MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

MAY 2002

The Miami airport is where the tug begins. Walking the long corridor that runs from the food court to the gate area is where the gringa in me starts struggling with my inner Colombian. It is here, at the airport, where the transformation began as I learned to run these terminals, as I went from Colombian to American and back again. I walk past the drugstore where, as a child on family vacations, I spent my last American dollar on Bazooka bubble gum before boarding the plane. A few yards down I encounter the bathroom where, as a college student returning to the University of Michigan after Christmas break, I ran to change from summer clothes into heavier winter attire. It was here where I turned into my American self: I had never had to wear a coat on the coast of Colombia. It is here where I started doing things on my own, from buying a book with sex scenes — Scott Spencer's Endless Love — to forgoing the flight that my parents had booked for me to hang out with my childhood friend, Allegra, who was already married and living in Miami, which is like living in Barranquilla, except with better roads and better stores.

As I walk toward the gate, I remember the time when I planned to meet Sam at the duty-free shop so we could spend the day together instead of taking our connecting flight back to school. I also remember the time when I heard my confusion voiced out loud for the first time. I was waiting outside for Allegra to pick me up when a young man wearing a janitor's jumpsuit and mopping the floor made comment after comment in Spanish, the kind we call piropos, flatteries. I struggled to ignore them. "Look at her," he finally said in Spanish. "Pretending she is a gringa with that Latin face of hers."

Going to Colombia is not easy for me. After almost twenty-five years of living outside of Colombia, I still define myself as Colombian when asked where I am from. But am I really? When does one stop being what one was born to be? I wonder as I sit at the gate waiting for the plane for Bogotá to board. Colombia is having presidential elections next week and I have been hired as a "fixer" for the Wall Street Journal. My job is to accompany a staff reporter, who has never been to Colombia before, and help him navigate the list of sources and the safety of the streets. I took the job the instant it was offered. I stopped working as a fixer more than a decade ago but I couldn't resist the temptation. Whenever I am offered a job there I take it no matter what, especially since I put that map on my wall. My recent trips under professional auspices have made it harder to separate my American self from my Colombian self, to divide the journalist in me from the daughter and the sister. During college, I thought of Colombia as a place of familial obligations; now I think of it as a war zone where my family lives. It might be that my journalistic ambitions are a way for me to protect myself from where I come from, a way of clarifying and exposing the ugly reality that surrounds and threatens my family. Or maybe I accept those assignments as an excuse to see them.

Between 1999 and 2000, news editors became increasingly interested in Colombia and so I've gone back with some regularity. It all goes back to the minister's visit to the America Society in New York City. By August 1999, the gift of the night goggles had turned into Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion military aid package, a move that opened the door for news stories about Colombia. "It is the recipient of the United States government's third largest military package" is the sound bite I now repeat as a mantra to make my Colombia assignments materialize. "The third," I say. "After Israel and Egypt." After I mention those two countries, editors want to know why the United States is being so generous to such a rogue country, still known as cocaine country and now known as the home of the intransigent FARC rebels. Plan Colombia opened the doors for news stories about Colombia for a sliver of time, but those doors were closed by 9/11. Now, however, with Hugo Chávez next door in Venezuela and the extensive military aid on the table, the financial paper has decided that the country's election merits at least a story, even one written by someone who has never been there. Still, I am glad the Journal needs me.

I am full of doubts and trepidations, angels and demons talking at the same time. It's all about how I feel about this place I still call home. So I am thankful to be distracted by a handsome young American who sticks out in the crowd of mostly cachacos waiting to board the plane. His nervousness is palpable to me — perhaps because I am also nervous, but also because he cannot sit still. His clothes also make him stand out among the formal bogotanos. The men wear tweed jackets and suits, mostly blue and gray, and he is dressed in a loud brown and white short-sleeved tropical shirt.

I watch him closely as he approaches other passengers. "Hola," he says, "tengo que practicar mi español," but he is not having any luck engaging anyone. A group of businessmen give him the silent brush-off, not even pausing in their conversation to look at him, perhaps thinking he's just another gringo who wants to practice his pidgin Spanish. Clearly agitated, he approaches a man sitting alone. Politely, he also turns him down. Again and again, he tries to start a conversation but none of the passengers waiting for the American Airlines flight to Bogotá, Colombia, takes his bait.

Granted, these post–September 11 days are not particularly good for chatting with strangers. I've chosen to sit a few rows away, making sure I am in the outer circle of Colombians, as if that would differentiate me from them, pretending that I am not traveling to Colombia. I want to be the last one to board. Still, I try hard to overhear their discussion. "How paranoid and rude they've become," the man closest to me says, referring to the brusque manner of...