. I sometimes even go so far as to let them carry guns though they're not visible in the scene.

Morgue

Today the morgue, and to top it all off, not enough bodies to fill 17 tables. T-shirts, sneakers and jeans are placed over the bodies for identification.

I'm not at all troubled--it astonishes me--being there and arranging the corpses as if they were extras. It only makes me feel like dancing and enjoying life more that same night.

Pool Hall Scene

I found out just before shooting there that the pool hall I had chosen with the red walls and a Mary Help of Christians statue is actually an oficina, a place where you hire assassins. It is, according to my bodyguards, the best-known spot for this sort of transaction. And I'd asked the young regulars to be contacted as extras! A shoot that was supposed to be cut-and-dried ended up being very tense. We had to make certain that the boss or patrons wouldn't overhear any of the dialogue.

We were very lucky with the Dead Boy character. I didn't know when I hired this boy to play death personified that he had two tattoos: a skull on his right shoulder and a grim reaper on the left. He's in a rock band called the Erect Penises.

Yesterday

Last night two corpses were found on the first assistant's doorstep, five blocks away from here in the rich, quiet Laureles neighborhood where we all live. The owner of a car and a thief had shot each other to death.

Yesterday our accountant was assaulted upon his return from the bank with an envelope full of cash. Two gunslinging youngsters on a motorbike followed him from the bank and asked him to hand over the envelope. The accountant hesitated; they asked him if he wanted to die. It lasted all of two seconds in front of a dozen witnesses. They would've shot him without hesitation--it's one of their rules of conduct to maintain the level of danger and terror.

Gunshots on la Playa

Looking for peace and quiet, we film violent street scenes early on Sunday mornings. In front of the Fine Arts Building there's a shoot-out between Alexis and two guys who lose control of their motorcycle. They crash against a car and, as they fly through the air, they get pelted with bullets before falling dead on the roof of the car. I always try to avoid firing blanks in scenes so we don't traumatize the population, who already hear enough gunshots every day. Sometimes, though, it's impossible to get good reactions from the extras without firing blanks. Such is the case for three shots that day. Soon after the first gunshots are fired, I see several people all dressed in white walking down La Playa Avenue where we're filming. I immediately know they're not extras. I've banned two colors in the film: white for technical videotaping reasons and orange for aesthetic ones (which makes us have to unscrew or cover in gray the horrible orange plastic trash cans that are hung throughout the city). For each take, we reload the revolvers and add blood, and when I turn around there are a few more people in white; they're all walking in the same direction without stopping, observing us strangely. We finally figure it out: They're peace marchers. Today, for the first time, in every city in the country, crowds of people in white are demonstrating that they're sick and tired of violence. A memorable date.

When I was a child here it was also a matter of colors: The "blues" and the "reds" were killing each other by the thousands. We had to twist my parrot's neck because it kept repeating: "I'm dressed in green but I'm a red [liberal]." We couldn't give him away or let him loose: He might have caused a massacre in any house he would have landed in.

A New Strategy

I found out last night from a police source that the guerrillas have put out a call for hostages in the criminal underground--they'll pay $1000 cash for any foreigner. It's a new strategy to replace that of the pescas milagrosas (miraculous catches), which had fallen out of favor. A strategy similar to the one Pablo Escobar adopted eight years ago when he offered the same price for each murdered policeman. My bodyguards are nervous. They can't take it easy anymore.

Still, there was a miraculous catch the night before last on the road that joins the town of R. to the road to the airport. For once, the police tried to intervene: two dead among their ranks but only four people taken hostage.

The guerrillas are among us, in the city, and they're given a monthly salary (unemployment exceeds 20 percent). They steal vehicles, put on uniforms at the last minute, raise blockades, capture the hostages who interest them after having stripped others of any valuables. They find out who is of interest to them on the spot using computers linked to the Internet and take the selected hostages to some nearby place where other stolen vans wait to carry them off to mountainous areas in the jungle. In the best of cases, hostages are freed six to eight months later, after several payments have been made. One thing is certain: Taking into account that on every front things are getting worse, it would be impossible to make this film here a year from now. Unless there is a miracle, and peace takes hold overnight. Nobody believes that will happen. Anyone who can is thinking of settling abroad.

God's Infamy

That's what Fernando sees in the eyes of a small child sniffing glue. The child lost his mother two months before the filming of this scene. She sold basuco in Barrio Triste for 300 pesos a dose (25 cents). The gangs who control the trade decided to raise the price by 100 pesos (eight cents). She refused to make her C customers pay more. Executed.

Horses Branded Eight

Yesterday we took a day's break to make up for the previous, sleepless night. So far it's been the only daylong break from filming that I haven't spent editing. I take advantage of the time off to take part in a great cavalcade on dream horses with 20 or so gentlemen from Antioquia. That is, in any case, what they perceive themselves to be, as well as cowboys from a time when barbed wire didn't exist, free and lawless but religious. All the horses were branded with an eight. They belonged to one of the Ochoa sisters and her husband, whom I got along with rather well, passing the aguardiente back and forth along the way. Two of the husband's brothers were killed by guerrillas, another kidnapped. He told me how he came to oppose the paso fino (special Colombian gait) because it isn't a gait a horse adopts naturally. According to him, it is an atrocity imposed by humans for their own comfort. He knew what he was talking about: Until a few years ago, he was the biggest breeder of Paso Fino horses in the world.

We needed props, copies we could damage, an Aiwa sound system to throw out the window. It turns out prices are so low that it's three times cheaper to buy a real Aiwa sound system than to have a fake one made. A contraband Mont Blanc pen costs $90 on the black market. The factory, the Mont Blanc headquarters, sold the same pen for $120. Money laundering. I go buy my wine at this strange house bustling with people, a discreet family dwelling in a working-class neighborhood next to ours. People run to it day and night to buy all kinds of alcohol at rock-bottom prices. Another money-laundering scheme.

Rivers of blood in the communes

Today was a memorable day in the diamante commune. The electricians' truck couldn't make it to the location we had arranged high up in the neighborhood to get a view from above the gigantic staircase. Lots of illegal cables--wired to steal electricity, though it's practically free in these neighborhoods--are hung so low across streets that a normal truck can't pass through.

All the high-definition recording and transfer equipment is stored in the van, which is always followed by two guards on motorcycles wearing blue uniforms and bullet proof vests and carrying submachine guns. Today they were utterly terrified. With reason, said my jeans-clad bodyguards, for these men were irresistible to groups who would kill to get their weapons. Upon their arrival the men in blue could relax a bit as there were eight policemen dressed in olive drab and armed to the teeth, besides the five we are used to having with us. During the shoot, an old lady who was passing by told me that we were quite justified in having protection as there had been a lot of real blood spilled in the neighborhood and that it was a welcome change to see a little fake blood she wouldn't have to worry about.

The most impressive part of the scene was when we made it rain blood over the neighborhood. The special-effects crew evidently made too much and we all got stained, our skin and our clothes, with red ink that wouldn't come off for three days. A normal movie rain shower that, at midtake, starts coming down twice as hard and turns red. The sky, the earth, everything turns red and rivers of blood begin to flow everywhere. The quebrada (stream) turns red and all the children start screaming for people to come out and see.

If I had known, I would've taken a wide shot instead of the close-ups of feet walking down steps. The rivers of blood turn into a blood lagoon. It's my friend Luis Ospina's team that has the best shots for the "making of" documentary. He was up in a balcony.

Everyone was moved by the image and symbolism. Especially the lady who lives in the house whose front yard was transformed into blood headquarters. We mixed the water and the pigment in her yard. She'd lost two of her eight sons, one of them at the age of 18, the other at 22, in the gun battles that take place every night and that you can hear as distant echoes in the downtown area of the city down below. She said it must be a sad moment in the film. I told her she had guessed right.

The Sleepwalking Killers

Rohypnol is a kind of sleeping pill that was banned in Europe and the U.S. five or 10 years ago. If you don't go to sleep after taking it you can still function but forget absolutely everything you've done. You can find it anywhere here on the black market, in large quantities and cheap. I don't know if Roche still manufactures them or if they're copies.

It's the assassins' favorite drug as it allows them to feel unperturbed before and during a "job" and to forget about it afterward. They call them Roches or roaches or ruecas.

Holdup

We have an account at the Banco Popular in Laureles, our neighborhood. Yesterday there was a holdup. Some young men asked the teller to open his till. He explained to them that the security system prevented him from doing so. They sprayed him with gasoline and since he still didn't open it they lit him on fire. He died from his burns. No mention of this in the newspapers.

The Angel-Faced Bodyguard is

Not what he Seems

We hear he has connections with the paramilitary and, after a silly argument, he threatened to kill one of the crew members after the film was finished. The latter had to abandon ship--it was in his best interest. In order not to create a security breach one week before the end of the shoot, we've decided not to confront Leonardo, who, this morning, before I'd found out about his threats, made me promise not to refuse to be a witness at his wedding next June with a 17-yearold girl I met at the same time he did. I remember that, back then, I'd begged the future fiancée to be wary of men.

Impotence and anger in the face of injustice.

The atmosphere is stifling.

Anderson, the Kiss

Anderson coughs and spits all the time, very often out the window of the high-rise where we're shooting, raining gobs on passersby. A week ago he started spitting blood, something that worriedour main actor very much, as he has to shoot a scene in which he kisses Anderson on the mouth. The main actor demanded medical tests. It proved impossible to find Anderson to obtain saliva and mucus samples on three consecutive days as he is always out partying and never showing up at home. On one occasion he was two hours late for a scene.

After we managed to drag him to the hospital three days in a row (tuberculosis tests negative), I had to show him myself how to kiss German; I also had to set up a situation where, at the moment of shooting, the crew all bet some money to dare him to do his kiss properly. When he saw the bills pile up he got self-conscious and was forced to do the scene. He collected more than 200,000 pesos ($100), which he then hid in the apartment. After smoking one of his enormous joints, he forgot where he'd stashed the money.

Last Day

Our last day of shooting. We were supposed to start at 10 A.M. on a set built in a warehouse. The entrance hall of the morgue. Nothing is ready: A door and some fluorescent lights are missing. We wait around, and finally at six P.M. the door arrives. It's too big. The lights have yet to be installed; we don't have a tall enough ladder on hand. We end up filming at nine P.M. with no fluorescent lights, only the regular film lights, a single complex shot. It's the last scene we're shooting as well as one of the film's last four scenes. We luckily never ran across these kinds of problems during the rest of the shoot. We just had to end it all on a slightly Colombian note. Overall, the crew I had the chance to work with was well up to international standards.

Emotions ran high when the champagne began to flow and things that had been left unsaid came out into the open: During the shoot, everyone had thought I was totally crazy to have tried to make this film. Now they would have to return to the hard reality of a country on the brink of disaster without ever being able to forget these past seven weeks. Neither will I. I don't think I will ever again take part in such an emotionally charged and dramatic shoot.

Driving home at two A.M. on the deserted highway, I hear three gunshots at the back of the vehicle: One of my giddy bodyguards is firing into the air.

Later he will try to justify this by saying a large car with six shady guys approached us at high speed and that he chased them away by firing. Eduardo is certain he didn't see a car. I'm not so sure. We'll never know. A typically Colombian experience: to become less sure how real what you see and hear is.

Nora's Sister

Nora's sister (Vallejo's sister-in-law) was assassinated by a pair of men on a motorbike last week. They first wounded her; she managed to escape, but they caught up with her two blocks away. She was 42, had always stuck to her principles and worked for the Envigado city administration. She was fighting against mob influence and had just been picked as a candidate for the elections in this municipality, which had been in the hands of Pablo Escobar for a long time. The citizens are asking Nora to take her place. She is now beginning to receive threatening phone calls. She no longer excludes the option of leaving the country with her family, something unthinkable a few months ago.

Eighteen musicians' wages

The wonderful musicians at our closing-day party--most of them elderly men who live modestly and don't have bank accounts, sometimes months going by before they get booked for a show--were dealt a hard blow today. Their boss went to the bank to cash our check. He went home with the 18 musicians' wages and on his doorstep he was held up by several young men who had followed him.

Christmas

Christmas is coming and everyone in town is obsessed with one thing: offering a nice Christmas celebration to their families. At any cost. And so the closer we get to this fateful date, the more the crime rate will increase--to the point of doubling. It's a tradition.

What also changes with the coming of Christmas is the evening soundtrack. I had gotten used to hearing gunshots every night, whether nearby or in the distance. The gunshots now blend in with an orgy of firecrackers that increases with every passing day.

The lighting is also excessive. Already, over the past two weeks, thousands of multicolored bulbs have been strung up in all of the city's trees. I can't help thinking they might be the last lights we'll see for a long time. Over the past month the guerrillas have blown up 45 electrical towers. Only 10 have been rebuilt; the others are in places too dangerous to get to. We're on the brink of rationing or worse.

Barrio Triste

I just had breakfast with Papa Giovanni, who tells me what's been going on in the neighborhood where he works as a mechanic. A war is being waged over the buecos (the holes where hasuco is sold and consumed) between the Montaneros and the Calenos. The latter are from Cali; they're well organized and have already taken over the Campo Valdez commune. Yesterday they went looking for one of the Montaneros in the depths of his hole and shot him six times in the chest. The man still managed to walk out onto the street normally, hail and get into a cab, and ask to be driven to the hospital. He died en route.

These guys walk around armed on street corners, or go into bars and make themselves at home. Their favorite threat is: "Don't bug me" or "Does someone feel like bugging me?" Two days ago one of them really got angry when an empty cab refused to stop after he had tried insistently to hail it. Furious, in front of witnesses, he killed the driver. Shortly afterward, the back door of the taxi opened and a tiny man, the invisible passenger, got out of the car, scared senseless. Nobody said anything, and the incident was viewed as a settling of scores. One more. Over the past week there have been one or two murders per day, all within a few blocks of each other: what Giovanni calls the ravages of Christmas.

A Single Regret

Not to have had the time before I left to meet a ballsy woman, the transvestite who rules over the poshest brothel in town with an iron hand--the whorehouse where people from the mafia rub shoulders with policemen and government employees. A few months ago, during preproduction, I had managed to make an appointment to have tea with her. I was curious to meet someone who must have quite an exceptional personality to be able to survive at the core of such a dangerous world, knowing everyone's secrets. A character suitable for Fassbinder.

I'd been led down the secret hallway reserved for city hall employees and VIPs. It was directly opposite the main entrance, on the other side of the block, on a parallel street, and it opened onto a small, perfectly run-of-the-mill bar. At the far end, behind the bathrooms, a curtain covered the entrance to a maze that led to a reinforced door. There I was greeted by the chief of security, who asked me to follow him. Another maze, then through the kitchen before emerging in a room full of very young girls and disco music. It's five P.M. Madam is late; I'm asked to wait for her. I hear she's very busy--diversifying by launching a line of beauty products in Europe. She has several bodyguards. She usually comes in through the back entrance like I did.

The girls who pass by the main entrance often stop and hit a statue with a wooden spoon. It reminds me of something: Cali, 20 years ago. I walk over to get a closer look. It is indeed a seated Chinese Buddha. There's a hole in its fat stomach. A drunken mobster fired a bullet into it, I'm sure of it; it's something I'm familiar with. I check with the employees; it's exactly what I thought.

In Cali, 20 years ago, Eduardo and I had accompanied a friend of ours to a brothel and I'd discovered a strange ritual that I thought was one of a kind: The girls hit a good-luck Buddha to punish it when there weren't enough clients. It faced the wall and was forced to look endlessly at a bloody bullfighting painting under its nose. It had a hole in its fat stomach and was surrounded by various plaster replicas of Greek statues.

The clock soon strikes six. Madam has arrived, she's getting ready, she won't be long, but I have to leave for a casting meeting. I'll be back.

Yes, but when? In a few months it'll surely be more dangerous, and without proper bodyguards.

Christmas, Yet

Cecilia takes care of the housecleaning and the cooking. She's religious and very proper. As she often has nothing to do, she reads books like How to Know Your Son Is Taking Drugs. Her son is eight years old.

We need to drink a great deal of coffee while we're editing. Every time she brings us some she overhears some of the film's scenes. Shoot-outs and insults, naked men--not always the same ones--in bed or kissing each other on the mouth. Tirades against the pope; the next day against Simon Bolivar or in praise of Pablo Escobar as a great employer of the people. Then more shoot-outs, bodies and bad language. And then yesterday, to top it all off, two men in bed and one of them says: "Blessed be thou, Satan!" That's when I saw her look really concerned.

It's time to go do the rest of the editing somewhere else, before she starts telling the priests about it.

Our favorite pastime: trying to figure out her take on the film.

The editing room has a large balcony, like all the other rooms in my apartment. Right across the street there are two banks. Yesterday, Cecilia, who has plenty of time to look out the window, told us twice to come and see what was happening on the street. The first time it was a businessman getting into his white Trooper after having gone to the bank. Two young motorcyclists had grabbed an envelope from him. There was a visible commotion: All over the street people were talking about the incident, which had lasted only a few seconds. Three minutes later everything was back to normal. But the law of series is the only rule to live by here. I had just managed to cut another minute from the film, which is now one hour and 47 minutes long, when another distracting event took place: The same scenario, only this time it was about two nuns and a small suitcase that was stolen from them. Nothing stops the Christmas fever, not even religion.

Firecrackers keep exploding all night, every night.