Hostage Nation

by Victoria Bruce

  Aside from a brief fantasy he’d had as a high school student, Botero had never considered joining the guerrillas. “After graduating from the university, I was already a father. I’d left my political life with the Juventud Comunista and gone into journalism, which I liked a lot.” Even though many of Botero’s friends had been killed or had joined guerrilla movements, his country’s civil war had always seemed very far away—until the early 1990s, when he began to hear stories from deep within the jungle and from the most remote mountain regions. “The tales were very intriguing, very journalistic. They were stories that always navigated between fiction and reality in the vein of magic realism.”

  Getting an interview with the guerrillas would be somewhat difficult because the FARC had become a very reclusive organization. By 1997, Marulanda and other leaders of the Secretariat were still in the process of rebuilding after the massacres of the Unión Patriótica. They almost never spoke publicly and rarely gave interviews to the media. But because of their twenty-year history, Botero wasn’t surprised when Cano—whose intense dedication to the movement had earned him a place in the Secretariat—agreed to an interview. Cano was known to be the FARC’s great ideologue, but it was still a shock to Botero when he came face-to-face with his former friend in May 1997: Cano had become a deeply reflective revolutionary and seemed to belong to a period three decades earlier.

  In the videotaped interview, Cano expounded on the FARC’s struggle against state-sponsored terrorism. He said that the FARC was growing in numbers of troops, just like other revolutionary groups around the world. He cited conflicts in Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, and the Congo, and insisted that the phenomenon of armed insurgencies was global. Cano chastised what he called a “farce” of democracy in Colombia. “If anything was proven in the last four years [during the scandal-ridden Samper administration], it is that the elections in this country are not democratic. They are corrupt; they are full of tricks, of deceptions, of a deep disregard for what the people express, how the country should be, who should govern, et cetera.” He also told Botero that only if the FARC came to power would the violence in Colombia come to an end.

  For mainstream Colombians, who wanted to believe that the guerrillas no longer had the idea of taking over the country, the Cano interview was an unwelcome wake-up call. The interview was aired in its entirety, and Botero took a lot of heat from the government for giving Cano such a forum. At the end of the 1990s, Botero took the job of director of news-magazine programs for one of Colombia’s largest networks, Caracol. He covered many stories and proposed dozens of others to the network producers, but no news story enticed him more than one that had simply disappeared from the public consciousness—that of the nearly five hundred kidnapped soldiers who had been captured in 1997 and 1998 when the FARC overtook several military bases.

  “Pastrana had recently given the FARC the DMZ, and I went to El Caguán because I wanted to do a large report about the military people whom the FARC held in captivity.” Botero traveled without his camera because he was working on preproduction for his story—securing locations and getting authorization for interviews and access. He arrived in Los Pozos (a three-hour trip from San Vicente del Caguán), where the dialogues between the government and the FARC were being held. The camp was only eighteen miles away, but the jungle roads were ridiculously difficult to travel, especially during the rainy season. “I was talking with various leaders and commanders of the FARC about my idea to do this report, and a car passed by with a man who caught my attention because of the way he acted, the elegance of his uniform. So one of the guerrilla commanders who was there said, ‘Look, comrade Simón, this is the journalist Jorge Enrique Botero.’” Trinidad’s car stopped, and he got out. “He said, ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. I have heard a lot about you.’ And of course, everyone in Colombia knew the story of the banker turned guerrilla, so I said, ‘No. The pleasure is mine because I have heard a lot about you.’” Trinidad, who was with his companion, Lucero, invited Botero to spend the night at their camp.

  “I was happy that I’d brought a bottle of Old Parr whiskey,” says Botero, who was thrilled to get such great access to the senior guerrilla. The camp, which belonged to Secretariat member and senior negotiator Raúl Reyes, was two hours away by car. Several other members of the FARC negotiation team were also there. “We were talking and drinking whiskey almost until two a.m. I had many questions because I had heard many things about Trinidad, about how he was a banker, about his past as a member of the social elite of Valledupar, that he had studied in Bogotá, all of that. We talked a lot about Bogotá in the seventies, when he was a young student. We knew the same places, and many of the people he mentioned were also friends of mine. It was a very interesting night because he was the first guerrilla whom I met who had a social upbringing similar to mine.” The two men discussed cinema, literature, women, and soccer. Botero found Trinidad eloquent, with a keen sense of humor, but also very determined politically. “When we talked about politics, he adopted an uncompromising attitude. He referred to ‘the oligarchy’ with contempt and hatred and defended the most radical positions within the FARC. The whole night he kept insisting that the FARC would never have to turn over their weapons, that they would never put them down. But at the same time, he seemed to be, from the human point of view, a happy man—not a guy who was sad with life or unhappily resigned to the fact that he was a guerrilla. He also seemed like a man completely in love. Lucero was always at his side. He always held her hand. She was always enjoying his jokes. It was as if they were almost one single person.”

  The following day, Trinidad drove Botero back to Los Pozos, where he would meet the guerrilla commander Mono Jojoy to ask for authorization to report on the military hostages.

  Several weeks later, Botero received word that Mono Jojoy would allow him access with his cameras. He would travel by car on remote muddy roads and by river and by foot for sixteen days into the jungle until he reached the hostage camp. What he encountered when he arrived was something he couldn’t have imagined. “I had never seen so much sadness in one place. Men, soldiers trained in rigid military discipline, cried like children in front of my eyes. They sobbed, begged that I would help them get out of there.” The prison was deep within the jungle, where the guerrillas had constructed camps surrounded by barbed wire. “Some were walking like zombies, ignoring reality; others clung fanatically to prayer, raised their arms to heaven, and asked for clemency, compassion, freedom.” From what Botero could see, the hostages were not subjected to torture and were in decent physical condition. “But their spirits had collapsed. Their souls were empty.” Botero thought the camp looked similar to images he’d seen of Jews held in Nazi concentration camps. “When I saw what it was like, I thought, This war is incredibly cruel. I also thought that no one in the world had any idea what these men were suffering, and that maybe if they did, something could change.” Although Botero had no idea if anything he could do would actually help, he says, “I promised that I would not rest for one minute until they were free.”

  With more than ten hours of recorded videotape, Botero returned to Bogotá and locked himself inside a Caracol office for over fifty hours to edit his story. When he finished, his bosses gave a copy of the final program to the government’s peace commissioner, who had requested to see it after the station had run commercials for the upcoming show that included shocking images of the hostages. The following day, the channel received a letter from the National Television Commission demanding the story not be broadcast because it could “seriously hurt the feelings of large segments of television viewers, such as children,” and that “this sort of broadcast could turn out to be counterproductive” in regard to the peace talks. Caracol agreed to scrap the program. A furious Botero went public, admonishing the government’s and Caracol’s censorship. He was fired the next day. But clips of his disturbing images had already reached the masses in the promotional spots.

  The public outcry over the scenes of
men behind barbed-wire fences and the heartbreaking messages from the captives to their families became the catalyst for the Colombian government finally to take action. The result was a successful negotiation between the FARC and President Andrés Pastrana’s government less than a year later to exchange some three hundred hostages. Amid great fanfare, Pastrana released dozens of FARC guerrillas from Colombian prisons. But the FARC Secretariat freed only the rank-and-file soldiers and continued to hold higher-ranking military and members of the National Police. The family members of those released were elated. But it became painfully clear that the FARC had no plans to do away with the practice of kidnapping. That same day, FARC commander Mono Jojoy made a startling statement: “We are going to grab people from the Senate, from Congress, judges and ministers, from all the three powers [of the Colombian government], and we’ll see how they squeal.” Although much of the country supported the exchange, many others were furious and thought Botero had crossed a line. The journalist began to receive death threats by mail soon after some of his video footage aired: “Shut your mouth, motherfucker. We’re coming to get you. You have five days to get lost.”

  “The people who threatened me never identified themselves,” Botero says. “But it was clear that the threats came from the ultra-Right, since in the letters they sent to me they accused me of being ‘a journalist of the guerrillas,’ ‘guerrilla disguised as a journalist,’ and so on. At that time, those who were threatening or murdering people were the paramilitary groups, and often special groups from the army or the police.” The Center to Protect Journalists reported, “Sometimes, the caller played a recording of Botero’s private phone conversations from a few minutes earlier, revealing that the reporter’s phone was being tapped.” In January 2001, a hand-delivered note appeared at his home with the message “We offer our condolences to the Botero family for the death of Jorge Enrique Botero.” The false condolence letter was a standard death threat in Colombia. Botero sent his family to a safe house in Cuba and went into hiding for two months.

  Even though the threats resumed when he returned, Botero was content. He believed that his work had been the impetus for freeing the hundreds of captive soldiers. On the topic of hostages in Colombia, Botero became a well-known expert. Not only had he been the only journalist to venture into the jungle to record the conditions of captivity but he had presented the country with the drama of the families, their desperation, their anguish, and their struggle to recover their loved ones. There were more than a few who accused him of exploiting the pain of others for money, while others in the Colombian government and military pointed to him as a puppet used by Marulanda to apply pressure for an exchange of prisoners. “I wasn’t surprised,” says Botero. “I expected it. It’s a tactic of the government and the official press outlets to discredit or delegitimize independent journalists. I didn’t give a shit. And I did not feel bad. To the contrary, it confirmed that I was doing my job.”

  13

  Proof of Life

  On April 1, 2003, dramatic images of Pfc. Jessica Lynch exploded in the American news media. The story was indeed incredible: the petite nineteen-year-old Lynch wounded and fighting off her Iraqi captors; a horrifying eight days in captivity; and the Hollywood blockbuster rescue by a joint unit of Delta Forces, U.S. Army Special Forces, and U.S. Navy SEALs. The fascinating tale inspired patriotic fervor in a country not fully convinced of the necessity of the Iraq war. The story was later proved to be highly embellished, and many, including Lynch, accused the Pentagon of manufacturing a propaganda campaign to rally support for the invasion. There was no benefit to the U.S. government to publicize the plight of Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves, and Keith Stansell, and few people in the United States even knew there were American hostages in Colombia. For the first six months after the crash, the U.S. government could not confirm if the men were even alive. The Colombians were still tasked with looking for the American hostages, but the trail was cold, and there were no reported sightings and no new intelligence. There were also no American military forces put on the ground to find them.

  While the American media mostly ignored the story of the American hostages, Jorge Enrique Botero was conducting a relentless and calculated campaign to get back into the jungle. He fervently believed that good fortune came to those who had patience. And if anyone had the patience to wait for the FARC (with all their frustrating pragmatism and guerrilla bureaucracy) to grant him an interview with Ingrid Betancourt and the three Americans, he did. After being fired from the network, Botero had formed his own company with the goal of surviving as an independent journalist, and an interview with Betancourt would be the journalistic coup of his career. Ingrid Betancourt’s case had been front-page news all over Europe since her kidnapping, and a video interview of Betancourt and Clara Rojas would not only prove they were still alive—something that no one was sure of—but also make headlines around the world. And maybe, Botero hoped, it would cause the Colombian government to do something to free the hostages.

  Americans Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, and Thomas Howes in an interview with journalist Jorge Enrique Botero while in captivity, July 25, 2003. Photo: Jorge Enrique Botero.

  In June 2003, Botero finally learned from his contact that he would have access to the camps where thirty-five Colombian military officials, members of the National Police, and politicians were being held. He was not told whether he would be able to interview Betancourt or the three Americans. Many of the hostages he would see were part of the same group he had reported on in 2001 and those who had been held back during the prisoner exchange with Pastrana’s government. Botero knew how hard the conditions were in the jungle, and he wondered how the hostages, whom he now considered friends, were faring. In several different packs he gathered the things he would need for his journey: a couple of shirts, a pair of jeans, a lot of underwear, and all the tapes he could fit. He also packed his green book for taking notes, pens of different colors, the audio recorder, batteries, and, above all else, his camera, a bright, flashy Canon XL1—a machine difficult to take into the jungle because of the humidity, but ideal for ensuring a quality sufficient for television broadcast. In his backpack he put videos that he had shot over the past few months of the hostages’ relatives sending messages to the captives. If he had the chance, he would show the videos to the hostages and take the opportunity to record them watching, creating a type of virtual meeting between family members who had not been able to speak for up to six years. He also carried magazines in which the hostages were mentioned, books to soothe the boredom and raise their morale, plenty of cigarettes, candy, chocolates, and real-world essentials: toothpaste, disposable razors, sanitary napkins, shampoo. In a moment of wishful thinking that he might be able to interview the Americans, he added a John Grisham book in English that he’d found in a bookstore and two copies of Newsweek and The Miami Herald so that the men could have some news from the United States. The prospect of seeing the Americans was what truly excited him most, but he was nervous and angry with himself for never having learned English.

  Botero’s motivation was twofold. He was sure that if the U.S. government saw an interview with its three kidnapped citizens direct from their jungle prison camp, something would definitely have to be done to help get them released. Perhaps President Bush would even pressure Uribe’s government to make an exchange of prisoners so that the Americans could be freed, which would help liberate Ingrid Betancourt and all of the others, too. It would also be the first time in his career that his coverage of the Colombian civil war would reach the United States.

  To learn more about the Americans, Botero searched the Internet for stories in the U.S. press. He found very few. But there was one extensive article on MSNBC.com about the crash, and it included quotes from Jo Rosano, the mother of Marc Gonsalves. There weren’t any interviews with other family members, and Botero couldn’t understand why. Because Botero was sure that he would be the only civilian the men had seen since their kidnapping, he wanted to take so
mething into the jungle that would help gain their trust and give the men some solace. He contacted two colleagues in the United States and asked them to record an interview with Rosano—specifically, to record a message from Rosano to her son. In her Connecticut home, Rosano was nervous and suspicious, but she agreed to the interview. Against a backdrop of flickering candles and dozens of sympathy cards, she cried as she spoke:

  Marc, I just want to tell you that I love you very much. I think about you day and night. I hope you come home soon, safe and alive and also your two colleagues. There’s hundreds of people praying for you. And I just need you to come home because I miss you so much. And I worry about you. Please stay strong. You’ll be home soon. I love you.

  Botero downloaded the video file from the Internet, packed it along with the messages from the other families, and set off to find his contact. The trip was perilous. For the first three days, he traveled alone, catching a ride when he could along the country’s paved roads. At each of the seven military checkpoints, he convinced the soldiers who tried to stop him that he was making a documentary about “the reality of the battlefields.” Then he crossed the boundary that took him to the “other” Colombia—the former DMZ, where the FARC was still the law of the land—and met his two guerrilla guides. Along the way, he took copious notes in his journal, describing the sounds, smells, and mysteries of the jungle, telling about walking on trails and navigating rivers, traveling in boats and on mules and on foot over impossible routes through endless green.