The Armies

'Every time I begin to write it is out of desperation’

The Armies, Evelio Rosero’s portrait of the effect of civil war on one rural Colombian village, has a gentle opening that belies the horror to come. Ismael, a harmless old man and retired profesor, climbs a ladder each morning to pick oranges and gawp at his beautiful neighbour as she sunbathes naked in her garden. Gently the woman’s husband mocks the old man and chides him for his embarrassing antics.

In the village, people gather at the café in the square to drink coffee and gossip; cats play in Ismael’s garden; out of town, a folk healer lives in the hills with his dog. All appears calm, but the reminder of those who have been taken away by the country’s interminable civil war is never far away: Hortensia, for one, holds a party on the anniversary of her husband’s disappearance.

Despite this, life goes on. Then, one day Ismael is out for an early stroll: ‘I hear a shout in the early morning, and then a shot. It is up ahead, at the corner. The detonation has formed a black cloud of smoke there.’ It is the beginning of a calamity that will affect Ismael, his sun-loving neighbour and all the inhabitants of the village.

The scariest thing about the novel (for me, at least) is the dreadful passivity with which the villagers accept their fate. Even the soldiers seem uninterested in any one particular, burning cause. When I suggested this to Rosero, he said, ‘It’s not scary to us because we’re used to it, or we’re indifferent – in the big cities – to the reality that overwhelms Colombians who live in the rural parts of the country, where the conflict intensifies and chooses its victims daily.

However, according to Rosero, this passivity, has begun to diminish in recent years. ‘Right now, for example, the indigenous people in the region of Cauca are openly rebelling against the government over the death of some of their people at the hands of the military. Also, the attitude of the common people is frankly aggressive against those active in the conflict, whether guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers or soldiers.’

‘People are fed up with war,’ Rosero continued, ‘but do not see a solution; then comes the scepticism, indifference, the “every man for himself” attitude, which is fatal for any people. This is a people used to leaders, who see, however, no sincerity in any of the current leaders, apart from the fact that, historically, all the truly important leaders have always been assassinated.’

Rosero’s focus on the fate of one village makes the conflict very real to the reader, and we keenly feel the loss of each kidnap or murder victim. The small canvas reflects larger-scale events. I wondered how he had come to write the book in this way.

‘San José gathers together the reality of various towns devastated by the war,’ he explained. ‘All the information I received, directly or indirectly, came from different towns; I decided to condense it, recreate it and set it in a single one, choosing especially the most representative anecdotes.’

There is a curious coda to the way this composite portrait was assembled: ‘When I finished the novel, looking at a map of Colombia, I was startled to discover that in every Colombian department there is a town or village called San José. San José del Guaviare, San José del Tablón, innumerable San Josés. I did not expect that.’

Is this a dangerous subject to write about? Is there a personal risk in writing about these events? Did Rosero have to be careful about offending particular factions?

‘I have never been careful to offend or not to offend different factions, especially when I’m writing,’ he said decisively. ‘While writing I’m as free as a bird. It is possible there is a personal risk, if the members of these factions read literature. But they are not readers, not at all, not the members or their leaders. They just read the newspapers.’

With the publication of The Armies and The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, I asked whether it was becoming easier to write about the war. ‘It has not become easier,’ he said. ‘At least, as far as I’m concerned, it is quite difficult to write about this war, with its unusual ingredients of absurdity, idealism, barbarism and fratricide.

‘What has become easier, or more frequent, is the publication of all sorts of books on the conflict, each with their own particular focus; chronicles, essays, testimonies … Narrative and poetry could not remain on the sidelines.’

Rosero has written about the war before, but with The Armies he has succeeded brilliantly in raising awareness of how randomly this violence destroys ordinary lives. As he says, ‘It is a conflict that has lasted 50 years, where the only winner up till now has been obstinacy on all sides, and, most of all, impunity.’