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

by Gary Brozek

  Tom proved to be a top-notch player, the best among the three of us. Not only was he good, but he was a master of the mind games as well. Whenever he took one of our pieces off the board, he would do so with a flourish—verbal and physical—to let us know that he had just crushed us and any hope we had of beating him. His grin was wicked, and the enjoyment he took in stomping an opponent was off the charts. I was just learning the game, so I wasn’t much of a challenge for him at the beginning, but I set myself the goal of beating him someday. Eventually I got so immersed in chess that I would skip lunch if I was in the middle of a game so that I could study the board and plot my next moves. During our marathon, day-long matches, the guards who had gone off duty at the start came up to us later in the day for an update. These titanic struggles between the master and the pupil loomed large in everyone’s imagination. I was grateful for the distraction the games provided; they helped me take my mind off of Ingrid and the others. I prayed for her nightly and hoped she was well.

  The Plumber also wanted to play Tom, and though he was a bright guy, he was not an experienced player. Tom wasn’t about to let up on anyone, and he had the Plumber on the run from the get go. Each time Tom took one of his pieces with that distinctive flourish of his, we could see the Plumber getting more and more flustered and angry. He was playing right into Tom’s hands—make the opponent think of anything but what he was supposed to be thinking about. Tom took the Plumber’s rook and it was only a matter of a couple of moves before he was going to win.

  Taking exception to Tom seizing his last vital defender and tossing it to the ground, the Plumber stood up and shouted defensively, “¡No hay violencia aquí!”

  As he jumped up, the Plumber knocked over the board, sending pieces flying in all directions. He was clearly upset, but all Tom did was stare at him and raise his palms up as if to say, “Let’s not get carried away.”

  Everybody started laughing and the situation quickly quieted since we knew Milton would freak out if he knew the guards were fraternizing with us in that way. But it seemed odd to all of us that the Plumber would respond so violently while telling us that violence had no place on the chessboard. We’d seen a lot of evidence that nearly every member of the FARC was capable of violence. We were playing a game, but these guys were committing real acts of brutality. Those thoughts didn’t stop us from playing chess, but I always kept that image of the Plumber shouting and upsetting the board in my mind. The incident was a good reminder of what his essential nature was—he was a terrorist and would always be one no matter how much contact he had with us. It was dangerous for us to think otherwise.

  A short while after the Plumber’s eruption, real violence intruded into our lives. One morning we woke up to the sound of bombs detonating near our camp—much closer than usual. The sound of explosion after explosion after explosion rode the waving tops of the trees; we knew a battle was going on, but we didn’t know where or who was waging it. Eventually we heard the familiar sound of gunfire from a Fantasma and we knew that something very serious was going on. All we could hope was that the FARC guerrillas were taking their lumps.

  The next day the Plumber reported back to us what he’d learned. We were in a region where the FARC had control over many coca fields. Instead of relying on airplane spraying to eradicate the crops, the government had sent in a unit to manually destroy them. The FARC had ambushed the workers and killed twenty-seven policemen. We didn’t know the number of wounded or killed among the FARC. We imagined their losses had to be significant based on the intensity and length of the battle.

  Later in the day Mono came to Keith and whispered, “Keith, the merchandise is here.” At first, Keith wasn’t sure what he meant; the guards frequently delivered supplies to us. When he repeated the message, Keith understood. Mono was referring to the cocaine that had not yet been fully refined. Mono claimed that the Front had shipped five tons to our location.

  During our years of captivity, we hadn’t seen much of the FARC’s drug operation up close. On one of our short marches, we’d been inside a lab, but hadn’t seen the final product. The news of this massive cocaine shipment explained why our guards had been on longer rotations. Instead of being with us for two hours, they were taking five-hour shifts. The guards we weren’t seeing were likely guarding the cocaine. When Keith told us about the amount of coke on the premises, we all thought about the job we’d been doing before our captivity and how it had contributed to the situation the FARC was currently in. They had the drugs at our location, but they couldn’t move them anywhere because of the strong military presence and heavy activity. We were glad to know that the combined efforts of the Colombians and the Americans in Plan Patriota were having some effect.

  While it was hard for me to visualize what five tons of crystal cocaine looked like, it was easy to picture the devastation that amount of drugs could do to neighborhoods back in the U.S. I was used to seeing photos of kids shot in drug-related drive-by shootings on the streets of just about every major American city. I was used to seeing pictures of crack babies. I was used to seeing pictures of grieving families at funerals for those directly and in most cases indirectly involved in the drug trade. I was used to hearing the outrageous numbers of dollars narco-trafficking produced.

  What I had come to see in my time in Colombia was that there was a whole new set of victims of the drug trade. I mourned the loss of those twenty-seven policemen. I mourned the loss of the kidnap victims who were frequently slaughtered because their families either weren’t able to make the payments the FARC demanded or refused to cave in to a terrorist practice. I prayed for their families. I prayed for all of us. I didn’t pray for the FARC.

  Our stay in the Chess Camp was marked by one of the problems that plagued us throughout our captivity—not enough food; only this time it was for different reasons. According to the Plumber, our supply chain had been cut off by the Colombian Army. In fact, the Colombians were so active, between the Front headquarters, supply depots, and our position, that two things happened: Milton went into forced radio silence, and we ran out of food. In our minds, this was a cause for celebration. It meant we were going to go on starvation rations, but it also meant the FARC were as well. They would be even weaker. The fact that they couldn’t communicate with their higher-ups only added to our glee.

  Meanwhile Milton was too stupid to make a sound decision on his own. We hoped he’d do something that would enhance our chances of them being taken down in a firefight with the army. If the noose was tightening and Milton continued to treat his people like dirt, we might be able to get some of them to fully commit to getting out there and surrendering. With them as our guides and offering some protection, we had a better chance of surviving.

  Nearly three months into our stay at the Chess Camp, food remained in short supply. Eventually we noticed that Rogelio and Mono had been gone for several days. Rogelio had been particularly cruel and nutty leading up to his absence. He was in a no-medicine-for-Tom mood and we were all fighting that battle again. With him gone, the attitude in our camp was definitely better and it seemed the same was true for the other members of the Front as well.

  Aside from enjoying the relative calm, we didn’t think much of Rogelio’s absence, but four days after our last little confrontation with him, we saw his girl, Vanessa, walking toward our part of camp crying. Not long after, we saw Tatiana, Mono’s woman, crying as well. We asked the Plumber what was up. Normally he was an upbeat kind of guy, but at that moment he looked really downcast.

  “Guys, I’ve got some very bad news,” he said, making it sound as if he was hesitant to tell us because he didn’t want us to be upset. “Mono and Rogelio are dead.”

  We looked at one another, uncertain of how much emotion to show in front of the Plumber. He paused for a minute before continuing.

  “They were sent to find food and to make contact with the other members of the Front. They were walking down the road when they were ambushed by the Colombian Army. They were b
oth shot and killed.” He lowered his head and scanned the ground in front of him for a few moments; his solemn expression said it all.

  I wasn’t proud of how I felt back then, but I was glad to hear that Rogelio was dead. I felt an enormous amount of relief that such a vindictive and evil person wasn’t on the planet anymore. As a Christian, I knew it wasn’t the attitude I should have taken, but I couldn’t help it. We all felt that way. It was as if we’d been given a gift.

  Though Mono had treated us better than Rogelio, I had no great affection for him, either. He had killed innocent people, something he talked about frequently. He had told us about the execution he’d performed and bragged about several other killings and drive-by shootings. Whether he did the things or not didn’t matter, and neither did the fact that at times he had helped us out and been kind. Either way, he was still a killer. I didn’t mourn his passing, but I did mourn the waste of a life. I knew that he had joined the FARC as a very young man and felt he had no other choice. That his opportunities had been so limited was sad, but I was not about to shed a tear for him.

  The Plumber walked away from us, and once he was out of earshot, we all shared our pleasure in not having Rogelio in our lives. We recounted some of the things that he had done to us. In my mind’s eye, I imagined him on that road and wondered what he thought about the moment the first round pierced his body or as he lay in the mud with his life seeping out of him. I doubted he felt any remorse.

  The silence lingered among the three of us.

  “Can you believe it?” I asked, almost thinking out loud.

  Tom and Keith knew what I was talking about because they both said, “No. But that’s just how it is.”

  Though we’d heard of other FARC guerrillas who had died or disappeared during our time in captivity, this was the first time that guards we’d come to know well had been killed. We were all a bit surprised that we’d taken such satisfaction in Rogelio’s death. It disturbed me. I found myself questioning whether it was the captivity that had brought out this side of me, or if I was simply changed now and this event demonstrated the new me. Perhaps some very small part of my soul died along with Rogelio. Perhaps his treatment of us had afflicted me in such a way that I’d lost some of my humanity. Perhaps I had to add my conscience to our casualty list.

  I didn’t dwell on these thoughts for very long. The FARC did nothing to commemorate their fallen comrades. Vanessa and Tatiana very quickly regrouped and moved on. The other guerrillas descended on Rogelio and Mono’s belongings and took whatever they wanted, picking through piece by piece until every item was taken.

  KEITH

  A week after we heard about Rogelio and Mono’s deaths, we were on the march again. Instead of it being a real ordeal or getting lost because of Milton’s cluelessness, we actually caught a bit of good luck. Whether it was because Milton had lost a couple of guys or somebody higher up in the group figured that the shithead needed a break, we were introduced to a new player. Ernesto joined our bunch, and the scuttlebutt was that he was pretty close to the boss of the whole Front.

  Compared to a lot of the guerrillas, Ernesto, at about five feet ten, was pretty tall. He had a barrel chest and a broad face topped by silvery gray hair and matching mustache. Next to Milton, he looked sophisticated, a city slicker rather than some backwoods ruffian—that is, a city slicker who wore a baseball-style T-shirt and sweatpants. He kept his nine-millimeter strapped to his side at all times and conducted himself like a professional—keeping his distance and maintaining a relatively calm and pleasant attitude.

  He, too, got sucked into the chess thing, and at one point in his series of matches with Tom (who won nine out of eleven), Ernesto told a long story about the history of chess. It was clear that the guy had some education and could read, but he had obviously drunk the FARC Kool-Aid. His story was that he came from a poor family, and to hear him tell it, everything he learned, he learned from the FARC. To him, everyone benefited from the cocaine trade and he didn’t understand our trying to stop it. He sincerely believed that the revolution would equalize things for everyone and that was what all this was about.

  From the start, we had Ernesto pegged as an idealist and true believer, but at least he made good on his idea of spreading the wealth. He treated us fairly and intervened on our behalf to make sure that our enclosures were larger. He said of Milton, “One thing that people in charge of prisoners sometimes fail to remember is that the prisoners are human beings.”

  It was too bad that the FARC had such an uneven policy when it came to respecting people’s human rights. On this series of marches, with Rogelio gone and Milton no longer completely responsible for our day-to-day care, the atmosphere loosened considerably. Each day when we bathed, it seemed as if we attracted more and more attention from the female guerrillas. They came down and bathed at the same time as we did, and we were back to being zoo animals in an interactive exhibit. As gringos, everything we did was funny. Because both the men and the women of the FARC had a tendency to giggle when nervous, at times it was like we were men surrounded by a bunch of silly schoolgirls.

  One day Vanessa came down to bathe, and when she took off her T-shirt, it was clear that even in death Rogelio had found a way to plague us: Vanessa didn’t just display a baby bump, she was full-on pregnant. Having a child was a direct violation of FARC policy, but we knew that Rogelio had to be the baby’s father. She’d moved on after his death, but she hadn’t taken up with any of the other guerrillas. We weren’t certain what was going to happen to the baby, but we knew whatever it was would not be good.

  By our estimation, Vanessa was four to five months’ pregnant when the word came down that she was going to have to terminate it. Tatiana, Mono’s former girl, had befriended Marc, and she filled us in on Vanessa’s situation. Tatiana knew what the only outcome could be, but she still expressed her dismay that Vanessa wouldn’t be able to carry the baby to full term. She said that Vanessa was resigned to the fact that the fetus was going to be killed.

  There was an older woman in camp, Gira, who acted like a wise mother hen much of the time; as it turned out she was also the camp abortionist. The morning that Gira administered the drugs to Vanessa so that she would “spontaneously” abort her child was surreal. As a parent, I was sick at the thought of a four-to five-month-old fetus having its life terminated. Marc and I were angry and frustrated that there was nothing we could do to help her. Sitting in our area and listening to Vanessa’s mumbled protests and later her cries of discomfort followed by grief, I felt like I’d reached a new level of disgust with the FARC. As much as we’d all hated Rogelio and hated the idea that some of his DNA was going to be passed on to another human being, we all hoped that somehow the best in humanity could overcome the rough start that kid had been given. We wanted to believe that with the opportunity, even in the incredibly dysfunctional FARC community, this child would have the chance to become a decent human being.

  The next time we saw Vanessa, she was a broken woman. No amount of brainwashing could extinguish her maternal instincts. She knew she’d had no choice, that one way or another the FARC would take that baby from her. Just as they had done with Clara’s baby, they didn’t see a human life in that child; they saw the potential for death. To them, a child was a liability, a crying, mewling presence that might betray their position. One more mouth to feed, one more item to be humped through the jungle. Seething in our area, I hated them like never before.

  As we marched away from the Chess Camp and the Colombian military, heading out of the mountains, we knew that we were in for a long one and that some major changes were afoot. In addition to Ernesto, we met another FARC leader, by the name of Pidinolo, a young, lean, athletic-looking guy who didn’t seem to belong to the rat’s nest of human genetic material that made up the rest of the group. He carried himself like he was somebody, and as it turned out, he was: the right-hand man of the 27th Front’s commander, Efren. Pidinolo was said to be the guy in charge of tactical planning for t
heir military operations.

  Accompanying Pidinolo were three really young kids, none of them older than fifteen. All were complete greenhorns, wet-behind-the-ears kids kitted up with brand-new gear and clearly in love with being in the jungle with the adults. This was their chance to play war. Shortly after Pidinolo and his young crew joined us, we stopped one day and he ordered that a pig be slaughtered so we could have a nice meal. While the pig was roasting, a few soldiers brought over a bunch of coconuts. As it turned out, we were in an agricultural area and there were farms all around us. The FARC were wolfing down coconuts, and Eliécer took his machete and used it like a set of ginsu knives to carve up a big portion of coconut for the three of us.

  The months that had passed since the Exercise Camp had done nothing to alleviate Eliécer’s feeling of entrapment. He continued to speak to us about his unhappiness, how enslaved he felt, but still he managed to get up every day and march alongside us. He revealed that he had been tricked into joining the FARC. Through it all, he always impressed us with his humanity and generosity—the coconut was just one small example of this.

  That night, we enjoyed the pork and bedded down. Because we were on the move, we set up our hooches in the middle of the FARC guards. Just to our left was where Eliécer and one of Pidinolo’s young aides, Duber, were sleeping. Long after we’d turned in, I was awakened by the click of a rifle’s safety being switched off. A second later, that weapon discharged and a bullet whizzed over us.