Paula Delgado-Kling- Story of a Lost Childhood

Show Transcript

Surviving Drug Violence in Columbia

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: It was difficult for most of us to comprehend the cruelty of those who control the drug trade in Colombia, and the unspeakable suffering often endured by young people who become ensnared in their illegal activities. Today on the Lean to the Left podcast, journalist Paula Delgado Kling takes us to her homeland.

[00:00:23] Where she examines the life of a young Colombian girl who became a child soldier in the guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, or the FARC. It's all in her new book, Leonor, The Story of a Lost Childhood, which she'll share with us in this episode ahead. Stay with us.

[00:00:46] Now, Paula Delgado Kling holds degrees in comparative literature, French civilizations, international affairs, and creative writing from Brown University, Columbia University, and the New School, respectively.

[00:01:02] Leonore, for which she received two grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts, is her first book. Born in Bogota, Colombia, and raised in Toronto, Canada, Delgado Kling now resides in New York City. For her book, Paula followed Leonore for 19 years from just after she became an active F.

[00:01:25] A. R. C. member, forced into sexual slavery by a commander 34 years her senior, through her rehabilitation and struggle with booze and drugs, to her more recent days, As the mother of two girls. Leonore will be published January 23rd and is available for pre order now from Amazon and on her website, which is PaulaDelgadoKling. com. And it's Paula, D E L G A D O, Kling, K L I N G, dot com. 

[00:02:03] In fact, you can meet Paula and attend her readings, both in New York City and Coral Gables, Florida. Her first appearance is Tuesday, January 23rd, from 6 to 7. 30 p. m. at Shakespeare and Company, which is at 2020 Broadway. Upper West Side. Then on Sunday, January 28, Paula will be at Books and Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, Florida, starting at 4 p. m. Hey Paula, thanks for joining us today on the Lean to the Left podcast.

[00:02:39] Paula Delgado-Kling: Hi Bob, thank you so much for having me. 

[00:02:42] Bob Gatty: I'm just excited to talk to you. You've got quite a story. Now, you're from Columbia, so did you, what was your childhood like there? 

[00:02:54] Paula Delgado-Kling: So I I was born, yes, in Bogota and my childhood was very sheltered.

[00:03:01] I was born into a family where my grandfather had quite a bit of business success. He started Columbia's first airline. He started a construction company, which is still in our family business, still four generations later. There's a lot of fairs and stadiums and schools named after him. Wow. And also, yes, he was also the mayor of Bogota for four times he was the mayor of Bogota.

[00:03:28] So by the time that I was born it turned out that the violence was coming into the cities more and more. And unfortunately his fame brought violence to our doorstep. So my childhood was sheltered in a way. I've never been in Colombia without the presence of bodyguards wherever I go. Wow. So I was very sheltered.

[00:03:55] I wouldn't say naive because I was aware of what was happening around us. But I just never had that freedom that kids have to be themselves without the eye of someone on 

[00:04:07] Bob Gatty: them. 

[00:04:08] Let's talk to me a little bit about the violence that. You had, you still have bodyguards when you go there, right? 

[00:04:14] Paula Delgado-Kling: Yes.

[00:04:15] The violence for this book, I traced it back and it really began since the very beginning of the birth of Columbia. The violence has been being recycled since I could trace back to the War of 1899. Between the conservatives and the liberals, there was a civil war then that recycled itself to the era of what they even call la violencia, the violence era in the 1940s, and it continued to be a war, civil war between liberals and conservatives again.

[00:04:51] And this time, communism came into the picture as well in the 1940s. And since. It's been a recycling and funny enough, I even found a reference from the war of 1899 to the 1940s. What people did is that they buried the arms and then they went to find them, dig them up for the 1940s.

[00:05:14] And this continues to happen. Like I, I. I'm sure it's happening now, that they bury arms, they bury ammunition, all of that, and then come back to it. So it's a recycling of a conflict that never really resolved itself. 

[00:05:29] Bob Gatty: You talk about their civil war between conservatives and liberals. What do you think's going on in this country?

[00:05:39] Paula Delgado-Kling: Yes, it's a very dangerous precedence that could take centuries to resolve itself. Wow. Wow. The FARC, which was the Norse group, came about in the 1940s because there wasn't a political space for them to be heard. They started out as liberals in liberal towns, and then all their families were being wiped out.

[00:06:03] Their land was being taken away forcibly, whether it was through violence of guns or whether it was through reforms by conservatives. And then from that, it just, they grew into a huge drug gang, but it did start out as a self defense system. But here, it is no longer a self defense system. Various peace accords with them have totally, absolutely revealed that it's no longer about an ideology or reforms.

[00:06:39] It's about drugs and the money. Drugs brings to them in 2016, there was a peace accord with them through the government of Juan Manuel Santos. He also, he won a the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Congressional seats were given to the leaders of the FARC. Several of them abandoned those seats and went on to live in Venezuela to continue to traffic drugs.

[00:07:08] So they did not want the power of the political power that it brought them, which meant work and policy building and state building. They just want to go back to the drugs. Wow. That's. That's incredible. Hey, 

[00:07:22] Bob Gatty: in a nutshell. Yeah. So when did you leave Columbia and why? 

[00:07:29] Paula Delgado-Kling: So I left Columbia in February, the first time that my, that I left, we haven't really left.

[00:07:35] Our family's still there. My extended family's there. I would say that home is still Columbia, but in February of 1983, I was nine years old. And my father came home from work and he shut himself in his room and he and my mother talked and what I came to realize many years later as an adult, and I realized that then, but with more clarity as an adult, is that the daughter of one of our family's competitors in the construction building had been kidnapped.

[00:08:10] And so my parents decided that we had to just leave. So three days later, I was living in Toronto, took a flight to Toronto. Within six months, I was a full Toronto girl with the green kilt and the green skirt and the green tie going to. Around the corner. Wow. We mentioned like the bodyguards and being sheltered and never having the freedom to be a child.

[00:08:43] Toronto gifted me that freedom. I would ride my bike to the school and I would ride it home and I had a key to the house and I was completely independent. And I would ride off with friends with bikes and no one knew where I was and that was wonderful. 

[00:08:58] Bob Gatty: Wow. You mentioned bodyguards. That means that when you were there as a child, and even now, when you go back, you have to have a bodyguard?

[00:09:14] Paula Delgado-Kling: Yes. Yes. Yes. 

[00:09:16] Bob Gatty: Your family has a long history in business in Columbia, in the construction business. Is your family perceived as wealthy, that they could kidnap you and rip off your family for a bunch of money? Is that what the problem is?

[00:09:33] Paula Delgado-Kling: Yes, but anybody's a target. Okay. The local store owner with one bodega is a target. Wow. There's extreme extortion of anybody. If you have a motorcycle, you could be extorted. Oh my. It's there's no control to this.

[00:09:56] Bob Gatty: It's hard to, it's just hard to comprehend. At least for me. It just is.

[00:10:02] So tell me this Paula, how did your personal experiences in Columbia inform your book about leonor. 

[00:10:10] Paula Delgado-Kling: Yes. So I started this book when I was 27 years old. All right. Imagine being 27, first book, not knowing exactly what you're getting into. I began this book when I was a graduate student at Columbia.

[00:10:30] Out of curiosity, because I was writing a paper for one of the human rights classes. Okay. And I could not find any information about it. Okay. So I went to Human Rights Watch and even just then, this was 2001, they were beginning to put together a report about child soldiers and the rights of children in Colombia.

[00:10:57] And that was it. So how it informed me is, first of all, it was that the information was going to be very difficult to come about and that I was one of the pioneers to try to find that information. And two, that any time that I presented myself to any former child soldier, there were a lot of intricacies that may be of trust that we had to find a common ground. For instance, the first time that I met Leonor, it was very obvious by my Spanish from Bogota with its cadence and kind of lower like a lower tone, if you will, whereas hers from the coast, and there's so much loaded to unpack. Of race, of class, of geography, of resources, of the way traditionally people from Bogota are treated versus people from the rest of the country.

[00:12:05] Offhand, I already knew that I'd have to unpack a lot of that. in order to get at a truth of what it was that she was telling me. And aside from that, she formed part of the FARC for most of her life until I met her. And she had been conditioned to think that anybody who's outside the group Is she even said it, the enemy, or she said to me years later, like maybe 15 years later, Oh, I thought it was so funny. I thought you were a spy. And I said, why would I be a spy for who I don't really understand. And she said a spy for the government. Then I said, but you're living in a government home. You're being fed by the government. The government's even hired nutritionists to make sure that you get back your health.

[00:12:55] How is the government? The enemy. And she said, you're right, but I was conditioned at that moment to think that anybody that was not part of the group was a spy or the enemy, and that I couldn't reveal information. And she said, she also said, And she made clear and I knew this going forward from the conversations with social workers is that she did not even know her entire truth when I began this project in 2001 when I first met her, because she was suffering through so much post traumatic stress disorder that you could ask her did you know about how they move drugs?

[00:13:38] And she would say no. But it's not that she didn't know. She'd seen it. It was in her mind. It's just she didn't have the words to tell me what it was at that moment. Then when I asked her your family was from here, but how did you get to here and why? She couldn't put those two things together because her story in her mind was so different from the story She put together later with the help of her own mother.

[00:14:04] Okay. 

[00:14:05] Bob Gatty: So where did you meet her? 

[00:14:07] Paula Delgado-Kling: So I met her in a government home Though I met her in June 2001, and two weeks prior, she had been full child soldier for the FARC. She partook in a battle. The government soldiers captured her, brought her back to an army base, took her to a government rehabilitation program, which she's entitled to under the law because she's a minor.

[00:14:38] And so this was a group home of kids, former child soldiers. 

[00:14:44] Bob Gatty: Wow. When you say child soldiers, how old are these kids? 

[00:14:49] Paula Delgado-Kling: So Leonore was 17 when I met her when she left the FARC. Back and forth from the group as early as nine years old. Because what happens is that they start slowly to build up confidence or not confidence, but like trust with the group.

[00:15:14] In Leonore's case her family couldn't Provide steady food for her. She had a lot of issues with her mother that led to domestic abuse and Fights and her mother kicking her out of the house. So she would find refuge in the group And in a lot of these areas the group is the boyfriend, the brother, the uncle.

[00:15:43] These are their areas. The group is considered employment to them. 

[00:15:51] Bob Gatty: Okay. And this all centers around drugs, right? 

[00:15:57] Paula Delgado-Kling: Yes. Drugs and violence. But I would even say. That it's a lifestyle, a form of life a business like sometimes when we think of certain cities, say Detroit used to be known for the car industry, correct?

[00:16:14] Yeah. It's the same like that. Okay. There's so much around keeping the group. For instance, there's the logistics of getting food to the mountains, to them, and who finds the food. There's the logistics of the arms and the ammunition, and who provides that. There are the drug runners, there's the messengers a whole infrastructure that they built around themselves, because it's almost become an industry that provides employment to the drug towns. There's something that struck me when I first began this book, when I was still a graduate student at Columbia is that with a peace commissioner for the Pastrana government with his name is Victor J. Ricardo. And he said to me, Paula, there's something so strange that I was in this town and I was having a soda.

[00:17:12] And that maybe was the last soda that was in that town. There wasn't anything that that groceries came to that town, that there was water, that there was bottled water, that there was anything. But sitting at a table nearby were a group of women. And they had bottles. And inside were leaves. Leaves. So he asked, what is that they have?

[00:17:40] And he was, oh, those women are prostitutes. And they get paid in coca leaves. So they accumulate the coca leaves, and at the end of the month, They go to the nearest town, and they sell the coca leaves. That's how they're able to buy their groceries, their essentials, soap, shampoo, whatever we may need.

[00:18:03] And then they come back to town, and they work another month. So that's how desolate, and desperate, and lacking. These areas are, like abandoned. 

[00:18:16] Bob Gatty: Oh, man, I'm telling you, that means that there's, it's clear why it's so difficult to undo any of that, because it's just ingrained as a way of life.

[00:18:29] Apart 

[00:18:32] Paula Delgado-Kling: from it being ingrained as a way of life, there's no options at all. What could have helped Leonore? What could have helped her mother? Her mother didn't have access to something as simple as birth control, so she had a child year after year, starting very young.

[00:18:54] She can barely even handle the children she has, and she keeps having generations of children. Here in the U. S. we talk a lot about early childhood development and kindergartens and why it's so important to have access for everybody from a young age to early schooling, playing with dough and playing with colors and mixing colors and playing in the sandbox.

[00:19:19] There is none of that available to them. Imagine being a mother and having a child year after year, and you have to take care of them, and maybe your husband is so out there from generational poverty and generational abuse that he can't even help you with the children. Yeah, it's heartbreaking.

[00:19:44] It's it's to, from Leonore's perspective, it's a generational cycle. She was able to come back. She was able to, because she was a child soldier and because she was at a moment. Where the pastana government in 2001 was very adamant about getting children rights and protection and establishing these government homes.

[00:20:12] She herself says she was very lucky to get some sort of schooling therapy through the government and a chance to live in other parts of the country. That allowed her to see that there was life, that there was childhood, that there was something to look forward to, that there was a taste of Oh, I know now I don't like curry.

[00:20:35] I know now I don't like wasabi sauce. To have something else that wasn't always the same. She says, however, that she had no other choice but to come back to her hometown, which is Mocoa, and she refers to that life that she had in the different government homes and in the different cities that she was able to experience and live in, but that her life is the same.

[00:21:05] She came back to the same pattern. She came back to the same family, to the same abuse, to her two little girls might think differently because she had another perspective, but they're still in the same circumstances. 

[00:21:21] Bob Gatty: So is Lenore her real name? 

[00:21:26] Paula Delgado-Kling: No. No. 

[00:21:27] Bob Gatty: You changed. You changed it for the book, right?

[00:21:31] Paula Delgado-Kling: Her name, but everything in the book is her true story as far as I could trace that was the true story. Sure, 

[00:21:40] Bob Gatty: sure. It only makes sense that you would change her name. It. I just wanted to clarify though, because the way we were talking about her it sounds like it's her name. What do you think can be done to prevent kids from joining early groups like this in Colombia, 

[00:22:00] Paula Delgado-Kling: I think first off a stronger legal system that protects children. Secondly, a stronger state, stronger state building resources for them, like in the state building in terms of, as we mentioned a moment ago, something as simple as access to birth control. And schools. Career building programs, like going there and establishing an auto factory. Why not train everybody, give them jobs or a pineapple pickle distributor that pickles or who knows something like jobs and a legal system that protects them so that they know they're right. So they don't have to carry a gun.

[00:22:52] They don't have to. Worry about their own protection. So the mother doesn't have lenore's mother moved several times several towns to prevent her children from recruitment every single time that she had to move she had to find new housing She had to find new jobs She had to find new support system all of these things and this was to save her children from recruitment How many kids 

[00:23:18] Bob Gatty: did she have?

[00:23:21] Paula Delgado-Kling: Lenore herself says she doesn't really know Because one of the things was that when Leonore was very young, they moved for the older children to prevent them from being recruited. But it happened that they were in this hamlet or young settlement in the middle of the jungle, and the FARC came along and said, I will pay you a salary if you come, teenage children.

[00:23:51] And so the children, knowing that the parents needed the money, said, okay, it's a salary. It's a job. Okay, we'll go. And that was the first set of children that her mother lost. But Lenore didn't know of their existence until she went through government therapy and her mother was able to explain to her, you were not the first round of children that this happened to.

[00:24:13] Bob Gatty: I'm taking back, I'm just thinking back to what you said about these prostitutes, these young girls that are prostitutes that are paid by, with cocoa leaves. And then in order to actually get the money for the work that they did, they gotta go sell those cocoa leaves somewhere. And obviously that just is exacerbating the whole drug culture in Colombia too, right?

[00:24:44] Paula Delgado-Kling: Amazing. Leonor started going to the FARC because she was hungry. And she knew that over there in the camp, there was food for her to eat. Wow. But also, she recognizes, as an older woman now, that she was very rebellious, as perhaps all our teenagers are. Okay. And, I don't listen to my mother, I don't listen to my parents, which I'm sure all are, all of us can understand.

[00:25:19] Oh, sure. The FARC camps were also a chance to rebel, and there was drinking. There was partying. There was no supervision. All right. 

[00:25:32] Bob Gatty: I want to make it clear, you keep referring to the FARC, which is the F A R C, which is what I mentioned in the introduction. And that's that group that we were talking about.

[00:25:45] What's that stand for again? 

[00:25:48] Paula Delgado-Kling: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. 

[00:25:52] Bob Gatty: Okay. Okay. Now, Why should we in America care about any of this? 

[00:26:03] Paula Delgado-Kling: So we've all been reading in the newspapers about the immigration crisis. Yeah, for sure. I know that in New York, you can't go anywhere without it hitting you in the face.

[00:26:16] Really? Yes. Yes. You read in the New York Times and at Port Authority, these buses and busloads of people coming into the city every day. And there's, apart from already New York having a homeless crisis. It's becoming, you can't ignore it. You could not ignore it. Okay. A lot of these are immigrants from Venezuela and Venezuela is completely broken down by the government of Chavez to begin with.

[00:26:53] Then it was the government. Over by the government of Maduro at the moment, and there's no state, there's no, there's nothing for them to do left in Venezuela. They'd rather cross the Darien Strip. And walk and walk than to face another year of living in Venezuela. 

[00:27:20] Bob Gatty: That's Venezuela, but what about Colombia?

[00:27:24] Paula Delgado-Kling: Venezuela is just one step, a couple of steps away from Colombia. If Colombia lets down its guard about drugs, or government becomes involved even more with, when I say even more, I'll explain in a moment with drugs. Then who knows where Columbia would end up, but it's the same with Central America.

[00:27:49] Okay. 

[00:27:51] Bob Gatty: Are a lot of these immigrants that, excuse me, are a lot of these immigrants that are coming to this country, are some of them from Columbia? 

[00:28:02] Paula Delgado-Kling: Some of them are. Yes. Yes. But I think the Colombians who are coming, come in more in with, by overstaying their visas. Okay. Okay. But. It's not by walking the way the others do, right?

[00:28:22] Bob Gatty: Okay, you've been working on this project now for over two decades. Finally, I've gotten this book done, which I congratulate you for. So after all of that research and after having lived there and still having connections there, business and otherwise, what do you think can be done to curtail the drug trade in Colombia and its influx into the U.

[00:28:54] S.?

[00:28:56] Paula Delgado-Kling: I don't know. That's that's a whole other two decades worth of work. I'm sure, yeah. That's not an easy, I don't have a Yeah. 

[00:29:08] Bob Gatty: You don't touch on that in your book, right? No. 

[00:29:12] Paula Delgado-Kling: No. My book is really an homage, if you will, to a girl who survived something that none of us could even begin to imagine, from the horrendousness of her family life, the domestic abuse.

[00:29:31] She had to withstand to, then she's very beautiful, she's very pretty, then being noticed by a commander 34 years her senior and becoming his sex slave for, I don't know how she probably doesn't know exactly how long, but 

[00:29:56] Bob Gatty: I have to say, I read one of the excerpts that you posted on your website. From one of the review sites and I read it and I didn't want to stop reading it and it was over and I was sad because it was so powerful.

[00:30:18] Paula Delgado-Kling: Oh, yes, it is sad. 

[00:30:21]

[00:30:21] Bob Gatty: It's very powerful and I would encourage our listeners and our viewers, if you have an opportunity, pick this book up. It's not just, it's just not, it's not just a story. There's, it's an important book.

[00:30:40] And this young girl, Lenore, it's hard to comprehend what this young woman went through and how Paula has told her story. It's beautifully done. 

[00:30:57] Paula Delgado-Kling: Thank you, Bob. Yeah. It, honestly, this story, I don't know how, by the grace of the universe, I was able to put it together. First of all, that I was able to keep in touch with Lenore for 19 years that I did, I still, I bet you I could try to find her again.

[00:31:19] I could, it's just giving her space and that I was able to form some sort of kinship between the two of us that she would trust me. And that all through this time. She continued to speak to me about what she was going through. 

[00:31:44] Bob Gatty: How old is she now? 

[00:31:46] Paula Delgado-Kling: So she was 17 in 2001. Okay. She, back through the years holds that, both bad and, 35, 

[00:31:55] Bob Gatty: something like that.

[00:31:57] Paula Delgado-Kling: Yeah, she's the mom of two young girls turned 

[00:32:01] Bob Gatty: her life around, sounds like 

[00:32:04] Paula Delgado-Kling: the yes and no, because you with her baggage and her background and the state of her emotions. You never know what is turning her life around or what sets her off. 

[00:32:18] Bob Gatty: When I read some of the material that was provided to me in preparation for this podcast interview, I was confused as to whether or not you personally had experienced any serious issues. Growing up in Colombia, 

[00:32:39] Paula Delgado-Kling: so even after we left in 1983 in 1991,

[00:32:46] my older brother after having grown up abroad, returned to Colombia. And six months later, he was kidnapped for he was kidnapped for six months. So as far as the violence touching us, That's as close to us to this moment, knock on wood, that it's come. I was in boarding school, the same boarding school that he had attended.

[00:33:15] And I received a phone call from my mom saying, oh, they took him this morning from his job. A group of men with seemingly military backgrounds came into his office. They started to check IDs and then they said, it's this one. And they dragged him to a car. He tried to hold on to an electricity post and they rifle whipped him and hit him until they could carry him inside the car.

[00:33:46] And then he was held in a room for six months. And then he came home. 

[00:33:54] Bob Gatty: How did he escape? 

[00:33:56] Paula Delgado-Kling: It wasn't that he escaped. There was definitely a ransom paid. Oh. And I go into this in the book. Okay. But it's mysterious, like where do you put the ransom, this, that. It's, sadly because this has been going on in Columbia for so long.

[00:34:15] It's very systematic. Okay. I know I have another cousin who went through a, what they called express kidnapping, which means yes, it's terrible. She hailed down a cab, which you should never do. You need to call the company and get the cab to come to you. She hailed a cab And she was kidnapped for over 24 hours.

[00:34:47] So they made her go to the cash machine, withdraw, then kept her until the cash machine would allow her to withdraw more. And then they let her go. And this was people, two, two men in a cab. 

[00:35:05] Bob Gatty: Wow. Now you're, you've lived in New York City. You guys hail cabs all the time. I know. Do you ever think about that?

[00:35:16] You're standing there in the corner and you're waving down the yellow cab. Are they still yellow in New York City? Yeah. Anyway, you're waving down this cab. Do you ever think, oh my god, this might be these might be kidnappers? Not in New York City, right? That's amazing. All right, I have another question for you, and I don't know whether it's a fair one or not, because but I'm going to ask you.

[00:35:44] I've had a bunch of, I've had several guests on this podcast. to talk about illegal drugs, and two of them specifically have both called for the legalization of all drugs from pot to cocaine to heroin, essentially saying it's virtually impossible to control and that it's resulting in unfair prison sentences and overcrowding of our prisons.

[00:36:11] Now, what do you think about that? What 

[00:36:16] Paula Delgado-Kling: I can say? Is that even if it's legalized, that would not have solved Leonore's life problem. As these groups then take on something that could essentially in the beginning be legal, say goldmine. And they. Also turn kids into slaves with gold mining, and then so that becomes illegal gold mining.

[00:36:42] There's reports that these groups are trying to control pharmaceuticals. It, it, as far as Lenore, that would not solve it. That would not have solved her mom's problems with having multiple children year after year. That would not have given her access to schools, to a healthcare system, to jobs, to something else.

[00:37:06] That, that would be comparing something completely different to Lenore. The reality of her life. Understood. 

[00:37:14] Bob Gatty: Yeah. All right. So Paula what do you hope to achieve with your book? You put so much time, effort, sweat, blood, tears, probably. Oh my 

[00:37:27] Paula Delgado-Kling: gosh. So many tears. Yeah. I bet. No piublisher wanted to touch the story because it's not a feel good story.

[00:37:37] It's not a love story. It's not. It's a story about a real person with her own tears, her own blood. Perhaps it's too truthful. So in terms of what I was hoping to achieve with the book is to maybe bring some light to the darkness of so many children who live like this. Incredible. 

[00:38:08] Bob Gatty: Maybe. Yeah. I hope that you achieve what it is you're looking for out of this.

[00:38:16] It's an important, very important topic. 

[00:38:20] Paula Delgado-Kling: This show says at the end, like you mentioned that you were very sad when you read it. Yeah. But. A woman like Lenore is a story of resilience, a story of grit, a story of wanting to find life and happiness and love for her two girls, despite anything that she has gone through.

[00:38:48] Wow. So it's, It's a story of hope, and I hope people do see it that way. Of the human spirit. Does that make sense?

[00:38:57] Bob Gatty: Yeah, it does. So you said you had trouble finding a publisher because it's not a feel good story. 

[00:39:04] Paula Delgado-Kling: It was also perhaps a very difficult story to carry out. And as a first time author, maybe there were a lot of, issues around it.

[00:39:16] So my agent who's wonderful. I adore her, Anna Galsh. She said to me one 4th of July, Paula, you have to get me footnotes. every single thing backed in the book. So I ended up with 65 pages of end notes. We'll can say it was, this is true because it can be corroborated in this report in this way.

[00:39:45] It's. Perhaps it was also a difficult book to find a publisher because it's so far out of what we all know, but that to people in Colombia is very common knowledge. 

[00:40:03] Bob Gatty: So you did, I'm sorry, go ahead, finish. 

[00:40:06] Paula Delgado-Kling: No, I was going to say that Leonor couldn't believe the stuff that stumped me. She's of course, this happens all the time.

[00:40:14] Wow. 

[00:40:16] Bob Gatty: You did find a publisher. Who published, who is publishing the book, which is, I think you said, coming out on the 23rd? 

[00:40:24] Paula Delgado-Kling: This is, this book is published by Or books, which is a wonderful publisher .It takes World events very seriously I really recommend everyone to check out their website OR books. com. 

[00:40:40] Bob Gatty: How do you spell it? 

[00:40:42] Paula Delgado-Kling: O r books. Oh or books. Yes, and An alliance that they have with evergreen review All right. It's a great publisher because they They're ventilating a lot of world events for people who want to know a little bit more beyond headlines. Okay, 

[00:41:05] Bob Gatty: so the book is being published on the 23rd of January.

[00:41:11] Can people pre order it now? This is going to come out a couple of days ahead of that. 

[00:41:16] Paula Delgado-Kling: Yes, it's been available for pre ordering for a couple of months now. Okay. on anywhere online where books are sold. Have you sold any yet? It's hard. I don't know. I can't tell you. You don't know yet? Did you buy one?

[00:41:31] Did you buy one? 

[00:41:33] Bob Gatty: No one for you? Okay. And where can people find it? I presume Amazon. That's where everything is, 

[00:41:40] Paula Delgado-Kling: but. Barnesandnoble. com. Okay. Where books are sold. 

[00:41:46] Bob Gatty: Have you had good response? You've got these two sessions set up where you're going to be reading.

[00:41:53] Are you having a good reception when you Try to do that. Does your agent help you with that? 

[00:42:01] Paula Delgado-Kling: My wonderful PR, Kat Kennedy is helping me with that. Oh, 

[00:42:06] Bob Gatty: okay. You've got quite a team, don't you? You got an agent, you got a PR outfit. That's 

[00:42:12] Paula Delgado-Kling: great. Yes, no, the response has been really great.

[00:42:18] Really wonderful. Good. I was thrilled to see the review from Kirkus Reviews, which I did not know, but apparently it's very hard to get a good review from Kirkus Reviews. So that made my month. 

[00:42:36] Bob Gatty: That made your month, huh? Okay, that's good. So tell us if people want to reach out to you as the author, how can they do that?

[00:42:47] Paula Delgado-Kling: Oh, I'm on Instagram. Just Paula Delgado Kling. Okay. I'm also on Facebook. Okay. Paula Delgado Kling underscore author. Alright. And I'm on X. Which I understand is not as trendy anymore, but I'm also on X under I 

[00:43:08] Bob Gatty: don't know if it's trendy, but you still have to use it if you want to get attention. I don't know.

[00:43:16] Paula Delgado-Kling: Maybe

[00:43:18] and then, on my author website, Which is? Which is PaulaDelgadoKling. com Okay.

[00:43:27] You're welcome to reach out to me, and it comes straight to me, there's no one else, it's me. Okay. And for people out there who want to do book clubs, or, People who want to, in school, write essays or papers. I'm open, I'm available if you'd like to reach out. 

[00:43:50] Bob Gatty: Okay, that's great. Yeah. Okay, Paula. It's been a pleasure talking to you and learning about this.

[00:43:58] And you guys, I hope you check out her book. I can just tell you from the, I don't know, I guess it's part of a chapter that I was able to read online. The writing is beautiful. She is a really good writer. And it's it's told in a very easy to read style. And, the message is, obviously, we've talked about it.

[00:44:23] It's really important. So thank you, Paula. 

[00:44:27] Paula Delgado-Kling: Thank you, Bob, for having me. Thank you.