I was driving fast through the sugar cane fields 10 minutes later when I saw soldiers waving vehicles off the road a few hundred meters ahead. No problem. Retens, or roadblocks, are part of daily life in Colombia. Military or police set up the retens to search cars for criminals, drugs, weapons.
At that time I saw a front guard in tiger-striped fatigues, holding an M-16 at waist level. That's standard practice at retens; it's to keep cars from turning back. But one thing seemed odd. The guard had shoulder-length hair, held back by a red bandana.
I braked behind a truck at the roadblock, and waited for instructions from the soldiers. Like other Colombian soldiers, these wore camouflage uniforms. But some wore floppy hats and others, berets.
All of the soldiers were armed, but two carried pistols in their hands, not in holsters. Strange....
A soldier approached wearing...my God, an olive ski mask!
I'd never met anyone wearing a ski mask, except when skiing...and I'd never been skiing.
Ski Mask waved a .45 automatic. The message was clear. Get out of the car.
I pulled out my wallet and handed Ski Mask my ID cards. The guerrilla saw that the wallet was stuffed with Colombian pesos, so he took that, too.
Damn! I thought. Why didn't I hide that cash in my money belt?
I'd bought the stylish leather belt, with its secret pocket running along the inside, in Brazil, in case of a robbery.
"I work for el Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical," I said in Spanish. I was careful not to use the acronym "CIAT" because it sounds like the Spanish pronunciation for "CIA." Everyone at CIAT has a funny story about such confusion. My story wouldn't be so funny.
Ski Mask talked with another guerrilla, and I heard the word gringo. The guerrillas then motioned with assault rifles for me to move--fast--into the back of a stolen Chevrolet pickup. A guerrilla stayed there to guard me.
A guerrilla dashed up to my guard. ìPropaganda!î he shouted. The guard pulled a handful of leaflets, imprinted with the portrait of Che Guevara wearing a black beret, from his fatigue jacket..
"Who are you?" I asked the guard.
"FARC," he said matter-of-factly.
FARC once got money from the USSR and China, via Cuba, and through kidnapping and narcotics. Today, there's no more money from the Communist countries.
But FARC wouldn't kidnap a CIAT scientist, not purposely, I thought. We make no profit, sell nothing, exploit no natural resources. If the guerrillas fight to help Colombia's impoverished...that's what CIAT does. Ski Mask doesn't understand. I'll soon meet someone in charge, who knows what CIAT is, and drive on to work.
Two teenagers climbed into the back of the pickup. One baby-faced guerrilla looked about 13, but his Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifle made him look older. Two bandoleers of M-60 machine gun ammo crossed his chest. The other guerrilla wore a red bandanna, and carried an Israeli-made Galil.
The guerrillas fanned the roadblock with automatic weapons as they backed to the pickup and two stolen vans. A guerrilla gunned the pickup, and we sped away, bouncing wildly along a gravel road through the sugar cane fields. Half an hour later, we were driving into the Cordilleras Centrales of the surrounding northern Andes.
The guerrillas then regrouped at a small store by the road, where they ordered soft drinks and talked about the roadblock. There, I was transferred to a van driven by the comandante of the roadblock.
"Me llaman Rambo," he said. They call me Rambo.
Ski Mask rode beside him. He removed his mask, and looked like a pudgy, dim-witted grocery store clerk. Talking into the handset of a radio, he identified himself as Gato Negro, or Black Cat.
"You've made a mistake," I explained. "I work in agriculture, to help the poor farmers."
I told them how CIAT works with beans, cassava, pastures, and rice.
Rambo shrugged.
An hour later, we drove into a mountain village. A stark, whitewashed Catholic church stood across the plaza.
FARC obviously considered the village its own. Guerrillas in fatigues strolled the streets and basked in the sun on concrete park benches.
Does this village have police? I wondered. And what in the hell is the priest of that Catholic church doing?
Rambo and Black Cat left, but ordered two other guerrillas into the van to guard me.
"What is CIAT?" one guerrilla asked the other.
"The intelligence branch of the U.S. Army."
"No, no!" I interjected. "Es el Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical!" I explained CIAT's work again.
They weren't interested.
Rambo returned, carrying the briefcase he'd taken from my car.
"Here. These are yours." Rambo handed me two checkbooks, but kept the briefcase. Yeah, as if the briefcase and car and my life aren't mine, I thought. But I didn't say that. I was learning fast.
One checkbook was for my U.S. dollar account in the 1st National Bank of Rotan, Texas, my home town. The other was for my Colombian peso account.
I doubted that I'd be writing many checks, but took the checkbooks.
We drove to a stucco hut. Rambo barked orders, and a civilian brought a plate of rice and potatoes, and a boiled chicken wing.
"Do you like the food of the Indigenas?" the man asked.
"Mucho," I lied. "You are an Indigena, an Indian?"
"Everyone here is Indian."
We left the village an hour later and rendezvoused with about 25 guerrillas in a mountain valley. Three guerrillas ordered me, at gunpoint, to climb a steep mountain slope to a treeline that would hide us from spotter planes.
Surely I'll be home by tomorrow, I thought. I wish I could make notes about what's happening. I knew, from Vietnam, that one forgets. I had a new ballpoint in my front pocket, but no paper.
My checkbooks! I remembered. I tore out the records of deposits and withdrawals, and thrust them deep into the mulch of decaying leaves. I started writing on pages of my dollar checkbook.
That's why Chapter 1 of the book that eventually emerged from my diary is titled "1st National Bank of Rotan, Texas."
+++ VALLEY Part One (Non-Framed) +++ Road Part 2 +++ VALLEY Part Three (Non-Framed) +++
In too much of a hurry for a SHOUT OUT? E-mail your comments to our Editor: