"Would you like some basuco, or marijuana?" asked Ramiro, an effete and illiterate 14-year-old whose eyelashes reminded me of Michael Jackson. I knew that basuco -- bazooka in English -- was bad cocaine, the dregs of processing. The quality of basuco is too low for export, so it's sold to the poor across South America.
"Gracias, no." I didn't need anything that might make me feel more paranoid.
The guerrillas use a lot of drugs, I soon learned. But they never again offered to share drugs with me.
But like heavy users everywhere, the FARC guerrillas liked to talk about drugs. Most people, if asked, assume that marijuana is the drug of choice of Colombia's ìMarxist guerrillas.î No way. The guerrillas have contempt for anyone who smokes marijuana. "Marijuana makes you crazy, but basuco gives powerî I heard, again and again.
The next morning, I got my first personal insight into a newer, and more dangerous, side of the South American drug trade. The Indian farmer grew an interesting crop behind his hut: onions interplanted with Asian opium poppies. I'd read of how the Colombian drug trade is shifting from cocaine to heroin, an opium derivative. Why? Simple. A kilogram of heroin is worth 10 kilos of cocaine once it hits the market. Recent articles describe how heroin is becoming the new drug of choice in North America and Europe, and how at least 80% of the hard drugs entering the United States come over the Mexican border. But few journalists realize that the new, purer heroin is from Colombia.
How ironic, I thought. I've lived and traveled across Asia for almost 25 years, but these are the first Asian opium poppies I've ever seen growingóhere in the northern Andes Mountains of South America. And I see them only because I was kidnapped.
"FARC seems to be in control here," I commented later to the Indian farmer whose home we occupied. He nodded.
"So most people support FARC?"
"Not really--but we have no choice."
The Indian wouldn't talk with me next day. He'd been warned.
Juaco, the 19-year-old comandante, gave me two children's notebooks on Day 3, and ordered me to write a ransom letter to Susan. [Hargrove's wife. -- Ed.]
"We're going on a long trip, Tomas," a guerrilla said that day. "Can you ride a horse?"
"Con seguro," I said. "Of course. I'm from Texas."
"Would you rather ride a horse, or a mule?"
"A horse."
That evening they brought me a mule. Her name was Batalla, or Battle.
A dozen guerrillas and I rode until midnight, higher and higher into the vast, empty Andes Mountains. The term "sure-footed as a mule" ran through my mind as we rode narrow, muddy trails. Sheer cliffs a meter away dropped to rivers that frothed around giant boulders far below.
"Be careful, Batalla," I kept repeating, in Spanish and English. "You're a beautiful mule, and I'm damn glad to be riding you instead of a stupid, clumsy horse."
I had long conversations with a female guerrilla named Erika as we rode. The guerrillas also called her la Italiana because, with her long, red hair, she could easily pass for an Italian film staff. Erika wore form-fitted fatigues with high rubber boots and carried an AK-47. She reminded me a lot of that classic photo of Patti Hearst.
From the beginning, I had stressed to the guerrillas that CIAT was an international organization, funded by more than 20 countries, foundations, and development agencies to help farmers in the developing countries. My strategy backfired. "CIAT can't pay a ransom," I told Rambo as we rode through the mountains. "We don't have money for that. All our funds are committed to research to improve conditions of the poorest farmers."
"What do you mean, CIAT can't raise a ransom?" Rambo responded. "You told me that CIAT gets money from more than 20 countries."
Two days of hard riding brought us to a high mountain valley. From there we climbed almost straight up the mountainside until we reached a still-higher valley, invisible from below. It was typical of FARC's mountain camps.
The guerrillas didn't worry about the threat of helicopter attack or rescue operations because the surrounding peaks, 1,000 feet higher, trapped a constant cloud cover. Cold rain fell for hours each day. High mountain winds further assured FARC's security. The altitude was about 3,000 meters, or 9,000 feet, I learned later.
We made camp in a one-room hut with thin mud walls, the only structure in the valley. The guerrillas tacked a piece of nylon against the hut's outer wall, making a tent where I'd stay. My bunk was leaves and weeds piled on a rotting wooden platform.
I was almost always alone, but had relative freedom the first couple of months. I could walk in an area the size of a football field during the day. From about 6 p.m. until 8 a.m the next day, I was shut in the tent, with an armed guard sitting outside. Food was mostly rice, with some beans and potatos and, occasionally, tuna or sardines.
About my captors. Some people have a romantic illusion of FARC guerrillas as idealists, even disenchanted leftist intellectuals who've dropped out from the university to fight the injustices of Colombian society.
Don't kid yourself.
The seven guerrillas who guarded me were illiterate or semiliterate kids, from 13 to 19 years old, with IQs about like that of my Basset Hound. Dangerous, too. Especially when stoned. They left broken homes, or no homes, in the countryside or urban slums to join FARC at age 12 or 13. FARC taught their moral values. Their kidnappings serve no political agenda: it's strictly for money.
A second-grade education was the norm. Some had never been to school. But their lack of education doesn't necessarily reflect the deprivation in which the guerrillas were raised. Few could have passed the third grade if they'd been born into the Kennedy family. I met few guerrillas whom I considered of even average intelligence--and I'm not confusing intelligence with education. The average guerrilla wasn't bright enough to understand the consequences of his or her actions. Knowing that was one of the more chilling aspects of captivity.
A third of the guerrillas are women. If I categorized all guerrillas from the cruelest to the least cruel (note that I don't say "...to the kindest"), I'd fill both extremes with females. Men had abused most of the women. It's easy to take revenge on a prisoner.
FARC claims to follow the principles of Che Guevara, but I had to explain to those ignorant children how the Argentine Communist helped Fidel Castro orchestrate the revolution that made Cuba the Western Hemisphere's only Communist state. The Bolivian Army killed Che in a battle with Communist guerrillas in 1967, I told them. (U.S. Green Berets were allegedly advisors with the group that finally got Che, but I decided to skip that part.)
No one ever tried to proselytize me. None of the guerrillas understood the basic tenets of Communism, and few had any concept of the world outside Colombia.
"Colombia will soon be a revolutionary Communist nation like Cuba, China, and Japan," Mono, my second comandante, lectured the guerrillas. He also speculated that the Soviet Union would soon send military assistance to FARC.
"Japan isn't Communist, and the Soviet Union no longer exists," I insisted. No one believed me.
Ramiro, who had offered me drugs my first night of captivity, was a flaming gay, who made no attempt to hide his homosexuality. His bunk was opposite my tent, separated by the thin mud wall. Iíd hear Ramiro and other male guerrillas wrestling, tickling, giggling together.
FARC seems to have treated me worse than most hostages, probably because of the CIAT acronym. But that's not why I was kidnapped. Even without my CIAT ID, the guerrillas would have taken me at the reten when they saw I was a foreigner. In fact, the U.S. Embassy had issued a warning only a few months before my capture. It stated that guerrillas were now setting up roadblocks on rural roads and warned that if a U.S. citizen drove into one, his release was unlikely.
Had my ID read "Baptist Church," the result would have been the same. In fact, I personally know of eight foreign missionaries taken in Colombia over the past three or four years; FARC kidnapped seven and ELN, another "leftist guerrilla" group, one. FARC executed two of the missionaries -- shots to the back of the head -- while I was being held. Three others may be dead.
A guerrilla arrived with a pack mule loaded with supplies after a month of captivity. The supplies included liquor. My seven guerrilla guards were soon stoned on basuco and drunk on cheap brandy. Around midnight, they started shooting their assault rifles over one another's heads. Mine too, since my tent was between the stoned groups. I wanted to lie on the floor, but it was cold mud.
Juaco, the comandante, threw a grenade near my tent at about 3 a.m. "Wow!" I thought, imagining how the stoned guerrilla viewed the explosion.
The guerrillas were still stoned the next morning. Juaco took a bottle of brandy and went fishing in a stream that rushed below the camp. The others continued to party, and to fire their weapons randomly.
Viejito sprayed the mountainside with bullets, his weapon on full automatic, at about 10 a.m. He paid no attention to a herd of cattle that grazed peacefully nearby. He should have.
I looked up from my tent. A cow lay on her back, hooves kicking in the air, about 150 feet away.
You're in deep shit, Viejito, I thought. You just shot a cow, while stoned. Even FARC must considered that bad taste. Next, I thought: Now, maybe we'll have some meat!
Juaco returned, still stoned on bad coke, and saw the dead cow. The illiterate teenager went crazy--really insane. He wandered aimlessly, shooting short bursts into the air, rocks, trees. Juaco seemed to have thought he'd lose his command, or worse. The other guerrillas were obviously scared of Juaco, and went to sleep off the binge in their bunks in the hut.
I should lie low, too, I thought. Juaco might consider this my fault. After all, they're in this terrible mountain camp for only one reason: to guard me. I returned to my tent and closed the flaps.
At noon I left the tent, and went into the hut to get my lunch. I was slicing an onion when Juaco entered the hut. The stoned guerrilla placed the muzzle of his Galil to the back of my head.
A deafening explosion rang through the hut! But I wasn't hurt. At the last moment, Juaco had raised the muzzle of his assault rifle, and shot over my head, through the roof.
Like many journalists, I'm a nervous type. Vietnam made me still more jumpy around explosions. But I didn't flinch, and cut through the onion like no shot had been fired. I was close to death, and knew it.
I turned. Juaco lay across his bunk, the rifle muzzle pressed against his cheek. He's killed himself, I thought. But where's the blood?
Gustavo rose from his bunk and silently pointed a finger at me, then the door. His message was clear: Get the hell out of here. I took my plate and returned to my tent.
The other guerrillas, terrified, left to butcher the cow. Juaco, alone in the hut, started shooting randomly, through the roof, the walls, the open door. The half inch of dried mud wall between Juaco and me would be no protection from a bullet.
"...I hear the metallic sliding [of] cartridges being chambered and ejected"I wrote in the tent. "...The air is thick with craziness and doom and blood. [That] someone may die today is in the air. Make sure it's not you, Hargrove....[But] I could be dead before this day is over...."
Juaco may return to the tent and kill me, I thought, an hour and a dozen rifle shots later. He almost executed me at noon. At 1405h I wrote:
There's been no shooting inside the hut for some time. What if Juaco's killed himself?....There's only he and I at the hut....If they find Juaco dead, and I'm here with him...that could look bad for me...especially in this insane time. If Juaco is alive, he may start shooting again. Can I go to the cow, join the others? They have guns, too....[But] I decide that the crazies at the cow are safer than the crazy in the hut, and I leave.
I waded through the mud to where the guerrillas were skinning the shot cow. Viejito lay curled in a fetal position by the corpse. He's dead, too, I thought...no, he's breathing. Then I jumped.
Juaco appeared over the crest of the hill. He waved his assault rifle at waist level, his finger on the trigger.
My God, I thought. I was trying to escape from Juaco--but Iíve walked straight to the insane son of a bitch!
"I thought [Juaco] was back at the hut, maybe dead," I wrote, reconstructing events that night. "He looked devastated, and acted like he was in a different world." (By then I'd figured out why I didnít know that Juaco was by the dead cow. He'd circled from below, out of my line of sight.)
The guerrillas ordered me to return to the hut for a knife, so I could help skin the cow. Before leaving, I spoke to Juaco. His eyes were wide and blank as he sat by the dead cow. He was wrapped in his ruana, or woolen cape, and hugged his Galil.
My voice was gentle, sincere, like Juaco --- crazy Juaco --- and I were close friends.
"Juaco, I know this has been a terrible day, but you can count on me," I said. "ll help you any way I can. Now, we have to save this meat. I'm going back to the hut, to get a knife. Remember, you have my support." Juaco stared ahead, blankly.
Pure hypocrisy. I felt only contempt for the miserable bastard. But that hypocrisy probably saved my life.
Back in the hut, I couldn't find the knife. I waded back to the dead cow, and reached the crest of the hill when--
"Ba-ba-bam!" A burst of three rounds on full automatic shattered the mountain air!
A woman screamed--terrified, anguished. I stood in the mud as the mountains echoed the gunshots and screams again and againÖa sound I'll never forget.
Gustavo appeared, an AK-47 leveled at me. "Go back to your tent!"
Ten minutes later, Melena came to the hut, crying. "Juaco killed himself."
FARC had no chain of command in place after Juaco's death--maybe because of its supposed Communist infrastructure.
"Pack everything to march," Leidi, the other female, said. "We're leaving."
Packing was easy. I had almost nothing.
Guerrillas piled Juaco's military web gear, ruana, and Swiss Army knife on his bunk, along with some candles, a new ballpoint pen, and two half-pint flasks of brandy.
Thou shalt not steal doesn't apply to hostages; a prisoner learns to be a thief fast. I stole a couple of candles and the ballpoint in the confusion.
Then I thought: Go for it, Hargrove. You won't get this chance again!
I slipped a flask of brandy into the front of my trousers. The bottle had been opened, but was almost full. No one noticed.
Meanwhile, a guerrilla had set ribs from the dead cow to roast in the coals of the kitchen fire. Leidi gave me a slab of half-cooked beef ribs.
Did I feel remorse over Juaco's death? None. I was glad the son of a bitch was dead, and I was alive. It could have been different. Easily. I pigged out on the meat.
We then left. Just before starting our march down the steep, muddy trail to the valley below, we paused for a last look at the camp.
Dead Juaco lay by the dead cow.
"Goodbye to this Valley of Death," I said in Spanish. From then on, the guerrillas called that camp el Valle de la Muerte.
After that, I named all of our camps. The guerrillas liked, and used, my names. The next camp was The Valley of Happiness, because it was so much better. But then came the Valley of the Shadow, Camp Loneliness, the Valley of the Volcano....
Halfway down the mountain, we stopped to rest. Leidi, a teen-age female guerrilla, told me what happened after I left the dead cow.
"Juaco stood and took a full bottle of brandy from under his ruana, opened it, drank, then recapped the bottle," she said. "He turned the selector switch of his assault rifle to full automatic, stuck the muzzle under his chin, and pushed the trigger with his thumb."
Three 7.62mm rounds had burst Juaco's head apart.
Then I realized: that opened flask of brandy that I stole...it was Juaco's. The last thing he did, before blowing himself away, was to drink from that bottle of brandy.
I liked that, and began to mock Juaco in my mind.
You kidnapped me, Juaco, but you're dead and I'm alive. And, you son of a bitch, I stole your last bottle of brandy. I'm glad it's that way.
Then another thought hit me: My diary. Only Juaco really knew about the two children's notebooks, where I was keeping my diary. Maybe, with luck --- and if I never write in front of the guerrillas, I'll get out of here, someday, with the diary, and use it to write a book.
Later, I was glad I'd left the money belt empty. I couldn't have used the cash--but I'd eventually walk from the mountains with a money belt stuffed with diary pages.
If it says anything about the FARC mentality, I was to meet two other guerrillas who called themselves Rambo over the next year --- plus one who wanted his fellow guerrillas to call him Rambo --- but none would.
+++ VALLEY Part One (Non-Framed) VALLEY Part Three (Non-Framed) +++
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