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

250 OUT OF CAPTIVITYwere diabolically clever. Just when we hit a high, they did something toknock us back down. A few nights later, we heard on the news that theU.S. had made arrangements with Colombia to have Simón Trinidadextradited there to eventually stand trial. President Uribe announcedthat if the FARC didn’t want this to happen, they needed to release alltheir prisoners immediately. We knew that was never going to occuranytime soon. The only response that we heard from the FARC was arumor, but one that was believable enough to send us hurtling downhillfrom the Lauren high: The FARC were going to hold all the hostagesfor the same length of time as the sentence Trinidad received. Wedidn’t know the formal charges against him, but it seemed possiblethat he could receive a life sentence.A week after the Trinidad news, Mono, who had become one of themore decent guards, came to us with an offer. He told us that he hadbeen wandering in the jungle and came across an abandoned campwhere he found a few Spanish-language magazines. Keith said thatwe would love to have them. With the exception of Tom’s copy of TheGeneral in His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Marquéz, we had shed allof our reading materials on the forty-day march. (In another gestureof kindness, Cereal Boy had found the copy of the book that Tom haddiscarded on the march and returned it to him when the march wasover.) Mono said that he would get them for us so long as we promisedto keep them hidden.That we didn’t rat him out after he brought us the magazines built upMono’s confidence in us. He began to open up to us, telling us his lifestory. He’d started out as a cow thief, then he joined the militia beforebecoming a full-fledged guerrilla. Mono was a bright kid and handsome,with definite European features. He was also completely into themacho thing and wore his rifle everywhere he went. He spoke with anobviously deliberate, lowered tone to his voice. It was funny and sad atthe same time, like a kid playing a man in a high school play.