Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

Broken Bones and Broken Bonds219the news reports. In June of 2004, we had been with the Colombiansfor eighteen months, when we learned via radio that President Uribeand the U.S. government had implemented a new plan to confront theFARC in southern Colombia. Named Plan Patriota (Plan Patriot), theprogram was heavily funded by the U.S. government, and it involvedthe U.S. actively training Colombian soldiers as special jungle commandos.According to the radio reports we heard, Plan Patriota was themost aggressive effort the Colombian military had ever engaged in todeal with the FARC, involving a substantial offensive against the guerrillasin southern Colombia.Some of the sources in Colombia claimed that Plan Patriota tookthe disguise off of the U.S.’s efforts to cripple the drug trade. Whereasthe stated aim of Plan Colombia—the strategy that had brought us andCalifornia Microwave into Colombia in first place—was to wipe out thedrug trade, many Colombians, including a number of the politicians inour camp, had always believed it was merely a front for taking on theFARC.Plan Patriota was designed to succeed where Plan Colombia hadfailed: wiping out the FARC. We had no idea how long Plan Patriotahad been in effect, but a number of the Colombian radio commentatorsbelieved that with Plan Patriota, the U.S. and Colombian governmentshad decided to drop the pretense of drug interdiction and engage theFARC more directly. This raised the ire of some of the politicals atCaribe, but none of us wanted to debate them on the issue of U.S. aidto Colombia. What we did want to debate was how this would affectour chances of being rescued, freed, or executed. The news that moretroops were on the ground and intent on capturing or killing the FARCwas a mixed blessing. While we knew this heightened engagementof the FARC was the hard right thing for the governments to do, theoffensive increased our chances of being killed.Radios kept us connected to all of these developments as they unfolded,helping us stay ahead of the news as much as possible. Knowing that