COLOMBIA'S DRUG WAR: SLANG OFFERS A WAY TO COPE WITH CRIME

Bogota, Colombia - Don't be envious if a Colombian tells you he's been on a
"millionaire cruise."

Nor should anyone mistake the "miracle of the fish" for a religious
experience.

Both phrases describe events that Colombians wake every day fearing, a
reality that they can neither fully accept nor completely ignore in a
country that has both Latin America's highest kidnapping rate and its
longest-running guerrilla war.

Instead, they talk about their deepest dreads in an informal code that is
turning Colombian Spanish --- once considered the purest form of Castilian
spoken in South America --- into a language of terror.

"Colombian reality is so bizarre that it is starting to be reflected in the
language," linguist William Salazar said. "People develop codes --- that
includes new language necessary to express what they are living through."

So, similar to the pattern in other cultures marred by violence, Colombians
have invented expressions such as "millionaire cruise" ("paseo millonario")
for a taxi ride that turns into a kidnapping. The victim cruises the streets
with armed abductors who force him to use ATMs to empty his bank accounts
and withdraw cash advances that charge his credit cards to the limit. It
ends up being an expensive drive.

Guerrillas set their nets --- roadblocks --- across highways and wait for
the fish --- kidnapping victims --- to multiply. Expressions such as
"miracle of the fish" ("pescado milagroso") and dozens more are becoming
Colombian colloquialisms.

"It is language that represses values, that hides what it names," said Jorge
Bonilla, a communications professor at the respected Javeriana University
here. "It diffuses the violence of war by using euphemisms to talk about
crude realities."

For Colombians, it's a kind of coping mechanism. When they discuss whether
"road conditions" will prevent them from going to the country for the
weekend, for example, they're not wondering about rockslides or highway
repairs. They're worried whether their route will coincide with the
guerrillas' newest fishing hole.

"It has to do with our capacity as Colombians to not confront what is
destroying us," Bonilla said. "We use language to keep from drowning in the
daily horror. It's like taking an aspirin."

Just as aspirin numbs pain, linguists are concerned that some euphemisms are
contributing to the numbing of this violence-weary nation. Salazar has
recorded 26 different expressions that mean "to murder," ranging from
"fumigate" to "organize" to "clean." The victim, who is a "doll" or "cold
one," has "marked a skull" or "failed a grade."

Part of the reason for using such metaphors is to prevent someone who might
overhear from being absolutely sure that he has listened to a confession of
a crime, Salazar said. Colombia's urban slums are crowded mixtures of
Marxist guerrilla militias, assassins contracted to right-wing private
armies, the minions of drug traffickers and common criminals, as well as
law-abiding citizens.

Colloquial expressions began to permeate the language when, in the middle of
the 20th century, Colombia was immersed in a civil war so all-encompassing
that it became known as simply "The Violence."

"People will tell you, 'The Violence killed my father' or 'The Violence
drove me from my farm,' " Bonilla said. And everyone understands, without
the need of saying so directly, that the father was probably hacked to death
in front of his family and that the person's crops were burned and he was
brutally threatened. About that time, he said, people began to refer to paid
assassins as "birds" because they hung around street corners waiting for
their victims, the way vultures wait for carrion. Not even the Catholic
church is powerful enough to stop the widespread use of an expression it
deems offensive.

"The priests complained when the media started to use the term 'miracle of
the fish,' " linguist Jorge Pardo said. "They tried to get them to say
'diabolic fishing,' but nobody understood that. They could not change it."

DEADLY DOUBLESPEAK
Colombians have developed euphemisms to talk about the terror that permeates
their lives:

* Spanish: Pescado milagroso
English: Miracle of the fish
Meaning: Guerrillas set roadblock and kidnap drivers

* Spanish: Paseo millonario
English: Millionaire cruise
Meaning: Taxi passenger is kidnapped and forced to empty his bank accounts
at ATMs

* Spanish: Pajaro
English: Bird
Meaning: Assassin

* Spanish: Muneco
English: Doll
Meaning: Dead body, usually murder victim