I began to weep, uncontrollably, unable to stanch the flood of tears—a reaction that was all the more unexpected given that I was unable to identify the feeling that had triggered it. I tried to contain the onslaught of tears with my sleeves, which smelled of vomit, and by brushing aside the strands of hair that stuck to my streaming cheeks as if deliberately increasing my confusion. I hated my lack of restraint. My anger left me pitiful, and the knowledge that I was being observed only intensified my clumsiness. The idea of leaving, of heading back across the camp, enchained as I was, obliged me to concentrate on the simple mechanics of movement and helped me to lock up my emotions.
When Andres felt he was no longer under scrutiny, he relaxed, giving free rein to his malice. “I have a sensitive heart . . . I don’t like to see a woman cry, still less a prisoner. Our regulations stipulate that we must show consideration for our prisoners.” He grinned, aware that he was delighting his audience. With one finger he beckoned to the man who had brutalized me. “Take her chains off. We’re going to prove to her that FARC knows how to show consideration.”
It was unbearable to endure the touch of that man’s hands, brushing my skin as he put the key into the padlock hanging from my neck.
He was smart enough not to make too much of it. Then he knelt down, not looking at me, and removed the chains that hobbled my feet.
Relieved of the weight, I wondered what I should do. Should I leave without asking for anything more or thank the commander for this gesture of mercy? His indulgence was a move in a pernicious game. The aim was to go one better in snubbing me, by means of an ingenious stunt that left me indebted to my torturer. He had planned it all, enrolling his subordinates as his henchmen. He had gone from being the instigator of his villainy to pretending to be its judge.
I chose a way out that would once have cost me so dearly. I thanked him, in the proper manner. I needed to cloak myself in rituals, to regain whatever it was that made me a civilized human being, shaped by an upbringing that was part of a culture, a tradition, a history. More than ever, I felt the need to mark my distance from the barbarity. He looked at me with astonishment, uncertain whether I was making fun of him or whether I had capitulated.
I headed back to my cage, aware of all the mocking gazes of disgust that, in spite of everything, I had gotten off lightly. They all must have concluded that the old crying trick had finally gotten the better of their commander’s obstinacy. I was a dangerous woman. Surreptitiously, the roles had been reversed—no longer a victim, I was now feared: I was a politician.
Politician. It was a word that contained all the class hatred with which they were brainwashed daily. Indoctrination was one of the commander’s responsibilities. Each camp was built on the same model, and each featured a classroom where the commander communicated and explained his orders, where everyone was expected to denounce any nonrevolutionary attitude displayed by their comrades. They risked, if they failed to do so, being considered an accomplice, being brought before a court-martial for sentencing and being shot.
They’d been told that I had run for president of Colombia. I belonged, therefore, to the group of political hostages whose crime, according to FARC, was that they voted to fund the war against FARC. As such, we politicians had an appalling reputation. We were all parasites, prolonging the war in order to profit from it. Most of these young people did not really understand the meaning of the word “political.” They were taught that politics was an activity for those who managed to deceive and then amass wealth by stealing taxes.
For me the problem with their explanation was that to a large degree I shared it. Moreover, I’d gone into politics in the hope, if not of changing things, at least of being able to denounce injustice.
But, for them, anyone who wasn’t on the side of FARC was scum. It would be pointless for me to wear myself out explaining my struggle and my ideas to them. They weren’t interested. When I told them that I had gone into politics in order to fight against everything I hated—corruption, social injustice, and war—their argument was irrefutable: “You all say the same thing.”
I headed back to the cage, freed from my chains but burdened with this hostility mounting against me. It was then that I heard for the first time that FARC song, set to a childish little tune:
Esos oligarcas hijueputas que se roban la plata de los pobres,
Esos burgueses malnacidos, los vamos a acabar, los vamos a acabar.2
In the beginning it was a humming sound, coming very quietly from one of the tents; then it began to move around with me wherever I went. I was so lost in my ramblings that I didn’t even react. Only when the men’s voices began to chant the verses, deliberately articulating very loudly, did I raise my head. Initially I did not grasp the meaning of the words, since their regional accent often distorted them, but they were raising such a fuss about this little ditty that it ended up making everyone laugh, and the change of mood brought me back to reality.
The man singing was the very same one who had removed my chains. He was singing with a sneer on his face, very noisily, as if to set the rhythm for his gestures, pretending the whole time to be putting his things away inside his backpack. The other one singing, who had come all the way from his tent on the far side, was a puny, bald, pathetic sort, in the habit of closing his eyes every two seconds as if to ward off a blow. One of the girls was sitting on the guy’s mat ogling me and clearly thought it was great fun to accompany her stare with this tune that, visibly, they knew by heart. I hesitated, wearied by everything I’d been through; I told myself that in the end I did not need to feel targeted by the words of the song. Their attitude conveyed the meanness of a playground at recess. I knew that the best thing would be to turn a deaf ear, but I did the opposite and stopped. The guard who was glued to my heels nearly collided clumsily with me, which made him mad. He yelled at me to keep moving, enjoying the fact that he had an entire audience he’d won over effortlessly.
I turned to the girl who was singing to herself. I heard myself say, “Don’t sing that song around me anymore. You have guns, and the day you want to kill me, you can just go ahead.”
She continued singing with her companions, but her heart wasn’t in it. They could not make a nursery rhyme out of death. At least not in front of their victims.
The order to bathe arrived soon enough. The afternoon was nearly over, and they informed me that the time allowed would be very short. They knew that bathing was the best moment of the day for me. To have it curtailed was an indication of the regime that I should come to expect.
I said nothing. Escorted by two guards, I went to the river and jumped into the gray water. The current was still very strong, and the water level had not stopped rising. I clung to a protruding root by the riverbank and kept my head underwater: I opened my eyes wide, hoping to wash away everything I’d witnessed. The water was icy. It awoke every painful spot in my body, and it hurt to the very roots of my hair.
The meal arrived as I got back to the cage. Flour, water, and sugar. That evening I huddled in my corner, with dry, clean clothes, and I drank my colada3 not because it was good but because it was hot. “I will not have the strength to face any more days like this one,” I said. I had to protect myself, even against myself, because it was clear that I did not have the strength to endure for much longer the treatment to which they were subjecting me. I closed my eyes before night fell, hardly breathing, while I waited for it all to subside: my suffering and anxiety, my solitude and despair. During the hours of that night without sleep, and during the days that followed, my entire being undertook a curious path that led to the hibernation of my body and soul, waiting for freedom like the coming of spring.
The next day dawned, as on all the mornings of all the years of my entire life. But I was dead. I tried to fill the endless hours, occupying my mind with anything that could distract me from my own self. But the world no longer interested me.
I saw them coming from the other end of the camp. They had crossed it silently,
one behind the other, or rather one pushed by the other. When they had drawn level with the guard station, Yiseth spoke in the guard’s ear. He motioned with his chin for them to go through. She whispered something that seemed to bother him and pushed him forward.
“We would like to speak to you,” she said to me, while I tried my best to not seem concerned.
She was wearing the same sleeveless camouflage shirt as the night before. And had the same hard, secretive air, which aged her.
I looked up at her, my eyes heavy with bitterness. Her companion was one of the three men who had brutalized me in the swamp. His presence alone gave me a shiver of repulsion. She realized and nudged her companion with her shoulder. “Go ahead, tell her.”
“We are . . . I came to say that . . . I’m sorry. Please forgive me for what I said to you yesterday. Yo no pienso que usted sea una vieja hijueputa. Quiero pedirle perdón. ¡Yo sé que usted es una persona buena!”4
The scene was surreal. This man had come to apologize, like some kid scolded by a strict mother. Yes, they had called me every vile name. But that was nothing compared to the horror they’d put me through. It was all absurd. Except for the fact that they had come. I was listening. I thought I was indifferent.
It took me time to understand that these words, and the way in which they’d been said, had actually soothed me.
TWO
FAREWELL
FEBRUARY 23, 2009
It is exactly seven years to the day that I was abducted. On every anniversary, as soon as I wake up, I wince when I realize what day it is, even though I’ve known for weeks that it is getting closer. I consciously count backward, wanting to mark this day so that I never forget it, so that I can dissect and ruminate over every hour, over every second of the chain of events that led to the prolonged horror of that interminable captivity.
I awoke this morning, as I have every morning, giving thanks to God. And also as I do every morning since I was freed, I take a few moments, just seconds, to realize where I’ve been sleeping. On a mattress, without a mosquito net, and under a white ceiling instead of a sky of green camouflage. I awake naturally. Happiness is no longer a dream.
But on this particular day, February 23, a split second after waking I feel guilty for not remembering. I am surprised, stunned, remorseful for forgetting. My guilt and anxiety drive my memory to distraction, causing such a flood of recollections that I have to leap out of bed to escape my sheets, as if mere contact with them could cast some irreversible evil spell upon me and engulf me once again in the depths of the jungle.
Once out of danger, my heart still pounding yet anchored in reality, I realize that the relief that comes from recovering my freedom cannot in any way be compared to the intensity of the suffering I have known.
I’m reminded of a Bible passage that had struck me while I was in captivity, a hymn in the book of Psalms that described the harshness of crossing the desert. The conclusion had come as a surprise to me. It said that the compensation for the effort, courage, tenacity, and endurance displayed during that journey was not happiness. Nor glory. What God offered as a reward was only rest.
You need to grow old to appreciate peace. I had always lived in a whirlwind of activity. I felt alive. I was a cyclone. I had married young, my children, Melanie and Lorenzo, fulfilled all my dreams, and I undertook to transform my country with the strength and stubbornness of a bull. I believed in my lucky star, and I worked hard and could do thousands of things at once, because I was sure I would succeed.
JANUARY 2002
I was on a short trip to the United States, accumulating sleepless nights and back-to-back meetings while seeking support from the Colombian community for my party, Oxígeno Verde, and for my presidential campaign. My mother was traveling with me and we were together when I received a call from my sister, Astrid. Papa was unwell, although it was nothing serious. My parents had separated many years earlier, but they had stayed close friends. When my sister explained that Papa was tired and had lost his appetite, we immediately thought of my uncles and aunts, who had all died suddenly after feeling a little unwell. Two days later Astrid called: Papa had suffered a heart attack. We had to return immediately.
The journey home was a nightmare. I adored my father. Time spent with him was always interesting. I could only imagine life without him as a desert of boredom.
I arrived at the hospital to find him hooked up to a frightening-looking machine. He awoke, recognized me, and his face lit up. “You’re here!” he exclaimed before falling back into a deep, barbiturate-induced sleep, only to open his eyes ten minutes later and exclaim once again, “You’re here!”
The doctors told us to prepare for the worst. The parish priest came to administer a blessing. In a moment of lucidity, Papa beckoned all of us to his bed. He had chosen his words of farewell and lavished blessings on each of us with the precision of the sage who can peer into people’s hearts. Then my sister and I were left alone with him. I realized that it was time for him to go, and I was not prepared. I broke down in sobs, desperately clinging to his hand. The hand that had always been there for me, that had warded off danger, had consoled me, had held on to me when I crossed the street, had strengthened me at those difficult times in my life, and had led me into the world. This was the hand I took whenever I was near him, as if it belonged to me.
My sister turned to me. “Stop it!” she said sharply. “We are in a logic to fight for life. Papa is not going to die.” Taking his other hand, she assured me that everything would turn out fine. She was holding him tight. In the midst of my sobs, I felt that something extraordinary was happening. A wave of electricity was running from my arm and flowing through my fingers into his arteries. The tingling left me in no doubt. I looked at my sister. “Do you feel it?” Without a trace of surprise, she replied, “Of course I feel it!” We probably spent the entire night in that position, shrouded in silence, feeling the circuit of energy that had formed among the three of us, fascinated by an experience that had no explanation except that of love.
My children came from Santo Domingo, too, with their father, Fabrice, to see Papa. Fabrice was still very close to him even though he and I were no longer married. Papa considered him like his own son. When I was with Melanie and Papa alone, she also experienced the strange wave of electricity when holding his hand. My father opened his eyes when Lorenzo kissed him; Astrid’s young children, Anastasia and Stanislas, were there wanting to be cuddled by him. Papa was so happy to have his family reunited by his bedside that he started getting better.
My mother and I stayed with Papa throughout his two-week recovery, living with him at the hospital. I knew I would not have the strength to carry on if he was no longer by my side.
I’d been in the middle of a very important campaign time for our party. Oxígeno, the Green Party, was still young; created four years earlier, it brought together a passionate organization of independent citizens who were fighting against years of political and military corruption crippling Colombia. We were putting forward an alternative ecological and pacifist platform. We were “green,” we were about social reform, we were clean in a country where politics went hand in hand with the drug kingpins and the paramilitaries.
Papa’s illness had suddenly halted all my political activities. When I disappeared from the public spotlight, my poll numbers plummeted. Some of my colleagues deserted my campaign in panic to swell the ranks of rival candidates. After I left the hospital, I found myself with a much smaller team to prepare for the final sprint. The presidential elections were to be held in May. We had only three months left.
During the first meeting with the entire team, we set out the agenda for the remaining months. The discussion was heated. The majority wanted to go ahead with the long-planned visit to San Vicente del Caguán. My campaign managers were eager for us to help out the mayor of San Vicente, who was the country’s only elected mayor to bear the colors of Oxígeno Verde. Our staff wanted me to make an extra effort to compensate for the we
eks I’d been at Papa’s bedside and to put all my energy into the campaign. I felt I owed it to them, so I reluctantly agreed to go to San Vicente. We announced the trip at a press conference during which we explained our peace plan for Colombia.
In the 1940s, Colombia was plunged into a civil war between the conservative party and the liberal party, a conflict so merciless that those years were called la violencia—“the violence.” It was a power struggle that spread from the capital of Bogotá and brought bloodshed to the countryside. Peasants identified as liberals were massacred by conservative partisans and vice versa. The FARC5 was born spontaneously as the peasants’ effort to protect themselves against that violence and to safeguard their land from being confiscated by the liberal or conservative landlords. The two parties reached an agreement to share power in government and end the civil war, but the FARC was not a part of it. During the Cold War of the 1950s and beyond, the movement shifted from being a rural, defensive organization to being a communist, Stalinist, guerrilla one seeking to take power. They built a military hierarchy in their ranks and opened fronts in different parts of the country, attacking the military and the police and carrying out indiscriminate kidnappings. During the 1980s the Colombian government offered a peace agreement to the FARC, and a truce was signed and political reforms were voted in Congress to support the agreement. But with the rise of drug trafficking, the FARC found a way to finance its war and the peace agreement collapsed. The FARC brought terror to the countryside, killing peasants and rural workers who would not accept their rule. A rivalry between the drug traffickers and the FARC gave rise to a new surge of violence. The paramilitaries emerged as an alliance between the political far right—in particular the landlords—and the drug traffickers, striving to confront the FARC and expel them from their regions. President Andres Pastrana, a member of the Conservative Party, had won the elections on a platform offering a new peace process with the FARC.
Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle Page 4