Santandercito's senseless slaughter — senseless to me, anyway

@wwaycorrigan

[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]

I've long held the opinion that we'd have far more vegetarians in the world if we all had to kill our own animals.

Many of us like meat, but how many of us would be willing or able to slaughter the actual animal providing such fare? I'm pretty sure I'd struggle in any case. And I don't think I'm on my own in this.

Bloodletting: The site where Jairo breathed his last after receiving a fatal stab wound to the heart.

A load of bull

Even though I grew up and laboured on what effectively is a beef cattle farm, our family enterprise is but just the first step in the chain: the cows my father keeps have calves each year that, when they are around a year old, he sells to other farmers who then feed them to 'finish' them, i.e. once sufficiently meaty, have them sent to a factory to be killed for human consumption.

Thus, I was removed from the slaughter. There was no life-ending blood on my hands, not directly anyway.

The closest I came to delivering the fatal blow to one of our herd was when, on an extended visit to Ireland from Colombia, I helped my father take a bull calf to the local factory.

This young bull had contracted a disease that prevented my father from selling him in the normal way — some EU directive was at play, a bovine infection that Europe wanted to eradicate; hence the animal couldn't be sold as livestock to another farm. The young bull's meat, though, was considered fine for human consumption.

So he was locked away from the rest of the herd and fattened up until he was deemed ready for butchering. A few days after his date with destiny, his body was brought back to the family home in conveniently packaged portions and placed in a deep-freeze, to be eaten as our family saw fit.

'The savage nature of it is particularly disturbing. To stab somebody in the heart requires one to be face to face with the target. It also requires physical force to plunge the knife into the body of the victim; one really has to mean it.'

My normally omnivorous mother, who was effectively chief caterer to this bull during his isolation period, couldn't bring herself to eat his meat. The sight of it made her feel sick.

I had less of a connection with him, so I didn't feel as bad eating his flesh. Had I been charged with ending his life, though, there's a good chance he would have received a last-minute pardon. In fact, I felt rather uneasy just forcing him off the cattle trailer at the factory. The little bull, clearly smelling blood, did his best not to follow the path to his demise.

Bloodletting

I am, however, quite a queasy sort. The only time I was allowed to donate blood here in Colombia — see 'Your Irish blood's not wanted here' for more on why I now can't give blood — I became faint on seeing it flow through the tubes and into the adjacent bag. Indeed, the mere thought of it now is making me a little nauseous.

Others seem less bothered by blood. Just as well, or we'd have no one willing to work in the life-saving health sector. Less critically, and perhaps less benignly, we'd also have little to no meat to enjoy.

Unquestionably malignantly, on the other hand, there are those who have no problem with bloodletting for purely nefarious purposes; nothing revelatory in that, of course.

Mercifully, though, most of us will not have our lives brutally cut short at the hands of a crazed killer. Nor do many witness such an act.

Now while Colombia is somewhat more violent than my native Ireland, I like to reassure myself that, for the most part, the killings happen at a safe distance from me. And at that, these days, those who do the killings tend to focus their wrath on fellow Colombians; a case of taking the law into one's own hands in a country where the justice system frequently fails its less powerful citizens.

I still, more or less, believe that as a foreigner I'm less likely to be deliberately killed in Colombia. I can no longer say the same for killings occurring at a safe distance from me.

Brutal beast

At around five o'clock in the evening on Sunday 06 September 2026, the senseless, savage stabbing of Jairo Manuel Avilés Martínez, an acquaintance of mine, happened just a couple of metres in front of me. I had been the last person to chat with Jairo, apart from the man, another acquaintance — for legal reasons, I won't give his name here — who fatally thrust a six-inch knife into his heart. A brutal, cold-blooded, calculated assault, inflicted without warning.

Jairo's murder — for what else can it be but murder? — came just three months after the killing of another acquaintance of mine from Bogotá's Santandercito barrio. However, as I described in Mingling with Colombia's killers, this earlier homicide was gangland-related. It was, to put it crudely, strictly business. The young guy who was killed knew, forced or otherwise, that he was engaged in potentially deadly dealings.

From all that I can gather, Jairo's murder was nothing of the kind. His killer had some sort of a grudge, no more, no less.

The savage nature of it is particularly disturbing. To stab somebody in the heart requires one to be face to face with the target. It also requires physical force to plunge the knife into the body of the victim; one really has to mean it. It's certainly not for the queasy amongst us.

If I were told I had to kill somebody and I had to do it with either a knife or a gun, I'd choose the gun. At least one can put some distance between weapon and target with a gun; not so with a knife.

For sure, many of us at times get angry with our fellow humans to the point where malice aforethought may enter the mind. Some may even consider it more acceptable to do away with another person than an innocent animal. Yet few are capable of following through on these homicidal thoughts.

For most of us these days, the slaughter — be it of animals for consumption or humans because they are considered a threat — happens at a safe distance from our everyday lives. Let somebody else deal with those blood stains.
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'Would you like some coffee with your cow's blood?'

@wwaycorrigan

[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]

It's widely believed — and probably true — that Colombia's best coffee is exported. The high-income nations that receive the bulk of this are willing — and able — to pay bigger bucks for better quality. They're also seen as more adept at transforming the product in its crude form into a quality brew. Defined in Colombia, refined abroad, so to put it.

Some Colombians are convinced that ordinary coffee consumed in the country is mixed with cattle blood.

Of course, gourmet or at least half-decent coffee is available in Colombia. Not all of what's consumed here is substandard compared to what's available in the likes of Europe and the USA. Nonetheless, much of it is pretty ordinary.

This isn't always the fault of the alleged lesser-quality coffee left behind in Colombia. A lot of the time it's down to how it's prepared. An any-old-way-will-do approach, such as the use of grecas. These metallic monsters are responsible for many crimes against drinkable coffee.

'It's a rather nauseating notion if there is a drop of truth to it.'

Also, like many things, one has to pay a good bit more than average to get a better brew. Thus, I'm regularly left with the I-can't-believe-it's-not-coffee variety. (It's similar in the dating game. Hence, I remain single. If one is reluctant to or simply can't spend big, one is usually left with little better than the dregs.)

Bloody brew

Yet, I've recently discovered that many Colombians think there's more at play in all this than just inferior coffee brewed badly.

There's a belief, which I've been quick to dismiss as an urban legend, that most mass-produced, affordable, working-class ground coffee sold here is mixed with cattle blood. This is done to add more volume to it. It's a rather nauseating notion if there is a drop of truth to it. But it must be an absurdity, mustn't it?

Well, it isn't for almost all the locals with whom I've discussed this in San Martín de los Llanos. And this is cowboy country, so cattle blood is far from alien to the place. What's more, Colombians tend to make use of all parts of an animal that's killed for consumption. Little, if anything, goes to waste. 

On top of this, there are some questionable practices in the country. What you get isn't always what you're told it is. On the other hand, some do hold dubious beliefs, such as the idea that throwing water on your face immediately after exercise will leave your facial features in a stressed state permanently (that might explain a few things for me).

Now, I'm no scientist, but I figure a quick lab test of the alleged cattle-blood coffee should tell us if it has the substance or not. (I say cattle blood as I assume that if the practice is real, it matters little if it's from a cow or a bull. Although cow's blood probably sounds slightly better for marketing purposes: 'Well, if you put cow's milk in your coffee, what's wrong with a little cow's blood?)

So, can those with the means to do so stem the flow of this ruddy rumour and test these cheaper and cheerful coffee brands for traces of bovine blood? Time to bust this myth. Or are we really being fed a load of bull? It wouldn't be the first time we've been told something is other than what it actually is.
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Listen to The Corrigan Cast podcast here.

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".