A2 · Elementary
7 min
foodconflictagriculturelatin america
The Road and the Plate: Colombia, Food, and Violence
La Carretera y el Plato: Colombia, la Comida y la Violencia
A bomb explodes on the Pan-American Highway in Colombia's Cauca Department, killing fourteen people. Fletcher and Octavio dig into food, agriculture, and how violence reaches the dinner table.
Una bomba explota en la Carretera Panamericana en el departamento del Cauca, Colombia, y mata a catorce personas. Fletcher y Octavio hablan de la comida, la agricultura y cómo la violencia llega a la mesa.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| campesino | peasant farmer, person from the countryside | El campesino trabaja en el campo todos los días. |
| carretera | highway, road | La carretera conecta muchas ciudades importantes. |
| el campo | the countryside, the fields | Hay mucha comida en el campo. |
| los precios suben | prices go up | Cuando no hay comida, los precios suben mucho. |
| comercio | trade, commerce | La carretera es importante para el comercio de comida. |
Fourteen people killed on a highway in Colombia this week.
A bombing.
And the first thing I thought about, genuinely, was not the politics, not the armed groups.
I thought about the trucks.
Sí.
Yes.
La carretera es muy importante en Colombia.
The highway is very important in Colombia.
Right, and that's exactly the point I want to get into.
Because the Pan-American Highway through Cauca isn't just a road.
It's the spine of food distribution for half the country.
Cauca tiene mucha comida.
Cauca has a lot of food.
Café, caña de azúcar, cacao.
Coffee, sugarcane, cacao.
Coffee, sugarcane, cacao.
That's not a list of minor crops.
That's basically the economic heartbeat of southwestern Colombia.
Los camiones llevan la comida al norte.
The trucks carry the food north.
A Cali, a Bogotá.
To Cali, to Bogotá.
And when that road closes, even for a day, those cities feel it.
Prices go up at the market before the smoke has cleared from the attack.
I've seen this pattern before, covering conflicts, the infrastructure hit is the slow-motion weapon.
Es verdad.
That's true.
La comida no llega.
The food doesn't arrive.
La gente tiene problemas.
People have problems.
Who claimed this attack?
Because Cauca has been contested territory for decades.
FARC dissidents, ELN.
The groups change names, the violence doesn't.
Hay grupos armados en Cauca.
There are armed groups in Cauca.
Siempre hay problemas allí.
There are always problems there.
Always.
And I think it's worth stepping back and asking why.
Because Cauca is not an accident.
It's fertile ground, literally and strategically.
Whoever controls those roads controls the money.
Sí.
Yes.
Los grupos controlan los caminos.
The groups control the roads.
Es un problema grande.
It's a big problem.
Let me ask you something, Octavio.
When you were in Buenos Aires, did you follow Colombian food culture at all?
Because Colombia doesn't get the culinary attention it deserves, not even close.
Colombia tiene una comida muy buena.
Colombia has very good food.
La bandeja paisa es famosa.
The bandeja paisa is famous.
The bandeja paisa.
For listeners who haven't had it, picture a plate the size of a small country.
Beans, rice, ground beef, chicharrón, a fried egg, an arepa, sweet plantain.
It's a meal that tells you exactly who these people are.
Es una comida de trabajo.
It's a working person's meal.
Para personas que trabajan mucho.
For people who work a lot.
Exactly.
And those workers, the farmers in Cauca, the drivers on that highway, they're the ones who die in these bombings.
Not the commanders sitting in some jungle camp.
Las personas normales tienen miedo.
Normal people are afraid.
Es su trabajo, su vida.
It's their work, their life.
I want to talk about the geography for a second.
The Pan-American Highway, for listeners who don't know, runs from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina.
One continuous road through eighteen countries.
And the stretch through Cauca is one of the most contested segments on the whole thing.
La carretera conecta muchos países.
The highway connects many countries.
Es muy importante para el comercio.
It's very important for trade.
Trade, yes.
And specifically food trade.
Do you know how much of Colombia's domestic food supply moves by road?
We're talking well above ninety percent.
The rail system barely exists.
No hay trenes en Colombia.
There are no trains in Colombia.
Solo hay carreteras.
There are only roads.
Which makes every bomb on every road a food security event, not just a security event.
That's the piece that I think gets lost in the coverage.
Cuando no hay carretera, los precios suben.
When there's no road, prices go up.
La gente no come bien.
People don't eat well.
I was in Medellín in 2003, covering something else entirely, and there was a week where a stretch of the main road south was closed after an attack.
The price of tomatoes in the central market doubled in four days.
Doubled.
Over tomatoes.
Cuatro días.
Four days.
El tomate es muy importante en la cocina colombiana.
The tomato is very important in Colombian cooking.
In any Latin American cooking.
The tomato travels that highway.
The onion travels that highway.
The plantain, the yuca, the potato.
It all moves through these corridors that armed groups have been targeting for fifty years.
Colombia tiene muchos productos del campo.
Colombia has many products from the countryside.
Es un país muy rico.
It's a very rich country.
Rich in the wrong way, sometimes.
Rich in resources that other people want to control.
That's been the story of Cauca specifically since, what, the colonial period?
It's always been a place where the powerful fight over what the land produces.
La tierra es el problema.
The land is the problem.
Siempre hay conflictos sobre la tierra.
There are always conflicts over the land.
Land reform.
Or the failure of it.
Colombia had one of the most unequal land distributions in the world going into the twentieth century, and that inequality fed directly into the guerrilla movements.
The FARC didn't emerge from nothing.
Las FARC son un problema muy viejo.
The FARC are a very old problem.
Muchos años de conflicto.
Many years of conflict.
Founded in 1964.
So sixty-plus years of a movement that started, at least in its rhetoric, as a peasant army fighting over land.
And the land question was always a food question underneath it.
Los campesinos quieren tierra para comer.
The peasants want land to eat.
Para vivir.
To live.
To live.
And the peace deal in 2016 was supposed to change that, at least partly.
Land redistribution was central to the agreement.
But the dissidents who are still operating in Cauca, they rejected the deal, and the land reform barely happened.
La paz no es fácil.
Peace is not easy.
Hay muchos grupos.
There are many groups.
Hay mucha violencia.
There is a lot of violence.
Not easy at all.
And the civilians on that highway this week, the fourteen who didn't make it home, they're carrying the weight of all of that history.
Every failed negotiation, every broken promise, every year the land question went unanswered.
Es muy triste.
It's very sad.
Las personas solo quieren vivir en paz.
People just want to live in peace.
They do.
And eat.
Which should not be a political act but has been in Colombia for generations.
I keep thinking about that highway as a metaphor.
It was supposed to connect the whole Americas.
One road from the Arctic to Patagonia.
And in Cauca it just, [sigh] it keeps breaking.
Fletcher, antes dices 'campesino'.
Fletcher, you said 'campesino' earlier.
¿Sabes qué es campesino?
Do you know what campesino means?
Peasant farmer, right?
Someone who works the land.
Though I've always felt like the English translation loses something.
'Peasant' sounds almost like an insult in English.
'Campesino' doesn't carry that weight, does it?
No, campesino es una palabra normal.
No, campesino is a normal word.
Es una persona del campo.
It's a person from the countryside.
Del campo, ¿entiendes?
From the campo, do you understand?
Campo.
Field.
Country.
The root is right there in the word.
Campesino literally contains the land they work.
I like that.
English doesn't do that with 'farmer' or 'peasant.' The word itself doesn't tell you where they belong.
Sí.
Yes.
El campo es la tierra.
El campo is the land.
Un campesino vive en el campo.
A campesino lives in the countryside.
Es su lugar.
It is his place.
His place.
And the whole conflict in Cauca, when you strip everything back, is about who gets to say that.
Who the campo belongs to.
Those fourteen people this week died on a road through somebody's campo.
That's where we'll leave it today.
Gracias, Octavio.
Gracias, Fletcher.
Thank you, Fletcher.
Y aprende más español, por favor.
And learn more Spanish, please.