Hostage Nation (22 page)

The public outcry over the scenes of men behind barbed-wire fences and the heartbreaking messages from the captives to their families became the catalyst for the Colombian government finally to take action. The result was a successful negotiation between the FARC and President Andrés Pastrana's government less than a year later to exchange some three hundred hostages. Amid great fanfare, Pastrana released dozens of FARC guerrillas from Colombian prisons. But the FARC Secretariat freed only the rank-and-file soldiers and continued to hold higher-ranking military and members of the National Police. The family members of those released were elated. But it became painfully clear that the FARC had no plans to do away with the practice of kidnapping. That same day, FARC commander Mono Jojoy made a startling statement: “We are going to grab people from the Senate, from Congress, judges and ministers, from all the three powers [of the Colombian government], and we'll see how they squeal.” Although much of the country supported the exchange, many others were furious and thought Botero had crossed a line. The journalist began to receive death threats by mail soon after some of his video footage aired: “Shut your mouth, motherfucker. We're coming to get you. You have five days to get lost.”

“The people who threatened me never identified themselves,” Botero says. “But it was clear that the threats came from the ultra-Right, since in the letters they sent to me they accused me of being ‘a journalist of the guerrillas,' ‘guerrilla disguised as a journalist,' and so on. At that time, those who were threatening or murdering people were the paramilitary groups, and often special groups from the army or the police.” The Center to Protect Journalists reported, “Sometimes, the caller played a recording of Botero's private phone conversations from a few minutes earlier, revealing that the reporter's phone was being tapped.” In January 2001, a hand-delivered note appeared at his home with the message “We offer our condolences to the Botero family for the death of Jorge Enrique Botero.” The false condolence letter was a
standard death threat in Colombia. Botero sent his family to a safe house in Cuba and went into hiding for two months.

Even though the threats resumed when he returned, Botero was content. He believed that his work had been the impetus for freeing the hundreds of captive soldiers. On the topic of hostages in Colombia, Botero became a well-known expert. Not only had he been the only journalist to venture into the jungle to record the conditions of captivity but he had presented the country with the drama of the families, their desperation, their anguish, and their struggle to recover their loved ones. There were more than a few who accused him of exploiting the pain of others for money, while others in the Colombian government and military pointed to him as a puppet used by Marulanda to apply pressure for an exchange of prisoners. “I wasn't surprised,” says Botero. “I expected it. It's a tactic of the government and the official press outlets to discredit or delegitimize independent journalists. I didn't give a shit. And I did not feel bad. To the contrary, it confirmed that I was doing my job.”

O
n April 1, 2003, dramatic images of Pfc. Jessica Lynch exploded in the American news media. The story was indeed incredible: the petite nineteen-year-old Lynch wounded and fighting off her Iraqi captors; a horrifying eight days in captivity; and the Hollywood blockbuster rescue by a joint unit of Delta Forces, U.S. Army Special Forces, and U.S. Navy SEALs. The fascinating tale inspired patriotic fervor in a country not fully convinced of the necessity of the Iraq war. The story was later proved to be highly embellished, and many, including Lynch, accused the Pentagon of manufacturing a propaganda campaign to rally support for the invasion. There was no benefit to the U.S. government to publicize the plight of Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves, and Keith Stansell, and few people in the United States even knew there
were
American hostages in Colombia. For the first six months after the crash, the U.S. government could not confirm if the men were even alive. The Colombians were still tasked with looking for the American hostages, but the trail was cold, and there were no reported sightings and no new intelligence. There were also no American military forces put on the ground to find them.

While the American media mostly ignored the story of the American hostages, Jorge Enrique Botero was conducting a relentless and calculated campaign to get back into the jungle. He fervently believed that good fortune came to those who had patience. And if anyone had the patience to wait for the FARC (with all their frustrating pragmatism and guerrilla bureaucracy) to grant him an interview with Ingrid Betancourt and the three Americans, he did. After being fired from the network, Botero had formed his own company with the goal of surviving as an independent journalist, and an interview with Betancourt would be the journalistic coup of his career. Ingrid Betancourt's case had been front-page news all over Europe since her kidnapping, and a video interview of Betancourt and Clara Rojas would not only prove they were still alive—something that no one was sure of—but also make headlines around the world. And maybe, Botero hoped, it would cause the Colombian government to do something to free the hostages.

Americans Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, and Thomas Howes in an interview with journalist Jorge Enrique Botero while in captivity, July 25, 2003. Photo: Jorge Enrique Botero
.

In June 2003, Botero finally learned from his contact that he would have access to the camps where thirty-five Colombian military officials,
members of the National Police, and politicians were being held. He was not told whether he would be able to interview Betancourt or the three Americans. Many of the hostages he would see were part of the same group he had reported on in 2001 and those who had been held back during the prisoner exchange with Pastrana's government. Botero knew how hard the conditions were in the jungle, and he wondered how the hostages, whom he now considered friends, were faring. In several different packs he gathered the things he would need for his journey: a couple of shirts, a pair of jeans, a lot of underwear, and all the tapes he could fit. He also packed his green book for taking notes, pens of different colors, the audio recorder, batteries, and, above all else, his camera, a bright, flashy Canon XL1—a machine difficult to take into the jungle because of the humidity, but ideal for ensuring a quality sufficient for television broadcast. In his backpack he put videos that he had shot over the past few months of the hostages' relatives sending messages to the captives. If he had the chance, he would show the videos to the hostages and take the opportunity to record them watching, creating a type of virtual meeting between family members who had not been able to speak for up to six years. He also carried magazines in which the hostages were mentioned, books to soothe the boredom and raise their morale, plenty of cigarettes, candy, chocolates, and real-world essentials: toothpaste, disposable razors, sanitary napkins, shampoo. In a moment of wishful thinking that he might be able to interview the Americans, he added a John Grisham book in English that he'd found in a bookstore and two copies of
Newsweek
and
The Miami Herald
so that the men could have some news from the United States. The prospect of seeing the Americans was what truly excited him most, but he was nervous and angry with himself for never having learned English.

Botero's motivation was twofold. He was sure that if the U.S. government saw an interview with its three kidnapped citizens direct from their jungle prison camp, something would definitely have to be done to help get them released. Perhaps President Bush would even pressure Uribe's government to make an exchange of prisoners so that the Americans could be freed, which would help liberate Ingrid Betancourt and all of the others, too. It would also be the first time in his career that his coverage of the Colombian civil war would reach the United States.

To learn more about the Americans, Botero searched the Internet for stories in the U.S. press. He found very few. But there was one extensive article on
MSNBC.com
about the crash, and it included quotes from Jo Rosano, the mother of Marc Gonsalves. There weren't any interviews with other family members, and Botero couldn't understand why. Because Botero was sure that he would be the only civilian the men had seen since their kidnapping, he wanted to take something into the jungle that would help gain their trust and give the men some solace. He contacted two colleagues in the United States and asked them to record an interview with Rosano—specifically, to record a message from Rosano to her son. In her Connecticut home, Rosano was nervous and suspicious, but she agreed to the interview. Against a backdrop of flickering candles and dozens of sympathy cards, she cried as she spoke:

Botero downloaded the video file from the Internet, packed it along with the messages from the other families, and set off to find his contact. The trip was perilous. For the first three days, he traveled alone, catching a ride when he could along the country's paved roads. At each of the seven military checkpoints, he convinced the soldiers who tried to stop him that he was making a documentary about “the reality of the battlefields.” Then he crossed the boundary that took him to the “other” Colombia—the former DMZ, where the FARC was still the law of the land—and met his two guerrilla guides. Along the way, he took copious notes in his journal, describing the sounds, smells, and mysteries of the jungle, telling about walking on trails and navigating rivers, traveling in boats and on mules and on foot over impossible routes through endless green.

It was the middle of July, one of the rainiest months in the Amazon.
At night, Botero and his guides suffered under heavy downpours. Each morning, the jungle was bathed by fog, which only lifted at midday, when humidity took hold of everything. The guerrillas told Botero that they preferred the apocalyptic rains to the dry months, when water was scarce and the enemy was freer to move about. But the season brought many difficulties as well, they said. Moving through the jungle was more difficult, clothing never dried, illnesses increased, and food got wet and rotted. The hours standing guard in the rain seemed eternal, and a collective melancholy took root in the rustic housings that the guerrillas continued constructing and dismantling throughout their nomadic travels.

Botero appreciated that his guides helped carry his gear, but he cursed them when they dropped his pack and broke his provision of J&B scotch. As they continued past village after village, each more isolated and impoverished than the last, Botero felt like a visitor to a war that interested no one. Many Colombians, especially those from the cities, seemed accustomed and resigned to listen, read, and watch the news of the deaths, explosions, and pain and suffering of thousands of families in the remote areas where the battles occurred. Even as four million internally displaced people arrived in Bogotá and other big cities to escape the endless violence in desperately poor settlements, life seemed to proceed normally. News of the war was mixed with that of corruption scandals and soccer goals and beauty queens, and somehow became a part of everyday life. Many times, Botero felt that people watched the news of the dead, wounded, and displaced as if it were one more soap opera of the many that aired on Colombian television. It was a world that Botero found difficult to explain when talking with colleagues or with politicians from other countries. The only reason he could think of as to why there was so much indifference toward his country's suffering was that perhaps people in other countries had become bored hearing the same news from Colombia: murders, bombs, kidnappings, drug traffickers, guerrillas, paramilitaries.

In the afternoon of the fifteenth day of his trip, Botero sat on the edge of a makeshift bed of planks, checking his equipment and writing in his notebook, when a young guerrilla named Nancy suddenly appeared. At first, Botero did not hear the great news that she brought because her
fresh scent and wide, flirtatious smile overwhelmed him. “You have been given permission to interview the gringos,” she told him.

It had been five months since the three Americans had been kidnapped, and during their captivity, they had not spoken to anyone other than their captors. While many of the other political hostages were kept together in a large prison camp, the extremely valuable nature of the Americans caused the guerrillas to keep them far away from all other captives. They had no access to radio broadcasts or newspapers, and they were desperate to find out what was going on in the outside world, especially what was being done on their behalf. At New Camp, where the three men slept in separate quarters, they were still forbidden to speak to one another, but despite the unbearable loneliness, the men had found ways to cope. Thomas Howes used pages from his notebook to make a full deck of cards, but because he was still not allowed to speak to anyone, the only game he played was solitaire. Marc Gonsalves drew a picture of his house, the layout of each room, in a small notebook that the guerrillas had given him. Every morning, he would open his journal to page 13 and say “good morning” to his family.