News of a Kidnapping (10 page)

The least-remembered victims were Liliana Rojas Arias, the wife of the cameraman Orlando Acevedo, and Martha Lupe Rojas, Richard Becerra’s mother. Though they were not close friends, or relatives—despite their last names—the abduction made them inseparable.
“Not so much because of our pain,” Liliana has said, “but to keep each other company.”

Liliana was nursing Erick Yesid, her eighteen-month-old son, when “Criptón” called to tell her that Diana Turbay’s entire crew had been abducted. She was twenty-four years old, had been married for three, and lived on the second floor of her in-laws’ house in the San Andrés district in southern Bogotá. “She’s
such a happy girl,” a friend has said, “she didn’t deserve such ugly news.” And imaginative as well as happy, because when she recovered from the initial blow she sat the child in front of the television set during the news programs so that he could see his daddy, and continued to do this without fail until his release.

Both she and Martha Lupe were informed by the people at the news program
that they would continue to provide them with money, and when Liliana’s son became sick, they took care of the expenses. Nydia Quintero, Diana’s mother, also called the two women to try to imbue them with a serenity she herself never had.
She promised that all the efforts she made with the government would be not only for her daughter but also for the entire crew, and that she would pass on any
information she received about the hostages. And she did.

Martha Lupe lived with her two daughters, who were then fourteen and eleven years old, and was supported by Richard. When he left with Diana’s team, he said it would be a three-day trip, so that after the first week she began to feel uneasy. She does not believe it was a premonition, she has said, but the fact is that she called the news
program over and over again until they told her that something strange had happened. A little while later it was announced that the crew had been abducted. From then on she played the radio all day, waiting for them to be returned, and called the show whenever her heart told her to. She was troubled by the thought that her son was the most vulnerable of the hostages. “But all I could do was cry
and pray,” she says. Nydia Quintero convinced her there were many other things she could do for their release. She invited her to civic and religious meetings and filled her with her own fighting spirit. Liliana had a similar feeling about Orlando, and this caught her in a dilemma: He might be the last one executed because he was the least valuable, or the first because his death would provoke the
same public outcry but with fewer serious consequences for the kidnappers. This idea made her burst into uncontrollable weeping, and continued to do so throughout his entire captivity. “Every night after I put the baby to bed, I would sit on the terrace and cry, watching the door so I would see him come in,” she has said. “And that is what I did, night after night, until I saw him again.”

In
mid-october Dr. Turbay called Hernando Santos with a message worded in their personal code. “I have some very good newspapers if you’re interested in bullfighting. I’ll send them to you if you like.” Hernando understood this to mean an important
development concerning the hostages. In fact, it was a cassette sent to Dr. Turbay’s house and postmarked Montería, the evidence that Diana and her companions
were still alive, which the family had asked for over and over again during the past few weeks. The voice was unmistakable: “Daddy, it’s difficult to send you a message under these conditions, but after our many requests they’ve allowed us to do it.” Only one sentence gave any clues to possible future actions: “We watch and listen to the news constantly.”

Dr. Turbay decided to show the message
to the president, and find out at the same time if there were new developments. Gaviria received Turbay and Santos as his workday was ending, as always in his private library, and he was relaxed and more talkative than usual. He closed the door, poured the whiskey, and allowed himself a few political confidences. The capitulation process seemed to have run aground because of the Extraditables’ obstinacy,
and the president was prepared to get it back in the water by appending certain legal clarifications to the original decree. He had worked on this all afternoon and was confident it would be resolved that same night. Tomorrow, he promised, he would have good news for them.

They returned the next day, as arranged, and found him transformed into a wary, morose man whose first words set the tone
for a conversation without hope. “This is a very difficult moment,” Gaviria said. “I’ve wanted to help you, and I have been helping within the limits of the possible, but pretty soon I won’t be able to do anything at all.” It was obvious that something fundamental in his spirit had changed. Turbay sensed it right away, and before ten minutes had passed he rose from his chair with solemn composure.
“Mr. President,” he said without a trace of resentment, “you are proceeding as you must, and we must act as the fathers of our children. I understand, and ask you not do anything that might create a problem for you as head of state.” As he concluded he pointed at the presidential chair.

“If I were sitting there, I would do the same.”

Gaviria stood, pale as death, and walked with them to the
elevator. An aide rode down with them and opened the door of the car waiting for them in the courtyard of the private residence. Neither of them spoke until they had driven out into the melancholy rain of an October evening. The noisy traffic on the avenue sounded muffled through bulletproof windows.

“We shouldn’t expect anything else from him,” Turbay said with a sigh after a long, thoughtful
silence. “Something happened between last night and today, and he can’t say what it is.”

This dramatic meeting with the president was the reason doña Nydia Quintero moved to the foreground. She had been married to former president Turbay Ayala, her uncle, and the father of her four children, the eldest of whom was Diana. Seven years before the abduction, her marriage to Turbay had been annulled
by the Holy See; her second husband was Gustavo Balcázar Monzón, a Liberal parliamentarian. She had been first lady and knew the limits protocol placed on a former president, above all in his dealings with a successor. “The only thing he could have done,” Nydia had said, “was try to make President Gaviria see his obligation and his responsibilities.” And that was what she attempted, though she
had few illusions.

Her public activity, even before the official announcement of the abduction, reached staggering proportions. She had planned the appearance of groups of children on radio and television newscasts all over the country to read a plea for the release of the hostages. On October 19, the “Day of National Reconciliation,” she had arranged for simultaneous noon masses in various cities
and towns to pray for goodwill among Colombians. In Bogotá, while crowds waving white handkerchiefs gathered in many neighborhoods to demonstrate for peace, the ceremony took place on the Plaza de Bolívar, where a torch was lit, the flame to burn until the safe return of the captives. Through her efforts, television newscasts began each program with photographs of all the hostages, kept a tally
of the days they had been held captive, and
removed the corresponding picture as each prisoner was freed. It was also on her initiative that soccer matches throughout the country opened with a call for the release of the hostages. Maribel Gutiérrez, Colombia’s beauty queen for 1990, began her acceptance speech with a plea for their freedom.

Nydia attended the meetings held by the families of
the other hostages, listened to the lawyers, made efforts in secret through the Colombian Solidarity Foundation, which she has presided over for twenty years, and almost always felt as if she were running in circles around nothing. It was too much for her resolute, impassioned nature, her almost clairvoyant sensitivity. She waited for results of other people’s efforts until she realized they had reached
an impasse. Not even men as influential as Turbay and Hernando Santos could pressure the president into negotiating with the kidnappers. This certainty seemed absolute when Dr. Turbay told her about the failure of his last meeting with the president. Then Nydia decided to act on her own and opened a freewheeling second front to try to obtain her daughter’s freedom by the most straightforward
route.

It was during this time that the Colombian Solidarity Foundation received an anonymous phone call in its Medellín offices from someone who said he had firsthand information about Diana. He stated that an old friend of his on a farm near Medellín had slipped a note into his basket of vegetables, claiming that Diana was there, that the guards watched soccer games and swilled beer until they
passed out, and that there was no chance they could react to a rescue attempt. To make a raid even more secure, he offered to send a sketch of the farm. The message was so convincing that Nydia traveled to Medellín to give him her answer. “I asked the informant,” she has said, “not to discuss his information with anybody, and I made him see the danger to my daughter, and even to her guards, if
anyone attempted a rescue.”

The news that Diana was in Medellín suggested the idea of paying a visit to Martha Nieves and Angelita Ochoa, the sisters of
Jorge Luis, Fabio, and Juan David Ochoa, who had been accused of drug trafficking and racketeering and were known to be personal friends of Pablo Escobar. “I went with a fervent hope that they would help me contact Escobar,” Nydia reported years
later, recalling those bitter days. The Ochoa sisters told her of the abuse their families had suffered at the hands of the police, listened to her with interest, expressed sympathy for her situation, but also said there was nothing they could do as far as Pablo Escobar was concerned.

Martha Nieves knew what an abduction meant. In 1981 she had been kidnapped by the M-19, who demanded an exorbitant
ransom from her family. Escobar responded by creating a brutal gang called the MAS, or Death to Kidnappers, which obtained her release after three months of bloody war with the M-19. Her sister Angelita also considered herself a victim of police violence, and both women recounted devastating stories of police abuses, raids on their homes, and countless violations of human rights.

Nydia did not
lose heart. If nothing else, she wanted them to deliver a letter for her to Escobar. She had sent one earlier through Guido Parra but had received no reply. The Ochoa sisters refused to deliver another for fear Escobar would accuse them later of creating problems for him. By the end of the visit, however, they were more responsive to Nydia’s fervent pleas, and she returned to Bogotá certain that
a door had been opened that could lead in two different directions: one toward the release of her daughter, the other toward the peaceful surrender of the three Ochoa brothers. This made it seem appropriate to tell the president in person about her visit.

He saw her without delay. Nydia came right to the point, recounting the Ochoa sisters’ complaints about the actions of the police. The president
let her speak, asking only a few pertinent questions. His obvious intention was to give less weight to the accusations than she did. As for her own situation, Nydia wanted three things: the release of the hostages, the assertion of presidential
authority to prevent a rescue attempt that could have calamitous results, and the extension of the time limit for the surrender of the Extraditables. The
only assurance the president gave her was that no rescue of Diana or any other hostage would be attempted without authorization from their families.

“That’s our policy,” he said.

Even so, Nydia wondered if the president had taken sufficient precautions against someone making the attempt without authorization.

In less than a month, Nydia returned for more talks with the Ochoa sisters at the
home of a mutual friend. She also visited one of Pablo Escobar’s sisters-in-law, who spoke to her at length of the brutality she and her family had suffered at the hands of the police. Nydia brought her a letter for Escobar: two and a half full-size sheets covered almost completely by her ornate hand and written with an expressive precision achieved after many drafts. Her purpose was to touch Escobar’s
heart. She began by saying that she was not writing to the fighter capable of doing anything to achieve his ends, but to Pablo the man, “a feeling man who loves his mother and would give his life for her, who has a wife and young, innocent, defenseless children whom he wishes to protect.” She understood that Escobar had abducted the journalists as a means of calling public attention to his cause,
but in her opinion he had already succeeded. And so—the letter concluded—“show the world the human being you are, and in a great, humanitarian act that everyone will understand, return the hostages to us.”

Escobar’s sister-in-law seemed truly moved as she read it. “You can be absolutely sure this letter will touch him,” she said as if to herself. “Everything you’re doing touches him, and that
can only work in your daughter’s favor.” Then she refolded the letter, put it in the envelope, and sealed it herself.

“Don’t worry,” she told Nydia with evident sincerity. “Pablo will have the letter today.”

Nydia returned to Bogotá that night, hopeful about the effect the letter would have and determined to ask the president for what Dr. Turbay had not dared to request: a halt in police operations
while the release of the hostages was being negotiated. She did so, and Gaviria told her straight out he could not give that order. “It was one thing for us to offer an alternative judicial policy,” he said later. “But suspending operations would not have meant freedom for the hostages but only that we had stopped hunting down Escobar.”

Nydia felt she was in the presence of a man of stone who
cared nothing for her daughter’s life. She had to control her rage as the president explained that law enforcement was not a negotiable subject, that the police did not have to ask permission to act, that he could not order them not to act within the limits of the law. The visit was a disaster.

After their failed efforts with the president, Turbay and Santos decided to try other avenues, and
they could think of none better than the Notables. The group was composed of two former presidents, Alfonso López Michelsen and Misael Pastrana; the parliamentarian Diego Montaña Cuéllar; and Cardinal Mario Revollo Bravo, archbishop of Bogotá. In October the families of the hostages met with them at the home of Hernando Santos. They began by recounting their conversations with President Gaviria. The
only part that interested López Michelsen was the possibility of amending the decree with judicial specifications, which might create new openings for the capitulation policy. “We have to get a foot in the door,” he said. Pastrana favored formulas that would pressure the drug dealers into surrender. But using what weapons? Hernando Santos reminded Montaña Cuéllar that he could mobilize the guerrilla
forces.