Hostage Nation (20 page)

Journalist Jorge Enrique Botero (right) covering a conflict for the news program
24 Horas
in 1995. More than 100,000 coca growers were marching to protest fumigation and were stopped by Colombian troops with bullets and tear gas. Photo: Felipe Caicedo
.

In college in 1975, Botero joined the Juventud Comunista. “That was a very important political party during that time. And he was really involved,” says Angela. In Colombia, the 1970s were a time of enormous student agitation, and as the president of the student council, Botero led several strikes and street marches, which almost always ended in confrontations with the police. “At the time I entered the university,” Botero says, “I wasn't only ready but anxious to be part of the student groups that fought alongside the workers, the farmers, and, many times, the guerrillas, to change our country.” The students demanded better salaries for workers, a better educational system in Colombia, and social programs for the poor. They punctuated their cries with violence, throwing rocks at police barricades. In 1978, during a national day of protest against the government, Botero was detained by the National Police. At the time, the city was under martial law. “The police could take you, bring you to prison, and the same police could condemn you,” Botero recalls. “There weren't judges or anything.” Botero's family was devastated when they learned of his arrest, but not surprised. “I think my parents already understood that it was going to be a ride for the rest of his existence,” says Angela. “It was tough for everybody, but it was his decision. And he had been doing pretty much what he believed in.” After several days of physical abuse and threats (at one point a gun was put to his head), a police captain sentenced Botero to six months in jail.

Along with other student protesters who had been jailed with him, Botero formulated a plan to survive the hard conditions of the Colombian prisons, and at the same time, he set out to do political work with the inmates. “So taking advantage of the fact that we had managed to get authorization to have a television, we organized a study group with the inmates. They attended our conversations about the social and political situation of the country, and—in exchange—we let them watch the World Cup soccer matches, which were played in Argentina that year.”

Across the compound in the seven female quarters of the jail was
Danelli Salas. At twenty-eight, she was five years Botero's senior and a student leader of the Juventud Comunista. “At the time, in the mid-1970s in Bogotá, there were many strikes, many work stoppages. The people in the street were shooting and throwing rocks and everything. And that's where I met Danelli. We were young and totally intoxicated with revolutionary ideas and socialism,” he says. Salas was bright, lively, and constantly upbeat—and the single mother of a five-year-old son. Her path to the student revolts was far different from Botero's; she came from a very poor family in Cali, one of seven children of a
zapatero
, a shoemaker.

Botero and Salas were released on June 24, 1978. Botero was a changed man. The 180 days that the aspiring journalist spent in the Bogotá District Jail marked a kind of dividing line between what he had been until then—a rich boy who ventured to explore the world of rebellion—and what he would become afterward, a journalist obsessed with finding the humanity beneath his country's endless violence. Botero and Salas rented a small apartment in the south of the city, and in 1979, Salas gave birth to their first child, Alejandro. A year later, their daughter, Juliana, was born. Botero's father paid for his tuition at the university while Botero studied and supported his new family by writing for a Communist newspaper. In 1980, the couple separated, and for all of his liberal views, Botero would blame class difference for the demise of their relationship.

Salas was becoming more and more fanatical in her political beliefs, and Botero began to worry that she might be involved in a violent urban guerrilla movement called Ricardo Franco. While Botero was walking with three-year-old Alejandro, the boy pointed to a soldier with a machine gun. “He said, ‘Look, Papi, my mama has those in her house.'” Several weeks later, Alejandro had an accident when he was in Salas's care: he was burned over his entire back from boiling water. The three-year-old spent two months in the hospital. “Then I asked her if she would give me the kids, and she accepted because she knew that she couldn't take care of them. I also believe at that time she knew that she was in danger—extreme danger,” Botero says.

Salas left Bogotá for Medellín, but she would return every three months. Botero would take the children to a meeting spot so that she
could spend a weekend with them. “I never asked her anything, because I didn't want to know what she was doing. I already had the kids. I took them to school every day. I was their father and their mother,” he says. Botero felt that he knew little about the woman whom he'd been with for three years, and she was becoming more and more of a mystery to him. One day in 1985, Salas asked Botero to bring the children to her. Botero waited with Alejandro and Juliana. “One hour, two hours, I waited. I waited and waited. I thought that she would call. But days went by, weeks, months, and she never appeared. We went to the places she'd been and asked her friends and people at the university when they'd last seen her. Finally, we filed a missing person's report with the police. One night I was in my house and the police called me: ‘Mr. Botero, there's a woman's body at the morgue.' Then I went, half-asleep, drove there, went and looked at the body. They lifted the sheet. I said, ‘This is not her,' and they covered it again. And for an entire year I did this, looking at cadavers. I think that was the worst year of my life. Because, you know, you're in the house and then, ‘Mr. Botero, we found a dead body.' And me: Son of a bitch, please don't let it be her. Please don't let it be her.” Botero spent the entire year telling Alejandro and Juliana that Salas was on a trip, that she would come back soon. “I was inventing things, and that was unbearable for the kids. They were asking every day, ‘Where is my mama? Where is my mama?'”

Almost a year after Salas's disappearance, her sister came to speak with Botero. She and her siblings had been searching for Salas as well. “She had a photo from an old newspaper, one of those ripped, crumpled newspaper pages from a tabloid that commonly showed graphic photos of massacres—three, five, ten people killed in the same event. The photo was of some dead people tossed among piles of garbage. Salas's sister pointed to one woman whose face stood out and asked me, ‘Do you think this is Danelli?' I looked at the photo. It was a very blurry photo. But for me, it
was
her.” Salas's sister did not want to believe it was true. “She said to me, ‘No, it's not her. It's not her.' Denying it, trying to deny it. But when I saw it, I saw an expression on the face of that dead woman that was very much Danelli.”

During Botero's adjustment to life as a single father, he experienced his first direct contact with war when he traveled to the city of Urrao, in
northwestern Colombia. The town was under attack by two guerrilla factions, and the novice war journalist was intoxicated by the mélange of life and death playing out in the streets. “That first trip to the world of the guerrillas had
everything:
night marches through the mountains, camping, and ten hours straight of firefights in the streets of the town. There were also wounded, airplanes firing bursts onto the town's streets, chaos, panic, autographs of the good-looking guerrillas for the young girls of the town, and hurried fleeing of the insurgents, who were not able to complete their objective of taking over Urrao.”

In those years, Botero also watched the metamorphosis of Bogotá; an uncontrollable wave of Caribbean sounds and flavor sprinkled his gray city with colors. “Bars and salsa and bolero clubs opened, many full of the unmistakable air of the rebellion, of secrecy and conspiracy. It was not strange to see the leaders of the urban commandos of the M-19 [Movimiento 19 de Abril], the FARC, or the ELN enjoying the nightlife. I frequented these places and it allowed me to stay up-to-date on the subjects of the war, as well as to maintain contact with the sources.”

At the end of 1986, thirty-year-old Botero was offered a job with a major Cuban media organization called Prensa Latina at the company's headquarters in Havana. “I decided to go with the kids, because it had already been a year, and Danelli hadn't appeared. So I knew that she was dead.” Botero was almost certain that the Colombian military had “disappeared” Salas. The term
desaparecido
is a common one used throughout Colombia and the rest of Latin America. It is a fate that affects many families when a loved one—sometimes someone connected to a subversive movement, sometimes someone completely innocent but suspected of subversive activity—disappears without a trace. Occasionally, bodies are discovered in back alleys or shallow graves, and the culprits are assumed to be military or paramilitary forces. But most often, the victim is never seen or heard from again. The anguish of having a loved one disappear is similarly excruciating to what a family experiences in a kidnapping situation. However, there is never an end or any answer to fill the emptiness.

Once in Cuba it was the five-odd interviews Botero landed with the country's charismatic dictator that left him with his most lasting
impression of the island. “Before I went to Cuba, Fidel Castro was almost like an idol to me, someone I admired and very much respected. What I'd most wanted when I came to Cuba was to meet him, to see him in person. But when I arrived, it immediately felt like I wasn't in Cuba. It was the land of Fidel Castro. Turn on the TV, there was Castro; on the roads on giant billboards, Castro; everywhere, Castro. I felt like it was a cult of personality. The impression I had was that Castro was almost like something religious, sacred. The idea of Castro as the supreme leader was something unquestionable. For the majority of the islanders, Castro's word was the last word—the only word.”

The dictator made constant public appearances, and Botero was always sent to cover them. Arriving three hours early, he would be corralled with dozens of other reporters and cameramen. On each occasion, an impressive array of security surrounded Castro, who was illuminated by massive spotlights, giving the events a cinematic flair. “In the midst of the excitement, I tried to make myself noticed, going around the security ring that surrounded Castro. When I was able to catch Castro's eye, I showed him my recorder and made hand signals like I wanted to ask some questions.” When Botero managed to score an interview, he experienced the double sensation of having achieved a journalistic trophy and of having blown an exceptional opportunity. “In the midst of the bright lights, Fidel seemed to grow in stature, and his towering figure intimidated me. To top it off, he had the habit of constantly tapping his fingertips on the shoulder of the person he was speaking to—in this case, me—which rattled me completely.” Each time he interviewed Castro, Botero would ask a question, and the Cuban president would launch into a monologue, which could last up to twenty minutes. Then the interview was over.

What Botero encountered during those short meetings wasn't the courageous revolutionary he had idolized during his college years. Botero saw Castro as arrogant, with a stifling air of superiority. In addition to his dislike for the Cuban president's character, Botero was left cold by Castro's policy toward Colombia. “I never liked the way that Fidel handled his relationship with Colombia. To me, it didn't seem right. I think he played a game so that he could have good relations with the government of Colombia, even if the government was far
right, even if the government was persecuting the people.” Botero also found it interesting that even though those in the FARC worshipped Castro—feeling an intense brotherhood with Cubans, whom they believed had achieved the perfect society—Castro had little interest in the guerrillas.

Not everyone on the island was a believer in Castro. In the Prensa Latina office where Botero worked with seventy other journalists, “there was a lot of sarcasm in the circle of friends that I hung out with about Castro. They were always making fun of him.” The company was pleased with Botero's work. But for Botero, “the effects of a closed political system were felt strongly in the exercise of journalism. We had to self-censor. We knew that there were prohibited topics, and people we could never write about. At the time, Celia Cruz was the biggest singer in all of Latin America. But because she was a Cuban dissident, to Prensa Latina, she didn't exist. Sometimes I felt that I was creating propaganda, not journalism, so I started to have a lot of problems with my bosses.” In 1991, after Botero had spent four years on the island, the Soviet Union collapsed. Cuba was left adrift, without allies and without foreign aid. One of the first decisions that was made by the Cuban government was to expel foreign journalists. Botero returned to Bogotá with his family and began to work in television news. Compared with a newsroom, the pace of the television studio was dizzying. And it was during Colombia's greatest political corruption scandal that Botero would make a name for himself as a journalist and begin a long-standing antagonistic relationship with many of his country's political elites.