Even Silence Has an End

by Ingrid Betancourt

  I nodded mechanically. Everything he said was worrying. I wanted assurance that my companions were safe and would be freed shortly. The fighting at Unión-Penilla was a source of hope. But if there were confrontations, we risked being killed. How did he know that the general had been dismissed? That general was the one in the best position to mount a successful rescue operation. He was the man who knew the area, he was in the field, and he was the last one to have seen us.

  Cesar took his leave. There was nothing to do but wait, without knowing what we were waiting for. The minutes stretched into an oppressive eternity, and to fill them required a determination I didn’t have. I could do nothing but ruminate. We noticed a game of chess on the corner of what was meant to be a table. That such a thing could exist in the middle of this self-contained world was both unexpected and surprising. But once I sat in front of the chessboard, I was overcome with panic. We were the pawns. Our existence was being defined according to a logic that my abductors were concealing from us. I pushed away the game, incapable of continuing. How long was this going to last? Three months? Six months? I observed the people around me. The blithe attitude to life, the gentle rhythm of routine—it all sickened me. How could they sleep, eat, and smile while keeping us away from our loved ones?

  Isabel had finished her guard duty and had come to have lunch. She looked with manifest longing at the red and black-lace underwear still in its packaging. I offered it to her. She turned it over in her hands with childlike delight, then put it back where it was, as if pushing away too great a temptation. Finally she stood up, driven by a sudden fervor, and said in a loud voice for her comrades to hear, “I am going to make a request.”

  As I later learned, “requests” were a fundamental part of FARC life. Everything was controlled and monitored. No one could take the slightest initiative or give or receive a gift without asking permission. You could be refused the right to stand up or sit down, to eat or to drink, to sleep or to go to the chontos.

  Isabel came running back, her cheeks flushed. She had obtained permission to accept my gift. I watched her walk away, trying to imagine what life must be like for a woman in the camp. The commander was a woman, but I counted just five girls among about thirty men. What could they hope for here that would be better than elsewhere? Their femininity did not cease to amaze me, even though they were never without their guns and had masculine reflexes that did not appear to be feigned. Just as with this new vocabulary, these peculiar songs, this peculiar habitat, I looked with surprise at these young women who all seemed to be cast in the same mold and to have sacrificed their individuality.

  Being a prisoner was bad enough. But being a female prisoner in the hands of the FARC was another matter entirely. It was difficult to put it into words. Intuitively I felt that the FARC was exploiting these women with their consent. The organization worked subtly, words were chosen deliberately, appearances were carefully cultivated, and there was more to everything than met the eye. . . . I had just lost my freedom, but I was not willing to surrender my identity.

  When night fell, Sonia came to fetch us to watch the news on TV. The camp was convened in the hut that boasted the small screen. She assigned us our places, then left to switch on the generator. A solitary lightbulb swayed from the ceiling like a hanged man. It came on, and the group went into raptures. I had trouble understanding their excitement. I sat there waiting in the middle of a band of armed men, their rifles propped up between their legs. Sonia switched on the television and left again; the picture was fuzzy and the sound full of static. No one moved, all eyes glued to the screen. Sonia finally came back, turned a couple of knobs, and a blurred picture appeared. But the sound was clear. The news had started. I saw Adair, my logistics manager, on the screen. He and the other members of our group had just been released. They were speaking emotionally about their final moments with us. I leaped up with joy. My commotion irritated some of the guerrillas, and they called gruffly for silence. I slumped back down on the bench, my eyes moist.

  That night I didn’t feel like sleeping. It was a bright, huge moon again, and the temperature outside was pleasant. I wanted to walk to clear my mind. Isabel was on guard. She had no problem agreeing to my request. I set off across the clearing to the chontos, passing in front of Sonia’s hut and alongside the shelter. Some of the convalescents had switched on their radios, and echoes of tropical music drifted toward me. I imagined the world without me, this Sunday that had brought sorrow and anxiety to those I loved. My children, Melanie, Lorenzo, and Sebastian, my stepson, had already heard the news. I expected them to be strong. We had often talked about the possibility that I might be abducted. I had always been more afraid of being taken hostage than of being assassinated. I had told them that they must never give in to blackmail and that it was better to die than to submit. Now I was not so sure. I no longer knew what to think. What was most intolerable to me was the pain they had to be feeling. I wanted to live. I did not want them to become orphans, and I was determined to restore to them their carefree spirit. I imagined them talking to each other, bound by mutual torment, trying to reconstruct the events leading up to my abduction, trying to understand. I was in pain.

  I understood only too well the significance of the press release issued by the Secretariado. It confirmed that I had been taken hostage and that I was part of the group of “interchangeables.”9 My captors threatened to kill me one year to the day after my capture if there was no agreement to release the guerrillas detained in Colombian prisons. To spend one year in captivity and then be assassinated— that was my possible fate. Would they carry out their threat? It was hard to believe, but I did not want to be around to find out. We had to escape.

  The thought of preparing our escape calmed me. I created a mental map of our environment and tried to reconstruct from memory the road we had taken to get here. I was certain that we had traveled in what was almost a straight line, southward. It would mean a lot of walking, but it was feasible.

  I finally got into bed, fully clothed, but I still couldn’t close my eyes. It must have been around nine in the evening when I heard them in the distance. Helicopters, several of them, were rapidly approaching. Suddenly the camp went into a frenzy. The sick jumped from their beds, pulled on their backpacks, and started running. Orders were shouted in the darkness as the commotion reached its peak. “Turn out the lights, goddamn it!” yelled Sonia, her voice like a man’s. Ana and Isabel rushed toward us, grabbing the mosquito net and pushing us out of bed. “Bring what you can, we’re leaving immediately! It’s the air force!”

  My mind went blank. I heard hysterical voices around me and went into a trance: put on shoes, roll up clothes, put them in the bag, take bag, check that nothing is left behind, walk. My heart was beating slowly, as it did when I went diving. The echo of the outside world reached me in the same way, as if filtered by an enormous wall of water. Ana continued to yell and push me. The guerrillas were already advancing in single file. I turned around. Ana had rolled up the mattress and was carrying it under her arm. Wedged under the other arm was the mosquito net, twisted into a roll. She was also carrying her huge backpack, so heavy that it forced her to lean forward. “Talk about a dog’s life!” I muttered, more irritated than anything else. I was not afraid. Their hastiness was none of my concern.

  About a hundred yards from camp, we were ordered to stop. The moon was sufficiently bright through the trees so that I could distinguish the people around me. The guerrillas were sitting on the ground, leaning against their backpacks. Some had taken out their black plastic sheets and were covering themselves with them.

  “How long are we going to stay here?” I whispered to Isabel. We could still hear the sound of the helicopters, but it seemed that they were no longer close.

  “I don’t know. We have to wait for instructions from Sonia. We could be in for days of walking.”

  “Days of walking?”

  Isabel didn’t respond.

  “Our boots are still at the camp,
” I said, hoping to have a reason to retrace our steps.

  “No, I have them.” She showed them to me. They were folded in a bag she was using as a cushion. “You should put them on. You won’t be able to walk in the mountains otherwise.”

  “The mountains? We’re going to the mountains?”

  That threw me. I had thought we’d be going south, toward the inmost depths of the Llanos, the tropical plains to the east of the Andes. Beyond that was the Amazon. Mountains meant turning back on ourselves toward Bogotá. The Andes formed a natural barrier that was almost impossible to cross on foot. Simón Bolívar had done it with his army but it was considered an exploit!

  My question struck her as suspicious, as if I were trying to trap her into divulging secret information. Isabel looked at me warily.

  “Yes, the mountains, al monte,10 the selva11!”

  For them, monte meant the forest and any land covered by vegetation untouched by man. Curiously, that was indeed the ancient meaning of the word monte. They had assimilated it into the word montaña and used it without making a distinction. Their dialect tended to be confusing. I started learning it as if it were a foreign language, and I tried to memorize the false friends between my Spanish and theirs. Once I understood that we were headed toward the Llanos, my mind started to race.

  The helicopters were returning, the sounds rapidly getting louder. They were hedgehopping above the trees. I could see three overhead, lined up in formation, and guessed there must be more. They passed right over us, and the sight of them moved me to joy: They were looking for us! The guerrillas were visibly anxious. Their faces were turned toward the sky, their jaws clenched in defiance, hatred, and fear. I knew Ana was watching me. I avoided letting my feelings show. Now the helicopters were moving away. They would not be returning. Those around me had been aware of my moment of hope. They were animals trained to sniff out other people’s happiness. I had done the same. I had gotten a whiff of their fear, and I had delighted in it. Now I could smell their satisfaction at my disappointment. I belonged to them. Their sense of victory excited them. They nudged one another, whispering and looking me straight in the eye. I lowered my gaze. I was powerless.

  The line loosened up; they all went back to preparing their little spaces for the night. I walked over to Clara. We held hands in silence, sitting next to each other on our travel bags, stiff and formal. We were used to the city. The night was closing in, and large clouds were gathering above us, filling the sky. The moon became blurred. There was a flurry of activity. The guerrillas were kneeling before their backpacks, undoing the thousands of straps, buckles, and knots that secured them.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “It’s going to rain,” replied Isabel as she, too, worked on her backpack.

  “And what about us? What are we supposed to do?”

  Her response was to hand me a black plastic sheet. “Cover yourselves with this!”

  The first drops of rain began to fall. We heard them tapping on the leaves of the forest canopy, not yet penetrating the vegetation. Someone threw us another plastic sheet, which landed at our feet. It came just in time. The storm unfurled like a biblical deluge.

  At four-thirty in the morning, we filed back into the camp. Radios were switched on, and familiar voices announced the news. The smell of black coffee marked the start of another day. I collapsed onto the planks before I even had a chance to unpack.

  María brought over a large plate of rice and lentils plus two spoons.

  “Do you have any forks?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to put in a request with the commander,” she said.

  “You mean Sonia?”

  “No, Commander Cesar!”

  He had arrived at the camp earlier in the afternoon in his luxurious red pickup, which was far too luxurious for a rebel. I smiled when I thought of the story he’d told me. He had gotten a FARC militiaman to buy it for him in Bogotá and drive it to the demilitarized zone, where he’d handed it over. The militiaman then declared it stolen and received the insurance payment. That was the FARC way. More than insurgents, they acted like gangsters.

  A large construction truck full of young guerrillas followed the pickup.

  Cesar greeted me, looking pleased.

  “There was fighting last night,” he informed me. “We killed half a dozen soldiers. They were coming to get you. They have come to realize they will never succeed! You have to leave at once. This place has already been spotted. It’s for your own safety. Get your things together.”

  This time Cesar did not accompany us. The driver was the same fat man who had bought the mattress and other items. The fifteen guerrillas who had arrived with Cesar continued on with us, standing in the back of the truck, holding their rifles. Clara and I climbed into the cab with the driver.

  After the previous night’s storm, the track had become a slimy mud chute. It was impossible to travel at more than twelve miles per hour. We continued southward, deeper and deeper into the Llanos. The landscape became thickly forested, with just a few open fields lying fallow and some terrain razed by controlled fires. The experts called it the “agricultural frontier.” The Amazon rain forest could not be far away.

  The sky was ablaze as the sun set with great ceremony. We had gone many hours without stopping, and the farther we traveled, the more my heart constricted. It meant even more miles separating me from my home. I tried to stay calm by calculating that we could put aside enough provisions for our escape to last for one week’s walk. We would have to get away at night when the guards relaxed their vigilance. We would walk until dawn and hide during the day. We wouldn’t ask civilians for help. They might be working for the FARC. The driver’s attitude was revealing: Like many in the region, he was bound to the guerrillas in an almost feudal relationship that was based on dependency, submission, allegiance, interest, and fear.

  I was deep in thought when the vehicle stopped. We were at the top of a butte, the full splendor of the sunset spread before us. On the left were hacienda-style gates. The property was enclosed not by a wall but by green oilcloth, which circled the perimeter and completely concealed from the road what lay inside.

  The guerrillas jumped out of the truck and, in groups of two, dispersed to each corner of the property. A tall man with a thin mustache opened both entrance gates wide. He was very young, probably in his early twenties. The truck entered silently. The sky was turning green, and night fell swiftly.

  The tall man walked over and held out his hand.

  “I’m honored to meet you. I’m your new commander. If you need anything, you come to me. My name is Cesar. And this is Betty. She will look after you. She is your receptionista.” Betty was not her real name. The guerrillas all had aliases chosen by the commander who recruited them. Often it was a foreign name, or a biblical one, or a name from a national television show. Ugly Betty12 had been a favorite soap opera in Colombia for years. And here was another commander called Cesar. Hardly surprising, all the commanders here are Cesar, I mused.

  Our Betty was not ugly, but she was so small she resembled a dwarf. She switched on her flashlight and asked us to follow her. The truck, empty, went away, and the gates closed. Betty led us toward an old shed with a rotten roof, half of which had fallen to the ground. Under the half that remained were two beds, similar to those we had used at the hospital, except that the boards were also rotten and crumbling.

  Betty set down her backpack in a corner and with her Galil rifle over her shoulder began the task of recuperating the few planks still solid enough to make one bed. She held the flashlight between her teeth to keep both hands free and work more quickly. The beam of light followed her movement. She was about to put her hand on one of the planks when she jumped back, losing the flashlight, which rolled onto the floor. I saw it at the same time: an enormous furry red tarantula, puffed up on its fat legs, ready to pounce. I grabbed the flashlight to look for the beast, which had since bounced under the bed and was scuttling toward the rotten
roof and a pile of straw. With her machete Betty chopped the creature in two.

  “I can’t sleep here. I hate those beasts. What’s more, they live in pairs, so the other one can’t be far away!” My voice was shrill, betraying my anxiety. It was astonishing. I sounded just like my mother. She was the one who dreaded “those beasts,” not me. I found them fascinating because it seemed as if their massive size took them from the world of insects and bugs to that of vertebrates.

  “We’ll give the place a thorough cleaning. I’ll have a good look under the bed and all around. And then I’ll sleep here with you, don’t worry.” Betty was trying her best not to laugh.

  As soon as the mattress and mosquito net were in place, Clara lay down on the bed. Betty came back with an old broom she’d found lying around, and I borrowed it to help her. I put our belongings on a plank of wood that Betty had fashioned into a shelf, then got into bed, although it was dawn before I was able to sleep. My insomnia gave me the opportunity to locate the positions of the guards, and I soon formulated an escape plan for the following evening. I even spotted a knife in Betty’s backpack that could come in handy.

  But our hopes for escape were short-lived. El Mocho turned up around noon, and we took to the road again, still traveling southward. I was once again gripped by anxiety; I figured that it would now take us more than a week to retrace our steps. The situation was becoming critical. The farther we traveled, the fewer our chances of success. We had to act as quickly as possible and equip ourselves to survive in a region that was becoming more hostile by the mile. We were no longer crossing flat country but starting on the climbs and descents of an increasingly rolling landscape. The peasants were now a population of lumberjacks, whose presence you could detect from the damage they left behind. Helpless spectators to an ecological disaster no one cared about, we crossed the ravaged space as if we were the sole survivors of a nuclear war.