As Jorge’s relationship with William has grown, Jorge’s relationship with Carlos has undergone some revision. Jorge is more mindful of Carlos’s feelings now that Jorge and William spend so much time together. The tattoo of Carlos’s image on Jorge’s chest, next to the one of their mother, moved Carlos deeply, but these accidental brothers continue to kid each other constantly, usually to the point of exasperation. When Jorge called Carlos to say that he would be delayed, Carlos added more than a touch of sarcasm by announcing, “Jorge is coming late—for once!”
* * *
Jorge has thought a lot about what it means to be switched at birth. How could he not? I asked him, “What would you say to switched and nonswitched twins who came to you for advice?” To the switched twin, he would say that it is good to learn the truth, especially when you are young enough to form a relationship and learn new things about yourself. Along these lines he hopes that the four Colombian brothers will live together someday or at least travel together with no girlfriends allowed. He would tell the nonswitched twin to be happy to have grown up in the right family and to relate detailed childhood stories to the switched twin so that he or she would “know how it was.”
Jorge has felt an inner spiritual growth that he links to knowing William, although Luz’s death and Santi’s birth have also played key roles. “Once you become a parent, you gain a whole new perspective, and you ask God for help.” He doesn’t go to church or practice religion in a formal way. And although he was raised Catholic, he does not consider himself to be one. However, Jorge does engage in private religious activities several times a week, something he did less than once a month before he met William. Jorge defines his personal religion as doing good deeds, having observed that some people go to church but are blind to the needs of others. Jorge enjoys visiting churches when he travels, mostly to see their architecture, but he would occasionally attend church with William if asked.
Wilber
The La Paz twin who grew up in La Paz sees himself as unchanged by the twin switch, which is understandable because he was raised in the place where he was born. Some initial shock and angry feelings gave way to curiosity about meeting his identical other and learning what the exchange would mean for everyone else. Wilber did worry that his mother, who is in her seventies, might suffer a heart attack upon learning that she did not give birth to one of her sons, so he helped others convince Ana that William would always be her child. He also told himself and William that they would always be brothers and that, because both felt the same way, nothing had really changed between them. However, Wilber gained fresh understanding of why his same-aged sibling was always so different from the rest of the family, and now he has new respect for genetic effects on behavior. “I get it now,” he said.
The biggest changes in Wilber’s life are his management of the butcher shop and his blossoming relationship with his identical twin. In 2016 Wilber and Carlos were clearly more focused on each other than they had been in 2015, perhaps because of Carlos’s greater openness with his new family members and his recognition that having an identical twin did not detract from his uniqueness. Wilber believes his twin was changed by his first trip to La Paz because “he saw how things really were, that it was not so easy to climb the ladder in life. He became less cocky after that.”
These twins can be serious together, understanding of each other, and fully supportive, but those around them see them as playful and scheming. One night, while we were having drinks with Carlos and our interpreter, Carlos received a text message from Wilber saying he needed to see him. But it was just an excuse that Wilber cooked up to get away from his girlfriend, with whom he had been arguing, and for Carlos to postpone a date with his. They decided that if the two women saw a copy of this message, they would understand that the twins had to be together and would be unavailable that night. It seemed to work.
For now Wilber’s goals are to become a business owner, of either a butcher shop or a supermarket, and to settle into his own apartment. In these and other respects he is slower to make changes than the others, seemingly content to take his time and follow their lead. Although Wilber was the first brother to be interested in joining the military, William enlisted first, and Wilber arrived in Bogotá after William did and then worked in the butcher shop after his brother got the job. Wilber is also less enthusiastic about traveling than the others, and he is the only one of the four who does not have a passport, although Carlos and William got theirs only recently, for their trip to Mexico. It’s likely that Wilber will follow suit once he hears about their grand adventures.
Learning about the switch, while life changing in many ways, left the La Paz brothers’ relationship intact; they worked together until recently and still live together. They are brothers who have built trust and loyalty over the years. “Despite how we fight, we get along well,” Wilber said, although those privy to their constant bickering might disagree. Each is free to be himself around his brother, but like many unrelated siblings, they lack the rapport that each developed so easily with his identical twin. And, like Jorge and Carlos, Wilber and William probably would not have been friends had their paths crossed outside the family.
Wilber gets along well with Jorge, but, as people who have neither a shared history nor shared blood ties, their relationship is not intimate, leaving them to converse mostly about women and sports, frequent topics of conversation for men who have little in common. But Jorge and Wilber have an inescapable connection, forged by a series of extraordinary life events. Their major breakthrough happened on July 20, 2015, Colombia’s Independence Day, when William was working and Carlos was occupied. Wilber and Jorge had nothing to do, so Jorge invited Wilber to watch the annual celebratory parade. Wilber was reluctant, saying he had seen parades and he wanted to nap, but Jorge insisted, which turned out to be a good thing. Wilber was shocked by the magnitude of the parade, as he had never seen one on such a grand scale, and ended up feeling glad that he went. Although Jorge was bored after three long hours, Wilber remained enraptured. Jorge also learned something new: Wilber taught him about the two types of military designations, the high school graduates (bachilleres) who have high school degrees and rarely see combat during their twelve-month service, and the regulars (regulares) who do not have high school degrees and are often in combat during their eighteen- to twenty-four-month service.3 Wilber explained that the La Paz brothers were regulars from the countryside whom members of the higher-ranking units regarded as disposable. This gave Jorge greater insight into the experience of his twin and his replica (his accidental brother’s twin).
Wilber has also developed a close relationship with Diana and calls her to join them when the four get together. Jorge and Carlos know that she doesn’t drink so they never bother to call, but Wilber does, and when she visits him at home they talk about his job, his girlfriends, and other things that matter. He introduces her as his sister if new people are around.
Was Wilber glad that the switch was discovered? He immediately answered in the affirmative and listed the many “cool things” that have happened as a consequence. He enjoys going places and being recognized, not out of vanity or pride but because he likes sharing the twins’ story with people, helping them to understand what really happened. This young man has changed dramatically in this respect, compared with the early weeks when he avoided publicity because it was new and he felt uncertain about where it might lead. Wilber changed in parallel with his twin brother in this respect, and like Carlos he remains adamant about avoiding attention in Bogotá where the story was sensationalized.
Like his three brothers, Wilber believes that the twins’ reunion was God’s doing, and Wilber calls upon higher powers to keep his family safe, as he did when he and William were enlisted men. He wears the image of the Virgen del Carmen, the patron saint of vehicles, around his neck—he chose it for reasons of adornment but said nothing more. However, he rarely engages in religious activities, no more than several times a year.
&nb
sp; Twin research on religiosity has been full of surprises, as we noted earlier. Since 1990, new studies have shown that religiosity is equally affected by our genes and by our individual experiences, whereas a shared family environment seems to have little influence. Earlier studies made the mistake of studying young twins living at home, under the environmental thumbs of their parents, who made their children attend Sunday services or take Hebrew lessons whether they wanted to or not. Later studies focusing on adult twins found that when people can freely choose their religious activities, their genetic predispositions come to the fore.4 The identical twins Sarah and Susie were raised together in a moderately religious Catholic home, but their mother says these twenty-two-year-olds would be religious “even if we were atheists.” And the reared-apart firefighter twins, Mark and Jerry, both went to Hebrew school and celebrated some Jewish holidays, but neither twin showed interest in religious activities as an adult.5
The La Paz brothers were immersed in their mother’s deep religiosity, but only William followed Ana’s lead when he was young and after he left home, his natural bent most likely affecting his behavior. Consistent with this view, the reared-apart twins Sharon and Debbie know they would have absorbed the beliefs and rituals of whatever faith their adoptive family had practiced. Both twins enjoy the traditions and practices attached to both holiday celebrations and regular services held throughout the year.6
Luz, who raised Jorge and Carlos, attended church regularly, and religion held great importance for her. As we would expect, both men engaged fairly regularly in religious activities as children, at least once a month or more. However, as young adults they participated only several times a year. More interesting is their return to spirituality and religion following the discovery of the switch and the major changes in their lives. Jorge and Carlos share no genes, but both experienced significant life events that affected them deeply.
Consistent with what twin studies tell us, the identical reared-apart twins Jorge and William have become more religious as adults, although how they express their faith differs. Carlos and Wilber also share faith in a higher power, but Carlos has become more spiritually aware than in the past, a likely outcome of his reflections on his life after learning the truth about his birth. Jorge, Carlos, and William scored somewhat higher than Wilber on honesty-humility, the elements of the HEXACO personality scale linked to religiosity.7
The Colombian twins help us identify factors that bend our religious paths in one direction or another. Their experiences and behaviors demonstrate that both genes and experiences, especially emotionally charged life events, are involved.8 The beauty of these observations is how well they illuminate findings on religiosity from large-scale twin studies telling us how much of each contributes to the mix.
* * *
People have different opinions about which of the switched twins suffered greater hurt and which one overcame his difficulties to a greater degree. I believe that their situations were, and are, too different and complex to compare and that both young men gained, lost, and grew from their experience. The nonswitched twins suffered, too, in ways of their own. The twins’ attorney has filed a lawsuit against the Hospital Materno Infantil on their behalf, alleging negligence in managing their care; the lawsuit is one of several major events that will engage the twins as they plot their future together.
Chapter 12
Band of Brothers
Circle Game
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
—Joni Mitchell1
Jorge, Carlos, William, and Wilber cannot undo the mistake that happened at the Hospital Materno Infantil many years ago, nor can they change the course of their lives in the years that followed, but they do have a say in what happens to them in the future. They can look ahead to where they are going, not “back from where they came.”
The Lawsuit
Several prominent Bogotá attorneys, an uncle-nephew team, Carlos and Pablo Medellín, now joined by Carlos’s daughter Adriana, have been managing the twins’ lawsuit claiming negligence by the Hospital Materno Infantil and other entities. Intrigued by the case when it became public in October 2014, Carlos and Pablo have described it as “important, interesting, and rare.”2 The legal process will not be easy because precedents for switched-at-birth adult twins do not exist, although Colombian courts have heard cases involving exchanged infants.
The lawyers have two years to present the case to a judge, who will determine whether the hospital was negligent and, if so, what the award for damages should be. Making the case will be especially challenging because the mistake happened more than two decades ago; this is the first investigation of a public employee in such a case, a nurse; the passage of time makes identifying the party responsible for the switch difficult; and the chance of reaching an out-of-court settlement is low because the hospital is a state institution, under the watchful financial eye of the controller. The lawsuit was filed in January 2017, and so far the hospital has not responded.
The difficulties do not stop there, because all four twins have lived a normal life and do not appear to have suffered serious psychological damage. Specifying and determining compensation entails an element of subjectivity, and seeking too high a figure in damages could hurt the case. Public opinion holds considerable sway in such cases and could affect the final outcome in ways the lawyers cannot know. The case could also drag on for years if the first ruling is appealed, moving it up to the Administrative Tribunal of Cudinamarca. If major revisions are required it will then go to the Council of State, Colombia’s maximum judicial authority in the public administrative law jurisdiction.
Under Colombian law damages are calculated from the time of the discovery, when the twins were in their midtwenties. This limitation discounts the difficulties they variously experienced during childhood, such as feeling different from the rest of their family, not knowing their biological parents, losing the benefits of a close twin relationship, and lacking access to compatible blood or organ donors if affected by a serious medical condition. I would argue that damages should be calculated from the day of the switch, when the twins were newborn babies.
The brothers could have been represented by separate lawyers to press their specific claims and concerns and, according to one of the attorneys, this arrangement may have made for a stronger case since the four were not similarly affected by the switch. The attorney also explained that the brothers rejected that option because of their good relations with one another and in the interest of presenting a unified front.
Insights and Understandings
The four Colombian twins and their families are adjusting well to their unusual situation, better than the members of any switched-at-birth twin case I have encountered. Their positive adjustment was possible, in part, because they had several critical factors in their favor. The twins learned of the switch when they were twenty-five, young enough to enjoy their surprise identical twinship, but mature enough to assess their situation rationally and realistically. All four were living in the same city so, work schedules aside, meeting and communicating were fairly easy. Ana and Carmelo, the parents from La Paz, were sensitive to their new son’s feelings, willing to wait for him to open up to them and to his new siblings when he felt ready.
Everyone was helped by convivencia, the notion that everyone belongs to one family, a sentiment that permeates much of Colombian thought and culture. Some relationships were revised, but mostly in name only. As Carlos so beautifully expressed it, “From the beginning we focused on the positive, not the negative. This is God’s doing. We were not kidnapped. No one [intentionally] stole anyone’s life.”
Band of Brothers
Band of Brothers is the title of Steven Ambrose’s bestselling book about the E Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division of the US Army whose members volunteered for elite service in World
War II. The book reveals their true camaraderie alongside the horrific, but successful battles they fought. The Colombian four, who proudly call each other brother, replicate the spirit and dedication of E Company, albeit on a smaller scale.
In October 2016 the four twins attended a comedy show starring Yesika’s sister, Alexandra, the nationally famous celebrity impersonator. It was the first time they had gotten together in a while, and it felt good to be there together, go out for drinks afterward, and catch up with each other. They had some important decisions to make, such as the type of tattoo they all will get, how they will celebrate their next birthdays, and if, when, and where they will vacation together. They have resolved to settle all such issues collectively and unanimously. Toward this end they have set up a joint email address that keeps them informed simultaneously.
* * *
The twins’ experience has redefined family as anyone you regard as a mother, father, sister, brother, son, or daughter. How much better to feel you have gained two brothers or two sons than to think you have lost the one you lived with and loved. Time together cannot compensate for their years apart, and the joys of reunion do not erase their pain of separation, but meaningful relationships between and among the twins and their families can form and last a lifetime.
Wilber wants to know where their story ends, a concern he voiced on behalf of all his brothers. A spontaneous moment during a party on our last night in Colombia held a vital clue. Out on the dance floor Carlos executed a risky move, leaning backward at a dangerous angle. The other three surrounded him, enjoying the scene while extending their arms protectively. In that moment they were alone together, free of unresolved tensions brought on by the switch. No matter what, they have each other’s backs.
Accidental Brothers Page 27