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

364 OUT OF CAPTIVITYthe cross fire. We weren’t sure how the one had survived, but we knewthis communiqué was just a cover story. The government responded tothe FARC’s allegations by stating that it had made no rescue attempt.The FARC had been on edge for a while, and we figured they couldhave stumbled across any other group in the jungle and thought it wasthe Colombian military. In the confusion, the prisoners had been executed.The families were asking that the bodies be returned to them. Itseemed unlikely that the FARC would comply. There would have beentoo much evidence of their murders.We didn’t have long to dwell on the massacre. The next day we weretold to pack up. We brought our equipos down to the boat launch andone of the guards began announcing names; he pointed to the left sideof the boat or the right and we sat according to his directions. Thethree of us, Lucho, Juancho, and Miguel Arteaga were all on one side,and the others—including Ingrid—sat on the opposite side. Ingrid andI exchanged a look. This could only mean one thing: We were beingseparated. I walked over to her.“The FARC are separating the groups because they don’t want thetwo of us together.”She looked at me and nodded in agreement. We both got increasinglyagitated; they were doing this to keep us apart. We decided wewould write letters of protest to Mono JoJoy requesting to be placed inthe same camp. In them, we would make clear to Mono JoJoy that wewouldn’t put up with this abusive treatment, that they couldn’t keep usapart and deny us our free will.When we loaded onto the boats, the FARC tried to separate us by pilingall our equipos in the center. Ingrid was on one side of the barrier,and I was on the other. We moved through the moonlit night, sensingthat we were going to have to part ways. I laid my arm on the equipos,and I felt Ingrid’s soft hand in mine.“We won’t let them do this to us,” she said.