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

by Ingrid Betancourt

  We gradually opened our hearts to speak of things we did not dare admit to ourselves. Marc had had no news from anyone except his mother in years. In her messages there was not much information about his family or the life of the people he loved. “It’s as if I were looking at my world through a keyhole,” he said, trying to express his frustration. “I don’t even know if my wife is still waiting for me.”

  I understood him only too well. My husband’s voice had disappeared from the waves, long ago. When he did occasionally show up again, my companions were sarcastic. Nobody commented when a journalist from La Luciérnaga,91 one of the programs we listened to in the evening, made a comment about him, adding, “I’m referring to Ingrid’s husband, or rather her ex-husband, since we’ve been seeing him with someone else for some time now.” I had wanted to move on, but the words I’d heard tore at me.

  One morning when I was waiting, stretched out in my hammock to be freed from my chains, I felt someone shaking my feet. I jumped. It was Marc, on his way to the chontos. “Hi, Princess!” he whispered, leaning toward my mosquito net.

  It will be a happy day, I thought.

  We settled down as on previous days, side by side on Marc’s plastic sheet. Pipiolo was on duty, and he looked at me the way an eagle stares at its prey. I shuddered, knowing he was up to something nasty. We had just started talking when Monster’s voice boomed like a cannon: “Ingrid!”

  I immediately jumped to my feet and went out into the central path, trying to see him through the tents that blocked my view. Finally he appeared, his hands on his hips, his legs spread wide, and his eyes full of venom.

  “Ingrid!” he shouted again, even though I was standing in front of him.

  “Yes?”

  “I told you, you are not allowed to speak to the Americans. If I catch you communicating with them, I’ll chain you to the tree!”

  There was no room for tears, for words, for gazes. I closed in on myself, my contact with the outside world having shrunk to nothing. I could hear, as if from a world far in the distance, Marc’s voice. But I could no longer see him.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  THE LETTERS

  It will be like always—he won’t care, he will want to avoid having any problems, I thought, going back to sit on the root of the tall tree that ran across my caleta. I had to get busy doing something—sew, wash, tidy up, fill the space with movement to act as if I were alive. I didn’t think it would hurt this much, I told myself, after catching a glimpse of Pipiolo’s carnivorous leer. My gaze met Lucho’s. He smiled at me and motioned to me to calm down. He was there for me. I smiled back. Of course it was not the first time they’d gone after me like this. I was used to being chained up or let go according to their mood swings. I’d been waiting for them to do this, from the moment I started my conversations with Marc. In a way I felt a certain relief. “It can’t be any worse,” I heard myself murmur.

  “Can we speak in Spanish, the way we do with the other prisoners?” I heard Marc ask Monster, standing haughtily by his tent.

  “No, those are orders. You can’t speak to her.”

  On our way to bathe, Marc came up behind me and whispered in English, “This sucks. I really enjoyed talking to you. We have to go on communicating.”

  “Yes ...” I mumbled, my eyes wet.

  “How?” he asked.

  I was thinking on my feet, quickly, quickly. Afterward we wouldn’t have the chance to talk.

  “Write me a letter,” I whispered.

  “Come on, move!” shouted one of the guards behind us.

  In the river, while I was washing my hair with a piece of blue laundry soap, Marc managed to find a place to stand where the guards couldn’t see him. He was gesturing to have me understand that he would write to me that very same day. I had to bite my tongue not to betray my joy. Lucho looked at me, astonished. I spoke to him, handing him my soap to fool the guards, “I feel better,” I whispered.

  All I could think about was his letter. I was sure he was going to pick up our conversation exactly where Monster had interrupted it. Above all I wondered how he’d manage to get it to me. I could see from my caleta into his. As soon as he was dressed again, he began to write.

  Night fell too quickly. The letter will be a short one, I told myself, in anticipation. But the night seemed very long. I had relived the scene a thousand times: Monster with his hands on his hips, threatening. I was afraid again.

  The letter came to me when I was least expecting it. I was on my way back from the chontos at dawn, just after the guard had unchained me. Marc was third in line. The path was narrow. He took my hand as I was brushing past him, and put into it a paper folded in four. I kept on walking, my hand trailing behind me. I thought everyone must have seen and that I would faint on the spot.

  When I got to my caleta and looked back out, I was surprised to see that everything was normal. The guards hadn’t noticed anything.

  Impatiently, I waited until breakfast to read the letter. It was short. Just a page and a half, a handwriting of carefully formed letters, that of a conscientious child. It was written in English, with all the standard procedure and polite formulas. It made me laugh; it was as if I were reading a letter from a stranger. He told me how sorry he was that we were forbidden to speak and went on to ask me courteous questions about my life. I read the letter several times, always with the same emotion, not because it had been forbidden but because it enabled me to hear the voice I had recorded in my head, whenever I wanted to.

  I’m going to write him a fine letter, I thought. A letter he’ll want to reread several times.

  I looked at my supply of paper—it wouldn’t last long. I wrote my letter in one sitting. I didn’t wear kid gloves and tossed out the conventional “Dear Marc” right from the start. I wrote as if I were face-to-face with him.

  “Hi, Princess,” he replied in his next letter, once again himself.

  Before long, we devised a secret language with hand signals he described to me in his letters and demonstrated when he saw that I’d finished reading his message. I sent him a few of my own devising, and soon we had a second, very efficient means of communication to alert each other when a guard was observing us or when we went to place a new message in the “letter box.”

  We had agreed to leave our notes at the base of a tree stump not far from the chontos. It was a good spot, because we could go there alone without arousing any suspicion. I had sewn some little black canvas bags to slip our messages into, to protect them from the rain and so that the white paper would not attract the guards’ attention.

  The guards must have noticed something, because one morning when I had just picked up my letter for the day, they followed me and went over the area with a fine-tooth comb. So we decided to alternate the letter box with other, more accessible ways of sending our missives, although they were just as risky. Sometimes Marc would stand next to me during the morning rush for breakfast and slip the bag into my hand, and sometimes I would motion to him to go to the wash area where I had just filled my water bottle, and he could fetch my letter.

  I was very worried. I’d noticed a resurgence of entangled feelings. Our pleasure in being together had made some people jealous. Some demanded that I be separated from the group. Massimo warned me: One of our comrades had explicitly requested as much. It gave me nightmares. I refrained from mentioning it to Marc, because I didn’t want to jinx us. But I was suffering more and more, fearful that what had become a lifeline to me might break.

  Writing was the only important thing of the day. I kept the letters he’d sent me and I reread them while waiting for the next. A strange intimacy was flowering between us. It was often easier to pour my heart out in writing. Another person’s gaze might prevent me from revealing my feelings, and sometimes what I intended to share remained caught in a silence I simply could not overcome. In writing, however, I discovered a distance that was liberating. I could always, so I thought, refrain from sending what I’d written, and that possibility
made me bold. But once the secrets of my mind came to light, they seemed simple to me, so there could be no harm in sharing them. Marc played the game with far greater mastery than I did, and I enjoyed his openness. There was something very elegant about his ideas, and I was never disappointed by the person he revealed. It seemed as if the most recent letter was always the best, until I read the one that followed. The more I craved his friendship, the more I began to worry. They’re going to separate us, I thought as I conjured Enrique’s perverse glee if he discovered Marc’s importance to me.

  Enrique organized a search in a very underhanded way. They made us believe we were preparing for a new march. Marc’s letters had become my greatest treasure, and I instinctively tucked them into the pocket of my jacket before closing my equipo to put it on my back. They made us walk a hundred yards or so to the place they used as a sawmill. There they asked us to empty out our packs. Marc was right next to me, livid. Had he managed to hide my letters?

  He gave me a meaningful look, then turned around and said he had to relieve himself and went behind a big tree. He came back, his eyes riveted on his shoes, except for a brief moment when he gratified me with a confident smile, as fleeting as the wink that I alone could see.

  I let a few minutes go by, and then I did exactly the same. Once I was behind a tree, I hid the letters inside my underwear, then came back to tidy away my equipo after the search. I noticed that the old talcum powder bottle, where I had painstakingly rolled my most precious documents to preserve them from the humidity, had disappeared. Inside, there were my mother’s letters, my children’s photographs, my nephew’s drawings, and the ideas and projects that Lucho and I had worked on for three years.

  “You’ll have to ask Enrique for it,” said Pipiolo, enjoying every word.

  This was a bitter blow. Mom’s letters had been my lifesaver every time I felt a black mood come upon me. I rarely looked at my children’s photographs, because they gave me a physical torment I could not endure. But just knowing they were within reach lent me a feeling of security. As for the program of reforms I had written up with Lucho, I really wanted that, too. It represented hundreds of hours of work and discussion. Still, I could not dispute the fact that I felt immensely relieved they hadn’t found Marc’s letters. Nor would they find my diary—I had taken the precaution of burning it.

  Just when we thought the search was over, four more guards showed up. They’d been sent to perform a “personal” search. They asked the men to get undressed, while Zamaidy told me to follow her.

  Zamaidy stood before me, apologizing in advance for what she was about to do. In my pockets she found small pieces of cloth caught up in squares.

  “What’s this?” she asked, intrigued.

  “I haven’t had any sanitary napkins for a long time now. I asked for some, but apparently Enrique gave the order to stop supplying me.”

  She grunted. “I’ll get you some.”

  Consequently she stopped her search and sent me back to the rest of the group. I let out a long breath; I hated to think what I would have had to invent to explain anything else she might have found.

  Marc was waiting anxiously for my return. I smiled to him, and he understood that I’d made it through the search. Lucho, violating every rule, asked me if everything was all right. I told him about Enrique’s confiscation of my bottle of talcum powder.

  “You have to get it back!” he scolded.

  That seemed like an impossible mission. After the fright that Enrique’s search had given us, Marc and I were twice as careful and our correspondence grew even more intense. We told each other everything about our lives, our relationships, our children. And our guilts, as if by describing them we might make our wrongs right. Condemned to distance, we had become inseparable.

  One morning Marc came up to me when I was in the first line to go to the chontos and said he had to speak to me no matter what. An irrational fear took hold of me. He’s going to tell me that we mustn’t write anymore! I thought. I was filled with dread until we were the last two left in the line.

  The things he told me made my blood run cold. The last of his thoughts was about our current ban. He wanted us to ask Enrique to lift the restriction imposed by Monster. At the same time, I saw Pipiolo glaring at me; my head was spinning. He saw Marc speaking to me, he saw the effect his words had on me. We had disobeyed orders. He would be only too happy to make us pay.

  Later I wrote a long answer to Marc. I told him how worried I was that Enrique might try to separate us, and I relayed what Massimo had said: Some of our companions were plotting against us.

  To add to my grief, as I was getting ready to brush my teeth one morning one of my neighbors tried to grope me. He was a man who was prey to his obsessions, and I’d already had problems with him. Enrique had put him next to me just to humiliate me even more. Lucho happened to be going by, dragging the night’s jug of urine in one hand to go toss it into the chontos. He instantly realized what was happening. The guards had already informed Enrique of these attacks, but he’d merely replied, “All the prisoners are equal. She can just stick up for herself.” Lucho knew this. He threw down his jug of urine and jumped on the man. In reply the other man punched him in the stomach, and Lucho went wild, knocking him to the ground and pummeling him. The guards were laughing till they burst, lapping up the spectacle. I was horrified. This could give them a pretext to take me away.

  But nobody came. Neither Enrique nor Monster nor Asprilla. I felt reassured, thinking that Enrique would lay down the law and the matter would be closed. Marc’s letter that day was more tender than usual. He didn’t want me to suffer for what had happened.

  When I heard Mom’s message on the radio at dawn, I trembled. I’d been completely turned upside down by my neighbor’s actions. No matter how I told myself he was deranged, and that his behavior was the result of ten years in captivity, knowing that he was nearby made me ill at ease. I hated the way he spied on me, even holding a mirror up to his eyes to stare at me while he had his back turned.

  Mom’s voice was gentle and serene, as on her good days. She was calling me from London, pleased with the steps taken to garner support for our release. “Don’t lose heart, whatever happens, don’t lose heart. Look up at the sky and rise above all the nastiness around you. Very soon you will get out and move toward a new life.” So I looked at the sky. The weather was fine; this sunny morning could only bring good things.

  But fate decided otherwise. The radio informed us that eleven of the twelve members of the Valle del Cauca Regional Assembly who were also being held by the FARC had been massacred. I’d just heard the message that the sister of one of the victims had sent, fighting for him in London. But he was already dead and she did not know. I was sickened.

  Still chained to my tree, I put my head out of my caleta, stifling in the horror of it. I listened to the messages for them every day, in particular at dawn on that June 18, 2007. Their families had probably just heard the news the way we had. They had left children behind. One of them, Carlos Andres Barragán, was born the day before his father was abducted. I had heard little Carlos Andres grow up through the sound of his voice, and I had imagined his father’s emotion while he listened, as if he were a member of my own family. I sought out Marc’s eyes in his caleta and met his gaze, as distraught as my own.

  When I thought the situation of the day couldn’t get worse, I was told by Asprilla to pack my things because I would be leaving. I was annihilated. Marc asked for permission to come help me. Being in the physical presence of each other, we sensed the close scrutiny of the guards and of our fellow hostages and our demonstrations of affection felt awkward.

  “Send me your Bible. I’ll send it back to you with my letters,” he said, taking down my tent. The guards were busy clearing a space for me near the wash area. That’s where they were going to put me.

  “At least we’ll still be able to see each other. Promise me you’ll go on writing every day.”

  “Yes, I’ll wri
te to you every day,” I assured him, bent double with the pain. I had just been wounded to my core, and I was only just beginning to realize it. Before the guards came to get me, he handed me the little black bag. When had he had time to write? I saw that his eyes, too, were moist.

  Then I heard Oswald’s nasal voice: “Go on, move it!”

  I couldn’t.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  THE SEPARATION

  JUNE 18, 2007

  Where they took me, I could still see them from a distance. I clung to this thought, thanking the heavens for not burdening me with an even heavier load. Silence fell upon me like lead; everything rang hollow. A crushing, twisting pain in my guts forced me to remember to breathe, inhale, and then, with excruciating effort, exhale. This jungle is damned.

  I arranged my things on an old board they had condescended to give me. I didn’t owe them anything, and I didn’t want to ask for anything. I shut myself away. No one would see that I was suffering. Some girls were sent along to help me set things up. I didn’t say anything. I sat down on a rotten tree trunk, and I contemplated the extent of my misfortune.

  My hammock became my refuge. I wanted to stay there all day long with the radio stuck to my ear, grinding my loneliness. That Saturday night, when La Voces del Secuestro broadcast Renaud’s song “In the Jungle,” I hoped it was a sign. Renaud was one of the most loved French composers alive. Hearing him mentioning my name, singing that he was waiting for me, gave me an urgent thirst for blue open skies. I went to swim in the pond without anybody daring to harass me. I could see Lucho and Marc through the trees.