working overseas JEFF FARRELL


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extort money. He ignored them. A woman in his flock told me the FARC had kidnapped her daughter and released her for cash. I later interviewed a local politician who backed up the claims the FARC were running crimes in the area — including extortion of hot dog vendors. I knew I had a solid international story on the lines of


‘FARC guerillas run wild in Venezuela thanks to Chavez’. I pitched the story to a US international paper who ran it big on their paper and website with my byline. I’d made it. I’d achieved my goal to be an international correspondent. I continued on my travels, hoovering up stories for US papers from protests over soaring crime to elections in Chavez’s home state of Barinas before settling into Caracas for a few months. There, I chased stories including a visit to a barrio – a ghetto.


Back then, some 40–50 people were gunned down on an average weekend night in the barrios, with homicides topping more than 20,000 a year across the country. A Spanish priest led me around, saying if I went alone I faced trouble but the criminals respected the cloth and I was safe with him. One family told me their son was shot on the street by


criminals for no good reason. Worse, they filmed it and were flogging the video in a CD format to locals who rented it out along with copies of pirated movies. I wanted to puke. I got held up at gunpoint while out for a mountain hike up the El Avila mountain. The gunman pushed the barrel to my temple and I handed over what I had – an iPod. I felt no fear and it all played out in slow motion. He was happy with his booty and didn’t shoot me. I survived but, a few days later, I realised he could have killed me. It was time to go. But not home. I travelled across Latin America as a kind of backpacker reporter for a couple of years. In Bolivia, I


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reported on how the special forces shot dead a young Irishman over his alleged part in a supposed bomb plot to kill the then president, Evo Morales. In Argentina, I reported on the Dirty War trials over the anti-junta dissidents who were disappeared — with some thrown alive out of planes. In Colombia, I reported on presidential elections. And so on. After three years, I was burnt out and decided to go home for good. I booked a flight to Dublin in Christmas 2010. In Dublin airport in the immigration queue, I heard a guy telling officials he was travelling with an emergency passport because his original one had been stolen in Colombia. This seemed a suspect story – a tale an inmate on the run


from Venezuela might use. I raced after him to the carousel where he stood with another Irish drug mule from Los Teques. “How ya doing?” I said: “We met in Venezuela.” He studied me for a moment. “You came in to see me in Los Teques.” He smiled. “The reporter.” I then did the maths in my head. I had last seen him two years ago and he had had at least another seven years of his sentence left then. “We did a runner,” he said, “got out on parole and bussed it to Colombia.” “Me and you are going to write a book on your story,” I said.


One family told me their son was shot on the street by criminals, who filmed it and were flogging the video


We shook hands. We published the true crime memoir, The Cocaine Diaries: a Venezuelan Prison Nightmare, with a Random Penguin House imprint. It sold over 80,000 copies and was dramatised by National Geographic in a TV series. Neither Keany or I made a bean out of the book despite


huge sales. Publishers have the idea that authors should be happy enough their book is published. That burned, but I look back fondly at my travels in Venezuela. And many journalists start out with a dream to write a book someday. Few do. I did.


Jeff Farrell is self-publishing his novel Last Call in Caracas, due out in April 29. It features a fictional US attack on Venezuela — which he never expected to happen


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