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

224 OUT OF CAPTIVITYIn the end, little turns like this were what Caribe was all about. Smallpower plays, people competing for control. I felt like I was sitting in on amaster class in the art of negotiation and power politics. I liked Orlandoall right, but this incident highlighted that he was a master manipulator.I’d seen him get other people angry at one another. At various times he’dtold us that Ingrid was writing letters to Sombra telling him that we wereCIA agents or that we were dangerous and negative influences on camplife. When Clara was removed from camp to give birth, he told us thatIngrid was writing letters to her to encourage her to name Tom as thefather of her baby. He’d planted a seed that we were dirty, smelly Americanswho didn’t wear underwear, had rashes that would infect everyonein the camp, and were generally unhygienic. By nature, he was an instigator.I knew that he and Keith were close, so I mostly kept my perceptionsto myself. Keith was usually an amazing judge of character, but inthe case of Orlando, he seemed to have a bit of a blind spot—somethinghe could have easily said (and did) about Tom and me.I did have Orlando’s skills at manipulation to thank for confusingme even more about all the relationships among the prisoners and theguards. Not much more than a month or two into our time at Caribe,one of the lead guards, Fabio, came into our compound, followed byanother guard carrying a small TV, a VCR, and a generator. They set theequipment up and inserted a video into the VCR. It was a proof of lifevideo of the twenty-eight military hostages in the adjacent compound,and some of the politicians in ours—Orlando, Consuelo, Jorge, andGloria. Like ours, their proof of life had also been produced by JorgeEnrique Botero. After the video was over, he inserted another tape.The first shots to appear were from a car driving through my mother’sneighborhood. I recognized the area immediately, and Fabio quicklyturned the video off. We knew it was our proof of life, and we pleadedwith Fabio to let us see it. Orlando helped us, convincing Fabio thateverything would be fine if we saw it, and that we wouldn’t tell anyone.Fabio relented.