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

by Ingrid Betancourt

  Without thinking, I blurted out, “You’ve never had a chain around your neck, but you still talk about the ones your ancestors carried. How can you stand to see soldiers subjected to the same treatment, knowing that you are responsible, that’s it’s your fault?”

  He was speechless, immobile, absorbing the blow. My companions were across from us, far enough away that they couldn’t hear. They were dragging themselves along with the chains that hindered their movements, that obliged them to go through all kinds of maneuvers to avoid choking each other whenever they stepped too far apart. Arturo seemed to be looking at them as if for the first time, although we’d been together for days.

  I hammered the nail a bit deeper. “I cannot understand how a revolutionary organization can end up behaving worse than the very people it is fighting.”

  Arturo stood up, rubbing his knees. There was something feline about his perfectly defined muscles. He held out his hand to conclude our discussion and went on his way.

  After the evening meal, Jeiner arrived with a handful of keys that Sombra had given to him. He inserted them, one after the other, into each padlock, until all the chains were removed. The chains were so heavy that two men were needed to help him carry them. They were taken to Arturo.

  FIFTY-SIX

  THE HONEYMOON

  NOVEMBER 2004

  Without the chains we all felt lighter. There was a good atmosphere in the camp. Arturo led the march, and the kids behaved like kids. They played, and fought among themselves, and ran after one another, and rolled in the moss hugging each other. We looked like a tribe of nomads.

  I spoke a great deal with Lucho. During quiet hours, when there was a break in the march, we would discuss the reforms and the projects we dreamed of for Colombia.

  I was obsessed with the idea of high-speed rail, a supersonic machine traveling through space like a meteor, winding its way through my country’s Andes Mountains, balanced above the void on a gravity-defying elevated track. I wanted it to travel from the north coast of Colombia through the páramos54 and valleys to serve the inhabitants of inaccessible, forgotten villages that were dying of solitude, then wind its way westward, to open a route to the magnificent Cauca Valley and reach the luxuriant and abandoned Pacific coast. I wanted it to be a means of transportation for everyone, rich and poor, to make the country accessible to everyone, because I was convinced that only through a spirit of unity and sharing would it be possible to achieve greatness. Lucho told me I was crazy. I answered that I was free to dream. “Just imagine for one moment that you could, on an impulse, get a train and two hours later be dancing salsa on the beach in Juanchaco. Completely safe.”

  “In a country crawling with guerrillas, that’s impossible!”

  “Why should it be impossible? The conquest of the American West took place with stagecoach robbers everywhere, and that didn’t stop them. It’s so important that we could buy the luxury of having armed guards every five hundred yards. You wanted to create jobs for them, why not the railroad?”

  “Colombia is up to its ears in debt. We can’t even pay for the Bogotá Metro! And now you want a high-speed train!”

  I argued that it would be a great investment opportunity, and it could be financed by selling stocks.

  “It’s a crazy idea—but it could work!” said Lucho.

  “It would be a huge building site. It would provide jobs for professionals, engineers, and others, but also for all those young people who at the moment have no other way out than to offer their services to organized crime.”

  “And what about corruption?” Lucho would add.

  “Citizens would have to get organized to keep an eye on the project on every level, at every stage. With the law behind them, to protect them, it can be done.”

  It was time to bathe. We went to a huge swamp formed by the overflow of the river. They had set up two parallel planks across the surface of the water between half-submerged tree branches over fifty yards or so. You had to walk across them, keeping your balance, to reach the place that had been assigned to us for washing and laundry. We were all spread out on either side of these planks, guerrillas and hostages alike, scrubbing.

  This was the hour my comrades preferred, because the guerrilleras bathed in their bras and underwear, then paraded along the footbridge to go get dressed on solid ground. Jeiner’s companion, Claudia, was the most admired of all. She was blond, with green eyes, and her skin had a silvery shine to it that seemed luminescent; moreover she had a natural flirtatiousness that became more noticeable when she knew you were looking at her. The day the front leader arrived, nobody was in any hurry to go and meet him. Claudia was ordered to get out and dress elsewhere.

  The war name of the commander of the First Front was Cesar55—again. He was standing there in his fancy khaki uniform, a beret over his forehead, Hugo Chávez style, and a big chemical-white smile that made us envious. When, acting the great lord, he asked us what we needed, we answered in unison that we wanted a dentist. He promised he would take care of it, particularly as fat Sergeant Marulanda had illustrated how years of captivity had taken their toll: Right before Cesar he opened his mouth wide and pointed to the enormous hole left by a dental apparatus lost during a march. Cesar deemed that this evidence was enough.

  Cesar also allowed us to make a list to order supplies. I could recite from memory the list I’d made a couple of years earlier for Mono Jojoy, and I added a radio, because we desperately needed one. Since we’d been brought together, we all had to share my worn-out little radio, which was now behaving in a very capricious way, the reception erratic and completely unreliable.

  The soldiers’ excitement at the thought they’d be able to order what they needed contrasted sharply with Lucho’s despondency.

  “They’re not going to release us,” he said, his heart sinking, confessing that in fact he had shared some of my hope.

  “The soldiers told me that when the recruits were liberated,56 the FARC had dressed them in new clothes from head to toe,” I answered stubbornly.

  “I need to get out, Ingrid. I can’t stay here. I’m going to die.”

  “No, you’re not going to die here.”

  “Listen. Promise me something.”

  “Yes.”

  “If we’re not liberated by the end of the year, we’ll escape.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Yes or no?”

  “It’s really hard ...”

  “Yes or no, answer me.”

  After a moment of silence, I said, “Yes.”

  Cesar had set up a tent, and in this tent he had built a table out of young tree trunks. From his bag he pulled a metallic, ultralight laptop computer. It was the first VAIO I’d ever seen in my life. I looked at it awestruck, like a child watching Mary Poppins open her magical bag. The scene was utterly incongruous, and fascinating at the same time. Here we had a technological marvel before us, a cutting-edge device placed on a table worthy of the Neolithic era. As if echoing this perception, they brought us some logs to sit on. Cesar had been kind enough to bring us a film, and the screening was about to begin. He wanted us all to cluster around the little screen, which we did, casually enough, until we saw him fiddling somewhat nervously with the computer applications.

  Bermeo—the lieutenant in our group of prisoners—read my thoughts more quickly than I could myself. He nudged me with his elbow and said, “Watch out, he’s trying to film us!”

  His warning spread like wildfire. In a split second, we all scattered and agreed to come and sit back down only once the film had started. Cesar laughed, like a good loser, but now we were all wary. Nothing he asked us from that point on would get a spontaneous answer. What I remember from that dialogue of the deaf was the incidental information I managed to grasp in passing. Cesar was the commander of the First Front. He was a rich man, and business was doing incredibly well. Cocaine production was filling his coffers to the brink. “We have to fund the revolution somehow,” he said with a laugh. His gi
rlfriend was in charge of the finances, and she was the one who approved expenses and who could authorize, among other things, the purchase of gadgets like this laptop computer Cesar was so proud of. I also concluded that because Cesar never missed an opportunity to refer to this young Adriana by name, he must be madly in love.

  I was not the only one who had noticed. Pinchao whispered to me with a mischievous laugh, “I hope Adriana will be in a good mood when she gets our list!” Two days later (in record time), we received our order. Everything except my dictionary.That evening Arturo introduced us to another commander.

  “Jeiner has been called away on another mission. Mauricio will be looking after you from now on.”

  Mauricio was a big guy with a hawklike gaze and a carefully groomed mustache above thin lips, and he wore a light cotton poncho like the one Manuel Marulanda wore as a scarf. Mauricio used his to hide a missing arm.

  Unlike Jeiner, he had come in like a cat, doing the rounds of the caletas with a suspicious air. The soldiers had gotten out of their hammocks to speak with him, and they called us over.

  “What do you think of him?” asked Lucho when Mauricio had left.

  “I preferred Jeiner.”

  “Yes, good things never last with them.”

  In the morning we had a visit from a group of very mischievous young guerrilleras . In the same manner as Mauricio, they lurked around the caletas, laughing among themselves and eyeing the prisoners. Eventually they peered into my tent. One of them, a voluptuous girl with prominent breasts, long black hair braided to below her waistline, and almond eyes rimmed with thick lashes that seemed endless, said in a childish voice, “Are you Ingrid?”

  I laughed and, wanting to make her feel at ease, called my comrades over to introduce them.

  Zamaidy was Mauricio’s girlfriend. She called him “Pata-Grande” (Long Leg), and she had clearly put his promotion to good use, for she in turn reigned over a court of young girls who followed her devotedly. She wore a revealing fluorescent tank top that enhanced her curves, the envy of all her girlfriends. Her girlfriends obviously wanted to strive for the same effect, but they weren’t as successful, which served to increase Zamaidy’s ascendancy over them. If Zamaidy walked somewhere, they followed; if she sat down, they did, too; and if Zamaidy spoke, they fell silent.

  Zamaidy’s appearance had paralyzed our camp. The soldiers would shove each other aside for a chance to talk to her. She repeated her name to them only too willingly, explaining that it was not a very common name, and that you spelled it with a Z—another way for her to make it clear she knew how to read and write.

  When the nurse who had just been appointed came in to introduce himself, only Lucho and I were there to talk to him. Camilo was a quick, intelligent young guy, with a friendly face that made everyone like him. We took to him immediately, particularly when he confessed that he didn’t like to fight and that his vocation had always been to relieve the pain of others. At midnight, after we’d hiked for a while in the dark and total silence, the river appeared before us in all its majesty. A fine mist was floating on the surface, half concealing an enormous boat waiting by the riverbank. We were about to begin an endless journey. As usual they made us wait for hours before boarding. The moon had vanished, and the mist on the water had thickened. Camilo cast off, and the bongo (a sort of Amazonian barge) throbbed throughout its iron hull, sounding like an old submarine, and we could only guess at the unfathomable depths of the waters we were sailing.

  Each of us found a place to spend the night, while the bongo plunged deep into the bowels of an ever denser jungle with its cargo of armed children playing on the deck, and its tired prisoners curled around their regrets. Mauricio was at the prow, with an enormous projector clamped between his knees throwing a beam of light through the fog into the tunnel of water and vegetation before him. With his one arm, he gave instructions to the captain who was standing at the stern, and I could not help but think that we were in the hands of a new breed of pirates.

  After an hour had gone by, Camilo took a metal bucket he’d found on the deck, wedged it between his legs, and turned it into a drum. The diabolical rhythm he produced roused everyone’s spirits and sparked a fiesta. He mingled revolutionary songs with popular tunes; it was impossible not to join in. The girls improvised cumbias,57 to swaying their hips and whirling in place, possessed by a dizzying urge to live. They were driven wild by the onlookers’ full-throated singing and vigorous hand clapping. Camilo banished the cold and boredom, and probably the fear, too. I looked at the starless sky and the endless river and this cargo of men and women without a future, and I sang all the louder, searching in this semblance of joy an aftertaste of happiness.

  At one of the bongo’s stops, during the night, we came alongside a phantasmagorical abandoned camp, where suddenly a nasal voice taunted us from the treetops.

  “Hello there, silly goose, you eat alone, and die alone, ja, ja!”

  Then the voice grew closer.

  “You don’t see me, but I see you ja, ja.”

  It was a starving parrot who had not forgotten what he had learned. He let us feed him but kept a careful distance. His freedom was precious to him. As I observed him, I thought that he was far cleverer than we were. When the time came for us to leave, the parrot disappeared. Nothing could get him to come down from his treetop.

  Farther along the river, Pata-Grande made arrangements to build a permanent camp. The location was on the bank, among some scattered peasant houses we’d glimpsed from the bongo. Once again it was an abandoned camp. We arrived in the middle of the night, during a violent storm. The young men set up our tents in the blink of an eye, using the old frames that were still solid.

  I noticed one little boy, with a thicket of blond hair and the looks of a cherub, ill at ease holding an AK-47 in his hands.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mono Liso,” he mumbled.

  “Mono Liso? Is that your nickname?”

  “I’m on duty, I can’t talk,” he said to me.

  Katerina was going by, and she made fun of him, telling me, “Don’t pay any attention to Mono Liso. He’s a real pest.”

  Any desire to establish relations with my captors had vanished. Jeiner’s departure had dampened the good-natured atmosphere that had reigned for a few short days. From my experience, the troops modeled their attitude on their leader’s. I was convinced that over time there would be an inevitable deterioration into abuse.

  A few months before my abduction, I’d switched on the television and come upon a fascinating documentary. In the 1970s, Stanford University had undertaken a simulation of prison conditions to study the behavior of ordinary people. The findings were astonishing. Well-balanced, normal young people disguised as guards, with the power to open and close doors, turned into monsters. Other young people, equally well balanced and normal, masquerading as prisoners, let themselves be mistreated. One guard dragged a prisoner over to a closet, where he could only stand, not sit, and left him there for hours, until he passed out. It was a game. However, faced with peer pressure, only one of them had been able to react “out of character” and demand that the experiment be stopped.

  I knew that the FARC was playing with fire. That we were in an enclosed world, without cameras, without witnesses, at the mercy of our jailers. For weeks I had observed the behavior of these armed children, forced to act as adults. I could already detect all the symptoms of a relationship that could easily degenerate and turn poisonous. I thought it was possible to fight against it, by preserving one’s own character. But I also knew that peer pressure could turn those children into the guardians of hell.

  I was lost in thought when I saw a very short man, with glasses rammed on his nose and close-cut hair. He walked like Napoleon, his arms crossed behind his back. His presence disturbed me. There was a dark aura around him.

  He came up to me from behind and whispered, “Hello, I am Enrique, your new commander.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

&n
bsp; AT THE GATES OF HELL

  Very quickly it became clear to all of us that the arrival of Enrique would change things a great deal. He had been sent to oversee Pata-Grande, who visibly resented the fact. The cold war between the two men became obvious. They avoided each other and communication between them was kept to a bare minimum. Mauricio spent a great deal of time with the military hostages, and my comrades liked him. We had received a little radio with multiple bands in our shipment, as well as a big panela radio from Cesar. Finally, a third panela radio with big speakers arrived, which Mauricio lent to us to play vallenatos at full volume all day long. He knew that the soldiers enjoyed it, and he made use of this to plant in their hearts the seeds of dislike he himself felt toward Enrique.

  As for Enrique, he did everything he could to make people despise him. The first order he gave was to forbid the girls from talking to the hostages. If any of them came up to us, they would be punished. The second was to oblige the guards to inform their leaders of the slightest communication they had with us. Any request we might make had to be cleared by him. In the space of a few weeks, the children’s faces resembled adults’, dark and scowling. I no longer saw them rolling in the moss, hugging each other. There were no more hysterical peals of laughter. Zamaidy had lost her following of young girls; Lili, Enrique’s socia, had gone off with them.

  The day he arrived in the camp, Enrique had taken her to his bed. Lili was a fine specimen, no doubt about that. Her faintly copper skin emphasized her smile and her perfect teeth. She had smooth, silky dark hair that she swung gracefully as she walked. She was flirtatious and mischievous, and her eyes shone when she spoke to the soldiers, to make them understand that she considered herself exempt, at least in part, from Enrique’s order; she called him “Gafas,” Specs, with obvious familiarity. She had immediately, and joyfully, taken on her role as ranguera.