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

by Ingrid Betancourt

  As if to echo my thoughts, Fat Martha, who was on duty, came over to me.

  “Ingrid . . . they’re building a prison.”

  “Who is building a prison?”

  “The muchachos.”

  “What for?”

  “They’re going to lock you all up.”

  I had refused to face the truth. I felt dizzy, as if I were standing on the edge of a precipice, moving ever closer to the edge. “Who do you mean by ‘all’?”

  “All the prisoners who are in the camp half an hour from here and the three of you. There are political prisoners, three men and two women, and the rest are soldiers and policemen. They’re the ones who are part of the ‘humanitarian exchange. ’ They’re going to put you all together there.”

  “When?”

  “Very soon. Probably next week. The barbed wire goes up tomorrow.”

  I went pale.

  “Mamita,31 It’s going to be very hard for you,” said Martha with compassion. “You’ll have to be very strong and prepare yourself.”

  I sat down on my caleta, drained. Like Alice in Wonderland, I was falling, falling into a bottomless well. There was nothing to hold me back. This was my black hole. I was being sucked down, dragged down into the bowels of the earth. I was alive only so that I could witness myself dying. Was this my fate? I hated God for having abandoned me. A prison? Barbed wire? With each breath I suffered, I could not go on. But I had to go on—there were the others, all the others, my children, Mom. Furious with myself and with God, I clenched my fists against my knees, and I heard myself say to him, “Don’t ever let me stray from you, Lord! Ever!”

  My head was empty, and I stood up like a robot to share the terrible news with my companions.

  Every time we went to the chontos, we would look to see how the construction was coming along. Just as Fat Martha had said, they put up a chain-link fence, topped with barbs all around, a fence that was twelve feet high. In one corner of the construction site, overlooking everything, they had built a watchtower, with stairs to climb up it. Through the trees you could make out three more identical turrets. It was a concentration compound in the middle of the jungle. I had nightmares and would awake with a start, covered in sweat. I must have been shouting out, because Lucho woke me up one night with his hand on my mouth. He was afraid there might be reprisals. I began to lose sleep, seeking refuge in insomnia so that I wouldn’t be caught unawares. Lucho could not sleep either. We would sit on our caletas and talk, in the hope of banishing the ghosts of the night.

  He would tell me about his childhood, when his mother cooked tamales32 for Christmas, a typical dish from the Tolima region where she was born. The recipe included hard-boiled eggs, and as a child Lucho would steal a few. The next morning, there his mother would be in her bathrobe, counting her eggs and wondering why there were always some missing! He laughed so hard he cried as he remembered it all.

  As for me, I went back to the Seychelles and to the happy memories of my daughter’s birth. I returned to what mattered most to me: being a mother.

  The building of the prison shook me deeply. I repeated to myself that I was not a prisoner, that I was being held illegally. I had done nothing wrong, I was not paying for some crime. Those who had dispossessed me of my freedom had no rights over me. I needed this constant reminder. To help me not to give in, not to forget that it was my duty to rebel. They called it a “prison.” As if, through some magic trick, I had become a criminal and they were the authority. No, I would not submit.

  Despite my efforts our daily life became gloomy. I noticed my companions’ morose mood; we were all depressed. Lucho had gotten into the habit of taking his morning meal with Clara on a wooden platform that must once have served to store supplies and which seemed like a floating island in the pig pond now that the swamp water surrounded it. Lucho went there every morning, taking some of the cookies that he had received. He shared them with no concern for keeping any for later. Then one day he no longer went to the platform and instead ate his meal sitting on his caleta.

  “What happened, Lucho?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Go on, tell me. I can see that something is bothering you.”

  “Nothing.”

  “All right, if you don’t want to tell me, it can’t be that important.”

  As I was coming back from the river after my bath, I saw that Lucho was arguing with Clara over by the plastic buckets the guerrillas had given to us. He had volunteered to fill the buckets in the river to have fresh water for brushing our teeth, washing our hands, and cleaning our bowls after meals. It was a difficult chore, because you had to carry the two full buckets up along a muddy, slippery slope.

  It was late afternoon, and night was about to fall. He had already completed his task for the day and taken his bath, and he was clean and ready for the night. But Clara had used the water in the buckets to soak her dirty laundry. There was no more water to wash the bowls or to brush our teeth on waking. Lucho was exasperated.

  These minor incidents were poisoning our life, probably because our world had become so small.

  I looked at Lucho in his anger and understood him only too well. I, too, had lost my temper dozens of times. I, too, had had bad reactions and bad attitudes. Sometimes I shocked myself with how little I knew about the inner workings of my own personality. For example, food did not interest me. And yet one morning I was angry because the largest piece in the rations they had brought us was not for me. It was ridiculous. That had never happened to me before. But in captivity I discovered that my ego suffered the moment I was deprived of something I wanted. It was over food that prisoners, urged on by hunger, waged silent battles. I observed a transformation in myself that I did not like. I could see how ugly the same behavior was in other people. Deprived of everything—our lives, our pleasures, our loved ones—we had the misguided reflex to cling to what little was left: a tiny amount of space, a piece of cookie, an extra minute in the sun.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE SATELLITE ANTENNA

  OCTOBER 2003

  It looked as if the prison was finished. We were counting the days left to us on our slope, like borrowed time on death row. Sombra came to see me one morning. He was planning to put up a satellite dish. There was a television in the camp. Some of the instructions were in English, and he needed my help.

  I told him I didn’t know anything about satellite dishes. He insisted nevertheless that I go with him to check the equipment. Two enormous wooden barracks had been built. There was a third building, smaller than the two previous barracks, with benches and dozens of plastic chairs piled up along the side. They were well supplied, there was no doubt about that. Boxes full of electronic equipment were stacked in the middle of the room, with the instruction booklets neatly placed on top. I went closer. And then I saw the prison, all of it, behind the heap of chairs. It was a sinister sight, with spikes of barbed wire everywhere and mud all around.

  I acted as if I were reading the instruction manuals, fiddling with a few knobs, and then I declared, defeated, “I don’t understand a thing, I’m sorry.” I was unable to focus on anything else besides the living hell they had built for us. I returned to tell my companions about it, my heart sinking.

  Sombra, however, would not accept defeat. The next morning just before noon, one of the boats that went up and down the river came back with a prisoner from the camp upstream.

  He was a thin little man, his hair cut very short, his eyes sunk deep, his face deathly pale. All three of us were standing on our slope, curious to see the person whom Sombra had brought to install his antenna. He went right by us, probably unaware that there were other prisoners in Sombra’s camp. Did he sense our gazes fixed upon him? He turned around and stopped short. For a few seconds, we looked at one another. We were going through the same mental process. Our expressions reflected surprise and horror, followed by pity. Each of us was staring at a human wreck.

  Lucho was the first to react. “Alan? Alan Jara? ¿Er
es tú Alan?”

  “Of course! Of course! Excuse me, I wouldn’t have recognized you. You are all so different in photographs!”

  Everybody greeted one another. “How are you?” I asked after some silence.

  “Fine, fine.”

  “And the others?”

  “They are fine, too.”

  Poked by the guard, Alan gave a sad smile, waved good-bye, and started walking toward the barracks.

  The three of us, devastated, exchanged looks. Alan was a walking corpse. He was wearing a T-shirt that was little more than a rag, and a filthy pair of shorts. His legs were extremely thin, floating in rubber boots that were too big for him. It was as if a blindfold had been taken from our eyes. We were used to seeing one another like this, but we were in no better shape than Alan. Except that we had just received supplies. Without hesitating we went to get what was left of our supply of treats, to send them to the prisoners in the other camp.

  There was some of the cake left that I had just made to celebrate the birthdays of Lorenzo and Lucho’s son.

  “We should send it to them,” Lucho said. “It’s the birthday of Gloria Polanco and Jorge Géchem.”

  “Wait, how do you know it’s their birthday?”

  “In the messages on the radio, their families congratulated them for their birthday, it’s the fifteenth or seventeenth of October, I can’t remember. But it’s in a few days.”

  “What messages on the radio?”

  “My God, how is it possible? It can’t be! Don’t you know that every day there is a broadcast on RCN radio, La Carrillera, presented by Nelson Moreno, which transmits messages from all our families to each of us!”

  “What?”

  “Yes! Your family doesn’t call in to that program. But your mother sends you messages every Saturday on Caracol’s Las Voces del Secuestro! The journalist Herbin Hoyos came up with the idea to set up radio contact for the hostages. Your mother calls in, and she speaks to you. I hear her every weekend!”

  “I don’t believe it! And only now you tell me?!”

  “Look, I’m sorry, I thought you knew. I was sure you were listening to the program, like me.”

  “Luchini, this is marvelous! I can listen to Mom the day after tomorrow!” I threw my arms around him. He had just given me the best present imaginable, and he wanted me to forgive him!

  We prepared a package of candy and cookies along with the piece of cake we had put aside for Gloria and Jorge Eduardo. I asked the guard to pass on our request to Sombra. His reply came quickly: We had ten minutes to talk to Alan and give him our package.

  I didn’t need to be asked twice. I followed the guerrilla into the room with the stacks of chairs. Alan was waiting for me. We hugged as if we had known each other forever.

  “Have you seen the prison?” I asked him.

  “Yes . . . I think I’m going to be in your group.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alan had found out by bribing his guards with cigarettes that there were four civilian prisoners, two men and two women. Alan would rather be with the soldiers. “Still, if I’m with you, we’ll get organized. I want to learn French.”

  “You can count on it.”

  “Listen, Ingrid, we don’t know what’s going to happen—you never know with them. But whatever happens, be strong. And be careful. The guerrillas have their informers everywhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you have to be careful, even among prisoners. Some of them are prepared to snitch on their comrades for a lighter or a packet of powdered milk. Don’t trust anyone. That’s my best advice.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “And thank you for the treats. Everyone will be happy.”

  They gave us exactly thirty minutes. Not a minute more. Alan’s words had made a strong impression on me. I felt that I should indeed steel myself for a difficult time ahead. I could see the enclosure, the barbed wire, the watchtowers. But what I couldn’t yet see was the world inside the prison—the lack of privacy, the crowding, the violence, the informing.

  TWENTY-NINE

  INSIDE THE PRISON

  OCTOBER 18, 2003

  In the morning some guerrillas came up to our tent. Among them was a tall skinny one with a thin mustache and a venomous expression. He was wearing a ranger’s hat, the kind the paramilitaries used. He wedged his mud-encrusted boot onto my caleta and barked, “Pack up your things! Everything has to disappear in five minutes.” He didn’t intimidate me—in fact, I thought he was ridiculous with his tropical cowboy outfit—but I was trembling all the same. I was nervous, as if there were two of me. My mind was cold and lucid, whereas my body was emotional. It annoyed me. I had to be quick—fold, roll, put away, tie up. I knew where to begin and where to finish, but my hands wouldn’t follow. I could no longer find the gestures that usually only took a second. The guy with the mustache looked on, irritated, as I botched every effort. I knew he was thinking that I was a clumsy idiot, and this just made me clumsier. I was obsessed with the idea of doing everything perfectly, as if to prove to myself that my awkwardness was only temporary. So I started over again—folding, rolling, putting away, tying up again, obsessively. The guy with the mustache thought I was doing it on purpose to delay the execution of his orders. It was more than enough to make him dislike me.

  Lucho was looking on, anxious because he sensed problems. No sooner had I finished tying up my poor old supply bag than the guy with the mustache snatched it from me and ordered me to follow him. We set off in single file in painful silence, surrounded by armed, sinister-looking men. I was memorizing every step, every bump in the earth, anything specific in the vegetation that might serve as a signpost for my future escape. I had my eyes riveted on the ground. Perhaps that’s why I got the impression that the prison came down upon my head. When I saw it, I was on the verge of bumping into the fence and the barbed wire.

  My surprise was all the greater when I saw that there were already people inside. I had foolishly assumed that because we were so close to the prison, we would be the first ones to be sent there. Sombra had arranged it so that the others would be inside before we were, either so that we’d be less afraid of going in or to announce the fact that other masters of the house had gotten there before us. The guy with the mustache had us make a detour, which showed us that the prison was divided in two, with one very small building and another bigger one, back to back and separated by a narrow corridor just wide enough for the guards to do their rounds. The entrance to the little building was through a dirt courtyard. All the vegetation had been removed except for a few young trees, which cast their shadow on the huts to keep the zinc roofs out of sight of the military planes scouring the zone. The entire space was enclosed by a thick steel fence. A heavy metal gate was kept closed, doubled up with an imposing chain and a massive padlock.

  The guy with the mustache took his keys out of his trousers, fiddled with the padlock to make it clear that it was not an easy maneuver, then opened the gate; it creaked as if it had been built in the Middle Ages. The four people who stood inside took a few steps back. He tossed in my bundle hesitantly, as if there were wild animals inside. The four hostages were staring at us, inspecting us thoroughly.

  They looked physically ravaged, their features drawn, their expressions gaunt, and their hair white; they had deep wrinkles and yellow teeth. But more than by their physical appearance, I was moved by their attitude, barely noticeable: the way they all positioned themselves, the way they looked at us, their heads bent. You could be led to believe that everything was normal. And yet something was no longer the same. Like when a new scent is carried in the breeze and fills the air. The instant you notice it, it’s already disappearing. You might wonder if you ever really smelled it, and yet it has infused your memory.

  They were behind bars. For a few seconds more, I would still be outside. It was almost indecent to be looking at them; their humiliation was laid bare, irrevocably exposed. They were human beings who had be
en dispossessed of themselves while they waited for others to decide their fates. I thought of mangy dogs rejected and maltreated, who can no longer stave off blows, hoping only to be forgotten by their tormentors. It was the look in their eyes. There were two of them whom I used to know—we had sat together in the same benches in the Senate. I saw them now before me, unshaven, their clothes ragged, their hands dirty, standing straight, trying to save face and keep their dignity despite their fear.

  I felt sorry, sorry to see them like this and sorry they would know they were seen. And they felt sorry for me, aware that I was to share with them, any minute now, the horror they could read on my face.

  The gate was open. The guy with the mustache pushed me through. Jorge Eduardo Géchem was the first to walk up to me and take me in his arms. He was trembling, his eyes filled with tears.

  “My dear madame,33 I don’t know if I’m glad to see you again or very sad.”

  Gloria Polanco also gave me a strong embrace. We had never met before, but we greeted each other like old friends.

  Consuelo came up, and Orlando. We were all crying, surely relieved to be together, to know we were alive, but our shared misfortune hung like a dark cloud over us. Orlando took our bundles and led us into the building. It was a wooden barracks, with a wire mesh covering the entire ceiling and walls on the inside. There were four bunk beds so close to one another that you had to stand sideways to get to your own. On one side the wooden planks of the wall had been cut three-quarters of the way up, which made a sort of big window facing the outside of the enclosure, completely covered over by the same wire mesh. The place was in perpetual half-light, and the bottom bunks were downright dark. A smell of mold rose unpleasantly the moment you came in, and over everything there was a film of reddish sawdust; it floated in the air, proof of how recently the barracks had been built.