by Gary Brozek
Lucho nodded. “That is the arrogance of Uribe. Granda was a FARC at one time, certainly, but that doesn’t mean that the government can ignore the sovereignty of another nation. If Chávez is willing to move beyond that, then this is a good thing, Keith. Though I doubt it will lead to much.”
Lucho’s typically insightful but contradictory response was something I’d come to expect. With him, life was a feast or a famine. Sometimes both simultaneously, but you always knew where he stood—even if he sometimes moved around a lot.
“C’mon, Lucho,” Keith replied. “Uribe let Chávez believe he won that whole Granda thing. Uribe got what he wanted and then backed off. Chavez is angling for something else.”
“Let’s keep this in perspective,” I said. “There’s a chance that they’ll get everybody together to talk about humanitarian exchanges. Who cares about the rest of the politics involved.”
I looked at Marc, who nodded in agreement. “We can wait and see what Uribe does. Let’s just hope this leads to something.”
Our fears of the situation exploding were tempered when we found out that Chávez was scheduled to visit Bogotá in the next weeks to speak with Uribe. If Uribe didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand, we had even more reason to hope that our captivity wouldn’t stretch beyond five years. I’d always had that span of time in the back of my mind as a kind of barricade past which I wouldn’t be able to go. Though I hadn’t focused on the idea for a while, it may have subconsciously contributed to my eruption at Enrique.
Ten days later on August 31, 2007, our prospects got even better when Uribe announced that he would allow Chávez to act on behalf of the Colombian government in negotiations with the FARC for a prisoner exchange. Chávez stated that he had also received a letter from a high-ranking FARC official asking him to get involved. In a show of good faith, the FARC led a Red Cross delegation to the site where the bodies of the eleven slaughtered deputies were located. The bodies were to be returned to the families after a forensic analysis. Several days after this promise was carried out, Raúl Reyes, the FARC’s number two in command, stated that Chávez’s participation was a good first step; however, any prisoner exchange would have to take place in Colombia. Chávez vowed that if necessary, he would go into the deepest parts of the jungle to meet with FARC leaders. There’d been rumors that Marulanda was not well and unable to travel, so wherever and whenever Chávez held his meetings was a good thing for us.
Everyone in camp was energized by the news. Even Lucho was cautiously optimistic.
“This is the first time in twenty years that I’ve seen relations between Venezuela and us even remotely positive,” he said. “It has been a long time coming. I don’t trust Chávez’s motives, but if it can help extract us from this hell, I’d be willing to have the devil himself take my hand.”
The radio reported that Chávez stayed twelve hours longer than originally intended and that he and Uribe had wide ranging discussions about a variety of issues of mutual benefit. If the Venezualan president was angling for something else, as Keith predicted, I didn’t care. I wanted out of that jungle even if it meant that I was being used as a pawn in a much bigger game.
About the same time that Uribe announced Chavez’s involvement, we got word that there would be a new U.S. ambassador to Colombia named William Brownfield. Brownfield was replacing William Wood, a move that could only be good for us. During his tenure as ambassador, Wood only seemed to talk about drugs and counterdrugs, saying nothing about us hostages. Brownfield was different. In an address to the Colombian people, he made it clear that he knew about the three of us and that he was hopeful a solution could be worked out.
The arrival of the new ambassador was encouraging, but lengthy delays in getting the negotiations started set our hopes back a bit. As September drew to a close, the two sides were haggling over things as they usually did. The FARC demanded a demilitarized zone in the south, roughly where we figured we were located, along the border between Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. Uribe refused. Colombia wanted proof of life before moving forward with any hostage negotiations, but as far as we knew, the FARC had yet to order any.
As the wrangling continued, Uribe shocked us all once again by naming Piedad Córdoba, a member of one of the more liberal parties in Colombia and a vocal critic of his presidency, as a mediator in the negotiations for hostage release. She made no bones about being sympathetic to the FARC, but no one knew just how deep her ties were. A cloud of suspicion seemed to follow her around in some circles in Bogotá. Lucho was a friend of hers, and he defended her, saying that she was a serious, hardworking, and charismatic woman with good intentions. He said that if anyone could help us out, it was she. She’d once been taken hostage herself by a right-wing paramilitary group and would be very sympathetic to our plight. As questionable a figure as Chávez was, and to a lesser extent Córdoba herself, in the end it didn’t matter to us who was doing the talking, so long as there was talking. Even Keith, who hated Chávez and everything he stood for, said that he would kiss the man’s butt if he could get us free.
The morning of October 20, we were in the river bathing when Enrique hustled down the embankment.
“You have five minutes. You must put on your best clothes. I have received orders to do a proof of life for each of you.”
We all looked at one another. Ever since we’d heard those words come up as one of Colombia’s demands, we’d known this was coming. The question now was how we would react.
“Look,” Keith said, turning away from Enrique. “The FARC have come forward saying they want to do a prisoner exchange. Uribe does an about-face and gets Córdoba and Chávez involved. Our ambassador starts talking about us. Something is up. Let’s keep it simple and focus on that.”
Marc seemed lost in thought. I asked him what was on his mind.
“Yeah, we have to keep this as simple as possible,” he said. “We can’t control what the governments of all these countries and all the departments within governments are going to do or say. Do we want to do this?”
“I think I need to do it,” I said. “I wasn’t prepared the last time and I want my family to know that I’m okay. All the other political stuff and what our government is asking for and what doing the proof means to the FARC just doesn’t matter in comparison to that. I have to assure my family I’m alive and well.”
None of us spoke for a few seconds.
“I know how you feel,” Marc said. “I’m torn. I want to let my family know that I’m okay, but after what that journalist Botero did with the first proof of life, I don’t know if I can let the FARC use me like that again.”
We paused for a moment, all chewing over the memory of how Botero had manipulated us with news of our friends’ deaths.
“I’m not the same guy I was then,” Marc continued. “I’m not afraid of them anymore. And after what they’ve put us through, I don’t know if I can do anything that might help their cause.”
He sat with this chin resting on his closed fists, still shaking his head, looking like a man faced with doing the right hard thing who hates himself for having to do it. Keith threw his hat in the ring.
“I hear you, Marc. I’m not doing it. They want to use our pain, our families’ pain, to advance their cause. That’s just wrong to me. Tom, I admire you for being able to focus on your family, and you know you don’t need me to tell you this, but I’m going to anyway. You do what’s best for you and we’ve got your back, bro.”
“I know that, Keith,” I replied, certain that we each had to do what was right for us.
“Marc, I’m not trying to sway you one way or the other, but just hear me out. We’re human currency here. We all know that. The FARC secretariado are likely busting their buttons over this. They got multiple countries wanting to deal with them, legitimizing them in their eyes. We’re also more valuable to them now than ever before. I don’t think they’re going to throw us chips into the pot at this point. Why should they?”
We waited in th
e water for Enrique, and when he returned, he told Marc he would be first. Marc didn’t hesitate a second.
“I’m not going to do it. I don’t want to be videotaped and I don’t want to speak. I won’t answer any questions.” When he was through, Marc’s jaw was clenched and a vein stood out on his forehead. His eyes never left Enrique’s.
Enrique took in his stare for a moment before speaking. “That is fine. But know this: I will have a video of you whether you like it or not. You can be squatting over the chaunto; I’ll get a video of you there. You can be as you are now in the bath; I’ll get a video of you here. It doesn’t matter, you will have a video of you done on my terms or you can cooperate.”
Enrique walked off a few yards.
“I know he could tape whatever he wants. I’m not going to give him that control. I’ll do the video but I won’t talk.”
Marc waded out of the water and headed up the hill with Keith and me following. He put on a black T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, hardly the “best clothes” that Enrique had asked us to wear. Marc was determined that the video show how we really were treated and not what the FARC wanted everyone to believe. Enrique hovered around him with his video camera for a few minutes, trying to get the best shots he could. Marc took out the scrap of T-shirt he used as a handkerchief and swatted at a few mosquitoes, never smiling, never looking straight into the camera.
Keith was next, so Marc and I had a chance to talk.
“I really, really wanted to say something to my family,” Marc said. “I really did. This just hurts so bad. I feel like I’ve swallowed a brick and it’s lodged in my throat. My kids. What would they think if they knew?”
Keith did the same thing as Marc, as did Lucho. My motivation was wanting to hold my marriage together and not having someone wait for me to be released out of pity. I hadn’t heard from Mariana in quite a while, and I wasn’t sure what our status was, but I did want her and my sons to know how I felt about them.
Sitting there with Enrique taping me was surreal. Here was this guy whom I hated so much I just wanted to spit in his face, a guy who ordered me placed in chains. And yet there I was speaking words of love to my wife, looking into the camera and trying to ignore who was behind that lens. I handed Enrique a letter that I’d written to my wife. It was essentially a will, so that in case I didn’t make it out, my family would be well taken care of. I needed to know that things would be handled neatly and there would as few loose ends as possible. As a practical guy, I needed to have that bit of security in my pocket. I wasn’t particularly worried about dying, but covering all the bases would help me rest easier.
The letter also included a list of things my wife needed to do to keep the house in good working order. The gutters needed cleaning once a year so that they wouldn’t overflow and ruin the wood siding. There had already been some water damage before the crash and I told her to get a carpenter to fix it. I knew that it was an oddball assortment of romantic and pragmatic stuff, but in a marriage, there’s always going to be that mix. I knew she’d understand, and in some ways, she’d know the letter wasn’t a fake. I’d been changed by my captivity, but those essential traits that made me a pilot and someone who liked to dot all the is and cross all the ts remained.
After the proof of life, camp returned to normal during the fall of 2007. Enrique wasn’t happy that we’d ignored his request to tell the world we didn’t want a military rescue, but he didn’t tighten the screws any further. In fact, a few times he even allowed us to be out of chains to play volleyball. We stayed tuned to the radio and kept up on all the other developments. Chávez had the French government on his side because of Ingrid’s dual citizenship. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was doing what he could to encourage negotiations. Meanwhile the FARC had announced a unilateral hostage release as a sign of goodwill.
From what we could tell, there seemed to be a whole lot of talking, flying, and visiting, but no real progress. Chávez had promised the much-anticipated proof of life to the French government before his visit to France, but when he arrived, he wasn’t able to produce it. We had no idea why the FARC were holding on to it, and our frustration with the pace of things increased. We also began to see evidence that Chávez’s motives were self-serving and two-faced. In radio addresses, he would praise the FARC’s founder Marulanda and hail him as a great revolutionary, while we saw him as what he really was—the leader of a terrorist organization.
It seemed as if every day that fall, the news in Colombia was related to the hostages and the FARC. We had other reasons to be hopeful. U.S. presidential campaigns were in full swing. With Senators Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama in the lead on one side, and Senator John McCain rallying on the other, we figured that either way our chances looked good. Liberals were more likely to be sympathetic to our cause and Senator McCain, having been a POW himself, would be willing to focus more attention on our situation. A U.S. congressman, Jim McGovern, had been active in trying to get the FARC to negotiate, and we had hopes that other government representatives would join him. In addition, Simón Trinidad had been convicted in the U.S. the previous July of kidnapping the three of us, but when we heard his sentencing had been delayed, we hoped that somehow it was related to possible Justice Department negotiations about our release.
On November 20, Enrique informed us that we needed to do another proof-of-life video. When we asked him why, he offered a vague excuse about something happening to the other one. It seemed just like the FARC to lose something that various heads of state had been asking for. We had no idea what had happened to the last one, but given the kinds of casualties we’d heard the FARC had taken in the last few years, anything was possible. With the mounting evidence that this proof of life was something that others beside the FARC were calling for, we agreed that it was best to provide our families with the reassurance we all wanted to give them and to satisfy one condition of the possible negotiations. If we didn’t know that the French and Colombian governments were asking for the evidence that we were still alive and we hadn’t heard for ourselves that our ambassador was eager to work for our release, it would have been a lot easier to reject Enrique’s request. We weighed all that out and decided that the scales tipped in favor of doing what Enrique asked.
For my part, I was glad to have another shot at a proof of life. I felt like the previous one had been rushed; in looking back on it, I had some thoughts about what I would do differently, and I incorporated them into the November version. I stole a line from my favorite author, Gabriel García Márquez, which sounded better in Spanish than English. I told Mariana, “La quiero resueltamente,” which means “I love you resolutely.” I also put that line in the written love letter. I was pleased to get that message out in place of my home improvements, especially since I didn’t know if I would have a home to return to.
KEITH
I never trusted Chávez. I figured that any military guy who would flee to Cuba wasn’t worth much. When he showed up empty-handed in Paris for his meeting with Sarkozy, I knew these negotiations weren’t long for this world. Of course, the FARC didn’t help matters. If I was certain of one thing, it was that between Chávez and the knuckleheads at the FARC, they would figure out some way to fuck things up. It took a while, but they managed to do it.
It was hard not to let that bit of news overshadow something else we learned. Among the family members who’d earlier gone to Caracas was Patricia. Even if I wasn’t at the press conference that Chávez held, my twins were. Apparently, they’d gone with their mother, and “los tigres,” as they were known, got out of the cage of their mother’s arms. They tore around Chávez’s presidential palace and interrupted the press conference, so that Chávez left the podium to chase after them. He caught them and played a bit of hide-and-seek around a huge globe on a stand. The press loved it, and the twins served as a reminder that “los americanos” were still in captivity even if one of them had twins who couldn’t be tamed.
Hearing on the radio that los tigres had
torn up the presidential palace was a huge boost—especially knowing that the apple hadn’t fallen very far from the tree. It was also good to hear that the Colombians had seemed to embrace Patricia and the boys as their own. Whatever worries I had about their being dumped on because of the sins of the father were now gone. All I needed to do was to figure out how to better atone for those sins and stop being a Chávez-esque dumb shit myself.
On November 22, two days after our second proof of life, we heard on the radio that Uribe had officially terminated Chávez and Córdoba as his envoys with the FARC. Happy fucking Thanksgiving to us, pass the cranberries and the mashed hopes. When we heard the news, I held my chain in my hand and said, “That’s it. Stick a fork in it. It’s over.”
All of us sat around the radio listening to the sad little tale of hurt feelings and stupidity. Apparently, Chávez and Córdoba got a little too full of themselves. During a flight together, they got the big idea into their heads that they could take charge of this situation entirely. They called Colombian army commander General Montoya and tried to set up a meeting with him to discuss the hostages and the FARC. What they forgot was that one of the conditions of their appointment as Uribe’s representatives was that they not contact anyone or set up any meetings unless they went through him first. He had to approve whatever moves they made. Oops, I guess they didn’t read the fine print on the contract, and so because they wanted to hog the spotlight, we stayed in captivity.
Lucho was as pissed off at Uribe as I was at Chávez—not that I didn’t think there wasn’t enough blame to go around.
“Uribe was merely looking for an opportunity to rescind his agreement. He wanted to embarrass and discredit Chávez from the beginning. A mere technicality and he gets his wish.” Lucho had gone red in the face and was looking like he was going to launch into one of his antiright speeches. Fortunately, Marc cut him off before he got too wound up.
