The final 147 days of Diana Turbay
History can be notorious for sending presidential agendas out of control. The kidnapping last week of 59-year-old Spanish reporter and columnist Salud Hernandez probably got President Juan Manuel Santos’ government wondering not just how to negotiate her release, but how much the hostage situation could damage the peace process with FARC and ELN rebel factions. The affair is an eerie reminder of the risks a high-profile kidnapping can pose to keeping Colombia’s peace efforts in tact. Consider the kidnapping of Diana Turbay Quintero.
The day was January 25th, 1991. In the outskirts of a small town called Copacabana, about a fifteen-minute drive from the city of Medellín. This is where drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s cartel had been holding hostage the 40-year-old journalist and daughter of ex-president Julio Cesar Turbay for around 147 days, recounts Colombia’s Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica. Then president Cesar Gaviria ordered a rescue attempt to free Turbay. When Escobar’s crew heard the army’s gunfire, they fled, taking the hostage with them. Cresting a hill, friendly fire seared her abdomen. She died on the way to being airlifted to a hospital in Medellín. Diana Turbay’s final 147 days reveal how thick Colombia’s quagmire of competing interests can get.
Turbay was taken hostage on August 30th, 1990. She was led to believe she would meet with ELN guerrilla leaders for an interview. But it was a farce. Escobar arranged it. The drug lord was being held under house arrest at his prison La Catedral and was under threat of being extradited to the US to face criminal charges. Gaviria’s government was in the final stretches of a peace process with another rebel group M-19. Part of the peace deal with M-19 was to build the framework of a new constitution through a National Constituent Assembly, in which M-19 would have a voice. But Escobar still had enormous power, and there was a point to be discussed in the National Constituent Assembly which he deeply cared about. The Assembly, scheduled by Gaviria to convene in December, 1990, was to decide whether or not extradition to the US should be legal. Escobar wanted to stop the government’s new constitution from extraditing him to the US. Taking Turbay’s high-profile and politically valuable life into his possession would be the perfect leverage.
It’s unclear just how much Escobar’s posse, known as The Extraditables, had to do with the outcome of the National Constituent Assembly’s decision to prohibit extradition, but in any case, the Medellín Cartel made an enormous effort to block extradition and eventually got its way. Escobar’s case was confined to Colombia’s justice system, where he was able to comfortably bribe and threaten the judges and politicians pursuing criminal charges brought against him. The National Constituent Assembly stayed intact, debated extradition, and produced a new constitution for Colombia in July, 1991, but at what costs? The killing of Diana Turbay was only part of a wave of political violence that involved assassinations of presidential hopefuls, and an attempt to blow up president Gaviria on Avianca flight 203. Gaviria did not board, but 110 innocent people lost their lives. The Turbay affair proves how advancing a peace process with one insurgent group can come under threat by dealings with another. The tensions between these multiple political agendas created a vortex of almost uncontrollable political violence in Colombia.
As Santos’ government pushes to seal a deal with FARC in Havana, Cuba, the ELN is still unincorporated into the peace process. The smaller guerrilla group agreed to an agenda in March, but Santos said he would not start formal talks with ELN until it release all hostages. On May 26th, the military confirmed that Salud Hernandez and two reporters working for radio station RCN had been taken hostage by the ELN. The next day, the ELN released Salud Hernandez. On May 28th, the group released the other two reporters. It’s unclear what conditions, if any, ELN won in return for handing over Salud Hernandez. What is clear is that FARC and the Colombian military have generally maintained a de facto ceasefire since July 2012. But there is no truce between the military and the ELN. That makes the balance of peace diplomacy and military strategy terribly complicated for Colombia’s government. The Salud Hernandez kidnapping affair raises a big question for Santos and it’s the same question facing Gaviria 25 years ago during the final days of Diana Turbay: how much will the dealings with one anti-government actor dizzy up the efforts at building peace with the another?
