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

278 OUT OF CAPTIVITYtheir superiors. If they wanted to be a couple, they had to get approval.The FARC weren’t interested in increasing their numbers throughchildbirth. The women were given contraceptive pills, and if a womandid get pregnant, she would have to abort the fetus—no questionsasked. This didn’t stop the FARC guerrillas from engaging openly andfrequently in sex. That, the FARC commandantes couldn’t control, butin all other ways they allowed the guerrillas little freedom with theirlove lives.Becoming closer to many of the guards at the Exercise Camp helpedus to see how the FARC’s tight restrictions on its foot soldiers set off achain reaction that impacted us. Because they had so little command oftheir own lives and made so few choices for themselves, we were justabout the only things that they could actually control. Even though theywere never able to control us completely, the need to assert themselvesover us had a lot to do with their cruel and arbitrary treatment. Knowingthis didn’t justify their actions, of course, but it did help explainthem. It was easy, both literally and figuratively, to put myself in theboots of those low-level FARC every now and then. I didn’t have to walka mile in their shoes because I’d already done probably hundreds ofmiles in the ones they grudgingly supplied me. Even though the FARCrefused to give me glasses for so long, I could see them clearly for whatthey were.It was no secret that among the three of us, I was the most difficultfor the FARC to deal with, and that was okay with me. If the only wayI could confront their need to control me was by being standoffish, Iwas comfortable with it. We each had our different ways of coping withKeith’s proverbial shitheads. Sometimes the way I engaged them cameback to bite me, but I got back at them, as I knew I would in the end. Iwasn’t going to give in completely, and neither were Keith and Marc. Imade my decision to cooperate with them on my terms, but we all wentalong with them in the larger sense because this would ultimately be avictory for us. We’d survive.