Introduction

‘It is a horror to go to the Putumayo. I should prefer to go to hell.’ One hundred years after this sentiment was cited in Hardenburg's book on the rubber boom, the Putumayo continues to generate horror. For the past twenty years or so left–wing guerrillas, right–wing paramilitaries, and the army have all played a part in consolidating the region's reputation as one of the poorest and most dangerous places in Colombia. The Putumayo has been a stronghold of the FARC since the early 1980s and more recently has seen the influx of paramilitaries, leading to frequent armed clashes and massacres of civilians. By the beginning of the twenty–first century the department was the biggest producer of coca in Colombia. In 1998 the then Colombian president, Andrés Pastrana, responded to the worsening situation in the Putumayo with the counter–narcotics strategy ‘Plan Colombia’ which, backed by the USA, included the aerial spraying of coca plants. Fumigation began in Putumayo Department in July 2000, damaging food crops, killing and injuring animals, and harming residents who reported respiratory and skin problems among other ailments.

As much of this book has explored, writing on and from the Putumayo tends to be inflected by themes of brutality and suffering. Works from La voragine to recent testimonial accounts present the Putumayo as an inhospitable and lawless border zone, and are often markedly macabre. In the past decade several popular novels have also responded to violence in the region and it is to two of these that this final chapter turns: Jay MacLarty's Bagman (2004) and Sandro Meneses Potosí's El último guerrero de’ Aruwa: misterio en las selvas del Putumayo (2006). Both novels, published respectively in the USA and Colombia, appeal to the motifs of popular horror in order to explore contemporary problems in the Putumayo, particularly the social and environmental fallout of the oil and cocaine industries. This chapter will examine this turn to horror and contend that, despite their sensationalist styles and subject matter, MacLarty's and Potosí's novels provide significant insights into the causes and results of violence in Colombia.