Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle

by Ingrid Betancourt

  Three, four, six hours. Always the same trees, the same bends, the same unremitting roar of the engine, and the same despair.

  “We’re here!”

  I looked around. The forest seemed to have been cleared at the point where we’d stopped. A small, dingy-looking wooden house stood in the middle of the empty space. Voices came out to greet us, and I easily recognized some of the group that had gone on ahead of us.

  I was tired and on edge. I dared to hope that our captors would allow us to spend the rest of the night inside the little house. Andres quickly disembarked. He issued instructions for his bags to be brought into the hut and designated guards to take us “to the site.”

  We set off in single file, our path lit by a large flashlight at the head of the line. We crossed the garden of the house, then what had to be a vegetable patch. We passed a cowshed that I gazed at wistfully, and suddenly we entered an enormous cornfield, with stalks over six feet high bearing ears ripe for the picking. I heard Mom’s voice from when I was a child, forbidding me to go near them: “They’re full of snakes and trapdoor spiders.” I clutched my bag against my chest with one hand and used the other to chase away the bugs that were jumping on me, their legs and wings getting tangled in my hair, millions of giant grasshoppers and owl butterflies fleeing in fright. The plants were so close together that I had to fight my way through with my elbows and knees. I tried my best to protect my face from the green corn leaves that were as sharp as a razor.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the cornfield, we stopped. They had cleared a square area with the machete and had put four posts in the ground to support our mattress and the mosquito net, which was unfurled as a canopy. The insect population, attracted by the strange construction, had completely colonized it. Glistening red crickets, larger than a man’s fist, seemed to be ruling the roost. The guard chased them away with the back of his machete, and they soared laboriously into the sky, emitting a high-pitched screech.

  “You’ll be sleeping here.” The guard was ogling us, clearly reveling in our distress.

  I slid under the mosquito net, trying to stop the breathless creatures from getting in, and I looked up at the open sky above my head, heavy with black clouds, before I sank into a fitful sleep.

  They had started to build the camp in the monte,22 beyond the cornfield and behind the coca plantation that surrounded the house. While crossing the plantation, we filled our jackets with limes picked from an enormous lime tree that towered majestically over the coca trees.

  They had brought a chain saw with them, and from morning to night I heard them relentlessly felling trees. Ferney came to help us get set up and busied himself with building us a small shelf to put our things on. He spent the afternoon peeling the bark off some posts, proud to be doing such “meticulous work.”

  Ferney left as soon as he had finished his task, forgetting his machete, which lay concealed under the wood shavings. Clara and I both noticed it at the same time. My companion asked permission to go to the chontos. When she returned, she stopped to exchange a few words with the guard, giving me more than enough time to pick up the machete, wrap it in my towel, and hide it in my bag.

  Possessing the machete made us euphoric. Now we could venture again into the jungle. But we could be searched at any moment. The following morning we were put to the test. Ferney came with four of his comrades, and they combed the area without saying a word to us. We were sitting cross-legged under our mosquito net. Clara was reading aloud a chapter from her copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which she had thrown into her bag before leaving Bogotá. We had agreed to take turns reading pages aloud. In that hour, while they searched, we read out loud mechanically, without absorbing a word. We were both focused on following Ferney’s team, doing our best not to appear concerned by their movements.

  Finally one of them turned toward us and snarled, “Did you take Ferney’s machete?”

  A surge of adrenaline blocked my brain.

  “Why?” I responded obtusely.

  “Ferney left his machete here yesterday evening,” he retorted, his tone threatening.

  I stammered, not knowing what to respond, petrified that Clara might be interrogated as well.

  It was all too obvious that I was frightened. I knew they were going to search us, and I panicked at the thought.

  Then Ferney came to my rescue.

  “I don’t think I left it here. I remember taking it with me. I think I left it where we were cutting the wood, when I went to fetch some planks. I’ll take a look later. Come on, let’s go.”

  He had spoken without even looking at me and turned on his heel with his companions following, delighted to be relieved of their chore.

  My companion and I were drained. I took the book from her trembling hands and tried to resume reading. But it was impossible to focus on the page. I let the book drop onto the mattress. We looked at each other as if we had just seen the devil, and we burst into nervous laughter, bending forward so the guard couldn’t see us.

  As ridiculous as it seemed, that evening I felt the stirrings of guilt for fooling the too-trusting Ferney.

  The chains were not put back on. We could move freely around the caleta. However, we spent most of the day sitting in the five-by-five-foot space of our mosquito net, because we were used to it. The veil separating us from the outside world formed a psychological barrier, protecting us from the contact, curiosity, and sarcasm of the other side. For as long as we were under the mosquito net, they didn’t dare speak to us. But the feeling of being able to leave “our caleta” and walk a hundred feet in front of it if we so chose was a freedom we appreciated all the more now that we understood how easily it could be taken away from us. We used it sparingly, for fear that they would detect how thrilled we were and might use it as an instrument of blackmail.

  Little by little I was beginning to detach myself from both the small and the big things, for I did not want to be subjugated to my desires or my needs, because having lost the ability to satisfy them only made me more a prisoner in my jailors’ hands.

  They also brought us a radio. It was so unexpected that we weren’t even pleased. El Mocho had sent it, in all likelihood because in our last conversation I’d said that I no longer knew what was going on in the world and, to my astonishment, didn’t care. In fact, since I’d learned of Papa’s death, the outside world seemed foreign and distant to me. Back then the radio was a nuisance.

  It was a large Sony that the youngsters called “the brick” because it was black and shaped like one. It had a powerful speaker, so it was popular among the guerrillas, since they could listen to the latest pop music at full blast all day long. When Jessica brought it to us, it was immediately obvious that she did not approve of her commander’s gesture. Worse still, she was outraged by our indifference.

  “This is as good as it gets around here!” She took our reaction as a sign of contempt, believing that in civilian life we were used to much better. She could not understand that in our mental state all we were interested in was freedom.

  She took revenge in her own way. The following day she came to look for the penknife El Mocho had given me before he left. When she came to get it on the pretext that Commander Cesar had asked for it, I knew very well she was going to keep it for herself. She was the commander’s girlfriend. She could do whatever she wanted. I gave it to her reluctantly, arguing that it was a gift, but that only added to her pleasure.

  Gradually the radio became a source of friction. At the beginning Clara and I would take turns following the news bulletins during the day. The radio was temperamental, and you had to move it around like a radar gun, turning it in all directions before finding the most effective angle and the best reception, which was always full of interference. What I found surprising was that in the caleta next door they had exactly the same “brick,” but theirs, in contrast, had perfect reception. I discovered that they tampered with the sets by “poisoning” the circuits and inserting pieces of cable to
increase the reception. I asked if they could “poison” my brick. They sent me to Ferney.

  “Of course, I’ll take care of it. We’ll do it when you move into your new house.”

  I was stunned. “What new house?”

  “The wooden house that Commander Cesar ordered to be built for you. You’ll be very comfortable there. You’ll have your own room, and you won’t have to worry anymore about people peeping on you!” he said.

  That was the least of my concerns. A wooden house? They were going to keep us prisoner for months! I would not be home for Melanie’s birthday, or for Lorenzo’s birthday—he was turning fourteen. He wouldn’t be a child anymore. It broke my heart to miss that, too. My God, what if this went on until Christmas?

  Unable to rid myself of the anguish, I lost my appetite completely.

  Once the planks were cut, the house was built in under a week. It had been constructed on stilts, with a roof made of woven palm leaves that had been assembled with astonishing beauty and skill. It was a simple rectangular structure, with wooden walls six feet high on three sides and the fourth side completely open and facing the camp. In the left-hand corner of the space, they had erected two interior walls to create a bedroom with a proper door. Inside, four planks resting on trestles constituted the bed, and pieces of wood in the corners provided shelving. Outside the bedroom were a table and a small bench for two people.

  Andres was eager to show us our new lodgings. He was proud of his team’s work. I could barely hide my distress. The door would be locked with a huge padlock at night, and it was hard to see how we would escape. I tried my luck.

  “It needs a window The room is very small and dark. We’ll suffocate!”

  He threw me a highly suspicious look, and I let it drop. But the following day a team was sent over with a chain saw to open one up. With a window we might have a chance.

  Our life changed. Paradoxically, although this space was definitely an improvement compared to our previous living conditions and enabled us to dictate our own schedule and create our own routine, the tension between Clara and me became unbearable.

  I fixed a daily schedule that allowed me to remain active while staying out of her way. Her reactions were unpredictable. If I swept, she would follow me around and snatch the broom from my hands. If I sat at the table, she would want my seat. If I paced to get some exercise, she would block my path. If I closed the door to rest, she would demand I leave. If I didn’t, she would pounce on me like a cat with its claws out. I no longer knew what to do. Another morning, on discovering a hive in a corner of the kitchen, she began to scream. Snatching the broom and swinging it wildy, she sent everything on the shelves along the wall crashing to the ground. Then she ran off toward the jungle. The guards brought her back, shoving her with their rifles.

  When Ferney came to fix our radio, he brought a brand-new broom he had made especially for us.

  “Keep it. It’s better that you don’t ask to borrow things. It annoys people.”

  He spent time explaining which broadcasts we could pick up and what times they came on. Before six-thirty in the morning, there was nothing. In the evening we were spoiled for choice with all the national stations. However, he forgot to tell us the most essential thing: We did not know that a special program existed for hostages, and it aired messages every weekend from our families.

  Tension mounted one morning at dawn when I was disturbed by a terrible crackling sound. Clara was sitting against the wall with the radio between her legs, turning the knobs back and forth, oblivious to the noise she was making. The padlock to our door was not removed until six. I sat there waiting, my increasingly black mood filling the room. I reminded her as calmly as I could that there was no reception before six-thirty in the morning, hoping that she would turn off the set. Yet she dismissed me. She wanted nothing more than to make the set crackle. I stood up, sat back down, paced in circles between the bed and the door, showing how irritated I was. Just before they removed the padlock, she finally agreed to silence the “brick.”

  The following day the scene played out exactly the same way, except that this time I could not get her to switch it off. I watched her listen intently to the crackling noise and thought, She’s going mad.

  One morning after I had already gone outside to clean my teeth in a bucket of water that a guerrilla usually dropped off at the other end of the house, I heard a crash in the bedroom. Dreading what I might find, I ran back to see Clara, arms hanging at her sides, with the radio broken at her feet. She explained that it had slipped out of her hands. “Never mind. We’ll see if someone can fix it,” I said, doing my best not to hold this against her.

  TWELVE

  FERNEY

  Every evening at six, while it was still daylight, the guard would come by to put the padlock on our door. He would walk around behind the house to lock the solitary window with another large padlock before moving to the front of the house to take up his post for the night. I followed his movements with intense interest, trying to find a flaw in the system that would enable us to break out.

  We would have to execute our escape in two stages. Before six, Clara would jump down from the window and run into the bushes behind the house, taking the bag containing our supplies. The guard would come by at six on the dot to lock the door. He would see me and a decoy beside me in the bed. He would put on the padlock and go to lock the window at the back, giving me just enough time to jump out the window myself and climb up onto the roof to hide. After padlocking the window, he would assume his position at the front of the house, leaving me free to join Clara at the back. We would then veer to the right to get away from the camp and make a ninety-degree turn to the left, which would take us to the river. We would have to swim and let the current carry us as far as possible. We would hide during the day, as they would be on our tail, combing the entire area. But after two nights of searching, without knowing which way we had gone, they would not be able to trace us. We would run into a peasant dwelling and risk asking for help.

  I was anxious about swimming in the dark waters of this jungle in the night, having seen the shining eyes of the caimans, camouflaged on the riverbanks, scoping out their prey. We would need a rope to tie ourselves together so we wouldn’t get separated by the current and lose each other in the darkness. If one of us was attacked by a caiman, the other could come to the rescue—and, fortunately, we had the machete. We had to make a sheath for it so we could carry it on our belts without being hindered while we swam. We would take turns carrying the backpack. The contents would have to be wrapped meticulously in plastic bags and sealed tightly with rubber bands. Surviving in the water was a major challenge. We needed to make flotation devices so we could swim for hours.

  I solved this problem by using a Styrofoam cooler in which the nurse had received some medicine. When I asked if I could keep it, Patricia laughed. She obviously found my request odd and handed me the box as if handing a child a broken button to play with. Proud of my acquisition, I returned to the room, and with the door tightly shut Clara and I used the machete to saw it into pieces, loudly talking and laughing to mask the squeaking noise of the blade on the Styrofoam. We took the entire side panels of the box and made them into devices large enough to rest our bodies on and small enough to fit in our knapsacks.

  The rest of our preparations were easier to take care of. One evening, just before they shut us in for the night, I discovered an enormous scorpion, a female with all her offspring attached to her abdomen, more than five inches long on the strut of the door. The guard killed it with a blow of his machete and put it in a jar with some formalin. It would yield an antidote, which, he said, would perform miracles. I emphasized the danger of having no light inside the room and stressed the fact that the creature could easily have landed on the back of my neck when I closed the door. Andres sent us the flashlight I was dreaming of for our escape.

  However, although we were ready to leave, our plan kept getting delayed. First came a week of extremely l
ow temperatures, especially at dawn. “It’s the freeze from Brazil,” the guard told me knowingly. I was thankful we had not yet left. Then we were held up by my catching a cold. As they refused to give us medicine, the fever and cough had persisted. But the greatest obstacle to our escape was Clara’s manic-depressive behavior. One day she explained that she was not going to escape because she wanted to have children, and the effort of escaping could disrupt her capacity to conceive.

  Another afternoon, seeking refuge in the bedroom, I overheard an astonishing conversation. Clara was telling the girl on guard about an episode in my life that I had revealed to her, describing it with exactly the same words I’d used. I recognized my expressions, my pauses, the intonation of my voice. It was all there. What was disturbing was that my companion had substituted herself for me in her narration. It will only get worse, I said to myself.

  I felt we needed to talk. “You know, they could switch our camp at any moment,” I said one evening before she fell asleep. “At least here we already know their routine. We know how they operate. And now that we’re in this house, they’re less watchful. This is a good time. Of course it will be hard, but it’s still possible. There are dwellings two or three days’ swim from here—it’s not the other end of the world.” For the first time in weeks, she was the person I used to know. Her comments were sensible and her questions constructive. I felt a genuine sense of relief at being able to share my thoughts with her. We set our departure date for the following week.

  When that day came around, we washed our bath towels and hung them on a line strategically placed to block the guard’s view. I checked that from where he was standing; our guard would not be able to see our feet under the house between the stilts when we jumped out the back window. We followed our regular routine exactly. But we ate more than usual, perhaps, which raised the eyebrow of our receptionist. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon. We waited until the last possible moment.