Born Unequal in Colombia
Weekend Edition May 18-20, 2012
Héctor Abad's "Oblivion"
Born Unequal in Colombia
by CHARLES R. LARSON
Tolstoy’s famous observation—“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”—takes on new meaning in Héctor Abad’s Oblivion, the unsettling account of his father’s murder by Colombian paramilitaries in 1987. As readers, we know from the beginning of this wrenching story that Abad’s father is going to be killed, and yet there is so much beauty in this book, so much family love—particularly between Abad and his father—that the death foretold can easily be forgotten for much of the memoir. And the family (the parents and their six children) is presented so unforgettably that, again, one understands that happy families are not all alike, even if the unhappiness, when it arrives, is obviously unique.
The author’s father, Héctor Abad Gómez, was a celebrated professor of medicine in Medellín who spent his weekends in the city, working among the poor, which made him a threat not only to many of his professional colleagues but to conservative priests and the city’s politicians who felt that he was stepping into their territory. Gómez called himself a Christian, though he attended no religious services, a Marxist because of the abuses of capitalism, and a liberal in politics. A defender of human rights, he had compassion for suffering, poverty, oppression, and injustice, and because he could not abide silence, he had an impressive career as a writer—often exposing the crimes of those in power.
Early in his career when he found himself in difficult situations, Gómez took positions overseas for international health organizations. But as he grew older, he refused to seek the safety of exile and, dangerously, wrote op-ed pieces for Medellín newspapers, naming those who abused power: “He did not…denounce only the government and close his eyes to the atrocities of the guerrilla war. In his articles and statements it is clear he detested the guerrillas’ kidnappings and indiscriminate attacks, and he strongly, even despairingly, denounced them too. But he considered it more serious that the very State that claimed to respect the rule of law was engaged in fighting a dirty war—either directly or vicariously, by hiring thugs (paramilitaries and death squads) to fight on its behalf.”
During the dirty war, intellectuals (especially academics), students, and priests were brutally murdered or disappeared—something that went on for years. Many of Gómez’s closest friends and colleagues were murdered, others fled into exile; fear and death threats were rampant, yet Abad’s father did not waver in his beliefs, especially his sympathies for the poor and the uneducated. It is one of the supreme ironies of Oblivion that the afternoon of the day that Abad’s father was killed, he had written his last article (“Where Does the Violence Come From?”), intended for publication the following day.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/18/born-unequal-in-colombia/
