¡Feliz cumpleaños a ...Jaime Garzón (1960-August 13, 1999)!
A comedian, journalist, and peace activist from Colombia who in 2010 was voted the 2nd most admired person in the country (after President Álvaro Uribe and before Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez - see
this 2019 video made by
El Tiempo), Garzón was killed by right-wing paramilitary hitmen with suspected support from members of the Colombian military and security services. On the 20th anniversary of his death, he was the #1 trending Twitter topic in Colombia, with hashtags such as #SiGarzónViviera (If Garzón Were Alive), #MatamosALosBuenos (We Kill the Good Ones), #20AñosEsperandoJusticia (Twenty Years Waiting For Justice). There are many murals dedicated to his memory throughout Colombia, especially in Bogotá. Garzón was the third of four children born to a family in Bogotá. His father died when he was 7 years old. At a catholic school he attended, he was known as being irreverent and disrespectful to authorities. When he was 18, he briefly joined the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - a guerilla group that was pro-Cuban revolution), though he quickly left after deciding that violence was not the way to change society. He returned home and began studying law and political science at La Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (he never finished his studies for a degree).
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| Mural dedicated to Garzón. Photo from Wikipedia. |
From 1990 to 1994, during the presidency of César Gaviria, Garzón worked at the Casa de Nariño (the presidential house in Colombia) as coordinator of translations of the new constitution of 1991 into indigenous languages. During that time he was also writing columns and drawing caricatures for the newspaper
El Espectador and working on the program Zoociedad TV, which specialized in social parody and political satire. After Zoociedad, he starred in
Quac! El Noticiero (1995-1997), and
Lechuza y CM& (1997-1999). In 1998, after 32 people were kidnapped by FARC, including 5 foreigners, Garzón was instrumental in getting some of the hostages released. According to many sources, this caused a General in the Colombian army to publicly demand an investigation into Garzón's participation. Garzón attempted to get in touch with him to no avail, finally writing him a telegram:
General no busque enemigos entre los colombianos que arriesgamos la vida a diario por construir una patria digna, grande y en paz, como la que quiero yo y por la que lucha usted (General, don't look for enemies among us Colombians that risk our lives daily in order to build a more dignified, great, and peaceful country, like that that I want and that for which you fight). One year later, on his way to work, Garzón was killed after a year of hearing about various threats on his life due to his human rights activism. Since his death, his younger sister has written two books in his memory:
Jaime Garzón: mi hermano del alma and
Lea pa que hablemos N°1. For more, see
this 2019 video homage to his life (in Spanish) or read
this 2016 article from The Bogotá Post (in English).
For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.
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