Fishing for miracles in Bogota

Ingrid Betancourt was held hostage for many years by FARC guerrillas in the impenetrable lowland jungles in the east of Colombia. She was held in a distant jungle camp along with three Americans and seven Colombian soldiers. Hostage-taking has been one of the most effective tactics of the guerrillas in Colombia, not just FARC but also other paramilitary and Maoist groups. Taking hostages has dual benefits. Considerable sums are raised in ransom money, some paid, as it were, below the counter by worried, wealthy families. The second benefit is sowing fear and anxiety in the civilian community going about their day-to-day business. Some of the kidnapped were ordinary people, chosen by the upmarket brand of their car, whom the guerrillas hoped came from prosperous and privileged families and may therefore command larger ransoms. The market, so ubiquitous, even has it place in the world of hostage-taking. This semi-random approach to the choice of civilian hostages came to be known by the darkly ironic name of ‘miracle fishing’.

Even though FARC activities have been much curbed and their leader is dead, many other paramilitaries group are still active. Some say that the price that the wildly popular but aggressive President Uribe has paid for putting an end to negotiations with FARC and seeking to defeat them militarily is that other paramilitary groups operate with impunity and sometimes with covert official support. The main losers are the peasants, turfed from their land by intimidation. Two thousand people are still believed to be being held as hostages, 700 of them by FARC. The latest estimates are that about 30 hostages are soldiers in the Colombian army and two politicians remain in captivity. FARC maybe in retreat and the security situation much improved, but the war is not yet won and the consequences of lawlessness, crime and corruption will be a long time in the eradication.

As the world now knows, Betancourt and the other hostages with whom she was being held were rescued in a James Bond-like mission. Undercover Colombian army officers, operating on intelligence acquired over many years with foreign help, found the guerrillas’ hideout in the jungle. The guards at the camp were persuaded that the army officers were in fact also guerrillas under orders from headquarters to move the hostages to an even more remote camp close to the Venezuelan border. One of the hostages, Lieutenant Malagon, had been keen not to submit to the Stockholm syndrome, in which captives start to identify with their captors (most famously, Patty Hearst). So he took every opportunity to assert his true identity. On seeing the fake guerrillas arriving in the helicopter, believing them to be real guerrillas, he said “I am Lieutenant Malagon of the glorious Colombian army”. So convinced were the guerrilla captors that the men who had arrived by helicopter were their own kind that two of them went into the helicopter with the hostages. Once the helicopter was airborne the rescuing soldiers abandoned their cover and revealed their true identity. It was their turn to say that they were soldiers of the glorious Colombian army. At this point Ingrid Betancourt, who unsurprisingly had been depressed for a long time, burst into tears.

When the soldiers had been taken hostage they spoke no English. They had been taught English in the long tedious hours of captivity by the three American hostages and in return had taught them Spanish. Since being released the soldiers have gone through all the ‘detoxification’ procedures with psychologists and the army, particularly with a view to curing any lingering traces of the Stockholm syndrome. They are now to be re-commissioned. The legal advisor for kidnapped soldiers to the army suggested to them that they may like to continue their English studies in the rather more congenial but less dramatic setting of the British Council in Bogota. So yesterday, on a stormy afternoon in the upmarket Northern part of the Bogota, in the bright, glassy offices of the British Council, three officers were sitting at separate desks (presumably to avoid plagiarism; standards must be maintained!) taking their assessment test to check their current level of English alongside teenage students. On the surface the scene could not have been more humdrum. But the youngsters recognised these three soldiers as former hostages because they had been extensively on television. Lieutenant Malagon has been nominated for Colombian personality of the year, along with Olympic medallists, sports celebrities and President Uribe. Whilst doing their own tests, the teenagers cast a furtive glance at the soldiers and raised a small smile, comparing the routine business of sitting English language tests at the British Council with the outrageous extremes of being held hostage in the jungle and being taught English by your fellow hostages.

I shook hands with Lieutenant Malagon and wondered at the extraordinary miracle that had been fished from teaching English.