Correspondent for ‘La Jornada’ dies in Colombia

Jorge Enrique Botero Lince, Colombian journalist, correspondent for The Daydied early yesterday morning in Bogotá at the age of 68, after a brief illness that kept him hospitalized for the last three months. Owner of an agile and close prose, a reporter through and through, Jorge Enrique was a much loved journalist, awarded and recognized in his country. And also persecuted, censored, stigmatized and exiled on a couple of occasions.

His latest coverage for this newspaper documented the arduous path of negotiations between the government of President Gustavo Petro and the remnants of the guerrillas, the National Liberation Army and the dissident forces of the extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, now the Comunes party) in pursuit of total peace; the attacks of the right-wing forces against the Petrismo, the advances and setbacks of a complex transitional justice in a country that has experienced more than half a century of armed conflict, as well as the exploration of the border conflict between Guyana and Venezuela in the remote region of El Esquibo.

Just six days earlier, I had reported on the frequent shipwrecks off the Colombian coast due to the inexhaustible flow of migrants approaching the Darien Strait for the hellish crossing of the devil’s plugillustrating a little-explored angle of this problem.

With more than 45 years in the business, Botero did radio on a station called Am-pm, created by agreement of the constituent assembly after the signing of the peace accords with that armed group (in which the current president was a member). In the 80s, in the context of the extermination perpetrated against the Unión Patriótica party, his partner Daneli Salas was detained and disappeared. He went into exile, to Havana, with his two small children. There he worked at Prensa Latina. Upon returning to Bogotá he joined the media corporation Caracol until his work on the hostages kidnapped by the FARC was censored. Threats from Álvaro Uribe’s paramilitaries forced him into a second exile.

In 2005 he co-founded Telesur, the multinational Bolivarian television corporation. Since then he has been a correspondent for this newspaper.

During the negotiations between the FARC and the government, he lived in Havana to report on the process from the front line, which culminated in a peace agreement in 2006.

His in-depth reporting resulted in a series of award-winning books. In several of them he captured the contradictions and intimacies of life in FARC camps, such as Wait for me in heaven, captain (always out of print after numerous reissues; Latest news from the war (a first-ever book about the birth in the jungle of a baby, the son of a kidnapped FARC hostage) and Life is not easy, daddy.

He also made a trilogy – now classic and referential – of documentaries on this subject, Captives in Colombia (where, through a report on three American mercenaries captured by the FARC, Washington’s ins and outs in the counterinsurgency war are revealed), How can I forget you? (awarded by the New Ibero-American Journalism Foundation-Cemex and It’s cool to go out in December.

Another first book was The seven lives of Tanja Nijmeijerwhere he delves into a story that many European journalists unsuccessfully hunted down about the young Dutch woman who joined the ranks of the FARC.

He was the last journalist alive to interview in different historical moments the leaders of the insurgency Raúl Reyes and Jorge Briceño, Mono Jojoyboth killed in two bombings by the Colombian army.

Perhaps his greatest work was Simon Trinidad, the man of ironpublished in 2014 and republished in an expanded version last year. Here Botero not only delved into the depths of the jungle following the footsteps of the guerrilla Ricardo Palmera (Trinidad was his nom de guerre) but in the even more dangerous twists and turns of the American justice system, which after kidnapping the combatant, tried him and sentenced him to 60 years in prison. In a cause that was also embraced at the time by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Enrique did not give up until the last moment in his fight for his freedom.

Last year, Botero finally allowed himself to approach another story from fiction, White Darkness, with autobiographical reflections and a mind-blowing dialogue between one of its protagonists and Simón Bolívar, his historical reference character.

This journalist-writer-documentary filmmaker is known for being the person who best knew and documented the behind-the-scenes of the FARC, the largest and longest-lived armed organization in Latin America. He was also a teacher. He taught radio journalism at the Universidad Central.

This morning, upon hearing the news, President Petro dedicated a message on social media. He described our correspondent as a great and true journalist.

The Mexican ambassador to Colombia, Patricia Ruiz Anchondo, wrote from Bogotá: “A great loss for Colombia… a great human being is leaving us. See you soon, Mr. Botero, we are left with the great task of getting the man out of prison.” iron man”.

The journalist is survived by his children Juliana, Alejandro, Primavera and Valentina, his four grandchildren and his commitment to achieving the longed-for total peace for his country. His love for his favorite soccer team, his cute santafesito and the small house where he spent the last years of his life in Onda, on the banks of the Magdalena River.