Out of Captivity: Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

by Gary Brozek

  TOM

  For months, we’d been playing an unbelievably long game of chess with the Colombian Army, moving all around the board but with few pieces being taken. As much as I wanted to believe that a checkmate was imminent, I had only my optimism to support that belief. As far as I was concerned, our erratic and unpredictable marching had switched from being the result of Milton’s incompetence to a deliberate strategy of delay. I hadn’t been able to see this at the beginning of the game, but as the moves took on a pattern, I could detect, if not the logic to it, then at least how those moves fit into a larger overall strategy. To me, delay was a good thing. That meant we had something to wait for—and I’d been holding out hope that each time we waited, it was for something better to come along.

  But after months of marches and temporary camps, things couldn’t have been much worse for us. Yet as strange as it sounds, the worse things got, the more reason we had to hope. If things got so desperate for the FARC, maybe they would be willing to work a deal for us that involved some cash. Or maybe the government would give them a DMZ in exchange for the release of some prisoners.

  One day, a female guard told us that we were going to be turned over to a new set of guards. She was just a young kid, so we figured we should try to verify her statement. We managed to pressure the newly strict Plumber into giving up a bit of information, and he told us that a few days before, he and a guide had gone out on horseback to meet with Mono JoJoy, Joaquín Gómez, and a few other big bosses. According to what he’d learned, Mono JoJoy wanted us as close to him as possible, so close in fact that Marc, Keith, and I would be handed over to Mono JoJoy and his men at any moment.

  Anytime Mono JoJoy’s name and ours were used in the same breath, we were intrigued. Besides being in charge of the military operations, Mono JoJoy, we’d been told, had overall responsibility for the FARC’s many hostages. If we were being turned over to him, it was a big deal. We had heard a lot of aircraft activity and were near a lot of farms and larger towns, which boosted our hopes that a release might be coming up. We’d spent about twenty weeks playing this crazy chess match, and it was nice to think that it was finally going to end. Whether it meant release or getting away from Milton, we’d still be earning a huge victory.

  We really got the sense that some significant change was coming in our last temporary camp with Milton’s group. The Plumber came up to Keith and handed him one of the panelón radios we’d been lusting after for so long. I called it the Chevrolet of jungle radios. It was an AM-FM model, a Sony, and as reliable as anything out there, especially if you wanted to pick up local Colombian AM stations. He handed Keith the radio, said, “Remember me,” and walked away.

  The Plumber never did anything without a reason. A couple of years into our captivity, I’d had a conversation with him in which he said that if we were ever able to get out of there, and if he was able to get out of the FARC (he could lose a foot to a land mine or something), he wanted to know how he could connect with us again. I told him that the only way he could contact me was through my e-mail address. I told him he could go into Villavicencio and find an Internet café. I gave him as much information as I could, knowing full well that the odds of any of this happening were pretty remote.

  I saw the Plumber for what he was—a schemer. If I had any respect at all for him, it was because he seemed the closest of the FARC to really understanding the situation he was in. He didn’t like prisoner duty, but he knew that it was safer than other units. The likelihood of him being killed while with us was lower than it was out in the field taking military action or protecting coke labs. He’d seen his best friend killed in action and that dose of reality got to him. The Plumber understood risks, and just as he would go only so far to help us, he was going to go only so far to put his own life in jeopardy.

  When we asked him what he thought about his future, he said something very telling. In a lot of ways, he said, things were worse for him than they were for the others. He understood that by joining the FARC, he had essentially given his life away. Guerrillas got killed and the FARC just recruited more kids to replace them. Sooner or later it would be his turn. That he gave Keith the radio let us know that he still held out some hope that his life might play out differently. We figured it was his way of saying, “If you ever get out of there, keep me in mind and get me to the States somehow.”

  We didn’t have long to wait to see what was next. Some new FARC faces had joined our temporary camp, and when we got the order to pack up, we were the only ones who did so. All of the FARC under Milton’s “command” stood and watched us pack up. Then they formed a kind of rough line and said good-bye. Tatiana had a little chick that she wanted Marc to take with him so that he could finally have an egg layer of his own someday. I found myself feeling a little emotional at the thought of separating from this group. We’d been together for two years and now it was over. It wasn’t quite that old line about feeling good when you stop banging your head against the wall, but it was something like that mixed with a little bit of genuine regret.

  All of those emotions changed when Milton pulled the three of us aside. He started by explaining that he was turning us over to a new group. He said that Jair, a short blond guerrilla we’d seen in camp the last two days was now going to be in charge of us. We assumed that was all Milton was going to say, but then he went into cover-his-ass mode. Stating that he was only human—which we had seen ample evidence of, what with all his failings—he admitted that he’d made some mistakes. He was aware that he’d denied us the things we wanted most—radios and books—and he claimed that he’d told Jair to provide us with those things. He also said that he’d put in a good word with the new Front. We’d been no trouble to him. He offered his hand. As much as I hated the guy, I figured there was no point in pissing him off. I took his hand and Milton walked away, back to the jungle and the life he seemed to love so much.

  Jair led us on a ten-minute march and we met up with a larger group. He struck us as a sharp and energetic guy. With his blond hair and crew cut, he seemed like a gringo who’d been airlifted into the jungle. Still we were concerned about losing the connections to the guards in Milton’s group and the information channels that we’d worked so hard to cultivate. The Plumber and the others had been vital in helping us get what we needed and stay on top of our situation. We were all a bit anxious about having to start over.

  Immediately we could sense the change in attitude among this new group. Suddenly we were being stared at again—novelty attractions on display for all to see. We’d been with Milton’s guys for so long, we’d forgotten what it was like to be the new kids. But there was good news as well. Even though losing the connections we had for information was difficult, Jair’s style of leadership was way better than Milton’s, and he was much more responsive to our needs. I got the sense immediately that this was a big step up for us. They had prepared a bathing platform for us in the creek and that was more than we could ever have expected of Milton’s lazy bunch. Simple things like soap and toilet paper let us know that this group was better supplied. The food was more plentiful and that always helped our morale. Nevertheless, when we brought up the subject of radios, Jair seemed surprised—so much for Milton letting him know what we needed and wanted.

  The very next night, we were given the order to move out. Jair and his guerrillas were in much better physical condition and clearly better outfitted than Milton’s bunch. They were heavily loaded with supplies, but when we set out with them, we were moving double time. Before we had gone very far, we came to a large open field, and standing in it was an older FARC member, a guy we recognized from our proof of life. His name was César. He was the leader of the 1st Front and one of the most vicious warriors in the FARC’s history. As we filed past him he said in English, “Good morning.”

  We didn’t have too much time to wonder what he was doing there. This group had us on the move, hustling us out of that hot zone as quickly as possible. Marc had hurt his knee and mine wer
e still painfully swollen, not to mention that I was troubled by an Achilles-tendon problem. Still, we both wanted to make nice with the new group, so we did everything we could to keep pace. At times we were actually running, and we estimated that we were moving at a rate of about twenty kilometers a day for the first three to four days. The odd thing was that as fast as we were moving and as difficult as that pace was, the guerrillas were being nice to us. They kept saying, “This isn’t a forced march. If you need to stop, we can stop. Just let us know.”

  From the time Sonia and her crew had captured us to this point nearly three and a half years later, no one had ever said that to me. Just knowing that I could take a break when I needed to and not pay a price for it made it a lot easier to keep pushing on. The FARC were also carrying a lot of the gear Marc and I had in order to lighten our loads. With Milton’s bunch, it had been just the opposite; we constantly had to help them out by carrying extra food and other essentials in our equipos.

  When we reached a resupply point, we were given new boots and clothes. The food was more plentiful than before, but it came at odd hours and with no rhyme or reason. We weren’t about to object, but getting beer and bread at 8 A.M. did seem strange. If we’d learned one thing in the jungle, it was don’t question too much. We just took whatever food or supplies we were given because you could never predict when you might get those things again.

  While we were there, César also showed up. He seemed to like to joke around and keep things light. Before he moved off into the jungle with another cadre of FARC, he told us not to worry and that we’d now be better taken care of. He said that we’d be watching movies, reading, and when we got to our destination, there would be radios waiting for us. We were taking a wait-and-see attitude on that, but so far these guys definitely had lived up to their promises. We spent a few days at the resupply depot with Jair’s group, where we learned that one of the reasons we’d been hightailing it was that our new group had come under fire from an air attack just a couple of days before they picked us up. They wouldn’t talk about casualties, but it was clear they wanted out of the hot zone as quickly as possible.

  With all of us heavily loaded again—Marc and I had to carry all our own stuff again because the FARC were carrying all the food and other materials they needed—we kept up that same intense pace for a few days. We finally slowed down and came to a camp on the edge of a wide, fast-moving river. Across the river from us we saw César and his encampment. Even though we’d been with the FARC for more than three years, I never got used to one particular sight. Like all the other FARC leaders, César shared his quarters with a young woman. He had to be in his midforties and this woman was no more than eighteen or nineteen. I tried to tell myself that given what we knew about the FARC and the sheer drudgery of their life, she was probably wise to pair off with someone of his rank, but it still bothered me that these young women were wasting their lives.

  From that point on, we moved on the river. Including all the FARC, there must have been about forty of us plus all our supplies. The FARC only had two of the smaller river-running canoes. As a result, we would travel for a couple of hours downstream and stop. The boats would head back upstream to pick up those left behind and then return. In the meantime, we set up camp and generally took it easy.

  In this manner, we gradually made our way downriver, and though we continued to be on the move, it was far less rigorous than it had been with Milton. Our diet was much better thanks to the abundant caribe fish. I’d enjoyed eating them from the beginning and Marc and Keith started to nibble at them. For the first time in a while, there were measured stretches of leisure time that gave me the opportunity to take in my surroundings. Even though I’d been held captive in the place, the beauty of Colombia still lured me. At one point, we’d stopped to camp at a bend in the river. We were in what seemed to me to be virgin territory. This enormous elbow of river was spread out in front of us and it opened onto a vast vista of valleys and tree-covered hillsides that stood in row after row until they bumped up against the horizon.

  As it turned out, that vista was more than just a pretty sight. It signaled a change in the river. Instead of thick jungle on either side, we entered an area with sheer rock-face walls and enormous boulders strewn haphazardly across the river. The FARC had traveled these waters frequently and had names for some of the rock outcroppings—the Elephant, the Window, etc. We could hear the distinctive sound of white water. Rather than risk running the rapids, we would get out of the boats and walk along trails that the FARC had clearly been using for years. In the less tempestuous waters, a few of us would remain in the boat and run the rapid while the others walked and were then picked up again. At times we abandoned the boats altogether because the water was too low. The FARC seemed to know exactly where these spots were and anticipated them. Sometimes we would travel on foot for a few hours, sometimes for several days, before we got back in different boats that were tied up and waiting for us. Those coordinated efforts were a far cry from Milton’s meanderings.

  As I pilot, I admire anyone who can handle any kind of craft with skill. When we’d been on boats before, the pilots simply bashed their way through any obstacle. They couldn’t do that with the rocks and rapids. Our pilot didn’t seem like a FARC member. His long hair, which hung down his back, and his goatee gave him a rock-star look. He was a big guy, and like Rogelio, he was difficult to understand. What little bits we did pick up indicated to us that he was a true revolutionary convert. His nickname, Mantequillo, loosely translated to Butter Boy. Keith couldn’t resist needling our chubby boat driver. He kept asking why all the boat drivers were overweight and if he had been stealing instead of delivering the food supplies. Butter Boy didn’t laugh at that. He took his job seriously and swallowed the whole FARC reformation-of-the-country ideology in large quantities.

  Despite its better organization, this new group still managed to keep things as surreal as ever. One night toward the end of our ride down the river one of the older female guerrillas serenaded us with anti-American propaganda songs. As this came to end, we were struggling to find an entrance to a camp just off the water. The foliage and vegetation were so thick that even with their spotlights, the FARC couldn’t find the entry point to the tributary. At one camp, we’d all seen the cheap horror flick Leprechaun and one of the new guerrillas was a spitting image of the evil dwarf of the title. He was a bit of a know-it-all and a chain smoker extraordinaire. He stood in the bow of the boat using a branch to steady himself. Silhouetted by the spotlight, he pointed his short arm and crooked little finger in the direction he thought we should go. His high-pitched screaming lent an air of both familiarity and bizarreness to the night’s spectacle. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same when it came to the FARC.

  KEITH

  I wasn’t sure if it was because Butter Boy smelled his mama’s home cooking or what, but he finally found the river entrance through the jungle he was looking for. We only went a few yards before we were told to off-load the boat. We set out on a clearly marked trail at about two in the morning and marched for an hour or so before we finally stopped. After a quick dinner of guerrilla rice—their version of Rice-A-Roni—and an egg, we turned in for the night. We only got a couple of hours of sleep before we were awakened and told to pack up again. It didn’t take Tom and me long to get our gear together, since we’d both slept in hammocks, but Marc, whose back had been bad since the crash, needed to take his tent down, so he was lagging behind us.

  We marched for a couple of hours until we came to a large FARC encampment. Like so many others we’d seen, it likely dated back to the DMZ days when the FARC were far less mobile than now. The place had similarities to Caribe, with a few permanent-walled structures and walkways to keep the guards out of the mud. Primarily, the other structures were typical small, jungle, open-air buildings with roofs. The jungle had tried to reclaim some of the territory, but much of the camp was still intact. As we walked along a boardwalk past where all the
FARC were camped, something seemed unusual and out of place. At first, I was too tired to pick up on it, but then it hit me: On the clotheslines strung up around this camp, there were civilian clothes. The arrangement of the hooches was different from that of the FARC in their camp.

  Even in our sleep-deprived state, it didn’t take long for us to realize that we had been relocated to a camp with other hostages. When I first saw one of their faces I was both excited and sad. I was happy to see some of the military guys who’d been separated from us during the forty-day march after Caribe. Armando Castellanos was one of the first to spot me and he was literally jumping up and down. He was always a really emotional guy, and he started crying and put his arms around me. When I hugged him back, I thought I had my arms around a bag of brooms. Armando had always been a fit guy, but he had gotten very thin. He told me he had hepatitis, and though his skin didn’t show any signs of it, he was almost unrecognizable. Despite his physical condition, he was the same upbeat, positive guy.

  As was always the case during our captivity, this was a good-news/bad-news deal. On the one hand, I was pleased to see their familiar faces; on the other, it was devastating that these eight military prisoners were still in captivity. All of them had been in custody years longer than we had. In the time since the forty-day march, we had speculated endlessly about what happened to everyone. We’d also wondered a lot of times about when we might get put back into a group of other prisoners. The eight of them seemed thrilled to see us, too, and our little reunion was a mix of handshakes, pats on the back, questions and answers, and a rush of excited chatter. Making things even better was the fact that we were going to be mixed in with a group of military and police guys. Based on our time in the political camp, I knew they conducted themselves the way that I wanted to handle my captivity.