There are times when journalists are unqualified to document events in the world, and we all just have to step back and let the Latin American novelists get on with it. Colombia is facing a potentially deadly infestation of hippos, the descendants of the 24 hippos that were the personal property of the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The original hippos lived in Escobar’s private zoo, and escaped in the chaos after Escobar was killed in 1993. Now, without predators, these aggressive animals are thriving and evolving to become the largest hippo herd outside Africa, relentlessly destroying flora and fauna but leaving the humans alone.
This state of affairs will come as no surprise to the Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez. His novel The Sound of Things Falling, about drugs and crime in his homeland, began with an image of a dead hippo, an escaped male the “colour of black pearls”, inspired by a picture the author had seen in a magazine. Vásquez told an interviewer: “That image did something very strange for me. For Colombians of my generation. One of the strongest images we have is the photograph of Pablo Escobar shot dead on the rooftops of Medellín. That hippo, in a very strange way, resembled Escobar.” Could these hippos be the spiritual heirs of the notorious Pablo?
Tory runners and riders
There’s nothing I like more than a tasty conspiracy theory, and this one is a joy. Admirers of the Conservative leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom are complaining that Michael Gove’s chances of winning are being artificially kept alive, by Theresa May’s supporters “lending” their votes to him. This is to give May a chance of facing the unpopular Gove in the final two-person beauty contest rather than wildcard Leadsom, who would probably win by hoovering up that Trump/Corbyn/Brexit protest vote that now scares the jeepers out of everyone.
It’s a gorgeously neurotic theory. And for those who think May is the best of a bad lot, there is something exquisitely bizarre in the political classes considering it their civic duty to keep Gove in the game as a sacrificial lamb. But there is something else in the Tory leadership vote that makes it a great spectator sport: the melancholy spectacle of defeated candidates solemnly declaring whom they will now support.
Liam Fox, having garnered a paltry 16 votes, told an indifferent world he was now “backing” May. His ringing assertion of importance is the equivalent of a riderless horse in the Grand National galloping frantically on in the direction of the winning post.
Tony Fear of a white feather
The artist Jeremy Deller recently commemorated the Somme centenary by creating his brilliant #wearehere performance art event: thousands of volunteers dressed as first world war soldiers gathered at railway stations and public spaces, and giving out cards with their name and rank. It was inspired. But I wondered if Deller mightn’t consider another installation event that could commemorate the uglier side of that war and probably all others: the handing out of white feathers to civilians of fighting age – the accusation of cowardice.
The Chilcot report is now with us, and for me any report into Tony Blair’s enthusiasm for war would have to address his obvious fear of getting the Neville Chamberlain white feather from the Americans. This was the horror of appearing scared of al-Qaida or whomsoever the US decided was the enemy – while appearing, like the great appeaser of the second world war, to have rationalised this fear into some kind of specious policy. The white feather movement is a little forgotten now, but it’s a key to understanding New Labour’s determination to go to war in Iraq.