Pubdate: Sun, 11 Mar 2001
Source: Inquirer (PA)
Copyright: 2001 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc
Contact:  400 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19101
Website: http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/home/
Forum: http://interactive.phillynews.com/talk-show/
Author: Juan O. Tamayo, Knight Ridder News Service

COLOMBIAN MILITARY SPONSORS GAME SHOW

In A Public-Relations Campaign, Contestants Undergo Commando-Style Training

BOGOTA, Colombia - Contestants on the television game show Comandos wear 
camouflage, combat boots and helmets as they crawl through mud, swing on 
ropes, and run obstacle courses at an army training base.

"It's lots of dirty fun," said cohost Andrea Serna, whose own tight 
T-shirts and pants are definitely not army-issue. "Many people have a 
fantasy of being in the army - for three days, not three years."

But Comandos is more than a game show. Sponsored by a Colombian armed 
forces that admit to feeling isolated as they fight leftist guerrillas and 
drug traffickers, the program is also a bit of soft-core propaganda aimed 
at connecting the military with civilian society.

Bashed by human rights groups, chronically underfinanced, sidelined from 
peace talks with rebels, and shunned by the sons of the elite, the armed 
forces are pushing the message that they are a legitimate part of Colombian 
society.

"Many times we feel very alone," said Lt. Col. Carlos Ospina, deputy chief 
of the department that sponsors the show.

"An army like ours, engaged in a frontal war, must find some way of 
reaching the civilian community."

An Improved Image

The public image of the 146,000-member armed forces has improved in recent 
years, with a drop in human rights complaints, scattered battlefield 
victories, its increasing professionalism, and the arrival of $1.3 billion 
in U.S. aid, mostly for a military-run counter-drug offensive.

Recent Gallup polls have shown the security forces - the military and the 
120,000-member National Police - are the second-most respected institution 
in the nation behind the Catholic Church. But even so, wealthy families 
regularly bribe military draft officials to spare their sons the 18 months 
of mandatory service - though by law high school graduates cannot be 
assigned to combat units.

And the military's standing remains far behind that of the police, which 
rid itself of 11,000 corrupt or ineffective agents in the mid-1990s and now 
receives eight applications for every job opening.

That's where TV shows such as Comandos come in: Trying to break through the 
isolation, the Joint High Command's Department of Media and Psychological 
Operations now sponsors several programs to reach civilians, from a 
children's circus to four TV shows.

The U.S. aid package includes a $1 million contract with a U.S. firm, yet 
to be officially selected, that will advise the Colombian armed forces on 
their public relations and psychological operations.

Launched on Nov. 4, Comandos has already bumped the RCN network from fourth 
to second place in the Saturday 4:30 p.m. time slot.

Winners Get Vacations

Teams compete in obstacle courses at the Tolemaida National Training 
Center, the army's main training base 50 miles southwest of Bogota. Winners 
get one-week vacations in the colonial-era Caribbean port of Cartagena, 
show cohost Ivan Lalinde said, "and a lot of joshing that they are so good 
that they will be taken into the real army."

Lalinde said the program never shows weapons and once vetoed a proposal for 
a contest with paintball guns as "too militaristic."

"There's a disconnect between the military and civilians," said Richard 
Millett, a historian of Latin American militaries who is with the U.S. 
Marine Corps University in Virginia. "For the army this is an all-out war 
of survival. Civilians just want the war to end."

Unlike other armed forces in Latin America, Colombia's has traditionally 
kept out of politics, with the exception of Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla's 
military rule from 1953 to 1957. President Andres Pastrana has even kept 
the military from any direct role in his peace contacts with the leftist 
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC - unlike the 
negotiations that ended Central America's civil wars in the 1990s, where 
military officers sat at the bargaining table.

Most of the Colombian military's officers come from middle-class families 
and small cities, and their offspring attend special schools and tend to 
marry within the caste. Most of its soldiers come from poor rural families, 
much like the rebels they fight.

"My neighbors won't even say hello on the streets, if I am in uniform, 
because they don't want to be seen as friends of the military," said Maj. 
Hector Gomez, stationed in the northern city of Barrancabermeja.

In the 1960s and '70s, with small guerrilla groups operating in far-off 
corners of the country, which is seven times the size of Florida, the 
military was among the smallest and worst funded in Latin America.

But then came the '80s, when FARC and the National Liberation Army grew fat 
on a steady diet of "taxes" on the cocaine trade and kidnappings, and 
right-wing paramilitary units emerged to counter the guerrillas.

Suddenly, the military found itself outgunned by the rebels, shunned by 
civilians it could not protect, and accused by government prosecutors and 
human rights activists of allowing the paramilitary squads to kill at will.

"They feel alone, even persecuted," former Foreign Minister Rodrigo Pardo said.

While allegations of human rights abuses continue, the pressures have 
sometimes made the military as an institution appear almost timid and 
certainly insecure of its role in the conflict.

The military is pleased by the success of Comandos, but even one of the 
hosts expresses a bit of surprise at its popularity.

"To be honest, it's a bit strange because I've never heard any of the 
contestants even mention the real war," Lalinde said. "Maybe it's because 
people see the real war on the television news every night."
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