“ The pain I felt I can’t relate. The cuts, the blisters… Everything. And yet, at that moment, I suffered an even greater ordeal: the thought of my family ”.
By Cristian Gasca and Óscar Durán.
Sacrifice, sweat and will. That of accepting danger. This is what it means to work in one of the most relentless tasks that members of the National Police carry out on a daily basis: the eradication of illicit crops. Every operational decision taken in this regard as part of the country’s anti-drug policy is furiously debated in the offices of the high governmental spheres in charge. The Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Justice design and execute bilateral strategies. Their objective: “to put an end to high-impact criminal structures and the scourge of drug trafficking in Colombia,” they expressly state. The suppression of these plantations is, if not manual, by aerial spraying. The first method takes more lives. And sequels if not lives. But it takes.
He regularly occupied the top positions in the large student lists of the Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento School in the city of Bucaramanga, the institution where he studied and graduated as a high school graduate.
José Fernando Carvajal is the third of the four children of Luis José Carvajal Santos and Berta Lucía Rueda, parents of the Santander home where his boy, now twenty-nine years old, was born and raised. The nostalgia that comes with the decades always takes force in the experiences of the first of these, but José has only good memories to recall. He lived a wonderful childhood in the company of his family. He developed, from an early age, a strong affectionate bond with animals.
When he came of age, José saw military service as an ideal opportunity to continue his personal development. His preference was to study medicine, motivated by the innate taste for biology with which he had grown up. He loved animals as much as the science of life. However, his parents did not have the financial resources to pay for the professional training at a private university. High-quality training in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of pathologies that afflict the human body is one of the most expensive degrees offered by the educational system in Colombia. José then presented himself at the National Police facilities to provide the corresponding service.
Al cumplir la mayoría de edad, José vio en el servicio militar una oportunidad idónea para continuar su proyección personal. Su preferencia era estudiar medicina, motivado por el innato gusto por la biología con el que había crecido. Amor por los animales tanto como por la ciencia de la vida. Sin embargo, sus padres no contaban con los recursos económicos necesarios para costear el ciclo profesional en una universidad privada. La formación de calidad superior en materia de prevención, diagnóstico y tratamiento de las patologías que aquejan al cuerpo humano es uno de los títulos más costosos que ofrece el sistema educativo en Colombia. José se presentó entonces en las instalaciones de la Policía Nacional para prestar el servicio correspondiente.
A disturbing fear for the rurality and strangeness of the mountainous areas, which paradoxically give identity to a large part of the country’s region, was the main reason why he would have discarded going to the National Army. Reserves in the face of the contingencies of the territory: normality among its inhabitants. War is the martyrdom of which everything is already known, but never assimilated. Eternal Way of the Cross. José entered the Police Training School of Vélez, in Santander. “It is not a decision that I imagined since I was a child. If there is one thing I never really thought about, it was being a policeman or a soldier. I was wary of the bush and the whole conflict issue,” he recalls. Nevertheless, he accepted the alternative, given the possibility it offered him to get a job quickly, help his family and pay for his future studies. He was twenty years old when he began the process of preparing for the agency.
With the performance he maintained, he made his way in the precinct, forging a great reputation. Vestiges of his high school years. José and his classmates were informed that an outstanding formative performance would be of help so that, once their stay there was over, they would be assigned to the most beneficial locations available to start working; reason why he would carefully perform each and every one of his tasks within the institution with the objective of achieving such a longed-for destination. In accordance with the full conviction of his deep-rooted family values, he entrusted the same purpose to God. He was raised under the Catholic devotion and this is an important pillar of his life. It manifests itself in parallel to everything that happens to him. Positive or not. He is a man of faith.
The news of the place to which Joseph would be destined was subjugated to the dilation of a wait that clung to never cease. This is how one awaits the most decisive future. Once the decision was finally made public, José learned what his area of operations would be and, subsequently, the subdivision to which he had been assigned. The information plaque revealed the inscription DIRAN – ARECI. The first is the acronym for the Anti-Narcotics Directorate. It gave him a neutral reaction. The second abbreviation was, until then, unknown to him; but he deduced, glimpsing the letter A with which it began, that it could be an aviation faction. This was not the case. As soon as he could cautiously find out, he learned that the conjunction referred to the Area for the Eradication of Illicit Crops.
It seemed to be the result of bad luck. Of misfortune. He had been assigned a job that implied, with obligation, to transport and operate in those extravagant territories that so much repulsed him. The irony of the situation led him to wonder about the reason for such a design while his own conviction urged him to accept, with an almost stoic firmness, the imminent adventure and prepare quickly for the new stage it meant. He did so. He did not manage to avoid the momentary affection of the news, but he recovered.
It was now responsible for actively contributing to the elimination of the cultivation of all kinds of illegal substances that underpin the improbable enrichment of their growers. Actors in the conflict as varied as they are dangerous: FARC dissidents, the ELN, the Gulf Clan. These are just a few. The list goes on. A large majority of illegal armed groups turn to drug trafficking as their main source of income to support the cost of their operations and functioning. It is their economy.
José would then have to be trained in a modern preparatory cycle appropriate for the specialty: the Police Rural Tactical Operations (RTO) course. The conditioning modules also included precise instructions on how to exercise canine guidance in the process of dismantling crops. The impenetrable sense of smell of dogs is a valuable tool used by almost every type of security force, from those in charge of guarding an urban commercial establishment to those operating in the stormy daily life of the armed conflict.
So he joined the eradication missions after completing the instructional process focused on training. It was a pleasure for him. Of course it was.
Appreciation for animals is intensified when working with them and sharing the mutual periodicity of the trade. That is why, from then on, he would forge an indestructible emotional bond with his faithful companion: the Hulk. He was an eight-year-old golden Labrador at the time. He was given to José as a companion for eradication. He already felt, as he discovered since he was a child, an innate fascination for animal life, but “Hulkito”, as he soon called him, was special. They got along from the first moment as if they already knew each other. It is said that dogs have a sixth sense with which they identify, with prodigious accuracy, the aura of people. They became inseparable. Man and his historic best friend.
The routines involved in the operations were as complex as they were repetitive. The tactical team would enter by air into the areas with previously identified crop strips. Hectares to be covered. There they would descend from the helicopter and settle in the wandering jungle extensions. The coffee-growing territory has plenty of them. Subsequently, a joint operational base would be set up from which the surrounding area would be monitored. Due to the unique limitations of the practice, the guides would have to carry with them the essentials: their uniforms, hammocks and food, as well as that of their tusos.
Those stays became extremely difficult. Their requirements perfectly imitated the conditions of an Amazonian survival TV program in the purest tribal style. But the reality of José and his companions was far from being even close to such a scenario. They were in Norte de Santander, where they operated for some time before being transferred to Bajo Cauca, a warm sub-region of Antioquia whose settlements are located near the streams that rise from its mountains. Given the innate qualities of the main plant species cultivated in the illicit crops, these are lands where valuable plantations are most likely to flourish.
The police officers operating on site are informed of the implications of their work. They accept them with courage. It is difficult to enumerate the present adversities, not because it is not clear what they are, but because, with time, the numerical count that registers them gets lost. Wildlife, the endless expanses of forested landscape and, of course, the often unnoticed presence of insurgent groups emerge as the most important. Shadows of the crops. The latter are paradoxically protected and surrounded by other types of plantations. Closer to artificiality, far from resembling any object belonging to nature and, therefore, more lethal. So is everything they touch. Anti-personnel mines.
A large part of Jose’s preparation consisted in properly instructing himself to deal with this type of contingency once he found himself present, as he was now, in such a severely hostile environment. Hulk’s training consequently specialized in tracking those explosive devices that were always imperceptible to the eye as they used thick layers of earth to maintain stealth and fulfill their grim task once fate had the misfortune of stepping on them.
Physical harm is the effect of every weapon of war. But one fact: there are ways to harm, and some stand out for their inherent cruelty. To bet that one of the minds responsible for the installation of the devices would sacrifice part of their detonating capacity in exchange for generating in their victims an even greater and irreversible psychological damage is not madness. Alienation is to manufacture and install a bomb in the subsoil, not to evaluate the humanity of those who are willing to do it. For his faculty is impaired. In short, deranged.
“They were situations that caused a lot of fear, but there was something special about me: I felt protected by God. At that time in my life I had a very nice relationship with him and I felt that nothing would ever happen to me,” recalls José. His complete trust in the heavenly shelter was a sign of faith. An act of devotion that served him as a spiritual pillar on countless occasions to carry out his work with the greatest of success. To return safely every night. He and his beloved Hulk, he was convinced, had been covered under a divine mantle. He believed it unconditional status. He may not have been wrong, for it was so for a long time. Unfortunately, misfortune has that factor of spontaneity without which, in fact, it would not be so unfortunate, and a single instant is enough to make it present.
José was gradually assigned another companion to replace the Hulk: a little dog named Tara. His usual assistant had already entered the realms of seniority, which in the life of domestic creatures usually comes very quickly compared to the human life course. Hulkito was already ten years old. His capacity for service and his energy, increasingly depleted, had become a recurring cause for concern for the ARECI command’s coordinating leadership in which José was operating at the time. He was in the municipality of Tarazá, emerging there in the central district of Bajo Cauca with which he was already very familiar. The geographical reference locates the place a little less than two hundred kilometers from the southeast of Monteria.
It was November 10, 2018. José woke up that morning with an unsettling sense of helplessness. He describes it as a strange foreboding of extreme discomfort that almost seemed to announce a tragedy to him. A coming misfortune. He summoned up enough courage to overcome the vestiges of the foreboding, and went on. Together with Tara, they were tasked with tracking down an illicit crop identified in the area. During that Saturday, they tirelessly examined numerous surrounding extensions until, finally, they noticed what seemed to be their scrutinized find.
As Joseph descended from the crest of one of the characteristic hills that dot the region, he noticed that Tara, in the distance, was fully focused with her gaze fixed on the ground. Sniffing. She was walking slowly as she struggled to identify a strange scent that was causing her to fuss. Joseph witnessed the scene for only a couple of seconds. Before he could even generate the first thought or action about it, he was immediately hit by a loud explosion that emerged directly from the same spot on which he was partially static. From the last step he had just taken. His body rose violently as a result of the shock wave and, with still more brilliance, he plunged again in a fall of natural gravitational inertia. It was with his head that he received the impact. The shock of the moment resists description.
In an imperative impulse of the quest for survival, José tried to get up again. It was not possible. The moment when he became aware that he did not have the ability to stand up in a bipedal position, he remembers it with sublime perfection. Hinge point. When he looked down, he could see the consequent magnitude of the loss: his right leg was missing. More than half of it was missing. His left counterpart was in critical condition, a condition evident when, when he tried to lift it, it lost all semblance of unity, separating from itself the tibia and finding the fibula fractured.
At the same time, José also noticed that the ring finger of his left hand had a completely abnormal bend, accentuating a position that, in the light of a hasty and presumptuous diagnosis, would indicate a serious breakage.
“The pain I felt I can’t relate. The cuts, the blisters… Everything. And yet, at that moment, I suffered an even greater ordeal: the thought of my family. They were going to find out what was happening, and I had the impression that my life was slipping away. That’s why I asked my colleagues to tell my loved ones that I loved them very much. My mother, my sister… I remember looking up to heaven and asking God why He was allowing this to happen, if I was always trying to do things right, if I was serving Him”, José laments.
A rescue helicopter arrived at the scene about half an hour after the detonation. José was loaded onto the aircraft and subsequently flown to the city of Montería for prompt emergency treatment. The medical report, quickly estimated, was equally abysmal: José’s left leg had to be amputated. The anti-personnel mine he had set off was covered with corrosive substances mixed with the bark of the grass. There was an imminent risk of infection.
In the meantime, the medical staff performed strenuous interventions on José’s right limb in order to safeguard the integrity of his knee. After a few days, the tissue was severely compromised, acquiring an opaque purple hue. That leg also had to be severed in the area above the patella. The underlying conjunction from that point to the sole of his foot had already been pulverized by the explosion. It was one of the scenes that struck Joseph just moments after he had been hit by the fire: the realization that his limb had not only separated from his body, but that it was not resting, in its entirety, in an adjacent place. It had disintegrated. As a result of the required surgical action, José has a bilateral transfemoral amputation to date.
When you are in front of the sea and you have to cross it, call this man with faith, only he opens the sea. After four days of induced coma, Jose woke up listening, in tears, to the choral fragment of the Victory Hymn, an acclaimed Christian composition by the American singer-songwriter Danny Berrios. The nurse in charge of his ward arranged the piece of music for him. Once he was in, José was overcome with an overwhelming joy at what for him represented the gift of continuing to live. That’s what he thought at the time. That he was lucky. That he would see his family again. Hulkito. Without him he seemed to be helpless and adrift. His friend was a sort of protective angel in the company of whom he had never suffered any mishap. He worked for years as a canine guide; but, perhaps, in the end and paradoxically, it was the Hulk who guided him for so long. Infallible sense of smell.
Guardian like no other.
He kept raising his hands to the sky to the rhythm of the melody. Brother, do not be afraid, if Pharaoh comes behind. An unceasing stream was his cry. Balm for souls rooted in faith. Joseph communicated to God his willingness to forgive those responsible for what had happened, he begged Him to act in the same way and he also asked Him to give him the strength to continue his life in the shelter of His esteem. She wanted to get away from hatred. From anger. All those who experience war cry out for it. It is a collective will.
A massive reception awaited him in Bucaramanga. A hero’s welcome. Buses full, aisle of honor and caravans of cars and motorcycles. It was for José a sparkling relief for his still latent pain, but it was even more the present that gave meaning to all that mobilization: his family, with whom he never stopped counting on, accompanied him. Parents stripped of the burden, Luis José and Berta Lucía in a gracious temperance, offered their presence to the emotion of José’s reunion with the land where he was born. Where it all began.
After a few days, the Hulk’s tenure was also returned to him, who, as if the Castilian understood, seemed to have been informed of the facts. In detail. He greeted José with the eminence and spontaneity of a creature who finds no qualms in his passion for the one he considers his master. Hulkito would not have noticed any difference in the appearance of his companion, he could see him among a dozen twins and he would still know it was him. They are trained in mine detection, not loyalty. That one’s from the factory.
José then started physiotherapy sessions. His goal was to acquire continuous stability with the prostheses he was now wearing in order to walk as normally as possible. It took six months. He was taking part in an honorary parade when, bordering on disbelief, he found himself able to take firm steps. One after the other. Maybe, immersed in the plausible chaos that attacked him in the remoteness of that region located in the rurality of Tarazá, he believed that what he was living now was only the future of illusory fantasies. The truth is that it was not.
“Every morning, when you wake up, you see the reality, and that is that you are not as you were born: whole. Whole. So it has been difficult, but also bearable…”, says José.
It is truly commendable that he has overcome it with admirable will. No one would remain indifferent, of course; although it is equally true that one does not usually wait for preparation for a similar calamity to occur. José has dedicated himself to several promising projects that have meant great personal growth for him. He studied English at the National Police Language Center, Italian in the Mediterranean nation under the guidance of his godfather, General Silverio, with a stay in the country, and even managed to start his professional career at the Sergio Arboleda University as a beneficiary of a scholarship granted by the institution.
The great key to give continuity, day by day, to his unbeatable life project is the revalidation of internal dialogue, discipline and clarification of purposes. This is what he believes in deep conviction of his being. José strongly emphasizes the importance of self-convincing himself, in the light of each morning’s advent, to give way to the necessary tenacity to get up from the bedroom, put on his prosthesis and face the routine of his own world, without whose goals there could be no reason to give meaning to the daily periodic effort. But there is. His north exists.
Part of the most complex facet of Jose’s personal struggle hoarded the specter of his physical self-recognition. “I was very vain. I felt very good in my uniform, for example. Looking at myself in the mirror, I was comforted. Those kinds of thoughts make me wonder about what would have happened if what happened hadn’t happened, where I would be today or what I would look like. But I don’t focus on that idea because it’s a reality that there’s no way to change,” José reasons. As before and as now. Stoic vision.
It is her own experience that has led her to broaden her perspective on disability. “It is very difficult. It causes me too much sadness when I see people who have never been able to walk because they were born with that condition or people with different limitations who live in inconceivable conditions. I, thank God, am blessed to be able to do things on my own. I am aware that there are people who are permanently bedridden. One realizes that, how unfair life is,” he says.
His reflection on the matter and the energetic personality that characterizes him are the sources of conviction through which he assimilates the stigmatization he is exposed to face in the midst of social coexistence. José is no longer concerned about hearing consistent comments that imply interest in what happened or perhaps questions stripped of the filter of public behavior coming from children with overflowing curiosity attenuated by their age. If the situation even goes so far as to be comical, José takes it as such.
The opposite case involves a scenario that he strongly dislikes: that of excessive pity. “I’m not a pitiful person. I’m a person who is a go-getter. A competitive man in many areas of his life. As a result of everything that has happened, I tend to cause admiration in people. That’s what I’ve set out to continue generating,” José assures.
As a creditor of the good fortune with which the future has surrounded him to overcome his luck, José lives permanently with that positive predisposition that he never abandons. He faces the future. He has every reason to do so. His pillars are unshakable.
Just as he did not give up his strenuous faith when destiny proposed it, neither does he do so when his ever-renewed determination wanes. A planet could fall on him and he would still return to ratify his heavenly confidence, for in steadfastness he is matched by little or nothing. It is as strong as his bond with his family ….
With the Hulk, who at the same time is as vigorous as his name, as he carries with him the weight of being an invaluable emotional support for José and the great milestone of having always protected him like a hero. That is what they both are. At his side you will pass and there you will sing the Victory Hymn, Berrios concludes.
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