Tropical Nazis

In Tuluá, in Valle del Cauca, an anachronistic, burlesque, tasteless, ill-intentioned event took place that calls into question the capacity of the Colombian national police, an event that crossed geographical borders and the margins of reason. But how is it possible to recreate Nazism and relate it to modern-day Germany? There is no answer to such a phenomenon, which crosses the barriers not only of understanding but also of sanity, common sense and morality.

After President Duque’s recent visit to Israel, and in this specific case to Yad Vashem, which commemorates the 6 million Jewish victims exterminated by the Nazi terror machine. Not counting the other millions of different faiths and groups brutally and ferociously persecuted and eliminated by those who the Vallecaucanos honourably wore those Gestapo and even SS uniforms.

The Simón Bolívar Police School in Tuluá, not only bears the name of the Liberator, but is now internationally famous, not for being the best police force in the world as some others may have been, but because of this shameful act. Creole Nazis, no more, no less. It turns out that now Colombia, a country so far removed from the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust, offends all the victims of the Holocaust. Jews, gypsies, communists, etc., who were mercilessly murdered between 1939 and 1945, without the international society doing much, if anything at all.

The President, the Israeli and German embassies, where this type of event is even a crime, and the Colombian Jewish community have spoken out about this unusual incident in Tuluá.
But, beyond what happened, one can see the ignorance and the great lack of education that prevails within the uniformed forces and, incidentally, among civilians. The lack of education on this and other issues is the problem that gives rise to such an event. Even a portrait of Adolf Hitler was recreated as if it were a film about the Second Great War, but it was not this, it was reality, a reality thousands of miles away and after dozens of years that was relived without regard for what that reality really meant.

Colonel Jorge Ferney Bayona was dismissed almost immediately and for obvious reasons, as he was in charge of this misguided event. Colonel Bayona was missing a few history lessons and so on, as were so many other members of the Armed Forces and the National Police. Let’s see if instead of holding such “international days” and who knows what else, they would do more to educate the members of the institution.

The international opinion of Colombia matters, and it is not good so far, but rather getting worse and worse. Now it is not only Pablo Escobar, but also the Nazis and tropical Nazis.
A clear restructuring of the Military and Police Forces is needed, in which a major effort is made to ensure that those who wear the uniform do so with respect, honour and coherence, otherwise they are paper institutions, which one day will vanish in the wind.

@rosenthaaldavid