Old photos (warning, may be disturbing)

[datachicane]

I recently discovered these while going through my late grandfather's massive photo collection (he was a photographer, among other things). I'm sure I've seen them before, but this is the first time I realized what I was looking at.

The low angle and half-frame are characteristic of the photos he took with a camera he'd hidden in a hollowed-out bible during and after the Bogotazo, as all photography was forbidden under martial law (summary execution was the penalty for any violations of martial law, including curfew, but that's another story).

Clearly a braver man than I am.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqdxSWa9I/AAAAAAAADZY/IBUuarFRCpw/s800/18.jpghttps://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqdQqKU_I/AAAAAAAADZI/2ZvljLs5Ua0/s800/15.jpghttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqddmrGhI/AAAAAAAADZQ/fz9axUnwLFk/s800/16.jpg

[Don Quixote]

Mass grave on the left? Prisoners waiting for ... on the right? :(

[Ankf00]

w-o-w.

[TravelGal]

DC, I think if you were in the same situation in the same circumstances, you might very well have been just as courageous in an attempt to record things that should not be ignored.

Perhaps as a way to honor these photos, I did quite a bit of reading about the political history of Colombia. It's a breathtakingly beautiful country. I lived in Bogota for 10 weeks, twice, during the Frente Nacional. The "history" was not talked about much in our house except that we were not allowed out during elections for fear of kidnapping. I had no idea how bad it really was in the 1940's and '50's until I did the reading today. Nor did I know how very important a family I was living with.

[datachicane]

Who was the family you stayed with?

My grandfather and his family were in Bogota during the Bogotazo, and lived near downtown. My father was just shy of six years old and was at a friend's birthday party just a couple of blocks from the Presidential Palace when Gaitan was assassinated. The entire apartment block was dynamited, and my grandparents spent over a week searching the bodies lined up on the sidewalks for identification before they found my father wandering in the street.

He made several bible-cameras, including an 8mm movie rig, but most of the material was lost when the family was forced out of the country on short notice a year or two later (my grandfather was being treated for malaria in New Orleans at the time, and my grandmother, father, and aunt had minutes to grab what they could carry). It's amazing that as much made it out as did.

Here he is with my father and aunt in March, a few weeks earlier:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqLhO8_7I/AAAAAAAADW4/o4oFg4AhEns/s800/16a.jpg

[racer2c]

Amazing pictures...amazing story...thanks for sharing.

[datachicane]

He was an amazing guy. I lost him just five years ago. Earned his doctorate at 16, decided to enter the seminary (as was customary in my family), tried to get the Presbytery to send him to Manchuria during the late 1930s (thankfully that didn't pan out, else I likely wouldn't be here to type this), ended up building and running several free girl's schools in Colombia as, IIUC, public education was available only to boys under Conservative rule. Running those schools was dangerous and controversial even before the Bogotazo.

He walked the walk, that's for sure. When I was a kid his Presbytery assignment was to a handful of small churches in Eastern Oregon ranch country (Dayville, Monument, Mt. Vernon, John Day, and another I've forgotten), and he'd make them all each Sunday, getting done after dark. He felt that the communities were small enough that they shouldn't support him, so he ran his own photography studio and printshop to pay the bills.

I've got quite a few more photos of Colombia and the Bogotazo in particular, if anyone's interested.

[indyfan31]

Holy Jeebus DC, those are some powerful images.
I realize he didn't have time to frame the shots the way he would have wanted to, but just seeing part of the soldier in the corner of image tells an entire story. Wow.

[JohnHKart]

were those stealth pics taken during the 1950s "La Violencia" period?

[datachicane]

In the first weeks of La Violencia, April 1948.

[Elmo T]

Important history preserved there - while no doubt personal, copies of those photos ought to be provided to a museum or some other institution where they can be properly studied and preserved.

Thanks for sharing.

[opinionated ow]

For those of us with limited to no knowledge, what's the background story? (i'm genuinely curious)

[cameraman]

You can get a good overview here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogotazo

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Violencia

[datachicane]

The wikipedia entries are a bit suspect, unfortunately, as some folks don't seem able to separate the Liberal and Conservative parties of pre-1948 Colombia with U.S. politics, which are entirely different animals. The Liberal party had been in power for decades when the very popular Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, who was not selected as the Liberal presidential candidate, decided to run as an independent, split the Liberal vote, and returned the Conservative party to power (these are/were Colombian political parties, and have very little to do with imagined U.S. counterparts).

Hardline elements within the Conservative party decided to solidify their position by purging the countryside of Liberal-voting bastions, under the guise of 'rounding up bandits'. Suspected Liberal voters were imprisoned or killed, and their property confiscated. The abuses reached such a pitch that many Conservatives broke with their own party leadership and backed Gaitan, along with many of Gaitan's other former adversaries, including the Communists.

Gaitan's assassination happened while both Marshall's Pan-American Conference and the opposing Latin American Youth Congress were taking place in Bogota. The resulting riots (the Bototazo) destroyed much of downtown and killed thousands. The violence continued for many years afterwards, and at a reduced level, even today.

[RaceGrrl]

Thanks for sharing these.

Your father's expression is haunting. :(

[racer2c]

Not to detract from the story...a bit of a side bar... When you first posted this yesterday, I was immediately drawn to the pictures before I read your comments, and my first impression was that it was a mass grave scene around a German concentration camp based on the soldier with the 'stalhhelm' traditional German military helmet). I assumed the uniformed men in blue were a forced labor crew. I was surprised when I went back to read your post that it was actually part of the Bogotaza. A bit of searching revealed a message board dedicated to the discussion of uniforms around the world with a thread on the very topic of Dominican Republic soldiers wearing a German helmet (with the discussion including the armies of Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Columbia and Peru). Turns out the Colombian military still do.

http://uotw.heavenforum.com/t108-german-helmets-worn-by-dominican-republic-army

[cameraman]

Well names of international political parties can never be taken at face value, for example, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Not so Demokratische in reality.

[Gnam]

Holy ****.

Was your grandfather there to give last rites?
I would have been unable to think, let alone take pictures.
Probably would have given myself away by holding the bible up to my eye.

Do Colombians discuss this period in their history? Mass graves tend to be a sore point for most countries.

[chop456]

Amazing stuff. Thanks for sharing.

[datachicane]

I have no idea how he managed to take these. He was a Protestant, so it seems unlikely that he was there to give last rites, and in any case the ruling Conservative party was tightly aligned with the Catholic church (to the extent that more than one church and school my Grandfather worked with were dynamited, once by a parish priest with multiple eyewitnesses, with no investigation or interest by the authorities).

The only thing I can think of is that either they grabbed the first guy they found with a Bible off the streets to provide last rites, or he insinuated himself into that position to take these. He did have a collar that he wore, rarely, so that might account for the mistaken identity...

[TravelGal]

The wikipedia entries are a bit suspect, unfortunately, as some folks don't seem able to separate the Liberal and Conservative parties of pre-1948 Colombia with U.S. politics, which are entirely different animals. The Liberal party had been in power for decades when the very popular Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, who was not selected as the Liberal presidential candidate, decided to run as an independent, split the Liberal vote, and returned the Conservative party to power (these are/were Colombian political parties, and have very little to do with imagined U.S. counterparts).

Hardline elements within the Conservative party decided to solidify their position by purging the countryside of Liberal-voting bastions, under the guise of 'rounding up bandits'. Suspected Liberal voters were imprisoned or killed, and their property confiscated. The abuses reached such a pitch that many Conservatives broke with their own party leadership and backed Gaitan, along with many of Gaitan's other former adversaries, including the Communists.

Gaitan's assassination happened while both Marshall's Pan-American Conference and the opposing Latin American Youth Congress were taking place in Bogota. The resulting riots (the Bototazo) destroyed much of downtown and killed thousands. The violence continued for many years afterwards, and at a reduced level, even today.

Thanks for this. I was having a hard time with the Wiki stuff. It seemed out of whack to me but I couldn't figure out why because I couldn't remember enough of what I'd heard in the past.

[pineapple]

Important history preserved there - while no doubt personal, copies of those photos ought to be provided to a museum or some other institution where they can be properly studied and preserved.

Thanks for sharing.
I concur. What an amazing story.


Datachicane:I've got quite a few more photos of Colombia and the Bogotazo in particular, if anyone's interested. That would be great. Thank you.

[datachicane]

Here's a few more. I'm not certain that it's appropriate to post the first couple, and I debated with myself more than a bit before including them. I'll remove them without hesitation if the feeling is that I overstepped.




Bodies laid for identification:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqcleHcCI/AAAAAAAADY8/_KHdWvq56ws/s800/13b.jpghttps://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqdvU0EDI/AAAAAAAADZM/RwcQYhWqtIU/s800/12b.jpg




Far too many quick impromptu graves...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqdM4AA_I/AAAAAAAADZE/8NTnrdHlBmA/s800/14b.jpg




Damage to downtown, probably several months later:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqbBbM9PI/AAAAAAAADYo/EWHGkpSEAvk/s800/11.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqev7x5pI/AAAAAAAADZg/IfCtDEpXjL4/s800/g4.jpg
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqc0o6SPI/AAAAAAAADZA/iH0aacASPGY/s800/14.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqZzlUWyI/AAAAAAAADYU/Lzhag-yLjNI/s800/2.jpg




Flowers at Gaitán's home and office:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_2Yptu8g36aI/TWaqaFAN3kI/AAAAAAAADYc/GXeOarwAquo/s800/4.jpg