Hostage Nation (15 page)

The communiqué was signed by Raúl Reyes, Joaquín Gómez, Carlos Antonio Lozada, Andrés Paris, and Simón Trinidad in the mountains of Colombia on January 13, 2002. From his base in El Caguán, Trinidad read it live in its entirety on a national news broadcast.

Although the guerrillas had said they would vacate the DMZ, there was little evidence to suggest they were doing so. Pastrana's forty-eight-hour deadline passed, but, clearly wanting to avoid armed conflict, he held back from sending in troops for more than a month. Then on February 20, FARC guerrillas hijacked a Colombian airliner and took Senator Jorge Gechem hostage. The hijackers forced the plane down on a rough asphalt road in FARC territory, where dozens of guerrillas awaited the senator's arrival. It was the last straw for Pastrana, who went on television to tell the guerrillas they had a three-hour deadline to evacuate the DMZ. Pastrana, who had ordered thirteen thousand
troops to encircle the zone, commanded the army to retake El Caguán, and the war returned with full intensity. As his disastrous four-year term came to an end, Pastrana was characterized as a wimp, an imbecile for what was seen as an incredible failure to deal with the country's civil war. For those vying to replace the beleaguered president, finding a way to beat the FARC and bring peace to the country was the number one issue on all the candidates' agendas.

Six days before Gechem's kidnapping, three presidential candidates met in Los Pozos and made very public bids to the FARC to end the war. The meeting room at a local community center teemed with Colombian news media, and campesinos clambered for a view of the candidates and the FARC commanders. Most dynamic at the televised meeting was Ingrid Betancourt, a spitfire senator from Bogotá. Betancourt wore her usual campaign outfit—jeans and a simple yellow T-shirt bearing her campaign slogan,
COLOMBIA NUEVA
. Her hair hung plainly to her shoulders, held back from her face by a pair of brown sunglasses. Across the table from Betancourt, wearing a military uniform with an armband in the colors of the Colombian flag, was Simón Trinidad. He shook Betancourt's hand warmly upon arrival, then stared at her smugly as she gave her pitch to the FARC guerrillas who sat across from the candidates at the table. Betancourt, by now a seasoned politician known for her passionately delivered calls for justice, spoke directly to the high-ranking guerrilla commanders: “When each one of you decided ‘I'm going to the mountains to fight,' what was your intention? Was your intention to take water and electricity from the people whom you wanted to defend?” The FARC representatives, both men and women, sat expressionless as they listened to Betancourt's speech. At the end, Betancourt begged the FARC to make “a unilateral gesture toward peace:
no more kidnappings.”
Betancourt repeated the point for emphasis: “No
more kidnappings.… Stop kidnapping, and free the hostages.”

Her plea may have resonated more with the voting public than with Trinidad and his fellow guerrilla commanders. Media reports and government propaganda against the armed factions constantly reminded the general populace that kidnappings were garnering hundreds of millions of dollars for the FARC, the ELN, the paramilitaries, and common criminals. From 1998 to 2002, the number of kidnappings each
year reportedly averaged three thousand—a third of which were carried out by the FARC. Historically, the kidnappings had been almost exclusively for financial gain, but by 2000, many FARC hostage takings had taken a political turn. Increased success attacking Colombian military bases—which began in the mid-1990s—netted a massive increase in military prisoners. At first, because these prisoners weren't considered “economic” hostages for the guerrillas, FARC policy was to hold them for a few days, a couple of weeks, possibly as long as a month. Then the hostages would be handed over to a town priest, the Red Cross, or another humanitarian organization. During the increased fighting, many guerrillas were also taken captive; prisons were full of FARC guerrillas—almost a thousand in all of Colombia.

In 1997, Marulanda proposed an exchange of prisoners and publicly asked the Colombian Congress to approve a permanent “law of exchange” to be in force for the duration of the war. The FARC's proposal initially included exchanging captured government soldiers—whom the FARC deemed prisoners of war—for guerrillas in jail. But in 2000, the FARC Secretariat decided that captured elected officials would also be considered prisoners of war. They announced the change of tactic in an online communiqué: Politicians who entered FARC areas of influence would be captured and included on the list of what the FARC called the “exchangeables.” The exchangeables differed from the hundreds of other hostages who were being held by the FARC for ransom payments, and they could be released only through an exchange of prisoners. Reacting to the crisis, the government passed a law in December 2001 that made it legal for a politician to run in absentia. Several families responded by actually running campaigns for their missing candidates. In 2002, this bizarre policy would be played out in one of the strangest presidential campaigns in history, the candidacy of Ingrid Betancourt.

In 1994, after leaving her comfortable life and her French diplomat husband, the thirty-two-year-old Betancourt entered a Colombian political scene that had for years been infused by drug money. As a congresswoman (and later senator), Betancourt was quick to “out” fellow legislators she felt were corrupt, immediately turning herself into an outsider in the House of Representatives. She ignored her detractors,
and in 1996, she made a name for herself by exposing incumbent president Ernesto Samper for accepting campaign money from the Cali cartel. Her tenacity earned her a series of death threats and assassination attempts. In a 2002 interview, Ingrid described the threat that made her decide to send her two young children out of the country to live with her ex-husband. “A man came to my office. He said, ‘I am here to warn you; we have paid the
sicarios
[assassins] to kill you and your family.'” Betancourt took her family out of the country but could not resist the lure of Colombian politics, and she returned to the country alone. In 1998, she received more votes in the nationwide senate election than any other candidate. But by 2002, as she began her presidential campaign, Betancourt had lost a great amount of support. She had published her autobiography in France, and within its pages was a hard indictment of the pervasive corruption in Colombia, fueled by the massive cash flow from cocaine trafficking. To the average Colombian, it was like airing dirty laundry in an international forum, and she was highly criticized.

On February 23, Betancourt, who was lagging far behind in the polls, and her campaign team traveled to Florencia—a steamy jungle town on the perimeter of what had been the DMZ just three days before. Her idea was to get to San Vicente del Caguán, where the military had gone to retake the town. It was reported that paramilitaries had also arrived and were “disappearing” anyone they deemed sympathetic to the guerrillas. A local priest interviewed by
The Observer
gave this account: “There was a local administration and police force in San Vicente, but when the DMZ ended, they all left or were murdered. The town hall is closed, the police station was blown up and the area left without any form of non-military government. Then [paramilitaries] arrived in town one night, and the next day there were five bodies in the Caguán river.” According to Betancourt's second husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, Betancourt had received a call from the mayor of San Vicente del Caguán, who was a member of her independent political party. “He told her, ‘Ingrid, you have to come here. People are disappearing.'” Lecompte didn't hesitate to support his wife's decision. “She told me it was her duty to go.”

Betancourt and her team were first told by a military general that
they would have helicopter transport to San Vicente del Caguán. The road, everyone knew, was far too dangerous to travel. Hours passed, and several aircraft left Florencia, including one carrying President Pastrana, who was accompanied by dozens of members of the international and Colombian press for his visit to San Vicente del Caguán. Some felt that it was no more than a publicity opportunity to show the beleaguered president “liberating” the zone from the guerrillas, to whom he had given legitimate reign over the area for three years. Pastrana, who had once been a close friend of Betancourt's family, ignored her on his way to board the plane. Shortly after, Lecompte received a call from his wife. “She told me they would not take her by helicopter, but they had offered her a car, and she was going.”

An hour later, Betancourt and four colleagues were traveling south toward San Vicente del Caguán. Adair Lamprea, the logistics coordinator for her campaign, drove the government pickup truck, and Betancourt sat in the passenger seat. There were three others in back. The two-lane asphalt road cut through the jungle in an area of El Caguán that was still very much controlled by the FARC guerrillas, but now Colombian troops were on the attack, making it incredibly dangerous. The mood in the car was somber as they pulled behind a white Red Cross truck stopped on the road. Twenty yards farther up, a colorful school bus spray-painted with the words
BUS
BOMB
was parked perpendicular to the road, blocking traffic from both sides. It was a guerrilla roadblock—something that was to be expected in this part of Colombia. Lamprea recognized the roadblock as a method that the FARC used to capture people—one that had become so widespread that Colombians had actually given it a name: “Miraculous Fishing.” The guerrillas would set up a roadblock and pull over any vehicle that tried to pass. If the victims had money or political prominence, they were taken away. The rest, they tossed back, often burning victims' vehicles or forcing them back the way they had come.

Lamprea stared at the bus and clenched the steering wheel. Ahead, a teenage guerrilla carried an automatic rifle over his shoulder and casually munched on a triangle of ripe watermelon as he told the Red Cross truck's driver to turn around and go back toward Florencia. Then he directed a young woman on a motorcycle to do the same. Lamprea
was ordered to shut off the truck's ignition. Alain Keler, a French photojournalist, sat nervously in the backseat. Keler had joined the group to shoot photos of Betancourt's campaign for a magazine article in the French edition of
Marie Claire
. Betancourt, who had dual French and Colombian citizenship and had been raised in France, had become hugely popular in France over the last few years. But after traveling for a week with Betancourt, Keler's opinion of her differed greatly from that of her fans in France, who often referred to her as “Joan of Arc.” He found her very arrogant and difficult to be around. And although he had made the decision to go, even after being warned it was very dangerous, he still resented being dragged along into the danger. The other two in the car were Mauricio Mesa, the campaign's cameraman, and Clara Rojas, an attorney and friend of Betancourt, who had helped her with her previous campaigns and the Samper impeachment trial.

A second guerrilla demanded all of the passengers' cell phones and Mesa's video camera. Keler didn't understand Spanish, and he continued to photograph the tense scene. One of the guerrillas yelled at him to stop, but he continued to shoot, and Mesa saw the photographer quickly unload the film from his camera and stealthily tuck it into his vest pocket. The soldier then ordered the white flags and placards that read
INGRID
BETANCOURT
and
PRENSA
INTERNACIONAL
stripped from the truck's exterior, and Lamprea was ordered to drive around the bus. On the other side was a second bus, sandwiching the small pickup. The woman on the motorcycle had made her way around the bus as well and was stubbornly refusing the orders of a second group of guerrillas to turn back. “Our car was parked, and we were looking to the side at the young woman,” Lamprea recalls. “They grabbed her motorcycle, threw gasoline on it, and lit it on fire.” Lamprea hated the brutal methods the guerrillas used to terrorize the local civilians. He felt sick as he watched the motorcycle go up in flames and saw the anger and desperation on the young woman's face.

Seconds later, an explosion rattled the group. “All I felt was a
BOOOM
, and everything shook,” says Lamprea. Everyone in the truck screamed and ducked for cover, thinking they were under attack from the Colombian military. Lamprea assumed the buses were loaded with explosives, and he thought that another blast would set them off. Peering
through a cloud of dust and debris, Lamprea saw blood pouring down the face of one of the guerrillas, who was screaming, “My leg, my leg, my leg.” His shrieks gave Lamprea a moment of relief. The explosion had been caused by a land mine, not by a bomb from an air attack. The boy's left leg was now a bloody stump of shredded bone and muscle below the knee. However, none of the guerrillas went to help the injured boy. “If you don't put the guy in the truck, I'm going to get out and do it myself,” Lamprea yelled at them. Still, none of the guerrillas moved to help. Betancourt and Lamprea couldn't ignore the injured soldier. “The fear, at that moment … it completely left me. There was a human being who had a wounded leg, and we had to help,” Lamprea says. The young guerrilla shrieked in agony, and Betancourt insisted that they help get him to a hospital.

The guerrillas lifted the boy into the back of the pickup, and Lamprea thought that they would be taking the boy to a local hospital or to a local doctor sympathetic to the FARC. Unfamiliar with the territory, Lamprea asked the guerrillas for a guide. Several guerrillas climbed into the truck and ordered Lamprea to drive. Betancourt and the others remained quiet as the walls of the jungle rose up along the road, blocking the sun and wiping out any sense of direction. Eventually, two vehicles barreled toward them from the opposite direction and came to an abrupt stop. Together, the vehicles carried more than a dozen guerrillas, and cameraman Mesa realized immediately that they wouldn't need so many guerrillas to pick up one injured soldier. Mesa's hand shook as he lit his last cigarette and watched the guerrillas approach. They were much more forbidding than the first group, and they immediately ordered Betancourt out of the truck. “Ingrid told us not to worry, that everything would be okay,” Mesa says. Betancourt reluctantly got out on the passenger side, and the guerrillas forced her to the driver's side. “Then the guy told us to get out on the other side, and he told another guerrilla to move us away from Ingrid,” Lamprea says. Clara Rojas stepped out of the pickup with Lamprea, Mesa, and Keler. As they were herded away, Rojas asked where they were taking Betancourt. According to Rojas, the guerrillas became angry and forced her to join Betancourt. Lamprea felt a deep pang of guilt, knowing he should be with them as well. But his feet were frozen to the ground.