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

by Ingrid Betancourt

  She was right. I could not hold it against her. We had reached the point where we had to face the facts: Our release could take months. Any new attempt to escape would be all the more difficult now that we had such little leeway. The guards were on the qui vive, closely watching whatever we did and severely restricting where we could go. They took the chains off only when we went to the chontos and at bathing time. But I suppose we had to consider ourselves lucky. One of the guards had wanted us to keep the chain around our ankles when we went to bathe, which would have meant dragging behind us the length that had been unchained from the tree. I was forced to appeal to Cesar, who showed clemency. But in every other respect, our situation had grown substantially worse. We had no access to radio. The guards on duty had been ordered to respond to all our requests as evasively as possible. That was the FARC way. They did not say no. They just put us off and lied to us, which was even more humiliating. It was the same for the flashlights. Whenever we needed them, they had always left them behind in their caletas. Yet they were always pointing them at us, shining the beams in our faces all night long. We had to remain silent. We could no longer use their machetes, even for the most basic of tasks. We had to ask someone to help us, but no one ever had the time. We would spend the entire day in boredom under our mosquito net, unable to move without disturbing each other. Yes, I understood her reaction. But naturally I was hurt by her attitude. She had turned her back on me.

  She wrote her letter and passed it to me to read. It was a strange letter, because she had written it in legal jargon, as if it were addressed to a civil authority. Its formality seemed incongruous with the world in which we found ourselves. But so what? After all, these guerrillas had well and truly imposed their authority on us.

  She insisted on handing the letter directly to the commander. But Young Cesar did not come. Instead he sent the nurse, who assured us it would be delivered into the hands of Marulanda. The response would take two weeks. Two weeks was an eternity. With a bit of luck, we would be released before then.

  One evening, as Clara and I discussed the letter and the possibility of release, we explored the shifting sands of our hypotheses and fantasies. She was anticipating her return to Bogotá, certain that the leaders would reconsider their decision and give her back her freedom. She was worried about the plants in her apartment that must have dried out by now through lack of care. She was angry with herself for never having given a set of keys to her mother and was bitter about how alone she was in life.

  Her regrets aroused my own. Overcome by a sudden fervor, I gripped her arm and said, with uncalled-for intensity, “When you are released, swear to me that you will go and see Papa immediately!”

  She looked at me in surprise. My eyes were moist, and my voice was trembling. She nodded, sensing that I was racked by an emotion she had not seen in me before. I broke down, sobbing, clutching her arm, and spoke to her the words that I wanted to say to Papa. I wanted him to know that his blessing was my greatest solace. That I constantly went over in my mind the moment he had placed me in God’s hands. I regretted not calling him that last afternoon in Florencia. I wanted to tell him how much it hurt me not to have had more time for him in my life. In the whirlwind of activity in which I found myself at the time of my capture, I had lost sight of my priorities. I had been focused on my work. I had wanted to create change in the world, but in the end all I’d created was more distance between myself and those who were dearest to me. I understood now why he would tell me that family was the most important thing we had in life, and I was more determined than ever, the moment I regained my freedom, to change the way I lived. “Tell him to wait for me,” I implored Clara. “Tell him to hold on for me, because I need to know that he is alive in order to have the courage to go on living.”

  My companion had listened to this tragic confession feeling like an intruder in a drama that did not concern her. She was indifferent to it; she had her own tragedy to deal with. She did not want to carry mine on her shoulders as well.

  “If I see him, I will tell him you are thinking of him,” she said evasively.

  I remember that night, lying on the edge of the mattress, my face pressed against the mosquito net, trying not to wake her with the persistent gulps produced by my irrepressible sobs. Since my childhood, Papa had always done his best to prepare me for the time when we would be separated permanently. “The only sure thing is death,” he would say, like a wise man. Then, once he was certain that I understood he was not afraid of dying, he would say jokingly, “When I pass away, I will come and tickle your feet underneath the covers.” I had grown up with the idea that even beyond death this unwavering complicity would enable us to communicate with each other. I resigned myself to the thought that whatever happened, God would allow me to be with Papa and hold his hand when it was time for him to cross to the other side. I almost considered this my right. When Papa had almost died a month earlier in the hospital, my sister Astrid’s presence had been my greatest recourse. Her fortitude, her control, and her assurance had made me realize that the strong hand helping him cross the Acheron was not mine but that of my older sister. In contrast, my own might hold him back like a weight, making his departure more painful.

  I had not envisaged the possibility that I would be absent from his bedside on the day of his death. That had never entered my mind. Until dawn this very morning.

  After coffee at breakfast time, the sun commenced its reign, piercing through the jungle in every direction. Nighttime vapors started to rise from the ground, and each of us tried to hang our laundry under its most powerful rays.

  Two guerrillas arrived, their shoulders laden with recently stripped wooden poles, which they tossed at the base of our tent. Some of the ends were pronged, and it was with those that they began to work first. They drove them deep into the ground in each corner of an imaginary rectangle. They repeated the exercise with four more poles that they cut into much shorter lengths, and they dug those into the corners of another, more elongated rectangle. They had also brought vines, rolled into a spool, and they used them to bind sticks that they placed between the corner prongs. It was fascinating to watch them work. They did not speak but seemed to work in perfect unison, one cutting, the other pitching into the ground, one binding, the other measuring. An hour later there in front of our caleta were a table and bench, made entirely from tree trunks and close enough that we could reach them in our chains.

  The guard gave us permission to sit there. Sunshine fell directly onto the bench. I scooted into it at once, seeking to rid my clothes of the jungle dampness. From where I sat, I had an unobstructed view of the economato. Toward eleven in the morning, guerrillas arrived carrying large bags of provisions on their backs. To our surprise there was a delivery of cabbages wrapped in newspaper. Vegetables were an extremely rare commodity, as we had come to realize. But even more extraordinary was the presence of a newspaper at the camp.

  I asked if we could have the newspaper and insisted that my request be given to the commander before the newspaper was thrown into the garbage pit. Cesar agreed. Our receptionista was assigned the task of reclaiming the newspaper, and after lunch she brought over a small stack of sheets, still damp but nevertheless legible.

  We sorted them into two piles and sat down with our reading material, happy to have found something to pass the time and a suitable use for our table. The guards had been changed. It was now the turn of the nurse’s boyfriend. He had positioned himself almost hidden by the large tree to which our chains were attached. He wouldn’t take his eyes off me, and I felt uncomfortable being watched so closely. Never mind. I had to learn to shut it out.

  The sheet in front of me was out of El Tiempo from a Sunday in March, more than a month earlier. It was the gossip section dealing with the world of entertainment, politics, and the country’s social scene—required reading if you wanted to be up on the capital’s gossip. I was about to turn over the sheet to look for more substantial news when my attention was caught by a
photograph in the middle of the page. I looked again and examined it carefully. A seated priest was wearing an embroidered chasuble in purples and greens on top of his alb. He was looking at two photographers holding large cameras with ridiculously long telephoto lenses that were pointed toward an invisible target. What struck me was not the photo itself, but the priest’s expression, the tension on his face, his obvious pain, yet also a certain anger that came across in the sheer stiffness of his body. Curiosity led me to read the caption. It described the priest watching with consternation a crowd of journalists jostling to photograph the coffin of Gabriel Betancourt.

  I felt an invisible hand pushing my head underwater. The words danced before my eyes, and I had trouble understanding them. I read them again and again, and the concept took shape slowly in my numbed brain. When I finally made the link between the word “coffin” and my father’s name, I froze with shock and could no longer control my breathing. There was no more air entering my lungs. I was in a void, my mouth wide open, like a fish out of water. I was suffocating without understanding why; I felt as if my heart had stopped and I was going to die. Throughout my agony, I thought, It can’t be him. It must be someone else. They made a mistake. I grabbed the edge of the table, sweating from the chill, witnessing the dual horror of his death and mine, until I managed to tear my eyes from the newspaper and beseech the sky for air.

  And then my gaze met his. The guard had been watching me from behind his tree, fascinated by my transfiguration, like a child in front of a fly whose wings he wants to pull off. He knew everything—he knew about Papa’s death, and he was waiting for me to discover it. He had chosen the best seat in the house and was reveling in my suffering. I hated him instantly. My hatred forced me to regain my self-control, as if I had been lashed across the face.

  I quickly turned away, red with fury. I didn’t want him to see me. He had no right to look at me. I was going to die, I was going to implode, I was going to end my days in this shithole of a jungle. Good. I would be joining Papa. I wanted to go. I wanted to disappear.

  That’s when I heard his voice. He was there, just a few yards from me. I couldn’t see him, but I could smell him. It was the smell of his white hair, the hair I’d kissed when I said good-bye. He was standing to my right, like the centuries-old tree that covered me with its shadow, just as tall and just as solid. I looked toward him and was blinded by a white light. I closed my eyes and felt the tears running slowly down my cheeks. It was his voice—no words, no speech. He had kept his promise.

  I turned to my companion and, mustering all my strength, articulated the words: “Papa is dead.”

  EIGHT

  TAMING THE HORNETS

  A MONTH EARLIER, MARCH 2002

  It was Easter Sunday. The camp was still under construction. Young Cesar had organized the building of a rancha18 next to the stream that circled the camp, the economato for storing provisions, and, in the middle of the circle of tents, the aula, or classroom.

  I liked to walk around the rancha to see how they prepared the food. At first they cooked over wood fires. Eventually a heavy gas stove arrived, transported on a man’s back along with an enormous gas cylinder. But my real interest was focused on two kitchen knives always sitting on the table in the rancha, and I would gaze at them longingly. I told myself we would need them for the escape I was planning. While I sewed, wrapped, sorted, and selected items for our departure under my mosquito net, I observed life at the camp. There was one young man in particular who was having a difficult time. He was called “El Mico,” the monkey, because his ears stuck out and he had a big mouth. He was greatly smitten with Alexandra, the prettiest of the guerrilleras, and had succeeded in seducing her. But at the end of each day, a tall, strong, handsome guy would turn up at the camp who also had his heart set on Alexandra. They called him the masero.19 His role was to connect two worlds: the legal world, where he lived in a village just like the next person, and the illegal world, where he brought provisions and information to the FARC camps. Alexandra responded to his advances, while El Mico went around in circles, racked with jealousy. So badly was he affected that during his turn at guard duty he was incapable of taking his eyes off his girlfriend, and he completely forgot about watching over us. I prayed that on the day of our escape he would be the one on duty. I was convinced that we could leave right under his nose and he wouldn’t notice a thing.

  During these days of preparation, luck served us well. While the camp was in turmoil and the guerrillas were working like dogs, cutting wood and bringing it back for all sorts of construction, one of them left his machete near our tent. Clara spotted it, and I had managed to hide it in the chontos. The chontos they had made for us here were located between some bushes. Anticipating future needs, they had dug six square holes, each three feet deep. Once the first was full, it would be well covered and the next one would be started.

  I hid the machete in the last hole and covered it with earth. I had attached a piece of string to the handle and let it poke discreetly through the top, so that on the day of our escape we would only have to pull on the string to recover the machete and not have to put our hands in the dirt to look for it. I took the precaution of carefully explaining to my companion where the machete was buried so that she didn’t use that particular hole, which would have made recovering it very unpleasant.

  It was already holy week. I meditated every day, drawing courage from my prayers. Papa’s birthday was at the end of April, and I worked out that by leaving one month beforehand, we had every chance of being able to surprise him.

  I went through my list of tasks one by one and concluded with satisfaction that we were ready for the big departure. I thought this Sunday would be a good day to attempt our escape. I had noticed that on Sunday evenings Young Cesar gathered his troops together for some recreational activities. They played, sang, recited, and invented revolutionary slogans, which diverted the attention of the guards who wanted to join in but couldn’t.

  We had to wait for the right opportunity, and so every evening at nightfall we were ready, as if it were a practice session. I was tense beyond description, incapable of sleeping, thinking in my insomnia of all the obstacles we might have to face.

  One afternoon, on my way back from the chontos, I noticed Clara hastily hiding something in her bag. Out of curiosity and playfulness, I tried to find out what she was trying to conceal. To my astonishment I discovered that she had already broken into our reserves of cheese and vitamin C tablets. I felt betrayed. That significantly reduced our chances, but more than that, it created a climate of distrust between us.

  That was the one thing we had to avoid at all costs. We had to remain united and bound to one another; we had to be able to rely on each other. I attempted to explain my concerns to her as best I could. But she was staring straight through me. I took her hands in mine to try to bring her back.

  That Sunday had been a slow day. The camp had lapsed into a dozy calm. We had everything ready, and there was nothing to do but wait. I had tried to sleep, telling myself that we were in for a terrible ordeal and that we had to conserve our strength. I made every effort to be easygoing and was careful about what I did and what I said in order to avoid arousing any suspicion. I was only too aware that I was not myself. I was gripped by immense feverishness at the thought of putting an end to our captivity, but I was also deeply anxious about being caught. If I didn’t control myself, I would be swallowing my food whole, forgetting to rinse after bathing, and asking the time every two minutes. As it happened, I did the opposite: I chewed my food slowly, I took my time over the day’s tasks and threw myself into performing them as best I could in order to mimic what I believed to be my usual behavior. I spoke without seeking conversation. It was one month and one week since we had been captured. They were proud to be keeping us prisoner. I felt a thrill at the thought of leaving them.

  The guerrillas pretended to be nice, and I pretended to be getting used to living among them. Anxiety hovered over all our wo
rds, each of us trying to gauge what lay behind the other’s mask. The day went on, slowing down as my impatience intensified. My anguish became suffocating. So much the better: This mounting, unbearable surge of adrenaline was more effective to help us flee than the fear that our captivity would be endless.

  At exactly 6:00 P.M. on Sunday, March 31, 2002, there was a change of guard. The person taking over was El Mico, the very one who was madly in love with Alexandra, the pretty guerrillera. My heart leaped—it was a sign from destiny. We had to go. Six-fifteen was the ideal moment to leave the caleta, walk toward the chontos, and disappear into the forest. By 6:30 it would be night.

  It was already 6:10. I left my rubber boots in plain view outside the caleta and started putting on my own shoes, which I was going to wear for our escape.

  “We can’t leave, it’s too risky,” said Clara.

  I looked around me. The camp was getting ready for the night. Everyone was busy. El Mico had left his post. He had moved away and was waving madly at the object of his desire at the very moment the handsome masero made his entrance into the camp. The young girl had been about to come up toward us but stopped dead when she saw her other admirer arrive.

  “I’ll wait for you at the chontos. You have three minutes, no more,” I whispered to Clara in response, my feet already outside the mosquito net.

  I cast a final glance at the guard and was immediately annoyed with myself for doing so. If he’d looked at me at that moment, it would have given the game away. But he was caught up in his own drama. He was next to a tree, observing his rival’s success. Nothing else in the world interested him. I headed straight for the hole in which we had buried the machete. The string I’d left poking out was still there. Unfortunately, the hole had been used, and the smell was disgusting. Take it easy, take it easy, I repeated silently to myself, pulling on the string and retrieving not just the machete but all sorts of other unspeakable matter.