COLOMBIANS DEVISE LETHAL LEXICON TO DESCRIBE VIOLENCE

Robbery Victims Are Taken On A 'Millionaire Cruise'

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.

Amid such a potpourri of interests, it's best to be discreet.

The custom of calling a rose by another name dates to the days when the
Roman Catholic Church imposed severe taboos, Bonilla said. Colombians
developed a sort of parallel language of metaphors that poked fun at church
morality without confronting it directly, he said.

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, Bonilla 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.

From there, other expressions have blossomed, spread in part by newspapers
and radio looking for snappy expressions to draw attention to horror that
has become mundane. 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.''

In contrast, armed groups -- from the military to Marxist guerrillas and
right-wing private armies -- have been successful at getting the media to
change their terms, in turn influencing the expressions used in everyday
conversation.

``Combat is not an `ambush,' '' Bonilla said. But Colombian army news
releases call every confrontation initiated by the insurgents an
``ambush,'' and that term has become part of popular language.

``They call the guerrillas narco- bandits and terrorists, and the
newspapers print that,'' Bonilla said. ``There is a lot more fear of
calling the actions of the (right-wing) paramilitaries illegal than to say
that about the guerrillas.''

That may be because prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for self-
proclaimed paramilitary leader Carlos Castano in the slaying of several
journalists. ``It's a lot less dangerous to say that the guerrillas are
narco- guerrillas than to say that Carlos Castano is a terrorist,'' Bonilla
said.

The insurgents have also made their contributions to Colombia's double
language.

Rebels, for instance, collect money by issuing threats -- a practice
traditionally called extortion -- but refer to the proceeds as ``taxes.''
Colombians who refuse to pay are ``retained,'' otherwise known as being
kidnapped.

Tricks of language that were once invented for humor have become ways to
disguise reality, linguists said.

``We find a way to make a joke of everything,'' Bonilla said. ``I don't
know whether it's a national treasure or a way to turn our backs on reality.''