By the late 1960s, President Richard Nixon believed that illegal drug abuse in the United States had reached epidemic proportions. The boom was blamed on a variety of sources: Vietnam, paraphernalia shops, media coverage, and youthful disenchantment with mainstream culture. While marijuana and heroin were the lead characters, cocaine was steadily making a comeback, but it still remained out of the financial reach of the majority of drug users. In 1970, Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act—officially making cocaine illegal in the United States as a Schedule II drug (with only limited use by physicians). And in a 1971 press conference, Nixon named drug abuse as “public enemy number one,” officially beginning the United States’ decades-long war on drugs, which would prove increasingly futile as the years wore on.
By the late 1970s, with an exponentially increasing demand for cocaine among U.S. users, entrepreneurs in Colombia recognized that coca could be grown and processed in the most remote regions of the country, far away from the watchful eyes of Bogotá and Washington. Until the mid-twentieth century, a third of Colombia—the Amazon jungle, which reaches from the Eastern Cordillera to the southern border—was virgin land inhabited by small nomadic tribes. The demographic began to change in the 1950s, during La Violencia, when thousands of campesino families escaped from the bloodshed of their villages into the remote departments of Caquetá, Putumayo, Guaviare, Guainía, Vaupés, and Amazonas. They came from many regions of the country, seeking new lands to cultivate, slashing and burning the indigenous forest to clear small plots where they cultivated banana, yuca, rubber, and cacao (used to make chocolate) and tended to small herds of livestock. The jungle was colonized without the knowledge of the Colombian government, and without any central authority, the campesinos created their own laws to regulate their villages. Democratically elected community boards made major decisions regarding the welfare of the settlers. Makeshift schools, health clinics, markets, and bars sprouted from the jungle soil, and an Amazonian culture emerged—mixing the languages, the music, and the foods from many regions of Colombia.
In the mid-1970s, missionary Catholic priests—almost all Italian—arrived in the region, celebrating Mass and constructing small churches in Cartagena del Chairá, Remolinos del Caguán, and some other more populated villages in the region. News from outside, what was referred to as “the other country,” arrived by radio or by word of mouth from those who traveled the Caguán River—known as the “gateway to the Colombian Amazon.” It was during that period that the first groups of FARC soldiers appeared. For the guerrillas, the Amazon was a safe haven—a place to erect permanent camps, where they could increase their ranks without fear of the Colombian military. As far as the campesinos were concerned, the guerrillas were not intimidating. On the contrary, they offered some order and were a comforting, protective presence.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, coca buyers, seeing endless opportunity in the remote jungle, came with seeds from the high-altitude coca shrub and distributed them among the Amazon farmers. The plants thrived in the jungle. Coca increased the farmers’ incomes thirty-to fortyfold; a kilo of coca base paid $250, far more than what the farmers could get for twenty-five kilos of yuca or plátano. The coca was harvested as often as four times each year, and money flowed into the region. Villages on the shores of the Caguán River multiplied, but the coca boom also brought misfortune. Small farms were converted into huge plantations, which resulted in the need for manual labor to pick the crops. Men from all over the country came to the area, attracted by stories of “white gold.” The promise was of better wages and a good life without government and without laws. The newcomers were the poorest of the poor, almost all illiterate and accustomed to solving their problems through violence. Many of the men who came to the Amazon were fleeing from justice, delinquents who had committed crimes and were now seeking refuge in the jungle.
The migrants lived in horrible conditions in camps near the plantations. The work they did was backbreaking labor; in the blazing sun and stifling humidity, they held the coca shrubs between their knees, raspando (scraping) the coca branches with their hands to pull off the leaves, then tossing the leaves into burlap sacks on their backs. The method earned the coca pickers the name raspachines. During the harvests, raspachines worked from 6:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. The workweek began on Monday and ended Saturday, when at dusk, thousands of men with thickly callused hands descended on the nearby pueblos. The bars pumped out the favorite music of the raspachines, “narco-corridos”—Mexican ballads chronicling violent epics of great narco-traffickers—and the migrant workers spent all of their wages on aguardiente (an anise-flavored liqueur), beer, and prostitutes. Sexually transmitted diseases spread quickly throughout the region. By Sunday night, most of the men were drunk and looking for a fight. On Monday, after the tumult of the weekend, those killed in drunken brawls were counted by the dozens.
By the mid-1980s, with escalating violence and no official entity to deal with the chaos, the FARC guerrillas stepped into the role of law enforcement and began to govern the region. At the time, the growers were still directly employed by the major drug cartels in Cali and Medellín, and the cartels would send out buyers to gather the merchandise by the ton. Because the guerrillas now had control over the area, they were able to tax the coca growers and the buyers. The new funding source was practically limitless and provided the guerrillas with money for weapons, as well as the ability to greatly increase their ranks. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the cartels long out of the picture in the Amazon after their demise at the hands of Colombian and U.S. forces, the FARC had become the de facto government in all of the coca-growing regions in southern Colombia.
It was the task of a midlevel FARC guerrilla commander named Sonia to take care of business in Peñas Coloradas, a rugged outpost on the banks of the Caguán River in the department of Caquetá. Peñas Coloradas had become a commercial center on the river “highway,” and boasted three bars, two whorehouses, one pharmacy, a health clinic, a school, a small park, and about fifty houses. The village was nearly identical to about twenty others that lined the Caguán River. Campesino farmers—worn and cragged old men in cowboy hats—young housewives, dusty children, and tattooed prostitutes all had a hand in the lowest level of the international cocaine trade. All over town, bright blue tarps were spread out, covered by coca base drying in the sun. (Base is the result of the first stage of processing, when kerosene, sodium carbonate, and sulfuric acid are used to turn the coca leaves into a thick paste.) In the rainy season, when coca crops flourished, FARC soldiers would come to town weekly and buy the base, and the campesinos would have handfuls of cash, as a kilo of base at the time could earn a farmer about one thousand dollars. In the dry season, the FARC buyers would come by infrequently, and coca base became the only currency in the village. At the local pharmacy, the white powder paid for dry goods, and the clerk weighed the base with a scale on the counter, collected the bags, and made change in pesos. Prostitutes, whom the FARC required to have weekly medical checkups, took bags of base to the doctor to pay for examinations and treatment. Kilos of coca base were traded for clothing, food, liquor, and medicine.
Sonia’s assignment as the comandante of Peñas Coloradas and other nearby outposts was a testament to the toughness and determination of this woman in her early thirties who came from the department of Huila, in the foothills of the Andes. Born Anayibe Rojas Valderrama, she had lived in stifling poverty with her parents and twelve siblings. “In my house there wasn’t enough money for my siblings and me to have shoes. I wore my first pair of shoes the day of my First Communion,” she recalls. FARC soldiers were a common presence in the village, and given Valderrama’s limited education and lack of future possibilities, the young, clean, and well-fed soldiers were like gods to her. In 1987, when she was twenty years old, without telling anyone or leaving a note explaining her decision, Valderrama left to join the revolutionary army and took the nom de guerre Sonia.
At first, guerrilla life was
difficult for the young woman. She would wake up at 4:30 a.m. for chores and training. She cooked, planted and cultivated crops, exercised, and studied reading, writing, FARC ideology, and weapons for at least two hours a day. In the evenings, all FARC camps had a “cultural hour,” when they would discuss the news and politics or sing and play music. Occasionally, Sonia would memorize poems and recite them during the cultural hour. Afterward, she would stand guard for two hours before being allowed to sleep briefly. Then she would awake and repeat the identical tasks the next day.
Many of the male guerrillas in her unit courted her. “They complimented me for being so pilosa [active and energized],” she says. Often one of her comrades would ask her to be his girlfriend. “I always refused.” And the frustrated suitors began spreading rumors. “They said I was stuck-up; that I thought I was a queen, hoping to conquer a commander.” Sonia was frustrated and felt underutilized. She hadn’t joined the FARC to find a man or to “peel potatoes or learn to be a dental hygienist,” as they had been training her to do. She sincerely wanted to be a soldier, and she would regularly request that she be sent into combat. So Sonia was thrilled when she was taught how to operate some new radios that had arrived. She was fascinated with the study of communications, and she excelled in her class. Soon after, she was chosen to be the radio operator for a commander called Perdomo. “Finally,” she says, “I was on the road to the battlefields.”
Meanwhile, a young guerrilla named Wilson was subtly working on stealing her heart. “When the sun went down and everyone returned to camp, Wilson would accompany me as I bathed in the river; he helped me organize my small caleta [a tentlike structure] and tutored me in my studies.” If she had kitchen duty, he showed up and kept her company while she dripped with sweat in front of the boiling pots. “He became my guardian angel,” she says. But still, Sonia refused his romantic advances. It wasn’t until Wilson was sent away to an explosives course that she realized she was falling for him. Rumors that Wilson had become cozy with a very pretty guerrilla in his class made their way to Sonia’s camp. “I was tortured,” she says. This torture, she believed, was love. So when Wilson finished his course and returned to the camp, Sonia threw him into her caleta, gave herself to him, and begged him never to leave. As was mandatory, they requested permission from their superior to become a couple, a state synonymous with marriage in the FARC. A top commander named Fabián Ramírez, who was visiting the camp, did the honors and gave his official blessing to the union.
Sonia quickly and accidentally became pregnant, which was prohibited in every level of the guerrilla army. She escaped punishment or being thrown out of the movement because Wilson was a high-ranking soldier and was very respected by the commanders. Sonia spent her pregnancy in the camp but left to give birth in Cartagena del Chairá, the largest pueblo along the edge of the Caguán River. She returned with the baby and was able to spend almost a year with Wilson and her son. Then the day came when her heart would break. The commander in charge gave Sonia the option to leave and raise the boy with her family, where she knew she would struggle just to feed him; but if Sonia wanted to continue her life as a guerrilla, which was the only way she and Wilson could be together, she would have to give up the child. Tortured, she and Wilson chose to send the boy to the same family who had raised Wilson in a remote area of Caquetá.
Sonia’s military career flourished, and in 1998 she received orders, along with two hundred other guerrillas, to attack a military base in Caquetá. Sonia stayed back to coordinate the radio communications. Wilson was sent to the front, where he fell under the first barrage. For almost eight hours, Wilson lay on the ground, his stomach ripped open by shrapnel. She heard his terrible cries for help over the radio, but because the frequency was reserved only for commanders communicating battle plans, Sonia could not say a word as Wilson lay dying. “It was such anguish and helplessness that I felt, not being able to speak to him or to help him,” she says. Finally, when his comrades were able to get to him, Wilson was near death. Sonia saw Wilson briefly when he was carried to a jungle hospital. A few days after, she learned that he had died and been buried in a temporary grave. Months later, some of Wilson’s guerrilla friends brought Sonia a bag containing his remains. She washed the bones and put them in a clean bag, which she carried around for almost a year as her unit was moved from camp to camp, until she was able to return the bones to Peñas Coloradas, the place that Wilson had called home.
After giving Wilson’s remains a decent burial, Sonia continued her work on the banks of the Caguán River. Never having had many close friends, she was very lonely. But many of Wilson’s friends came to her, offering help. “Everyone loved him,” she says. “And they knew how much he loved me, so I was inheriting what people felt for Wilson.” As she traveled up and down the river, her mind would constantly go back to Wilson’s last words to her as he lay dying: “You have to continue on, and take care of yourself, dear. And you must tell our son who his father was. So that he, too, will be strong—a warrior like his parents.”
Her dedication to the movement and her great competence as a radio operator in the course of dozens of battles did not go unnoticed. The high commanders put her in charge of Peñas Coloradas. Sonia’s duties, like other midlevel commanders, included finding teachers for the school and nurses for the health clinic. She mandated that all of the prostitutes carry a card stating that they did not have any sexually transmitted diseases. She controlled the quantity of gasoline that could be sold to boat owners, and anyone wanting to travel on the river had to ask her for authorization. Sonia was well liked and respected by the people. “She was our ‘government,’ because we never knew anyone from Bogotá,” said one resident of Peñas Coloradas. Outsiders who arrived in the area had to register with her or with her subordinate guerrillas. She ran a tight ship, which was especially difficult during the weekends, when after a weeklong enforced sobriety, nearly everyone got drunk. She was also the town banker, the person who gave loans to the campesinos, a loving Santa Claus who bought all of the children Christmas presents, and a mediator who helped settle family squabbles and doled out punishment for bad behavior. The village had to be well run, because it was a large source of income for the FARC, and Sonia’s most important responsibility was to keep track of all of the buying and selling of coca base in the region.
By 2003, Sonia’s success and that of all the players in the massively diversified drug trade had caused the cocaine business to explode. Street values in the United States reached a new low, with a gram of cocaine averaging one hundred dollars—an 89 percent drop in price since 1975. Sonia felt confident in her abilities and optimistic about her future in the guerrilla army. What she had no idea of at the time was that others besides her commanders had recognized her dedication. With the use of bugged satellite phones, Colombian military intelligence officers had infiltrated communications along the Caguán River and were closely following the goings-on of Sonia and her comrades. And what she could never have imagined then was that just one year later, her high profile in the FARC and involvement in the coca trade would link her fate to that of Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes—the three American hostages whose goal had been to shut the pervasive business down.
8
El Caguán
Two years after Simón Trinidad joined the FARC, friends close to him say that he received word that his wife, who was living in Mexico with their children, had moved on with another man. The betrayal was the impetus for his decision to remain in the guerrilla army. The following year, in December 1990, during a meeting between the FARC and ELN commanders in the region, Trinidad met with a group of high school students who were part of the Juventud Comunista. When fifteen-year-old Lucero saw the forty-year-old guerrilla commander, her reaction was immediate. “I don’t know if it was love at first sight, but, yes, there was attraction,” she recalls. “I was an ordinary citizen, and I looked at the guerrillas and it was like seeing pure Che Guevaras.” Lucero idolized the renown
ed Argentinean revolutionary from images and propaganda that she’d seen all of her life. Guevara was the perfect hero, someone who could have saved the world. “I felt more than a physical attraction toward the guerrillas. It was an admiration for them, for what they represented.” Trinidad stood out from the others because of his elegant manner. But more than that, Lucero says, “was how I admired his beliefs that he defended in every word. In each one of us, he left a seed planted. The way he expressed himself, the way he reached each of us was very strong.”
For Trinidad, the young Lucero was impossible to forget, as well. The two began to see each other occasionally, when Trinidad could get away from his duties, or when Lucero could concoct a lie that her widowed mother would believe to explain a three-day absence. “One day, he took my hand, and we became boyfriend and girlfriend,” she says. There was a six-hour distance between Trinidad’s camp and Lucero’s farm, so the two spent most of their time apart. Over the next year, the guerrilla commander sent romantic letters. “When I was far away, a little card would arrive with a seed—whatever little seed—because, he said, ‘You place a seed anywhere, and the seed is sown. Since I have thrown my love in your field, love will bloom there, because I have planted it there.’”
After a year, Lucero told Trinidad that she wanted to join the FARC. He was hesitant. “Simón feared that I only wanted to join the guerrillas because I was in love with him. He thought that after the first week, I would be begging them to let me return to my house.” But Lucero was adamant. Her life had been spent on a small farm in Becerril, in the department of César, near the Venezuelan border. Lucero called it a “feudalistic society,” where rich landowners controlled the political system and hired paramilitaries to kill poor farmers they accused of rebellion. Several of Lucero’s childhood friends were killed in the violence, which made her greatly admire the guerrillas who fought back against the repressive oligarchy. On her third trip to visit Trinidad at his encampment, Lucero was adamant. “I said, ‘Simón, I’m going to stay here.’” When Trinidad told her that she couldn’t, “I told him, ‘Then I’m going to the ELN.’” Whether or not Trinidad took her threat seriously, he conceded that she could join the FARC and stay with him in the camp. When Lucero failed to return home, her mother and brother set out to find her, and when they did, they pleaded that she leave with them. When they realized Lucero would not listen, they sought out Trinidad. “She is a spoiled girl,” her mother told him. “She won’t be able to handle this.” But neither the young woman nor the guerrilla commander, both of whom had fallen completely in love, could be swayed. Lucero stayed.
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