Exceptional Circumstances

by Bartleman, James;

  “I’ll do my part,” I said. “I’ll tell everyone that I’m leaving on a familiarization trip to the Llanos.”

  Two days later I travelled by communal taxi from Bogota to Villavicencio, some twelve hours down the mountain in the hot Colombian rainforest. Following the advice of Señora Lopez, I had crammed into a knapsack a hammock to string up between the trees for sleeping, mosquito repellant and netting, and a couple of bottles of rum to offer as gifts to Rojas. With a poncho covering my shoulders, my straight black hair, brown skin, and black eyes, I could easily have passed for a Colombian mestizo had I wanted to travel incognito.

  But that was not part of my cover story. Señora Lopez told me to show my diplomatic passport if I was challenged by the police and explain I was on my way to spend a night with an American missionary at Cravo Norte, at the junction of the Casanare and Cravo Norte rivers in the southeastern part of the country. The missionary, I was to say, would take me up the Casanare River to spend a week or so at a settlement of Indians and learn about their way of life. That would be my excuse to make a side trip to see Rojas.

  After a night in a cockroach-infested hotel at Villavicencio, I scrambled aboard an ancient DC-3 plane at the local airport and took my place among the passengers — soldiers returning from leave, cowboys, campesinos, chickens, and pigs — and flew to Cravo Norte where Jim Hetherington, the American missionary and underground supporter of the ELN, met me. Before leaving the airport, however, a policeman asked me to identify myself. When I produced my passport, he was suspicious, and demanded to know what a diplomat was doing travelling in a dangerous frontier area. He let me go when Jim stepped in to back up my story.

  That night over dinner, Jim told me he was a member of a mid-West American fundamentalist church that had been working for decades to convert the Indians to Christianity. In recent years, paramilitary killers, hired by the big landowners, had begun raiding the Indian villages located on the jungle fringe along the along the Casanare River, killing the men and raping the women to drive off the people and open the area for large-scale cattle ranching. The government, he said, supported the landowners and the ELN did its best to protect the Indians. As a missionary, he was supposed to stay out of politics, but he supported the ELN in any way he could.

  The next morning, Jim handed me over to his gardener, an Indian who spoke only his native language, to take me upriver by motorized canoe fifty miles to the settlement. “Somebody from the ELN will meet you there, and take you the rest of the way. He’ll take you to Rojas.”

  The comrades scowled and turned their backs and Rojas didn’t look at all happy when I arrived in the early evening at his camp a few days later. He greeted me stiffly, accepting my gift of rum without a thank you. “My men think your visit is a big mistake,” he said.

  “But we took every precaution to avoid being followed and I thought everyone approved my visit. Do you want me to leave?”

  “No I don’t. The comrades aren’t strategists. They don’t see the big picture. Just because the ELN controls part of the Llanos, they think victory over the oligarchs is within reach. They don’t realize that as long as the outside world supports the government, we’ll have no hope of winning. The balance of forces against us is just too great. They don’t understand our need to bring outsiders like you to see our operations up close, and report back to your governments on the justice of our cause. I look upon your visit as being the first of many by objective diplomats and serious journalists. That’s why I’m taking you along when we attack the town of Sucio, down on the Llanos. You’ll be able to send a spectacular report.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Revolutionaries make revolutions,” he said, “and the comrades get restive if they aren’t in action. Besides, these operations are the way we popularize our cause, recruit new members, and replenish food and medical supplies. But I also want you to see true revolutionaries in action and be a witness to the love and esteem of the ordinary people of Colombia for the ELN. If the scouts make it back tonight as planned, and if their report is favourable, we’ll leave tomorrow at dawn.”

  I listened to Rojas with growing unease. “But I’m here on a fact-finding mission,” I said. “I’m a non-combatant and a diplomat. I can’t participate in military operations.”

  “You won’t be participating in a military action. You’ll be observing a military action. The distinction is important. Besides, I’ve already told the comrades you’d show your support by accompanying us into action. If you don’t, you’ll undermine my authority. And if I lose control, I won’t be able to guarantee your safety. They might insist on holding you for ransom or worse.”

  Rojas smiled when he made his last remark but he was implying I had to do as he said or suffer the consequences. The friendly Rojas I had met in the church was no more, and I didn’t like the new one. “Now let me show you around,” he said, taking me to a nearby high point and proudly showing me the view. “Those are the famous Llanos,” he said, pointing down to the hot, low-lying plains I had just left. “They’ve been a zone of outlaws and cowboys for hundreds of years. Their horsemen are as famous in the history of Colombia as the Cossacks are in Russia’s. Bolivar wouldn’t have won the battles to gain Colombia’s independence from Spain without the Llaneros, as we call them. The area is now a no-man’s land with paramilitary forces, criminal gangs, the army, and the police fighting with the ELN for control.”

  I interrupted him to say I was hungry and Rojas quickly apologized for his lack of hospitality. He said he found it hard to stop preaching. “It’s a déformation professionnelle,” he said, a habit he had picked up when he was a priest in good standing. He then took me to join the others who were gorging themselves on barbecued meat sliced from a side of beef suspended over a pit of red-hot coals. After serving ourselves, we sat with the others but they got up and left. Rojas shrugged his shoulders to indicate he either didn’t want or couldn’t force his men to eat with me. But before he could start lecturing me again, I asked where he had learned to speak French.

  “I speak enough to get by,” he said. “After my ordination, I spent a year in Belgium studying sociology at the Catholic University of Louvain. I wanted to get a solid theoretical foundation on the problem of poverty before I was given my own church back here in Colombia.”

  To be polite, I asked him if his studies had met his expectations. “More than just met,” he said. “I learned more about Liberation Theology over there in twelve months than I did here in all my years at the seminary. And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. There were priests there from around the world, including Quebec. In fact, they were the ones who first told me about the FLQ and their future plans.”

  “I’d like to hear more about them.”

  “I was sure you’d be interested, and so will your authorities back in Ottawa. But let’s do that later — after we come back from Sucio.”

  I crawled into my hammock as soon as we finished eating, aware that Rojas had trapped me. Despite my reservations, if the scouts came back with a positive report, I would have to accompany the guerrillas on their raid to get more information on the FLQ. Obtaining information on the FLQ was the principal purpose of my visit, and Rojas knew that.

  Later that night, I woke to the sounds of loud voices welcoming visitors to the camp. The scouts had returned and were answering questions from Rojas and the others. I listened carefully, trying to make sense of their report, but was only able to pick out the words el gringo from time to time — indicating they were discussing my fate — amidst a cacophony of unintelligible words and what sounded like fierce arguments. When the guerrillas erupted in a great cheer followed by silence, I was sure the operation was on and that I would be going along.

  The next morning, well before dawn, Rojas shook me awake and told me to get ready to leave. Within the hour I was riding down a mountain trail as part of a column of twenty men en route to take Sucio. The two scouts rode ahead to warn us if they ran into a military
patrol on the trail. A half-dozen pack horses brought up the rear. No talking while riding was the rule. In the evenings, meals were eaten cold to dispense with the need for fires, and sentries were posted. By this time, although the comrades were not particularly friendly, they didn’t move away when I joined them for meals. At the end of the third day, the scouts told us we were two hours away.

  The following day, riding in the early morning toward the town with the guerrillas, I admired their carefree attitude, their ability to joke and laugh when facing danger. I became concerned that they paid no attention to Rojas when he ordered them to maintain operational silence. I didn’t know until later that when the scouts had briefed Rojas and the guerrillas back at their camp, they had said Sucio was defended by only four policemen and a sergeant. I didn’t know they had said the policemen spent their time drinking coffee and playing cards on the town square outside the jail and wouldn’t be able to offer serious resistance. Not knowing what they knew, I was furious with the guerrillas, afraid their lack of discipline would warn the security forces we were coming and give them time to ready their defences.

  As we drew closer, the column picked up speed and the guerrillas began to shout encouragement to each other and to sing old Llanero marching songs at the top of their voices. Rojas grew more frantic, shouting at his men to be quiet, but they paid him no attention. I became ever more anxious. My hands began to tremble and my stomach to ache. What if I gave way to fear and fled the scene of battle? What if I shit my pants? How would I explain myself to a furious Colombian government intent on sending me home in disgrace if they found out what I’d done? Was I breaking any sort of Canadian law? What would the ambassador say? Would he order me back to Canada? What would Longshaft say? Would he call me a blundering idiot and disown me? What would Heather say? Would she be proud of me? Was I having another nightmare? Yes that was it. I was having a nightmare and would soon wake up and draw Heather’s body to mine … and all would be good.

  The column of horsemen raced through the outskirts of the town, drawing frightened looks from people going about their business. I glanced at the riders on my right and then at the ones on my left. They were no longer shouting or singing, but their flushed faces and broad smiles indicated they were looking forward to a fight. Their excitement was contagious, and I spurred on my horse. We were members of the British nobility Riding to the Hounds. We were Métis horsemen ignoring the withering fire from Gatling machine guns and attacking the line of Canadian troops advancing against them at the Battle of Batoche. We were the uniformed mounted troops of a defrocked priest, Colombia’s own modern day Girolamo Savonarola, fighting for social justice on behalf of God and Che Guevara in the middle of the Llanos.

  Afraid we were riding into an ambush, I crouched low as we thundered up with a great clatter of hooves on cobblestone to a plain cement block building marked in big letters CÁRCEL. If not proud, I was elated to be at the side of Latin America’s most charismatic revolutionary leader — someone with the highest principles, someone who felt deeply about the welfare of the poor. No one else in the Department had done something like this. Four unarmed unshaven sleepy policemen, their jacket buttons undone, sat outside around a table drinking coffee, swatting flies, and gossiping. A dog was under the table. Chickens scratched in the dust. The policemen looked up in surprise. They lifted their arms in silent surrender, and the scouts shot them down with their Madsen sub-machine guns, knocking over the table, killing the dog, scattering the chickens, and blasting holes in the walls of the jail. A policeman with sergeant stripes emerged from the jail brandishing a pistol and the scouts shot him down.

  Rojas leapt from his horse and went from dying policeman to dying policeman, absolving them of sin and blessing them as their souls departed for heaven. The guerrillas removed their hats and recited the Lord’s Prayer. The sun was bright. A rooster crowed. Colombian cowboy music drifted in. A woman began to wail. The square was deserted. I remained on my horse looking at Rojas. He saw me and averted his eyes. Dogs barked and shutters slammed. I was hot and sweat trickled down my chest inside my shirt. My mouth and throat were parched, I reached for my canteen and drank my fill. Rojas looked at me. I was an extra in Sergio Leone’s movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, in which the characters are all bad.

  The guerrillas shot their weapons into the air and galloped away. A half dozen men entered the bank. There was gunfire. They re-emerged carrying bags of pesos and loaded them onto a pack horse. Others raided a pharmacy, a shop selling foodstuffs, and a dry goods store, and carried their booty to the pack horses. Rojas looked on, saying and doing nothing. The scouts kicked open the doors to a bar and were followed in by the others. Gunfire. Screams of women being raped. Laughter. It was humid, there was a smell of gunpowder and blood in the air. I puked. Rojas entered the bar. Voices were raised in argument. Women ran out crying. Rojas ordered his men to assemble the people on the square. They went from house to house kicking in doors and driving the people like cattle to their leader. Rojas pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and mechanically read out a prepared speech to the terrified crowd.

  Comrades, workers, brothers and sisters of Sucio. Greetings from the ELN, the one true revolutionary movement of Colombia. An epic struggle is being waged in our homeland between the forces of good and the forces of evil. On the side of the good are the poor, the unemployed, the exploited, the hungry, the naked, the sick, the illiterate, , the parish priests and nuns, and those deprived of economic and political rights. They are the children of God and Fidel Castro is his disciple! On the side of evil are the big landowners, the private armies, the capitalists, the oligarchs, the television and radio stations, the newspapers, the armed forces, the secret police, and the church hierarchy. They are the offspring of the Devil and the president of Colombia is his acolyte! My comrades and I have come here today with love in our hearts as agents of the forces of good to seek your support in our struggle against the forces of evil. We thank you for your generous donations of money, food, and medical supplies. We invite you to send your young men to fight with us against the capitalist enemy. We assure you we will be back after the triumph of the revolution to help in the transformation of your community into a workers’ paradise. Long live the town of Sucio. Long live the revolution. Long live the ELN.

  Then unexpectedly, tears began to flow down Rojas’s face, followed by enormous, heart-rending sobs. The assembled townspeople looked on nervously, perhaps sensing they were in the presence of a madman who might just as easily laugh as order his men to kill them. The guerrillas stared at their leader at first with incomprehension, and as his crying continued unabated, they stole surreptitious looks at each other with small complicit smiles, as if to indicate they had known all along he was a lunatic. Eventually, Rojas wheeled his horse around and galloped out of the square, followed by his men firing off their guns as if they were celebrating a great victory. I caught up to Rojas later in the day and asked him what had gone wrong, but he stared at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. It was at that moment that I regretted ever meeting Rojas. By insisting that I accompany his band of raiders, he had implicated me in murder and rape, leaving blood on my hands.

  Rojas never spoke to me again. Despondent, I left for Bogota shortly after we reached the camp. I hadn’t found out what the priests from Quebec had told him about the FLQ, but in the state I was in, it didn’t matter. When back at our apartment Heather reacted badly, calling me sneaky and dishonest when she learned I had been to see Rojas, I made no effort to defend myself. When O’Connor sent a message to Ottawa demanding I be recalled, I didn’t protest. When he told me he had withdrawn his permission for me to marry Heather, I said nothing. When Señora Lopez called to ask me what had happened, I hung up, unable to deal with her. I didn’t care whether Longshaft would fire or promote me when I sent him a detailed report on the botched expedition. For what it was worth — and that would turn out to be not much — I marked my report “For Canadian Eyes Only” to
keep it out of the hands of the CIA.

  The following week, the Bogota newspapers carried stories with banner headlines on what they called “The Slaughter at Sucio.” Rojas was identified and blamed for inciting his men to plunder the town. No mention was made of the presence of a foreign diplomat monitoring the engagement. A spokesman from the ministry of the interior said the raid would set back the efforts of the ELN to win over the Llaneros for decades — but that might have been self-serving propaganda. Then, several weeks later, the television stations of Bogota interrupted their regular programing to bring a special message to the people from the president announcing the death of the ELN leader.

  The next day the newspapers carried photos of Rojas, lying dead on a stretcher as soldiers of an American-trained ranger counter-terrorism battalion posed for pictures around his body. His chest was pierced with bullet holes and it was evident he had been executed after being captured. By that time I had emerged from my funk, and was able to think more clearly. I knew I should have been upset by his death, but I wasn’t — at least not initially. That would come with the passage of years whenever I thought back to the sight of Rojas weeping for his revolution in Sucio and to the nighttime conversation we had in the church. For the moment, the image that came to mind was of Rojas, completely out of touch with reality, rushing to perform the last rites to the policemen shot down without mercy after he lost control of his men. I couldn’t help blaming him for their deaths.

  I nevertheless called Señora Lopez, intending to express my condolences, but nobody answered the phone. I went to the shelter and hammered on the door until one of the employees let me in.

  “The police took her away in the night, Señor. I don’t expect her back.”