Colombian Army

The Colombian Army is presented through the overlap of counternarcotics policy, field operations, and proximity to paramilitary activity. Rather than offering an institutional portrait from within the command structure, the narrative shows the Army at work around Putumayo: as part of the setting for an international campaign against cocaine production, as the force represented by the Twenty-fourth Brigade, and as the military presence beside an AUC training area. Art Keller’s visit to a base, followed by a nighttime burst of gunfire, makes this institutional landscape tangible while leaving important questions about responsibility and control unresolved.

Role in the Plan Colombia Debate

Art travels to Colombia on an information-gathering mission for the Vertical Committee, whose task is to ensure that the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Central Intelligence Agency present a coordinated case to Congress. The agencies and the White House are seeking congressional support for Plan Colombia, a $1.7 billion aid package intended to destroy the cocaine trade at its source in the coca fields of the Putumayo district. The proposed package calls for more funding for defoliants, airplanes, and helicopters. The Army is situated within this national campaign, although the account does not specify which units would receive or operate each type of proposed assistance.

That policy context matters because it places military resources inside a broader effort to suppress the drug trade. The stated target is cultivation in the southern jungle, and the requested equipment is framed as part of the effort to reach it. Art’s mission, meanwhile, is not to lead an operation but to help align the agencies’ case before Congress. The Army therefore enters the narrative both as a force on the ground and as part of a policy debate in which intelligence, funding, and military capacity are being brought together.

Presence in Putumayo

Art and his escort travel by helicopter from Cartagena to Puerto Asís, on the Putumayo River near the Ecuadorian border. The river is a practical boundary and a route through a region with few roads: narrow canoes carry plantains and firewood, while the Army’s helicopter connects the town to the wider military and political mission. The contrast places state power amid difficult local geography without suggesting that the Army controls all movement or life in the area.

Art’s escort, Javier, is a young soldier of the Twenty-fourth Brigade. When Art approaches the river, Javier hurries down the bank to stop him from crossing. Art says he had not intended to cross, then asks why he cannot. The exchange establishes a small but concrete instance of military supervision at the riverbank. It also gives the brigade a presence beyond the later base scenes: its soldiers accompany the visiting American and regulate his movement in a sensitive border region.

The Base and Its Boundaries

After spending the night at a small Army base north of town, Art leaves a dinner gathering and walks around the installation. He recognizes its familiar military form: a clearing cut out of the bush, enclosed by barbed wire, with the surrounding perimeter cleared to provide a field of fire. The description connects the Colombian outpost to the kind of fire base Art remembers from Vietnam, linking two theaters in his experience without making them identical.

The layout contains a more troubling division. Most of the base belongs to the Twenty-fourth Brigade, but a gate separates the main Army area from a section that appears to be reserved for the AUC. Through the high barbed-wire fence, Art sees a training camp with a shooting range and straw figures hanging from trees for hand-to-hand practice. AUC trainees are practicing there at the time. The details establish spatial separation, but also immediate adjacency: the paramilitary training area is enclosed within or alongside the same larger base complex, divided from the brigade’s main section by a gate and fence. The narrative does not explain the arrangement, identify who authorized it, or state how the Army supervises the camp. That silence leaves the institutional relationship suggestive rather than fully defined.

Gunfire and Narrative Significance

During the night, machine-gun fire tears through the mosquito netting, breaks the window frame, and strikes the wall above Art’s bed. An alarm sounds as boots, rifles, and shouted orders mark a confused response. The officer in charge enters Art’s room with a pistol drawn and asks whether he is hurt. Art answers that he does not think so. The scene shows Army personnel responding immediately to danger at the base, but it does not identify the attackers, explain their target, or attribute the shooting to the AUC or any other group.

That uncertainty is central to the Army’s limited but consequential portrayal. The institution provides the armed perimeter, the escort, the base, and the officer who checks on Art; at the same time, the divided installation places a paramilitary training camp next to the brigade’s principal area. The juxtaposition exposes a setting in which military authority and irregular armed forces occupy neighboring spaces, without supplying a simple account of command or accountability. In the Putumayo scenes, the Colombian Army is therefore not merely background to Plan Colombia: its physical presence makes visible the complicated ground on which the campaign is meant to operate.