SEMANA

Afterimage by Jorge Sanguino:

Semana is a widely circulated magazine in Colombia, much like Der Spiegel in Germany. The image is from 1985, and I kept the cover, though I’m not sure why. I was eight years old when I first saw it. The picture shows a building in flames, with the title reading 28 Hours of Terror. The building is the House of Justice, home to Colombia’s Supreme Court, burning to the ground. For me, this event is particularly significant for two reasons: first, because my father was a lawyer, and second, because the impact of what happened changed Colombia forever.

In Colombia, any major legal case had to be handled in the capital. All significant cases ended up in this court, the Supreme Court, located in the heart of Bogotá. In front of the building stood the parliament on one side, the cathedral on another, and the mayor’s office on the third. This is the main square of Bogotá, and by extension, the central plaza for the entire country.

During the siege of the building by the M-19 guerrilla group, the army responded by retaking the building with fire and bullets. An investigation into the events is still ongoing, though it may never be fully resolved. During the retaking of the palace, the military entered the building and forcibly removed many people—allegedly labeling them as communists—who later disappeared. The families of the employees who were inside that day still have not found their loved ones. The full story remains untold.

Alfonso Reyes Echandía, a magistrate of the Supreme Court and a friend of my father, addressed the president, asking the military and the government to cease fire in order to start a dialogue. The president never responded to this call. Instead, the military indiscriminately bombed the palace, with people trapped inside.

I remember this as one of the first times I saw my father cry. His generation was very socially engaged when they studied, fighting for social justice. It must have been hard for him to lose so many friends with a similar mindset. In Colombia, it’s difficult to change the country; it’s tough even for politicians. But at least there’s the judicial system, the third power, with the Supreme Court, where you can propose decisions to protect the people and the environment. Around the time this image was taken, Colombia was one of the first countries to propose a complex system for environmental protection. But that generation was lost in the terror, and I think that’s why I kept this magazine.

We may never know all the details of what happened, as I’ve described in the image, but it remains a powerful and haunting portrayal of terror.

Growing up in a country marked by so much violence—a violence often told through stories, rather than images, because there were so few—it’s been hard for those who work with memory and reconciliation. 1985 was the moment when that generation lost confidence that they could rebuild the country. After that, everything in Colombia just got worse.

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series about that one image you see when you close your eyes, the one still lingering in your mind. We invite artists and writers to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column has been a part of Objektiv since our very first issue in 2010.