Hostage Nation (33 page)

Botero had passed along Tucker's message to Raúl Reyes that proofs of life could help lower Trinidad's sentence, but the proofs were already in the works; Hugo Chávez had requested them to present to French president Nicolas Sarkozy on an upcoming visit, sending FARC commanders into a frenzy to comply. However, the logistics of producing and delivering proofs of life were complicated. As quickly as possible, a plan was devised, and in late October 2007, more than four years after they had last sent messages to the outside world, Ingrid Betancourt, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes, and twelve other prisoners found themselves in front of a video camera. Several of them were allowed to write letters as well. Luis Eladio Pérez was not happy when they came to remove his chains and told him to speak in front of the video camera. “I wanted to be with the chains on,” Pérez wrote. “And I told them, ‘Be men. Film me as you have me, like an animal. Don't be ashamed to show the world your behavior.'” Stansell, Howes, and Gonsalves also demanded that they be filmed in the chains they were forced to wear, but the guerrillas didn't allow it. Pérez convinced many of the hostages not to speak on camera, which he believed would impede what the guerrillas were trying to do. “It was to pressure the guerrillas, because what were they going to negotiate; what were they going to show the world if all of us refused to give them a proof of life?” wrote Pérez.

The videos, photos, and letters were put in an envelope and given to a young guerrilla sympathizer, who was instructed to take them to Bogotá. To ensure that the girl would guard the package with her life, the guerrillas told her that it was full of cash. She was told that once she got to Bogotá, she was to make contact with another FARC member, who would travel from Venezuela to meet her and take the package. But the transfer never happened. Colombian agents had picked up the trail of one or possibly both of the women. The women arrived in Bogotá completely unaware that they were being followed. When the two met
on a busy street in Bogotá to exchange the package, they were slammed facedown on the pavement and the envelope was confiscated. The Colombian government immediately released the videos to media around the world. What the government did not do—for a change—was verbally condemn the FARC for acts of terrorism. If they wanted proof of the FARC's atrocities, the videos spoke volumes. The image of Ingrid Betancourt was most shocking. She appeared emaciated, her skin gray and stretched over bone, and her hair hung to her waist. Even more heartbreaking was a long letter to her mother, Yolanda Pulecio. It seemed that after almost six years in captivity, the former senator, who had survived a hunger strike and numerous death threats, was totally and completely shattered.

Betancourt told her mother that she was in poor physical heath and mentally numb. Her hair was falling out, and she could not eat. She said her life in captivity was not a life at all, but, rather, a dismal waste of time. “Here nothing is one's own,” she wrote. “Nothing lasts, uncertainty and precariousness are the only constant.” Her sole luxury was a Bible, and her only lifeline to the outside world came in the form of radio messages, sent mostly from her mother and her children. Hearing about her children, she said, was the only thing that made her happy. She asked her mother to give a message to her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, who, although he continued working for her liberation, rarely left her messages on the radio. “Tell him to be at peace with himself and with me. That if life gives us the opportunity, we will come out fortified from this test,” she wrote.

Betancourt's letter had been leaked by someone in the government and published by the Colombian press. Her mother was outraged.
El Tiempo
reported that Pulecio was considering legal action against the prosecutor's office. But the letter created a firestorm, and a new light was shone on the horrors of captivity. Many left-leaning intellectuals who had once been sympathetic to the FARC were aghast at the hostages' treatment. In France, the push to do something for Betancourt intensified as it was rumored she was near death. In front of the Hôtel du Ville (Paris's town hall), a campaign portrait of Betancourt had been hanging since February 2005, but in December 2007, a six-foot
image of Betancourt in captivity replaced the smiling photo, and an electronic device ticked away the days of her captivity.

In three separate videos, the American hostages seemed to be doing much better than Betancourt, and the images provided some solace for their families. Keith Stansell stood completely still, his arms still muscular, his haircut neat as a marine's. The camera microphone picked up jungle sounds in the background as Stansell glared icily toward the camera, arms crossed defiantly over his chest, chiseled jaw clenched. In a separate video, Marc Gonsalves looked down at the ground, his hands behind his back, revealing a receding hairline and swatting at a fly on his neck. Of the three Americans, only Thomas Howes spoke to the camera. Pérez says that it was because Howes, who was plagued by health problems, had little hope of making it out of captivity alive. “Hi, Mariana, I'm sending you this video on the twenty-second of October, 2007. I was very proud to hear your voice on the radio a short time ago. I love you very much,” Howes said. “You and the boys. Please send my best to the family. I've got a letter for you. And a will, and a last testament that I'm going to give. Hopefully it'll get passed to you. Again I love you very much, Mariana. To my company, thank you very much for taking care of our families, and I ask that you please continue to do so. Thank you.”

Although the proofs of life had resulted in a major debacle for the guerrillas, Manuel Marulanda and the FARC Secretariat assumed that the American prosecutors would take the proofs into account in Trinidad's sentencing. But neither Kohl nor anyone else in the U.S. government was impressed by the FARC's olive branch. Gary Noesner tried to convince the DOJ otherwise, in the hope that it would encourage some kind of deal to send Trinidad back to Colombia, or at least reduce Trinidad's sentence, something that could be helpful for the hostage situation. But Kohl and others didn't count the proofs as having fulfilled the FARC's end of the bargain, because they'd been confiscated, not released. With the sentencing scheduled to take place two days later, it was rumored that Kohl would seek the maximum sixty-year sentence for the fifty-seven-year-old guerrilla.

In the meantime, Álvaro Uribe, sick of Chávez's posturing and
cozying up to FARC leaders in dozens of media ops and furious that Chávez had spoken behind his back to Gen. Mario Montoya, the head of the Colombian army, demanded that the Venezuelan president stay out of the hostage negotiation business for good. An enraged Chávez took the opportunity to cut all ties to Uribe and announced that relations with Colombia were in the “deep freezer.” But Chávez was now more determined than ever to be the one to deliver the hostages to freedom. Just before Christmas in 2007, Chávez announced that the FARC would release three hostages to him. The names of those to be released shocked Colombians and observers around the world. While the French government had spent millions of dollars and endless hours lobbying for the release of Ingrid Betancourt, instead it would be her former friend and colleague Clara Rojas who would go free. Along with Rojas, the FARC promised to release Rojas's three-year-old son, Emmanuel, and former Colombian congresswoman Consuelo González de Perdomo, who'd been held for over six years.

There was much speculation about why the Secretariat chose the two women and the child. The story of Rojas giving birth in captivity had shocked the nation, creating intense public pressure for the FARC to release Emmanuel. Consuelo González de Perdomo was one of the few women held by the FARC, and her daughters had worked hard to win her freedom, which impressed the guerrillas. The Secretariat believed that after the unilateral releases the public would recognize the guerrillas' generosity and surely support the idea of a humanitarian exchange for the rest of the captives. Moreover, for the FARC it was a good way to get closer to Chávez, whom they had always admired and considered an ally.

A delighted Chávez dubbed the mission “Operation Emmanuel,” after the child, and invited more than one hundred journalists and observers from eight countries to meet in the Colombian city of Villavicencio on December 28, 2007, where they would wait for instructions from the FARC. The first day passed uneventfully while rescue crews in Venezuelan helicopters bearing Red Cross emblems stood by to receive coordinates where they would collect the hostages.

President Chávez had promised Rojas's and González de Perdomo's families that the women would be home to ring in the new year. But
days passed and all Chávez was left with were excuses from the FARC. On January 2, 2008, the FARC finally released a message, claiming that they couldn't orchestrate the releases because President Uribe had called for intense military activity in the area where the hostages were being held. Hollywood director Oliver Stone, who was a fan of Hugo Chávez and had gone to Venezuela to film the documentary
South of the Border
, told
The Observer
, “It's Colombia's fault. Colombia did not want it to happen, and I think there were other outside forces, like Bush.… Every Colombian that I spoke to was scared of the military in some way or another; they're the most dangerous people, not the FARC.” That same day, Uribe appeared in Villavicencio and made an astonishing announcement at a press conference: The reason the FARC was not releasing the hostages was because they did not have Emmanuel in their possession. “The FARC terrorist group doesn't have any excuse. They've fooled Colombia and now they want to fool the international community,” Uribe told the massive congregation of journalists, who were skeptical of his intentions. The child had been found living in foster care in Bogotá, Uribe said, and was now safely in the custody of the state. Many believed it was a ridiculous ploy by Uribe to remove Chávez from the negotiations and to make the FARC look bad in their time of obvious humanitarianism. But it
was
true. And to prove it, Rojas's brother had given a DNA sample to compare with the boy's. The FARC looked ridiculous and so did Hugo Chávez, who was furious with the bumbling guerrillas. Chávez quickly called his people out of Villavicencio, and behind the scenes, he demanded that the FARC hand over Rojas and González de Perdomo to him immediately.

Eight days later, on January 10, 2008, Rojas and González de Perdomo were released to a Red Cross and Venezuelan commission. In video footage, Rojas and González de Perdomo appeared healthy and enormously relieved as they spoke by satellite phone to Hugo Chávez. “Mr. President, oh Mr. President, a million thanks for all of your humanitarian efforts,” said González de Perdomo. “Please, Mr. President, don't let your guard down, Mr. President. Those who are still there told us to give you that message. We have to continue working. A thousand thanks, Mr. President. Yes, sir. Thank you. And you are helping us, Mr. President, to return to life.” An equally jubilant Rojas took
the satellite phone: “Mr. President, I am thankful from the bottom of my heart for these people that you have sent us. A million thanks. Yes, we are being reborn.”

It was several days before Rojas would be reunited with her son and learn the details of his difficult journey. The story quickly emerged that Emmanuel had been taken from Rojas when he was eight months old, under the guise that he would receive treatment for a tropical disease and his broken arm. Instead, Emmanuel had been taken to a nearby village and handed over to a poor campesino family who could barely afford to feed him. Sometime later, a sickly baby with no known history arrived in the foster care system, a ward of the Colombian state. He was undernourished and his broken arm remained untreated.

How Rojas had managed to become pregnant in captivity was a matter of great speculation, and some wondered whether she had been raped by one of her captors. According to Rojas, that was not the case. Nor would she confirm Botero's speculation that she'd had a consensual relationship with one of the guerrillas. Luis Eladio Pérez wrote in his book that Rojas had secured permission to have sexual relations and was supplied with condoms to prevent pregnancy. Some speculated that she had planned to get pregnant, in the hope that the guerrillas would free her. Rojas told members of the media, who were understandably fascinated with her story, that she had no idea if the father of her son was still alive. Some of the hostages believed he was not. Martín Sombra, the commander in charge of Rojas during her pregnancy, was captured by Colombian forces in February 2008. From jail, Sombra told Ingrid Betancourt's husband that the guerrilla soldier suspected of being the father of Emmanuel had been executed for his part in the conception. Other guerrillas would tell Jorge Enrique Botero that Emmanuel's father hadn't been killed, but was sentenced to hard labor and stripped of his weapon for more than a year.

O
n the northern part of the border between Colombia and Venezuela, the land juts out into an enormous peninsula of temperate desert called La Guajira. Giant dunes reach down to the Caribbean Sea on the Colombian side and into the Gulf of Venezuela on the neighboring coast. Heading south along this same political boundary, a huge mountain range rises. The northernmost extension of the Andes, it is called the Serranía de Perijá, and it was in this region that Simón Trinidad began his career as a guerrilla. On one side of the wild virgin mountains is the Venezuelan state of Zulia. On the other side is the region that the family of Simón Trinidad was from—the department of César.

“It's impossible, really impossible, unless you're an expert or you have a GPS, to know whether you are in Venezuelan territory or Colombian territory,” says Botero, for whom the mountains had become a more and more common destination. His target each time was the camp of FARC Secretariat member and Caribbean Bloc commander Iván Márquez. Traveling to see Márquez was difficult, but less so than the trip to see Raúl Reyes near the Ecuadorian border or the weeks-long trek to the hostage camps in the jungle. After several days of travel, Botero would meet a guerrilla who would guide him up the rustic footpaths, or
trochas
, through the mountains along the border.
The trip to the camp was an arduous two-day journey by foot and on mules. The reason that Márquez's camp had become so important to the journalist was that it had become a sort of “international relations” headquarters for the FARC. And while Raúl Reyes was still the main Secretariat member dealing with hostage negotiations, Márquez and several other high-level commanders had also become players.