AP. 12 January 2002. Artist Completing Rebel Statue.
SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN -- It's a miniature Mount Rushmore, only this version -- which boasts rebels hoisting banners and toting Kalashnikovs -- may have a very short shelf life. The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia commissioned the 25-foot-tall, 125-foot-wide statue from artist Ali Medina, who chiseled the five armed rebels from sandstone. After nine months laboring over the towering piece, Medina plans to put the finishing touches on this latest project -- a 21st-century display of Stalinist-style art -- over the next few days. But with the future of the rebel safe zone in doubt, so is the fate of the huge sculpture. The government troops and a brutal right-wing paramilitary group fighting the rebels have no love for FARC leader Manuel Marulanda -- who's depicted in the frieze along with four other guerrillas. It isn't hard to imagine a soldier coming to the sculpture when the safe haven eventually ends and firing his rifle on full automatic at the transformed cliffside or lobbing a grenade or two. "It would be a crime if they destroyed this," Medina muttered. "It should be part of the national patrimony." Nine months ago, Medina and a dozen workers began chiseling the figures of five rebels carrying guns, a machete and a sickle, and hoisting a banner. To preserve the frieze, the figures -- whose boots alone are 3 feet tall -- were coated with cement and painted bronze. The sculpture sits alongside a road that cuts through virgin rainforest inside the safe haven. Medina, his long, black hair in a ponytail and his jeans and T-shirt smudged with dirt, sat perched on a scaffold Friday evening brushing paint onto one of the figures. A pistol was stuck into one of his pockets. After all, there are enemies of art and of the revolution, he said darkly, referring to the time when someone shot at him a few months ago. As night fell, he retired to a tent in the jungle that he and his girlfriend share near the work site. As birds and insects began filling the jungle with sound, he shared his coffee with visiting journalists -- and mused that while his work was so close to completion, it faced grave risks. "I'd hate it if the statues are destroyed," he murmured. Then he looked at a photographer and sighed: "At least they will last in your negatives." [Yes -- it's very frustrating that this story came with no photos.] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
