The jailing of the policemen who discovered that President Ivan Duque’s party plotted with narcos to rig the 2018 elections, ended all doubt Colombia has become a mafia state.
It’s not that I have anything against criminals– they are generally a lot more fun than politicians — I just don’t believe it is a good idea to put the state under mafia control.
Governments are bad enough if they are run by law-abiding sociopaths, also known as politicians. Allowing the mafia to run government institutionalizes organized crime.
This leads to absurd situations like honest cops being sent to prison or — to use a personal example — me paying taxes on Thursday, only to find out on Friday that my taxes are being used to spy on journalists.
You can imagine this is frustrating, if not intolerable. I may not be the most handsome guy in Medellin, but if I wanted to get screwed, surely I could get screwed for free.
Thomas Paine
Having paid taxes to the national government, the municipal government, the Chamber of fucking Commerce and the Superintendency for I don’t know what, I believe I am entitled to do my job.
Usually, when people ask me what I do I tell them “I fuck with politicians for money.” Others call it journalism. I suppose this year journalism in my case means fucking with the mafiosi.
Colombia’s mafia may be infamous for being tough guys, but that’s a gross generalization. The tough guys are the ones doing the dirty work, they despise the uppity cowards in politics as much as I do.
Now that I’ve paid my taxes I plan to get my money’s worth.