Ode to Occidental oil pipeline

Roger Langen
Cano Limon, May 2003

counterinsurgency
skills newly acquired
duly reported on the AP wire
stories run, perspectives one
now ready, set, go!

Betoyes, Arauca
Indigenous reserve
paramilitaries and the 18th Brigade
Omaira Fernandez, 16
raped, killed
fetus cut
out, cut
up
three others, 11, 12, 15
raped, killed
bodies dumped, ordeal-ridden, in the river
a public show
counterinsurgency skill
anti-terrorist School of the Americas
300, 800, driven out

war on terror
distant thunder
readers worry, readers worry
about Ingrid Betancourt

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Roger Langen was born in a potato-growing and timber town, Perth-Andover, in New Brunswick, Canada. His family members were Irish immigrants dating back to 1813. His father was the first university-educated member of his family, but was ruined by World War II. He was the sole survivor of an ambush event in Italy in 1944. This affected him but so did so much else. A lawyer, he lived on Toronto streets for a while until he collapsed, unable to identify himself for six months. He spent 24 years afterward in a hospital with a condition called Korsakoff's Psychosis. He died in 1998. Roger Langen has been a teacher and more recently a union representative for teachers, an Executive Officer with the Toronto Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, former Vice-Chair of the Provincial OSSTF Human Rights Committee. He also is with International Committee in Solidarity with Colombian Political Prisoners. He writes for Education Forum and the CCPA Monitor.