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

by Ingrid Betancourt

Monster arrived one afternoon, introducing himself to the prisoners in a friendly way. I was surprised by his name, and at first I thought it was a joke, but then I remembered that they did not speak English and that “Monster” must not have the same resonance for them as for me. He asked me a few questions, acting in a very friendly way, but when he went away again, I said to myself, Otro Enrique.79

  That very evening Oswald was on duty. He came and planted his uptight person before me and roared, “Get this shit out of here!” pointing to the hanging sheets.

  This was a hard blow. I really needed some privacy.

  Exasperated, Oswald pulled down my sheets himself. I asked to speak to Monster, hoping that he had not yet been contaminated. It was worse than that. He knew that he’d get a standing ovation if he treated me harshly.

  From that day on, Monster began to despise me with an easy conscience. No matter what I asked, he invariably said no. It’s character-building, I kept telling myself.

  Before Monster arrived, I had begged them to build us a screen of leaves in front of the chontos. They had dug them right next to the caletas, and I could see my companions when they squatted down. Huddling behind a big tree whose roots hid me, I made a hole with the heel of my boot and relieved myself, praying that the guards wouldn’t compel me to use the hole in front of everybody. One evening on my way back, my foot caught in a root. As I fell, I rammed a sharp branch into my knee. I understood what had happened before I even felt it. I got up cautiously and saw that the tip of the branch was soaked in blood from a gaping hole in my knee that was opening and closing spasmodically. I’ve done something nasty there was my instant diagnosis.

  As I expected, I was denied any medication. So I decided not to move from my caleta until the wound closed, and I just prayed to the heavens that there would be no raids until my knee had scarred over. I thought it would be a matter of two days; it took two weeks of complete immobilization.

  Lucho was worried and asked around for some alcohol. One of our companions had a permanent stock, and he had the last squeeze of a tube of some anti-inflammatory cream—miraculously, they both ended up in my hands. He also got permission from Monster to bring me a jug of water from the stream every day so I could wash, giving us the chance to exchange a few words, a privilege that brought me all the happiness I could hope for.

  I quickly told Lucho about the business that had so upset me. One evening before I hurt my knee, Tito shook me in my hammock. He wanted to speak to me in secret. I feared a repetition of Mono Liso’s advances, so I rejected him. Before returning to his guard post, he whispered, “I can get you out of here, but we have to be quick!”

  I paid no attention. I knew how the guerrillas liked to set traps, and I imagined that Enrique had sent him to sound out my intentions. But I didn’t see Tito again.

  Efrén came to see me. He brought a brand-new notebook and some colored pencils. He wanted me to draw the solar system.

  “I want to learn,” he said.

  I rummaged in my memory to situate Venus and Neptune, filling the paper with a universe that I created at my whim, with balls of fire and giant comets. He loved it and asked for more, and he came back every day for his notebook and his new drawings. He had a thirst for knowledge, and I needed to keep busy. I invented all kinds of subterfuges in order to bait him with subjects I knew well, and he would take the bait, delighted to come back for more the next day. So it was that I discovered, in casual conversation, that Tito had run away with a girl and another guy. They had been caught and shot. Tito’s face, with his lazy eye, came to haunt me in my nightmares. I regretted that I hadn’t believed him. The chain I wore around my neck twenty-four hours a day now seemed heavier than ever. My one consolation was that Lucho no longer had to wear his during the day.

  I got out of my bath and dried off quickly: The morning pot had arrived. We didn’t eat much, and this was the only meal that sated my hunger. I rushed over, forgetting my good manners, wondering how I could manage to get the biggest arepa. Marulanda was in front of me. I was jubilant—he would get the little one, and mine would be the big one, the next on the pile. Tiger was serving, he saw me coming, he looked at the arepas and understood why I was pleased. He took the pile and turned it over. Marulanda got the big one and I the little one.

  I was ashamed of myself for succumbing to such petty desire. So many years fighting against my basic instincts, to no avail. I vowed not to look at the size of the portions anymore and take whatever I was served.

  However, the next morning when they unlocked my padlock, despite my resolution to behave like a fine lady, the demon in me got out when it smelled the arepa and I realized to my dismay that my eyes were boring into the pile of cancharinas and that I was ready to bite the hand of anyone who tried to take my turn.

  So I decided I would wait until the very last moment to go for my food. Unfortunately, the moment the pot arrived, another “me” took over. This isn’t normal, I reflected. My ego is interfering. Much to my dismay, there was no way around it. Day after day I failed the test.

  SIXTY-NINE

  LUCHO’S HEART

  It was on one of those mornings, as I was standing in line to get my first meal, that I saw our three American companions coming along the path that led to the guerrillas’ camp. I was surprised it made me so happy.

  Marc, Tom, and Keith were all smiles. I hurried to greet them, with a warmth that proved contagious to my fellow prisoners. Tom hugged me affectionately and began speaking English, knowing how happy I would be to resume our English lessons.

  Monster scowled at me as he went by and heard me talking to Tom.

  The next morning he announced with obvious glee, “The prisoners are allowed to talk among themselves. Except to Ingrid.”

  Everyone forgot the rule when a poor stingray drifted into the pool. I saw it while I was taking my bath. It had tiger stripes, like the ones I’d sometimes seen in Chinese aquariums. Armando gave the alert, and the guard came to hack off its tail with a blow from his machete. Then it was put on display, not for the exceptional patterns of its skin, but because the guerrillas ate its genitals for their aphrodisiac properties. The prisoners gathered to examine the poor specimen, clearly a source of great interest, due to its resemblance to human male organs.

  That day, Enrique agreed to let the hostages enjoy watching DVDs.

  Some of our companions who were on good terms with the guerrillas insinuated that it might be therapeutic for the depression coming in waves among the prisoners. It’s true that at night we were often awakened by one of our companions screaming. My caleta was next to Pinchao’s, and his nightmares were more and more frequent. I tried to rouse him from his dream by calling his name, putting on my best sheriff’s voice.

  “The devil was attacking me.” he would confess, still in the grip of a vivid vision.

  I did not want to admit that we were all as disturbed as he was. It was happening to me more often. The first time, Pinchao woke me. I said, horrified, “Someone was strangling me.”

  “That’s the way it is,” he whispered to reassure me. “You don’t get used to it. It only gets worse.”

  Enrique hadn’t wanted to appear weak by entertaining his “detainees.” Maybe he changed his mind to impress the Americans. Maybe he was concerned about our mental health. Whatever. The guerrillas liked films with Jackie Chan and Jean-Claude Van Damme. But the ones they knew by heart starred their Mexican idol, Vicente Fernández. I watched the men as they watched the movies and was intrigued to discover they always identified with the good guys and had tears in their eyes during the soppy love scenes.

  One afternoon we left the stingray camp, unhurriedly and halfheartedly, and went once again deep into the manigua. On occasion I had been at the front of the line during the marches, because Enrique knew that I walked slowly, so he made me leave earlier. Very quickly some of my companions would catch up, ready to trample over me to get ahead. I would often wonder why grown men would bother vying to be in the lead of a
line of prisoners.

  LATE OCTOBER 2006-DECEMBER 2006

  The new camp boasted two places to bathe. One was the river itself, which was rare, because they generally tried to hide us from places where there was traffic, and another was on a little waterfall with turbulent water, farther inland.

  When we went down to the river, I would swim upstream and manage to go a few yards. Some of my companions followed my example, and bath time became a sort of sports competition. The guards didn’t go after anyone but me. So I swam in circles or on the spot, convinced that my body was benefiting from it just as much.

  When, for reasons that were not revealed, they ordered us to take our bath in the waterfall, we had to go past a clearing they had made into their volleyball court, created with sand from the river, then along the outside of their camp. As we went by, in their caletas I could see papayas, oranges, and lemons, which I looked at longingly.

  I had asked Enrique for permission to celebrate my children’s birthdays. For the second year in a row, he refused. I tried to imagine how different my children’s faces must be. Melanie had just turned twenty-one, and Lorenzo was eighteen. Mom said his voice had changed. I had never heard it.

  The flatness of life, the boredom, time that was forever starting over again just the same—it all acted like a sedative. I watched the girls practicing a dance for the New Year on the volleyball court. Katerina was the most talented. She danced the cumbia like a goddess. These good-natured activities filled me with melancholy and impatience to recover my freedom.

  We were all obsessed by our need to run away. Armando grew very excited as he explained in detail the escape he had planned, always for sometime soon. He even claimed he’d already gone through with it once.

  “But I had to come back. You see, I was wandering around like that at night, and I saw the commander headed straight for me. I thought he was going to kill me. But he didn’t. It was too dark. He didn’t recognize me. ‘Where are you going, son?’ he asked. ‘I have to take a leak, comrade!’”

  “That’s a shameless lie! You never even set foot outside your mosquito net.”

  “You don’t believe me? You’ll see, I’ll surprise you all!”

  I, too, could think of little else but the idea of escape. They had eased my regime considerably. I was allowed to speak with Lucho for an hour a day during lunch break and with the others without restriction, although English was strictly forbidden.

  When my hour with Lucho was over, Pinchao took his place. It had become usual to make appointments between prisoners. We took pride in making it clear when we didn’t want to be disturbed. Living together, twenty-four hours a day with hardly anything to do, led us to raise imaginary walls. Pinchao came for our daily chat.

  “When I grow up,” I liked to say playfully, “I’ll build a city in the Magdalena where the desplazados80 will have fine houses with the best schools for their children, and I’ll make Ciudad Bolívar into a Montmartre, with lots of tourists, good restaurants, and a place of pilgrimage for the Virgin of Freedom.”

  “Do you really want to be president of Colombia?”

  “Yes,” I answered, just to annoy him.

  One day he asked, “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Yesterday, just to try it, I wanted to go outside my caleta without asking the guards’ permission. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my hand.”

  “And?”

  “I was too frightened. I’m a coward. I’m useless. I’ll never be able to escape the way you did.”

  I heard myself say very softly, “Every time I left the camp, I thought I would die of fear. Fear is normal. For some people it acts as a brake; for others it’s an engine. The important thing is not to let it control you. When you make the decision to escape, it’s a cold, rational decision. Preparation is essential, because in the midst of action, when fear takes hold of you, you mustn’t think about it—you have to act. So you do it in stages. I have to take three steps forward, one, two, three. Now I get down and I go under that big branch. Then I turn to the right. Now I start running. The movements you make must take all your concentration. You feel your fear, but you accept it and you put it aside.”

  A few days before Christmas, we moved to a makeshift camp that was less than half an hour from where we were. Hastily built, it had no caletas, no hammocks; everybody slept on plastic sheets on the ground. Everything was somewhat improvised, and the guards were not as attentive, so I was able to sit next to Lucho.

  “I think that Pinchao wants to escape,” I confided to him.

  “He won’t get far. He doesn’t know how to swim.”

  “If there were three of us, we’d have a better chance.”

  Lucho looked at me, a new glow in his gaze. Then, as if he refused to show any enthusiasm, he said, frowning, “Have to think about it!”

  I hadn’t realized until now that during our entire conversation he’d been ill at ease, shifting position, worried, as if he were having trouble getting comfortable with his own body.

  “Ah, I’ve got a cramp,” he said breathlessly.

  He stretched out his arm, and I thought he’d hurt himself.

  “No, not there. It’s in the middle of my chest. It really hurts, as if someone were pressing on it, right here in the middle.”

  He went from white to gray. I had already seen this. Papa to begin with and then, in a different way but just as acute, Jorge.

  “Lie down and don’t move. I’ll get William.”

  “No, wait, it’s nothing. Don’t make a fuss.”

  I let go of him and reassured him. “I’ll be right back.”

  William was always wary. He’d often gone running to look at a patient, only to find a gifted actor scheming to get more food.

  “If I help you, out of friendship, the day we really need medication, they’ll refuse,” he’d explained, back in the days when we were chained up together.

  “You know I wouldn’t come and get you if I didn’t think it was serious,” I said.

  William’s diagnosis was instantaneous. “He’s having a heart attack. We need some aspirin right away.”

  Oswald gave me a chilly reception.

  “We need some aspirin, quickly. Lucho has just had a heart attack.”

  “There’s no one around. They’re all working on the site.”

  “And the nurse?”

  “There’s no one, and as far as I’m concerned, the old guy can die.”

  I leaped back, horrified. Tom had witnessed the scene. When I came over to him, Lucho opened his closed fist to show me his treasure: Tom had just given him a spare aspirin he’d been keeping since Sombra’s prison.

  Even when the nurse eventually came, there was no aspirin for Lucho. As if to apologize, old Erminson told me in confidence, “They had to clear some land to plant the coca. Enrique’s going to sell it, because we have no more money, and the Plan Patriota cut us off from our suppliers. That’s why there’s nothing left and we’re all busy.”

  The men had been complaining about the hard work they had to put in. Harsh blue smoke had wafted over us as they burned the land, making it hard to breathe, and we’d noticed that they changed the guard only twice a day. They were all very busy.

  Two days before Christmas, we went back to the old camp by the river, set up our antennas to listen to the program devoted to our families. Saturday, December 23, 2006, was a strange night. Wrapped up in my hammock and my solitude, I heard my mother’s faithful voice and the magical ones of my children. Mela spoke to me in a wise and maternal voice that broke my heart.

  “I hear your voice in my heart, and I repeat all your words. I remember everything you told me, Mom. I need you to come back.”

  And I cried just as hard when I heard Lorenzo’s voice. It was his voice, my little boy’s voice. But it had changed, and in it there echoed a second voice. My father’s voice, his grave, warm tone, like velvet. As I listened, I saw my child and I saw Papa. And not just Papa, but
also his hands, his big hands with square fingers, dry and smooth. It gave me such happiness that it made me sob. And I also heard Sebastian. He had recorded his message in Spanish, which brought him closer to me. I felt blessed in hell. I could not listen anymore. My heart couldn’t take this much emotion. “Have I told Sebastian how much I love him? Dear Lord, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that purple has been my favorite color because of that purple pareo he gave me and that I refused to wear.” I laughed at my memories and my guilt. “I will get out of here alive to be a better mother,” I said, resolved. At dawn, with swollen eyes and my hammock soaked, I got up, so they could free me to use the chontos.

  As early as it was, the guards were already drunk. Armando swore he would carry out his plan that same day, and I wanted to believe him. The night was moonlit, and the guards were drunker than ever. It was a perfect night, but Armando didn’t escape. The next morning Pinchao came up to me.

  “Armando didn’t leave. He’ll never be able to.”

  “And you, could you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how to swim.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “My God! It’s my dream to learn, because I want to teach my son to swim. I don’t want him to feel ashamed, like I do.”

  “We’ll start tomorrow.”

  Pinchao returned the favor. He appointed himself my trainer, and he put together a strict routine of exercises that he performed by my side. The hardest for me was pull-ups. I couldn’t get the weight of my body up even one inch. In the beginning Pinchao held my legs. But some weeks later my body kept going until my eyes were above the bar. I was thrilled. I was able to do six pull-ups in a row.

  We were working out far from the ears of the guards, when I asked him straight out.

  “You can count on me,” he said immediately. “With you and Lucho, I would go to the end of the earth.”

  We started work right away. We had to gather supplies.

  “It’s easy. We’ll exchange our cigarettes for dark chocolate and farinha,” I suggested.