by Gary Brozek
Add into this volatile chemistry of personalities and interests the fact that we were living in such close quarters, and it was a wonder that there weren’t physical confrontations every day. At home, if I was upset with someone and I really needed to get it out of my system, I could hop on my motorcycle, jump in the car, go for walk, do whatever it took to get some space between him or her and me. In a jungle prison, we had nowhere to go—or at least not very far.
After I confronted Tom with my assessment of these people and his attitude, we didn’t really speak for the next couple of days. It was just our way of putting distance between ourselves. Marc did his best to not take sides, and he was clearly upset by all the stress. I didn’t appreciate him not seeing things my way, and I’m pretty sure that Tom felt the same. None of us were saints by any stretch, and we certainly were not Buddhist monks who maintained our serenity at all times. We were people put in a shitty situation, and we sometimes behaved like shits.
In the days after Tom and I had our little spat, we continued to battle with Ingrid over territory and witness her unbelievable sense of privilege. On the day the FARC delivered mattresses to us, she got pissed off because the one they wanted her to have was baby blue and that color would show mud too easily. We were stunned. We’d been sleeping on bare ground, on boards, or on palm fronds for almost a year and this woman was doing a “Princess and the Pea” act.
Later that day Tom was out of the hooch in the open area looking for a place to hang his hammock. He found a spot near the corner of the hooch and tied it off. I could see Ingrid and Lucho sitting on their bench in the part of the yard that they’d staked a claim on. Tom was now in “their” space. The two of them got this look on their faces and they started talking and giving the stink eye to Tom. Instead of going up to him and dealing with it directly, they went inside the hooch. They came out with the sheets from their beds and hung them out on the clothesline so that they were flapping in Tom’s face.
I had been sitting with Marc watching this develop, and I told Marc, “I know that the three of us haven’t been getting along. This has been a tough stretch here, bro, but we’ve got to stick together on this one.”
Ingrid and Lucho knew what was going on among the three of us. They sensed weakness, and Tom had waltzed into trouble like the sheep who’d been separated from his flock. They figured he was easy pickings at that point, and sure enough, they descended on him, with Ingrid telling him that he should have gotten Lucho’s approval before putting up his hammock. Tom, being the good guy that he was and trying to get along with everyone, started to reason with them.
No matter what was going on between us, Marc and I needed to be there for Tom. Stepping in, we explained to Ingrid and Lucho that no one had to ask permission to put up a hammock anywhere—especially from the two people who had claimed more than half of the limited open area we had as their own. We weren’t raising our voices much, just doing what Tom was doing—trying to be reasonable. Ingrid and Lucho created such a ruckus that Rogelio, one of the FARC guards that the three of us couldn’t stand, came in and intervened. He got them to quiet down and then he basically took our side and finished up by saying that Ingrid needed to learn to respect other people. It was a big moment; all of the politicals were watching this go down, and in our brief time there, it was the first instance we’d seen Ingrid being put in her place by a guard.
I’d like to say that the three of us hugged and made up, but we didn’t. Things improved among us but we didn’t need to say anything. The point was clear. We were brothers. We fought like brothers, and we had one another’s backs like brothers do. I’d also like to say that Ingrid and Lucho did learn to respect us more and to climb down from their high horses, but that didn’t happen, either. It was in their nature. They were politicians and they’d been spouting their own praises for so long they had begun to believe everything they said about themselves.
In some ways, they were on the campaign trail and we were the voters. They would tell us whatever they thought we wanted to hear and had no trouble lying. At that first meeting, when we were supposed to talk about how to improve our prison life, Ingrid flatly denied telling anyone she wanted us out of the camp, even though we had heard her say as much with our own ears. In just about every conversation, it seemed like Lucho worked in a statement of his belief that Ingrid would become the president of Colombia when she was released.
“Is that coffee warm?” he would ask. “Well, when Ingrid is president soon after her release, everyone’s coffee will be ever warm.”
The two of them spent their days plotting and planning a new Colombia together. Despite the drama, gossip, and backstabbing that seemed to follow Ingrid around, I had to admit the woman could get things done that benefited us all. The hooch only had a windowless door and a tiny cutout in one wall. When Ingrid complained about the fact that it was so dark and dismal in the hooch, the FARC came out with chain saws. I think they thought they were doing this to spite her, but it turned out to be great for us all. They cut out an enormous picture window in one of the walls. We enjoyed the extra light and air. If Ingrid’s political party was the Oxygen Green Party, then I at least supported one plank in its platform.
In the end, those first weeks at Camp Caribe taught us that we all had to be quick on our feet. On any given day, you didn’t know what side of someone was going to come out—conciliatory, friendly, two-faced, political, or just plain nasty. I guess it’s true whenever you have a group of people together. Allegiances are going to be formed, friendships tested, decisions made and sometimes regretted. Mostly, though, judgments were formed, and while they weren’t cut in stone and impressions altered, I kept coming back to what my mom had told me. I was a long way from home, but the same rules still applied.
TOM
I wasn’t immune from the bickering, and I saw some of the unfairness that was going on. We each have our own lines and our own tolerances for people and circumstances. I responded when I had felt a line had been crossed. I’d hoped to find intelligent, good-hearted, and communicative people at Caribe and for the most part that’s what I’d found. If we could have stepped back and looked at things from the perspective of “are you better off today than you were before?,” I think that we might have been able to get along better.
So what if the manual-flush toilet system the FARC had improvised—you had to pour a bucket of water into the porcelain bowl—often clogged? That was still better than having to squat in the bush. So what if Ingrid or someone else hogged the space where we could keep our toiletries? I was just grateful we were at least able to take showers—cold, muddy showers, but at least we were able to stand on boards instead of tromping around in the mud. We had a spot in the bathroom building where we could scrub our clothes and that beat the hell out of mucking around with the pigs and their churned-up and floating filth. We were given boiled water, so Keith’s and Marc’s guts weren’t being wrenched as often. We weren’t marching. We weren’t in restraints. We weren’t under orders to be silent. We had access to books and other reading material—about a dozen different volumes. We had a chance to learn more about our situation because of the radios and the collective information and insights of a larger group of people. I was sleeping on a mattress for the first time in months and actually making it through most of the night and not waking up in agony.
As a captive, you have to develop your own methods to do the most important thing: survive. That’s what I wanted to do. My to-do list for the day always started with one of the things that Keith had listed for us all early on. Take it a day at a time and get through it. I knew that it couldn’t possibly be as simple as that given that my day involved interacting with a large group of people with different agendas and attitudes than mine. I did try to keep it to the basics, however. And as I looked at it, as much as I enjoyed Ingrid’s company, and as much as she was a great conversationalist and a charming and charismatic woman, she wanted something from me that I wasn’t going to give—control. She w
anted power over all of us, and I felt like I already had one boss—the FARC—and I didn’t need another. The FARC were feeding and clothing me. They were keeping the rain off me. As a result, I didn’t need or want another boss among the prisoners. That meant Marc and Keith and the rest of the Colombians along with Ingrid. I was fine with us helping one another out and getting by as best we could, but no one else was going to control me.
As the weeks and months passed at Caribe, I came to see it as far too simplistic and illogical to look at our situation from a sequestrados colombianos vs. sequestrados gringos perspective. First, we all had a common enemy in the FARC. Second, whenever we made a judgment about a person’s behavior, or whenever we decided on a course of action, based on nationality, we weren’t just being narrow-minded but were missing the point entirely. Those kinds of emotional responses were counterproductive. We needed to be thinking in terms of what was fair, what was decent, and what would help us all to get through the hell we were in. Our judgments and decisions often did fall along national lines and loyalties, but not always.
The one area where I can say with some certainty that the sequestrados colombianos had a distinct advantage over us was in dealing with the guards. I didn’t believe that the guards showed any kind of favoritism toward the politicals, but the politicals were used to dealing with their own people. They knew better how to work with them or in some cases manipulate them. Orlando, for example, employed a number of campesinos in some of his private business enterprises, and because of his roots, he was used to dealing with people from the lower classes of Colombian society. As a result, he was able to interact and manage them in a way that we couldn’t.
Going into Camp Caribe, we’d assumed that, given the FARC’s aim to liberate the lower classes and radically reorder Colombian society, they would be more resentful toward them. However, the opposite seemed to be true. Some of the guards showed deference to these well-educated and powerful Colombian men and women, which in turn enabled the politicals to gain more in the way of supplies. Whenever clothes came into the camp, it seemed as if one of the politicals was always called over to receive them. Keith continually fought to get clothes that fit him. When T-shirts large enough for him did come in, Gloria and Ingrid made sure to get them for themselves because they liked to sleep in them. We would not have minded if the politicals had been fairer in distributing what came in, but they weren’t. Because of that unfair distribution setup, our provisions usually suffered.
Similarly we’d been promised radios since the first days of our captivity. There were plenty of them in camp and we were glad for this, regardless of who owned them. Listening to the radio became an important ritual in our lives, the one thing above all else that united the ten of us. No matter how bad things were going in the camp, no matter what the petty disputes were, the unstated rule was that you did whatever you could to notify whoever was getting a message from his or her family on the air. We had only been in camp a day or two when we were all sitting and listening to the program Radio Difusora. It was an evening message program, and we were all in the hooch. At that hour it was dark enough to get good reception on the AM band but not dark enough to use our precious supply of candles. As we sat there in the fading light of the day, Marc’s mother’s voice came out clear and strong. She told him that she missed him and loved him and that he should keep the faith. She added that people were “in a commotion” about us being in the jungle. She went on to tell Keith and me individually that our families were okay and that we were going to be okay. We all felt wonderful, and took her words about the “commotion” as a positive sign.
Unfortunately, November of 2003 brought news via the radio that let us know we might not make it out for a long time—if ever. President Uribe announced that he was no longer going to negotiate to get any hostages out; the only option, he said, was rescue. In his statement, Uribe repeated something he’d apparently said back in May regarding the hostages the FARC had killed during the failed rescue operation. He would only support rescue operations, and hostages would be released by fuego y sangre—fire and blood. Those words sent a chill through all of us, and set off a discussion.
Jorge said, “I have heard these words, or ones like them, before from Uribe. I have not forgotten them in the months since he uttered them, ‘The failure to rescue many of the hostages,’ said Uribe, ‘cannot be attributed to the lack of political will, but to the lack of technical assistance and sophisticated equipment. That is what we need to crush terrorism in Colombia.’” Jorge sat back, obviously feeling as though he’d been crushed.
“Uribe’s words echo my thoughts exactly,” I told the others. “Without the right combination of expertise and equipment, a rescue would be a danger to us all.”
Gloria said, “Uribe has other motives. He wants to appear to be strong so the people will reelect him. I’m not convinced he has all our interests at heart—”
Lucho cut her off. “That’s it exactly. He wants your Congress”—he pointed at Marc, Keith, and me in turn as though Congress were truly ours and we were responsible for its actions—“to enact legislation that would provide him with even more sophisticated and expensive tools for his military. That way he can control the people by demonstrating his might—a surrogate might since it is not his own.”
“Are you talking about things like the Predator?” Keith asked. “Unmanned drones may not put people like us in danger, but I don’t think you can ever replace us with whatever the latest widget is.”
I had to explain what Keith meant by widget and added that I agreed. Maybe I was a dinosaur, but I would have rather seen the U.S. give the Colombians better training in how to fight the insurgency than outfit them with the latest toy from the catalog. The conversation continued along those lines.
Uribe also mentioned that he hoped Predators could be used in rescue operations and specifically referenced the three of us as a way to sway President Bush and the Democrats in the U.S. Congress. Orlando and Consuelo told us that there had been a lot of debate recently in the U.S. Congress about the viability of Plan Colombia and the $700 million in aid it provided to Colombia. In spite of the doubts, Congress had approved the money that kept our drug interdiction program in the air and even expanded the scope of the operation to allow for surveillance to search for and track arms shipments in the country. The bad news there was that the more heat the FARC felt, the more it trickled down to us, and obviously rescue operations meant that we were in danger of being executed. In fact, a few days after we heard Uribe’s remarks, the FARC issued a communiqué that stated they would execute prisoners in the event of a rescue operation.
We felt like insignificant pawns in an enormous chess match involving the U.S. and Colombia. Along with that, Colombia’s regional politics always played a part in our safety. The politicals filled us in on the activities of an organization we’d heard of but had not really paid much attention to—the Group of Friends. The U.S., Brazil, Chile, Spain, Mexico, and Portugal all sent representatives to that body. Those representatives had been meeting with representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS) to see what could be done about what our Colombian politicians referred to as the “Venezuelan issue.” Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez had not attended several scheduled bargaining sessions to help resolve several matters in the region. The politicals all seemed as concerned about Chávez and his role as we were about President Bush and Congress.
Marc, Keith, and I talked among ourselves about Chávez and the role Venezuela might have been playing in Colombia and how that affected us. The military-type clothing we received all had “Made in Venezuela” labels sewn into them, and we suspected that the FARC were receiving other additional supplies from Venezuela as well. While we couldn’t say for certain that the Venezuelan government was providing all this for the FARC’s use, the facts certainly seemed to point in that direction. Chávez stood to gain from the FARC’s conflict with Colombia. The more Uribe was tied up fighting terrorists in his own country
, the less he was challenging Chávez for regional military supremacy and influence.
Furthermore, it was clear that the FARC had a shared affection for Chávez. We had to endure a lot of propagandizing from the FARC, and they had spoken openly about their admiration for Chávez. In the eyes of the FARC, Chávez stood up to America and the other countries in the region. They compared him to Simón Bolívar, an iconic figure in South American history who helped defeat the Spanish imperialists and free the lands that today comprise Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia. In Chávez, the FARC saw someone who might be able to restore “Gran Colombia,” the nation made up of the newly independent countries over which Bolívar had first presided. The FARC had their own delusions of grandeur regarding how they were going to transform Colombia. It seemed almost laughable that they idolized someone who seemed to be equally delusional.
The fact that we had to consider the volatile figure of Chávez when exploring the complex dynamic at work only underscored our doubts about a speedy release and reinforced our concerns about a Colombian rescue attempt. After the November statement, we devised several escape plans from Camp Caribe in the event of a rescue and the FARC’s anticipated deadly response. Behind the bathroom, we discovered a small gap between the bottom of the fence and the ground. It was between two posts, so we could easily maneuver the slack and crawl out beneath it. In case of a rescue attempt, that was option number one. We also brainstormed other ideas and Keith suggested that the large black water barrels that each held a thousand liters would be ideal hiding spots if we couldn’t make it to the fence. We knew that being proactive was even more important than staying informed. With our ability to make an early identification of various aircraft, we felt a little more secure knowing that we had a plan of escape in place.