When I was in my early Twenties I had a little more of a radical and impulsive streak than I do now. During that time there was a lot of turmoil going on in the country of Colombia between the Colombian Government and the F.A.R.C (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In the struggle over the control and direction of Colombia between those two groups the indigenous population was suffering through violence, discrimination, and massive land destruction and forced seizure in the name of progress. I watched as the helpless indigenous, caught in the middle, were being rounded up, kidnapped and killed indiscriminately.
One day I decided that I couldn’t just sit by and let that happen. I took the next plane flight headed for Bogota. After I’d arrived I took the El Concho bus line until the road disappeared into the jungle. Then when the bus could go no further I rode a donkey deeper into the Andes Mountain range. When the donkey died of exhaustion I captured six feral roosters, lashed them together with an on-the-spot hand carved yoke with six holes for their heads , and like a dog sled team mushed them higher and higher up the mountain face. Finally, I reached my goal; a small village of indigenous pig farmers. These were not your ordinary pig farmers, though, they were known as Jinetes de Cerdos de la Revolución (J.C.R).
You may have never heard of the J.C.R because they were considered a minor rebel group in the much larger battle between the Colombian Government and the F.A.R.C, but the destruction they did cause was legendary. The members of the J.C.R were expert pig riders on par with the Bedouin horse riders of the Arabian Peninsula. They had one simple yet extremely effective tactic. As the convoys of soldiers entered their territory to try and destroy their village they would charge down the mountainside on their pigs of war to attack.
Now, rather than attacking with hand-held weapons, they chose a different method. When word came that a convoy was coming they would begin feeding their pigs C4 plastic explosives. Being pigs, they could care less what they were eating and would gorge themselves. I, myself, saw one pig eat 40 pounds of C4 in one sitting. The rebels would then insert a long metal electrode into the pig’s rectum that had wires coming out of it leading to the detonator battery box which the rider held. Now you’re probably asking “Well Rusty, why do they have to ride these boar bombs? Can’t they just send them on their own to destroy the target?”, to which I would reply “You obviously have never tried to direct an explosive loaded, 300 pound pig at full tilt down a mountain into a convoy of trucks filled with tyrannical government soldiers before?” Let me tell you….it’s not easy. Pig bombs require guidance not unlike the Japanese manned suicide torpedoes (Kaiten) of WWII that required a person manually steering them into the target. The rebels, over time, adopted a martyrdom philosophy.
After several months of living amongst the J.C.R, our day finally came. One of their scouts came running towards the village with reports of a massive convoy heading up the steep mountain pass. The rebels immediately went into action stuffing their pigs to the brim, strapping on the saddles, putting on war paint and inserting electrodes into rectums. With the amount of time I had spent amongst the rebels I was ready to fight and die, if necessary, for their cause. I felt ALIVE!! The problem with me fighting, however, was that everyone already had their own trained pig that responded to their commands, and I did not. I pleaded with them to let me help. The village elders finally capitulated and gave me a pig. My pig, which was the only one available, happened to be a scrawny 80 pound pig that was cross eyed, but with an impending battle looming I wasn’t going to be picky. My sickly pig would only eat about a half pound of C4 before it was stuffed but at least I could take out a soldier or two to help the revolution. We stormed out of the village and down the mountain side. In minutes we were in view of the unsuspecting convoy and careening toward martyrdom. VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!!
I was far in the back of the stampeding bacon bomb brigade as my pig was considerably slower and due its crossed eyes was hitting every other tree on the way down. Suddenly I saw, at the front, the lead pig of the cavalry bursting forth from the jungle. It sprung into the roadway crashing right through the front windshield of the lead convoy truck exploding on impact. The detonation rocked the entire mountain side as 50 pounds of C4 was ignited inside the pig’s stomach by the last reflex grip of the riders hand on the trigger. An entire squad of soldiers was reduced to hemoglobin pâté in the blink of an eye.
The convoy was stopped in its tracks; a sitting duck as bomb pig after bomb pig came bursting from the flora. The explosives were in such rapid succession and the impacts so violent that by the time I burst out onto the roadway all that was left was the still raining down shrapnel of vehicle and body parts. I looked around for anyway to put my boar bomb to use but nothing was left of the convoy or the J.C.R. The once khaki colored dirt road was beet red and jet black from the combination of bodily and vehicular fluids. Everything was on fire and if it wasn’t already dead it was just moments from it. I realized that I had nothing more to accomplish in Colombia. With my journey abruptly at an end, I giddy-upped my cross eyed companion, bid farewell to my brothers-in-arms, and moseyed my way back towards Bogota. Viva la Revolución.
No comments:
Post a Comment