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

70 OUT OF CAPTIVITYstruction to such a malicious end. Many of the drug labs the FARCcontrolled were made out of the same jungle woods and using thesame methods. When we’d been in the air above we hadn’t been ableto tell what they were built of, but being on the ground gave us a differentperspective and a new appreciation for the intelligence we couldn’tgather from the air.At times, I found myself slipping into the role of a field observer oran anthropologist. It became my way to escape the reality around meand prevented me from growing even more stressed out than I was.The three of us would talk about our situation, but we could only dothat for so long without getting our nerves all in a jangle. We agreedthat considering our physical condition, we were actually doing okay.Our strategy of being nonconfrontational had worked. In our minds,goal number one was to survive. Goal number two was not to do anythingthat betrayed our beliefs. We were captives but that didn’t meanthat we would behave like criminals. We were going to have to tread afine line mentally and behaviorally. We weren’t guilty of anything, andwe could never make it seem to the FARC that we had done anythingwrong or that we had intended to.In those earliest hours, we heard from Sonia and a few others aboutour imperialist presence and aggression, but it was just FARC party-linepropaganda, so we didn’t respond. As we heard more anti-Americansentiment, we ignored it. The best way to combat those feelings andopinions was by conducting ourselves as honorably as we could. Eventhough none of us was active-duty military, we were doing work for theDepartment of Defense and other agencies of the U.S. government. Wetook seriously the role we were playing to combat narcotics traffickingand as representatives of a country we all loved. None of that wouldchange just because we were being held captive. More than anything,we all had a sense of what was fair and just, and even though we werehostages, we would still demand to be treated fairly and justly. Being