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

by Ingrid Betancourt

  “She hardly weighs a thing,” she announced.

  Off we ran, like an arrow. All the women took turns carrying me, in twenty-minute shifts. Two hours later we came to a stream that meandered silently through the trees. A mist seemed to rise from the surface of the water, which still shone in the last rays of light. We could already hear the sound of the machetes. The camp had to be nearby.

  Sombra was sitting a bit farther along the path, surrounded by half a dozen young men who were admiring him. The girl who was carrying me jogged up to him and left me at his feet. She made no comment but looked at him for a long time. They all seemed shocked, and I didn’t really know why. Sombra gave me the answer. “You look terrible,” he said.

  Guillermo was there in the group. He immediately understood he had to take charge of the situation. He tried to hold me by the arm, but I pulled away. Everyone was returning from bathing. Lucho came up to me, aghast. “You have to get some treatment. Without medication you’ll die, and it will be their fault!” he said loudly, to be sure that Guillermo heard him.

  Orlando also came up to us. He put his arm around me—he still had a chain around his neck. “Don’t do those bastards the favor of dying here. Come with me, I’m going to help you.”

  I was already inside the mosquito net when Guillermo showed up carrying a pile of small boxes in his hands. He shone his flashlight beam right in my face.

  “Cut it out!” I protested

  “I’m bringing you some silymarin. Take two after each meal.”

  “What meals?” I answered, sure he was making fun of me.

  “Take them whenever you have something to eat. This should keep you going for a month.”

  As he went away, I heard myself saying, “My God, please let me be home in a month.”

  The following morning, there was an indescribable commotion over by the guerrillas’ camp. It was six o’clock, and there was no sign of departure yet. I’d arrived too late the night before to notice that the military prisoners were encamped with us. My companions made the most of the opportunity to talk to them, and the guards let them.

  When Lucho came back from his conversation with our new friends, he was in shock.

  “They’re going to split us up,” Lucho reported to me. “I think the two of us are going to go with another group.”

  That was exactly what the Indian had told me. My heart leaped. “Where did you hear that?”

  “The soldiers are well informed. Some of them have buddies in Sombra’s ranks. Look!”

  I turned around: walking toward us was a tall young guy with copper skin, a neatly trimmed mustache, and an impeccable uniform.

  Before he reached us, Gloria went up to him and bombarded him with questions. The man smiled, delighted by the importance we were according him.

  “Come here, all of you!” he shouted, friendly and authoritarian at the same time.

  Lucho went up warily, and I stood behind him.

  “Are you Betancourt? You look terrible. You’ve been very sick, or so I’ve been told.”

  I hesitated to answer, not really knowing what to say.

  Gloria broke in, “This is our new commander. He’s going to give new radios to everybody!”

  The group gathered more closely around him, everybody wanting to know more, and above all trying to make a good impression.

  The man began to speak again, knowing how important it was to weigh his words. “I won’t be everyone’s commander, just a part of this group. The doctora Ingrid and doctor Perez are going elsewhere.”

  I felt a spasm somewhere in the region of my liver. Out of pride I refused to allow myself to ask the hundreds of questions going through my mind. Fortunately, Gloria asked all of them for me in the space of thirty seconds. That much was clear: Lucho and I were going to be separated from the rest. Who knew—perhaps forever.

  Jorge came over to take me in his arms. He squeezed me so tightly I could hardly breathe. His eyes were filled with tears, and in a broken voice, trying to hide his face on my shoulder, he said, “Madame chérie, take good care of yourself. We’re going to miss you.”

  Gloria came up behind him and scolded him. “Not here, in front of them!”

  Jorge got hold of himself and went to embrace Lucho. I was doing my best to restrain my tears too. Gloria took my face between her hands and looked me right in the eyes. “Everything will be fine. I will pray for you, all the time. Don’t worry.”

  Clara came up. “I wanted to stay with you,” she said.

  As if to downplay what she’d said, she began to laugh, then concluded, “They’re bound to put us back together again in a month or two!”

  Guillermo came back to get us.

  We went through our section, then through part of the guerrillas’ camp, and finally along the stream for a few minutes before coming to a place covered in sawdust, where they obviously had set up a temporary sawmill. I sat down on a tree trunk the moment Guillermo ordered us to wait. There was already a guerrilla in place to guard us.

  I began thinking. What could it all mean?

  I didn’t have time to answer. Coming toward us was a group of eight soldiers chained together in pairs. They were ordered to wait. I got up to welcome them and hugged them one by one. They were smiling and kind, and they looked at us with curiosity.

  “I suppose we’re all going to be in the same group now!” said Lucho by way of introduction.

  We started talking right away. They all had their own ideas, opinions, ways of seeing things. They listened carefully to one another, courteously, weighing their words, so as not to give the impression that they were contradicting one another.

  “How long have you been prisoners?” I asked.

  “I’ve been with FARC longer than most of these kids,” replied a pleasant young man. Then, turning to the guard, he said, “Hey, friend, how long ago did you enlist?”

  “Three and a half years ago,” answered the adolescent guard proudly.

  “You see? Just as I said! I’ve been rotting here for nearly five years.” His eyes became red and shining. He swallowed his tears, gave a laugh, and began to sing, “¡La vida es una tómbola, tómbola, tómbola!”51 It was a song they played constantly on the radio. Then he became serious again and added, “My name is Armando Castellanos, at your service, subintendent of the National Police.”

  Our new group was made up of eight other men. Jhon Pinchao, also from the police, was chained to an army officer, Lieutenant Bermeo, the same one who had asked for me to be carried in a hammock. Castellanos was chained to Sub-lieutenant Malagón, Corporal Arteaga with Flórez, who was also an army corporal. Finally there was Corporal William Pérez, the army nurse, chained to Sergeant José Ricardo Marulanda, who was visibly the oldest of all these prisoners.

  Their presence immediately made me feel at ease. My separation from my companions suddenly seemed like a relief; I was determined to take the time to create direct relations with all of them and to avoid any situations that might create tension between us. They were open and interested in getting to know us. They had also been through difficult times and had learned from them. Their attitude toward Lucho and me was radically different from that of my former companions.

  Lucho remained wary. “We don’t know them. We have to wait.”

  “I would feel better if we could also change commander,” I whispered to Lucho.

  It was Sombra who came to get us. He stood before us, legs spread, his hands on his hips. I had not noticed the guard who must have overheard my comment, because he said, as if it were a secret, “You’re out of luck. You’re going to have Sombra for a long time still!” And he laughed.

  The next morning we woke up to a torrential downpour. We had to wrap up all our things in the storm and begin the march soaking wet. We had to begin by climbing an incredibly steep slope. I was too slow and above all too weak.

  After the first half hour, my guards decided that they would rather carry me than wait for me. So there I was once again, hanging for
hours in a hammock that was soaked and filled with rainwater, which the guerrillas would drain by shaking me on the ground whenever the terrain allowed it. Most of the time, they would hoist me up, then drag me, one man tugging in front, the other pushing from behind. Several times they let go of the pole and I slid perilously, picking up speed, to crash against a tree that stopped my downward slide. I pulled the hammock over my eyes so I wouldn’t see. I was beaten black and blue. I prayed, repeating prayers whose meaning I’d forgotten but which kept my mind full of words and stopped me from thinking and yielding to panic. He who could hear my heart knew that I was crying out for help.

  Going down the other side, they would leap like mountain goats and land on tree roots that restored their balance, with my weight on their shoulders, my hammock swinging violently, banging against the trees. They didn’t even try to avoid them anymore.

  The next day my companions left the camp before dawn. I stayed where I was, alone, waiting for instructions. The bearers had gone ahead to drop off their equipos, and they would come back to get me during the morning. Sombra had left a girl named Rosita to guard me. I had noticed her during the march. She was tall, with an elegant way of walking and a face of refined beauty. She had radiant black eyes, copper skin, and a perfect smile.

  While we were waiting, under a fine, irritating drizzle, I set about rearranging the few things I had left. Rosita watched me in silence. I didn’t feel like talking. She came up to me, crouched down, and began to help me.

  “Ingrid, are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not all right.”

  “Me neither.”

  I looked up. She seemed to be terribly upset about something.

  She wanted me to ask her why. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I maintained the silence as I finished packing my equipo. She stood up and made a shelter on a tree trunk that was rotting on the ground. She put the backpacks under it and invited me to come sit with her beneath the shelter.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” I asked her, resigned.

  She looked at me, her eyes full of tears, smiled, and said, “Yes, I think if I don’t speak to you, I’ll die.”

  I took her hand and whispered, “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  She spoke slowly, avoiding my gaze, lost in her memories. Her mother was a paísa, the term used to describe inhabitants, of Spanish descent, of the Antioquia region, and her father was from the Llanos, the Colombian grass plains. Her parents were hardworking but didn’t manage to feed all their children. Like her elder siblings, Rosita had left the family home as soon as she was old enough to work. She had enlisted in the FARC so she wouldn’t end up in a brothel.

  As soon as she’d joined, a minor leader, Obdulio, wanted to make her his girlfriend. She resisted, because she wasn’t in love with him. I knew Obdulio. He was a man in his thirties, with silver chains dangling from his neck and wrists, already bald, half his teeth missing. I had seen him only once, but I remembered him because I thought he must be a cruel man.

  Obdulio had been sent to provide backup to Sombra’s units. He belonged to another front and took his orders from another commander. In the group he’d put together to join forces with Sombra, he had included Rosita, in the hope of overcoming her resistance.

  She eventually had to agree to sleep with him. In the FARC it was frowned upon to turn down a leader’s advances. A girl had to show proof of camaraderie and of revolutionary spirit. Women in uniform were expected to assuage the sexual desires of their brothers in arms. In practice, there were two days a week when the guerrillas could request to share a caleta with someone else: Wednesdays and Sundays the young men handed the commander their requests to sleep with a guerrillera. A girl could refuse once, twice, but not three times, or she would be called to order for a lack of revolutionary solidarity. The only way to avoid censure was to declare, officially, that you were part of a couple and to obtain permission to live together under the same roof. But if a leader had his eye on one of the girls, it was unlikely that another guerrilla would try to intervene.

  So Rosita had capitulated. She had become a ranguera, a girl who “associated” with a high-ranking officer, someone who had “rank” and access to certain luxuries, FARC style—better food, perfume, little pieces of jewelry, small electronic devices, and nicer clothes. Rosita didn’t care about any of that. She was unhappy with Obdulio. He was violent, jealous, and petty.

  When she arrived in Sombra’s unit, Rosita met a young man called Javier. He was good-looking and brave. They fell madly in love. Javier asked to share his caleta with Rosita. Sombra agreed to the young couple’s request, and this only served to infuriate Obdulio. He was not Javier’s leader, so he could only take it out on Rosita. He inundated her with chores. Jobs that were increasingly exhausting—the hardest and most disgusting ones—were systematically reserved for her. This just made Rosita fall all the more deeply in love with Javier. And when the young man finished his work, he would run to help her with her chores.

  During the march I had seen Javier rushing past like a crazy man to be the first to arrive at the camp. He’d thrown down his equipo and gone straight back to get Rosita’s. He put it on his back, took Rosita by the hand, and they ran off laughing toward camp.

  The following morning they had divided the groups of prisoners. Javier went off with his unit in one direction, and Obdulio got Rosita back. He wanted to force her to return to him.

  “That’s the way it is in the FARC! I belong to a different front. I’ll never see Javier again,” said Rosita in tears.

  “Run away with him. Leave the FARC, both of you.”

  “We don’t have the right to leave the FARC. If we do, they’ll go and kill our families.”

  The bearers had come up, and we hadn’t noticed. They were standing in front of us, scowling.

  “Get out of there,” one of them barked at Rosita.

  “Come on, get in the hammock. We don’t have all day!” said the other one to me, with venom in his voice.

  I looked at Rosita. She was already on her feet, her Galil rifle on her shoulder.

  “Get the hell over to the camp. And don’t drag your feet if you don’t want to end up with a bullet in your head.” Then, turning to me, “And you, too, just watch it. I’m in a foul mood, and I would love to put a bullet between your eyes.”

  I cried throughout the rest of the day. Because of Rosita. She was my daughter’s age. I wanted to comfort her, to give her tenderness and hope. Instead I’d left her in fear of reprisal.

  I often think about her. One thing she said stayed with me, a dagger in my heart: “You know, for me the most horrible thing of all is knowing that he will forget me.”

  I lacked the presence of mind to tell her that it was impossible; she was simply unforgettable.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  THE ENDLESS MARCH

  On October 28, 2004, we were the last to leave and the first to arrive at the campsite, ahead of Lucho and the rest of my new companions. I was told they had gotten lost, but as I listened to conversations, or at least what I could gather from their whispering, I learned that my companions had narrowly avoided disaster. They’d been a few hundred yards from an army squadron.

  It was still raining, a stubborn little rain that never let up. It was cold. Just enough to chasten me but not enough to make me get up and walk around. Here time stretched to infinity; ahead of me there was nothing.

  I heard a commotion above my head. A group of fifty or more monkeys were making their way through the foliage. It was a well-populated colony, with the big males leading and the mothers with their babies clinging to them bringing up the rear. They had seen me from above and were looking down at me with curiosity. Some of the males became aggressive, shouting and dropping down just above me, hanging from their tails, making faces at me. I smiled. These rare moments when I came into contact with animals restored my desire to live. I knew it was a privilege to be there among them, to be able to look at them as equals, their behavior unaffect
ed by the barbarity of men. The moment the guerrillas got out their guns, the enchantment would vanish. It would be the story of little Cristina all over again. The monkeys pissed on me, bombarded me with broken branches, in the innocence of their ignorance.

  The guards had seen them, too. Through the bushes I watched as they grew excited and gave the order to load their guns. I couldn’t see anything anymore, I could only hear their voices and the monkeys’ cries. And then a first detonation, and a second, and yet another, the sharp sound of branches cracking and the thuds on the carpet of leaves. I counted three. Had they killed the mothers to capture the babies? Their perverse satisfaction in killing disgusted me. They always had good excuses to give themselves a clean conscience. We were hungry, we hadn’t eaten a real meal for weeks. All that was true, but it wasn’t a good enough reason. I found hunting difficult to tolerate. Had I always felt like this? I was no longer sure. I’d been profoundly upset by the business with the guacamaya that Andres had killed for pleasure, and by the death of Cristina’s mother. She had fallen from her tree, and the bullet had gone through her stomach. She’d put her finger in her wound and looked at the blood coming out. “She was crying, I’m sure she was crying,” William had said to me with a laugh. “She showed me the blood on her finger, as if she wanted me to do something about it, and then she put her fingers back in the wound and showed me again. She did that a few times, and then she died. Those animals are just like humans,” he concluded. How could you kill a creature that has looked you in the eye, with whom you’ve established contact, for whom you exist, who has identified you? Of course, none of that mattered anymore when you had already killed a human being. Could I kill? Oh, yes, I could! I had every reason to think I had the right. I was filled with hatred for those who humiliated me and took so much pleasure in my pain. With every word, every order, every affront, I stabbed them with my silence. Oh, yes—I, too, could kill! And I would feel pleasure in seeing them put their fingers in their wounds and look at their blood as they became aware of their imminent death, waiting for me to do something. And I wouldn’t move. I would watch them die.