From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jaime Garzón while producing his politically
charged satires TV show "Quac, El Noticiero" (Quac, the news).
Poster by
RTI
(1995)
Jaime Eduardo Garzón Forero (October 24, 1960 –
August 13, 1999 in Bogotá) was a Colombian journalist, a comedian and political
satirist.
In addition to his work on TV, he also had roles as peace
negotiator. He was murdered arguably by paralimitary forces in
1999, although the circumstances have not been verified.
Career
Garzón was born in Bogotá, Colombia.
He worked on various television parodies, becoming famous with
the TV Show "Zoociedad" (Zoociety) in the 1980s which contained
humor about materialistic society and politics. Garzón then started
working on a TV Show called "¡Quac! El Noticero" in which he
participated with the Colombian Actor Diego León Hoyos until
1997.
Garzón created many different and instantly recognizable
fictional characters, the last of which was his debut as "Heriberto
de la Calle", a shoe polisher who interviewed different
personalities, including politicians.
Murder
On August 13, 1999, Garzón was murdered, allegedly by the AUC, a
right-wing paramilitary organization, some time after they declared
him a military objective. Carlos Castaño
Gil, leader of the AUC, was later convicted in absentia for
Garzón's murder, and sentenced to 38 years in prison.
According to Judge Julio Roberto Ballén Silva, the AUC reacted
against his involvement in negotiations for the release of
guerrilla-held hostages on behalf of their family members. There
are several versions of what happened in the days preceding his
murder, in one of them Jaime Garzón was informed of an order to
assassinate him, he then contacted Castaño, who scheduled a meeting
with him to take place just the day after his murder, and sent a
counter order to abort the assassination. The order apparently
either never reached the actual killers, or came after it was too
late. This led some to speculate that the meeting was a trap [1].
An investigation of the TV program Contravía directed by Holman
Morris shows evidence of the participation of agents of the DAS
(state intelligence agency) by using false witnesses and therefore
the investigation turned away from the real events [2]. Likewise, the
paramilitar Freddy Rendón Herrera aka "El Alemán" accused members
of the military forces of being intellectual authors of the murder
[3].
External
links