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

by Ingrid Betancourt

  After that day my relationship with Jessica changed. She came and asked me if I could give her English lessons. Her request surprised me: I wondered what a little guerrillera could do with English lessons in the jungle.

  Jessica showed up on the first day with a brand-new notebook, a pen, and a black pencil with an eraser. Being the girlfriend of the commander had certain advantages. But it was also true that right from the start she had all the characteristics of a good student—neat handwriting, spatial and mental organization, excellent concentration, very good memory. She was so happy to learn that this in turn pushed me to better prepare my lessons. I was surprised to find myself looking forward to her visits. As time went by, we mingled English lessons with more intimate conversations. She shivered as she shared with me descriptions of her father’s death—he had also been part of the guerrilla movement—and of her own recruitment. She talked about her relationship with Andres. From time to time, she raised the tone and talked about communism, about how glad she was to have taken up arms to defend the people, how women were not discriminated against in FARC, how sexism was strictly forbidden, too. She would lower her voice to talk to me about her dreams, her ambitions, and the problems in her relationship. I realized she was worried that the guards might be listening.

  “I have to be careful, because they might misunderstand and ask for an explanation at the aula.”

  That was how I learned that problems were discussed out in the open. They were all under scrutiny and were obliged to inform the commander in the event of any suspicious behavior on the part of a comrade. Informing was an intrinsic part of their regime. They were all subject to it, and they all practiced it, indiscriminately.

  Once she came with the words to a song in Spanish that she loved. She wanted me to translate it into English so that she could sing it herself. She wanted to sing like an American. She worked hard perfecting her accent.

  “You are so gifted, you should ask Joaquín Gómez to have the FARC send you abroad to train. I know that a lot of the sons of members of the Secretariado are in the best universities in Europe and elsewhere. They might be interested in having someone like you who speaks good English. . . .”

  I saw her eyes light up for a moment. Then she quickly took hold of herself and raised her voice to be heard, saying, “We are here to give our lives to the revolution, not to go to some bourgeois university.”

  She never came back to her English lessons. I was sorry. One morning when she was on guard, I went up to her to ask her why she had dropped the English classes when she was learning so well.

  She glanced around her and said in a hushed voice, “I had an argument with Andres. He forbade me from continuing the English lessons. He burned my notebook.”

  FIFTEEN

  RESENTMENT AND REMISSION

  One morning almost at dawn, Ferney came to see us. “Pack up all your things. We’re leaving. You have to be ready in twenty minutes.”

  I felt my guts turn to liquid. The camp had already been half dismantled. All the tents had been folded up, and the first guerrillas were leaving with their backpacks, hiking in single file over by the river. They made us wait.

  Right at noon Ferney came back, took our things, and ordered us to follow. Crossing the coca fields was like walking through a furnace, the sun was so strong. As we went by the lemon tree, I picked up a few lemons and filled my pockets. It was a luxury I could not pass up. Ferney looked at me impatiently, and then he decided to take some, too, while ordering me to go on walking. We went back into the manigua—the swamplike terrain covered with tropical bushes. The temperature changed immediately. We had moved from the stifling heat of the coca field into the damp coolness of the undergrowth. There was a smell of rot. I hated this world that was decomposing perpetually, inhabited by horrendous swarming insects. It was truly a living tomb—all it would take was a slight inadvertent gesture on our part and we would be doomed. The water was only twenty yards or so away; we were near the banks of the river. So we could expect to be transported by boat. But there were no boats waiting.

  The guard flung himself on the ground, pulled off his boots, and made as if he were settling down for a while. I looked everywhere in the hope of finding a decent spot to sit. I turned in circles, undecided, like a dog trying to sit down on its tail. Ferney reacted with a laugh. “Wait a minute!” He pulled out his machete and vigorously cleared a space around a dead tree, then cut down some huge leaves from a wild banana tree and carefully spread them on the ground.

  “Have a seat, Doctora!” he said mockingly.

  We were made to wait all day long, by an old tree trunk on the riverbank. Through the thick foliage, the sky was turning a darker shade of blue by the minute, and it filled my soul with regret. Lord, why? Why me?

  The sound of an engine roused us from our drowsiness. We all got to our feet. In addition to the captain, who turned out to be Lorenzo, Andres and Jessica were already on the boat. I relaxed when I saw we were headed upstream. We came out on a river that was twice as wide as the previous one. In the pale gloom of twilight, I could see more and more little lights shining here and there, the lights of houses. I tried my best not to yield to the hypnotic effect of the engine’s vibrations. The others were snoring around me, curled in twisted, uncomfortable positions to avoid the wind that blew straight into our faces.

  We disembarked two days later by a small house. There were horses waiting for us, and we were led by the bridle across an immense farm with enclosures filled with well-fed cattle. Once again I prayed, My God, please make this be the path to freedom! But we left the farm behind and followed a little dirt road that was very well maintained, with freshly painted fences scattered here and there. We were back in civilization. A feeling of lightness came over me. This had to be a good omen. We came to a crossroads and were told to dismount; the guerrillas gave us back our belongings to carry, and we were ordered to start walking. I looked up and saw a column of guerrillas ahead of us, marching into the forest again, making their way up a very steep slope. I didn’t know how I would manage to do the same. But with a rifle in my back, I succeeded, one foot in front of the other, like a mule. Andres had decided to set up his new camp at the top.

  It seemed to be easier to get supplies at this new camp. There was a delivery of the shampoo and care products that I had been requesting for months. Yet when I saw the box full of supermarket bottles, I grew weary knowing that my release was not on the agenda. They expected me still to be there at Christmas. We also received a delivery of underwear. There must be a store not too far away. The road we’d taken had to lead somewhere. And what if there was a police station nearby, or perhaps even a military detachment?

  I decided to start up a daily routine that would allay their suspicions, and I made it a regular habit to keep an eye on all their movements. Clara and I were living in a caleta they had put together for us beneath a huge black plastic sheet. We were also entitled to a little table with two facing chairs and a bed just big enough for our one mattress and our mosquito net. I had asked Andres for permission to have a pasera23 built so that we would have somewhere to put our things. Jessica was just behind him, and she scoffed wryly, “They’re set up like queens, and still they complain!” Her resentment surprised me.

  A slope that turned muddy overnight led to a dreamy brook that wound its way along the bottom of our hill. The water was absolutely transparent, flowing over a bed of aquarium pebbles that reflected the light in a multitude of colored beams.Going there was the best moment of the day. We would descend to the brook at the beginning of the afternoon in order not to disturb the cooks in their work; this was where they came to fetch water and wash the pots in the morning.

  Two girls were our escorts for the time it took to wash our laundry and bathe. I had the unfortunate idea of mentioning how extraordinary the spot was and how much I liked diving into the crystal water. Worse than that, I had lounged in the water for just an instant too long when my eyes met the spiteful gaze of one of
the guards. From that moment on, the girls who guarded us stared at their watches and made us hurry from the second we got there.

  But I was determined not to let them spoil my pleasure. I spent the shortest time possible on my laundry in order to enjoy my bath. On one particular day, it was Jessica’s turn to escort us, along with Yiseth. As soon as we arrived, she went away annoyed, because I had jumped into the water playfully. I guessed she would go and complain, irritated, arguing that I took too long to bathe. But we had passed Ferney on the way down, and I was counting on him to clear things up. I was not at all prepared for what happened.

  We were naked, rinsing out our hair, our eyes full of soap, when we heard male voices shouting insults as they came down the path to the river. I didn’t have time to cover myself before two guards ordered us to get out of the water, their rifles pointed at us. I wrapped myself up in my towel, protesting, demanding that they go so we could get dressed. One of the guards was Ferney, and he looked at me viciously as he ordered me to leave the place immediately. “You’re not on vacation here. You’ll get dressed back in your caleta!”

  OCTOBER 2002

  I shielded myself behind the Bible, turning to what was easiest, the Gospels. These texts, written as if there were a hidden camera following Jesus everywhere, stimulated my imagination. And thus a character came to life before my eyes, a man who had relations with people around him and whose behavior intrigued me all the more in that I felt I would never have reacted like him.

  Yet my reading triggered something in my mind. For instance, the story about the wedding at Cana. There was a dialogue between Jesus and his mother that struck me, because I could have experienced something similar with my own son. Mary, realizing that there is no more wine for the feast, says, “They have no wine.” And Jesus, who understands perfectly that behind her simple remark there is a request for him to act, replies in a bad mood, almost annoyed at feeling manipulated. Mary, like all mothers, knows that despite his initial refusal her son will end up doing what she suggested. This is why she goes to speak to those who are serving, asking them to follow Jesus’s instructions. Just as Mary suggested, Jesus transforms water into wine, beginning his public life with this first miracle. There was something undeniably pleasing and almost pagan about his first miracle—to make sure the feast could continue. The scene stayed with me for days. Why had Jesus refused at first? Was he afraid? Intimidated? How could he be mistaken about the fittingness of the moment, when he was supposed to know everything? The story fascinated me. Thoughts spun around in my brain. I searched, I reflected. And then suddenly it dawned on me: He had the choice!

  How silly—it was obvious. But this changed everything. This man was not some robot programmed to do good and suffer punishment in the name of humankind. Of course he had a destiny, but he’d made choices, he’d always had the choice! . . . As for me, what was my fate? In this state of total absence of freedom, did I have the possibility to make a choice? And if so, which one?

  The book I held in my hands became my trusted companion. What was written there had so much power that it forced me to stop avoiding myself, to make my own choices as well. And through some sort of vital intuition, I understood that I had a long way to go, that it would bring about a profound transformation within me, even though I could not determine its essence, or its scope. In that book there was a voice, and behind that voice there was an intelligence that sought to establish contact with me. It was not merely the company of written words that distilled my boredom. It was a living voice, speaking. To me.

  Aware of my ignorance, I read the Bible from the first line to the last, like a child, asking all the questions that might come to mind. For I noticed that often, when some detail in the narrative seemed incongruous to me, I would put it to one side in a mental basket that I had created to store things I did not understand, stamping it consciously with the word “errors”—and this led me to go on reading without asking any questions and to be receptive to the voice as the words progressed.

  My initial interest lay in the Virgin Mary, quite simply because the woman I had discovered at the wedding at Cana was very different from the ingenuous and somewhat simple-minded adolescent I thought I’d known up to now. I went over the New Testament painstakingly, but there was very little about her. She never spoke, except in the Magnificat, which took on a new dimension, and I decided to learn it by heart.

  I had found something to do with my days, and my anxiety receded. I opened my eyes in the morning impatient to start my reading and my weaving. Lorenzo’s birthday was coming soon, too, and I intended to make it as joyful as Melanie’s. I had made it a life precept. It was also a spiritual exercise, that of forcing oneself to find happiness in the midst of the greatest distress.

  I had set about making Lorenzo a special belt, weaving little boats that stood out on either side of his name. Because I was getting rather skilled at it, I managed to finish it well before the date. My innovative design had promoted me to the rank of a “pro.” I exchanged technical conversations with the top weavers in the camp. Having a creative outlet made me feel I was capable of something new in a world that had rejected me, and it freed me from the burden of failure that my life had become.

  I also continued to exercise. Or at least that’s how I thought about it, because what I really needed was a pretext to do the physical exercise that would enable me, in the future, to escape.

  The Bible reading had helped to smooth my relationship with Clara. One afternoon, during a torrential storm, when we were confined together under our mosquito net, I ventured to share with her the results of my nocturnal ruminations. I explained to her in detail how to get out of the caleta, how to avoid the guard, how to erase our tracks, how to find the road that would lead us to freedom. The rain made such a din on the plastic roof that we had trouble hearing each other. She asked me to speak more loudly, so I raised my voice to go on with my explanation. It was only when I’d finished outlining my detailed plan to her that I noticed a movement behind our caleta. Ferney was hidden inside, behind the shelf that Andres had finally agreed to build for us. He’d heard everything.

  I collapsed. What would they do? Would they chain us up again? Would they search us again? I could have killed myself for being so careless. Why had I not taken all the necessary precautions before speaking?

  I kept a close watch on the guards’ attitude in order to try to detect any change. I fully expected to see Andres arrive with the chains in his hand. Then it was Lorenzo’s birthday. I asked for permission to bake a cake, sure that they would refuse to let me anywhere near the rancha. However, they did grant me permission, and this time Andres asked us to make enough cake for everybody.

  As I had sworn it would be, it was a day of remission. I was able to let go of all my thoughts of sadness, regret, and uncertainty, and I immersed myself in a task that would bring pleasure to everyone, as a way of giving back, in return for having received so much with the birth of my child.

  That evening for the first time in months, sleep overcame me. Dreams of happiness, where I was holding three-year-old Lorenzo in my arms and running through a field scattered with yellow flowers, invaded these few hours of respite.

  SIXTEEN

  THE RAID

  At two o’clock in the morning, I was violently awoken by one of the guards shaking me and shouting, the beam of his flashlight shining in my face. “Get up, bitch! Do you want to get killed?”

  I opened my eyes, not understanding, panicking at the fear I could hear in his voice.

  Military planes were flying very low over the camp. The guerrillas were grabbing their backpacks and running away, leaving everything behind them. The night was pitch black, you couldn’t see a thing except the silhouettes of the airplanes you could sense above the trees. Instinctively I grabbed everything within reach: my handbag, a bath towel, the mosquito net.

  This only made the guard bleat all the louder. “Leave everything! They’re going to bomb us, don’t you get it?”
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  He was trying to wrench my things out of my hands, and I was clutching onto them and grabbing more things on the way. Clara had already fled. I rolled everything into a ball and began to run in the same direction as the others, pursued by the guard’s cries of rage.

  I had managed to save my children’s belts, my jacket, and some clothes. But I’d forgotten my Bible.

  We crossed the entire camp and took a footpath I did not know existed until then. I stumbled every other step, grabbing onto whatever was within reach, and my skin was lacerated by the vegetation. The guard was annoyed, insulting me, all the more spiteful because he had no witnesses. We were the last, and we had to catch up with the rest of the group. The engines of the military planes droned above us, flying off, then coming back, with the result that we were often plunged into terrible darkness, because the guard would not switch on his flashlight until the planes were well away. I managed as I ran to put the few belongings I’d rescued into a satchel, but I was out of breath and my burden slowed me down.

  The guard poked the end of his rifle into my ribs, trotting behind me all the while, but the more he mistreated me, the more I lost my balance, and I often found myself on my knees in fear of an immediate bombardment. He was beside himself with rage, accusing me of doing it deliberately, dragging me by the hair or my jacket to pull me to my feet. During the twenty-plus minutes that we ran over flat terrain, I more or less managed to make headway, like a hounded beast, not really knowing how. But then the terrain changed, with steep downward slopes and difficult climbs. I couldn’t stand it anymore. The guard tried to take my bag, but I was afraid his aim was not to help me but rather to get rid of it along the way, as he had threatened to do. I clung to my little bag of belongings as if it were my life. Then suddenly, without any transition, I began to walk slowly, indifferent to his shouts and threats. Run? Why? Flee? Why? No, I wasn’t going to run anymore. Never mind about the bombs, never mind about the planes, never mind about me, I was not going to obey, nor was I going to submit to the whims of an overexcited, panicky young man.