A Hospital In Bogota, Mirror Of Colombia’s Civil War Scars

A Hospital In Bogota, Mirror Of Colombia’s Civil War Scars

Bogotá's Central Military Hospital has seen the worst of decades of civil war in Colombia — from severed limbs to longstanding traumas, Amid prospects of peace with the FARC guerrillas, its work begins a slight, and welcome decline.

Jaime Florez Suarez (2016-05-22)

BOGOTÁ — For the first time in decades, the trauma and injuries ward in Bogotá's Military Hospital has empty beds. A more peaceful breeze seemed to blow through the building, which had witnessed decades of conflict between the Colombian state, communist guerrillas and motley groups of armed gangs.

The trauma ward used to be full of young soldiers with broken bodies and severed limbs. Today, it caters more to the needs of older veterans dealing with heart or kidney conditions. That switch has come about as a result of peace talks between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The hospital reflects this transition to peace from the country’s long history of conflict: War with Peru in the 19th century, the Bogotazo — when Bogotá residents ran riot in 1948 after a politician was shot — mafia bombings, guerrilla and paramilitary killings. Each violent turn left its mark on this imposing, gray building in the form of the wounded who were brought in and the healed patients who made it back home.

One exchange in 2000 is emblematic of the challenges the hospital has faced in the past: "We're sending you a soldier with a grenade injury, Dr Uribe,” one person informed him.

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