LETICIA JOURNAL

DANCING ACROSS AN IMAGINARY LINE IN THE JUNGLE

LETICIA, Colombia  No place in Colombia is farther from Bogota, and thus
further from the thoughts of bureaucrats in the capital, than this
sweltering Amazon jungle town. Brazil is just down the street, the border
marked only by a miniature obelisk in front of a liquor store, and Peru is a
mere five-minute motorboat ride across the Amazon.

Of course, the residents of neighboring Tabatinga, Brazil, and Santa Rosa,
Peru, have also been known to complain about being ignored by their national
governments. Yet life in this remote region known as the Three Frontiers has
traditionally offered certain advantages, especially when compared with the
political turmoil that has engulfed the rest of Colombia and Peru.

"This may be the only peaceful place remaining in Colombia," said John
Benjumea Moreno, the mayor of Leticia. "We're an island practically
surrounded by jungle here, and nobody who is involved in the fighting, not
the guerrillas and not the paramilitaries, wants to get caught in that kind
of a bottleneck."

The approximately 75,000 residents of the Three Frontiers area have learned
to compensate for the absence of the state by helping each other as best
they can.

"In reality this is a single community, divided only by an imaginary line,"
said Altenor Lopes Magalhaes, a furniture maker and Tabatinga town
councilman who is chairman of the border commission there.

Many people in the region, in fact, have obtained identity cards from all
three countries, whether they are legally entitled to them or not. That
allows them to move across the borders unimpeded and, with schools scarce
and medical care precarious, use whichever country's public services are
available when needed.

"There are people who vote for and elect officials in all three countries,"
Mr. Benjumea said matter-of-factly. "Heck, I even know of people who have
run for public office in one country after having run and lost in another."

Ties between Leticia and Tabatinga are particularly close. Many people
communicate in "portunol," a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish, and most,
including the mayors of both towns, have relatives on the other side of the
ill-defined frontier. Mr. Magalhaes estimates that 80 percent of the
families in Tabatinga can claim kin in Leticia.

"There are men who have one wife on this side of the border and another over
on the other side," said Hugo Castro, a radio announcer here. "You hear them
talking about `my Colombian wife' and `my Brazilian wife,' or `my Brazilian
kids' and `my Colombian kids.' "

As for the local governments, their relationship is perhaps best described
as symbiotic. Official talks are under way to build a binational sewage and
garbage disposal system, but over the years the authorities have informally
devised any number of mechanisms to deal with problems arising from the lack
of financial support from ministries back in their respective capitals.

"We have a fire department and they don't, so we send our trucks over to
help them when they need it," explained Carlos Romero, secretary of the
municipal government here. "They, in turn, provide our population with the
containers of gas that are employed for cooking and other home uses."

Such cooperation is more essential than ever now that the outside world is
finally arriving, and in a form not welcomed by residents or the local
police. The isolation of the Three Frontiers area and a weak government
presence has made the region increasingly attractive as a route for
trafficking in drugs and the precursor chemicals needed to manufacture them.

Leticia is as isolated from Bogota as Tabatinga is from Brasilia, but out of
mutual difficulty grows camaraderie," said Mauro Sposito, a Brazilian
federal police official in Tabatinga. "When I'm running short on gasoline, I
know that I can call my colleagues on the other side to borrow some, and
vice versa. That's called solidarity."

The relationship between the Colombian and Brazilian communities and Peru is
more complicated. Though the Brazilian authorities in particular blame an
influx of some 6,000 Peruvian immigrants in recent years for most of the
crime and strain on public services in Tabatinga, the immigrants themselves
say they are merely poor people trying to survive.

"Life here is more tranquil, and you can actually earn a living," said
Patricia Reategui Gonzalez, 33, a Peruvian who runs a small shop at the boat
landing in Tabatinga and recently gave birth to a child who has Brazilian
nationality. "Peru's politics are completely messed up, and everywhere you
go looking for a job there they tell you, `We're not hiring.' "

Brazil's appeal to its neighbors may grow now that the government is
reactivating an old project called the Northern Channel. Put off for many
years because of a budget squeeze, the plan calls for investment in schools,
hospitals, roads, docks, power stations and airstrips in remote communities
along the border with Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French
Guiana.

But here on the Colombian side of the border, the national government's
resources are increasingly being diverted to fighting the war against
left-wing guerrillas and trying with public works projects to win the
support of the population in areas where the rebels are active.

That leaves very little, Mr. Benjumea complained, for his community's needs,
precisely at a time when people are coming here from other parts of Colombia
to escape the conflict.

"What worries me is that the national government is withdrawing and cutting
back on investment in social areas and public investment on a daily basis,"
he said. "Housing, sewerage, education and health are all suffering budget
cuts, so we need to be more self-sufficient than the country itself."

Continued adversity, Mr. Benjumea and his Brazilian counterparts predicted,
is bound to lead to further integration and weakening of national identity
here.

Townspeople, though, suspect that some cultural differences between the
communities are likely to remain.

"We like cumbia and vallenato, while they prefer samba and pagode," said Mr.
Castro, the radio announcer, referring to distinctive musical styles that
are Colombian and Brazilian. "But the important thing is that we all like to
dance and that we have learned to dance with each other."