[Officers of the National Association of Science Writers and the International Science Writers Association wrote to colleagues in Cali, Colombia, in September 1994 to protest the kidnapping of ISWA member Thomas Hargrove, communications director of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in that city. Happily, Hargrove's family have been able to secure his release after long months of captivity. Excerpts of his letter to friends follows.]
When two guerrillas, wearing ski masks, motioned me from the car with their pistols, I pulled out my CIAT i.d. card, and a card from the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that identifies us as members of an international organization. These will show them that I'm really a good guy, I thought.
I remembered problems with confusion of CIAT and CIA, so I never spoke the word CIAT. I said, in Spanish, "I work for el Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical near Palmira, and I'm on my way to work."
The two guerrillas studied my i.d., talked briefly among themselves, then motioned me to move-fast-into the back of the stolen pickup. One guerrilla stood by the truck to guard me.
I'll soon talk with someone in authority, I thought, and straighten this out. After 5 minutes, two guerrillas who looked about 14 years old climbed into the back of the truck with me. Both carried automatic assault rifles. We barreled away, between two vans stolen at the roadblock.
"You've made a mistake," I explained. "I work in agriculture, to help the poor farmers." I told them how CIAT works with beans, cassava, pastures, and rice. They shrugged.
Later that day, I heard one guerrilla ask another: "What is CIAT?"
"The intelligence branch of the US Army," he responded. "No, no!" I interjected. "El Centro etc.", and went back into my explanation of CIAT's work.
That evening I was hidden in an Indian's hut in the mountains. He grew an interesting intercrop-onions and opium poppies-in a field behind the house. Two days later, I was on a mule named Batalla (Battle). We rode for two days, higher and further into the mountains to a mud hut in a high mountain valley.
I seem to have received worse treatment than most hostages, probably because of the acronym. I was isolated the entire time, and the loneliness was terrible. I wished, desperately, for another hostage, so I'd have a friend.
The guerrilla started chaining me to my bunk at night on 22 November. "Why?" I asked.
"Orders," was the only response.
On 3 December the comandante charged that I was a full colonel in the US Army and a specialist in counter-guerrilla warfare. Oh Hargrove, I thought. You are dead. I still have that letter; I smuggled it out in the secret pocket of my money belt.
That's when they moved me to another camp, even more remote. There, the guerrillas started locking me in a dark wooden cell about [6 feet high, 1-1/2 feet wide and six feet in length] for as long as 48 hours at a time. I was also starved. I've had a lot of bone loss, apparently from malnutrition and vitamin deficiency, and three teeth may have to be extracted.
Later, I was allowed outside-but on a 16-foot chain-for 3 hours a day. About a month later, they started letting me out-chained to a post in front of my cell-from about 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
After 2.5 months, they decided I wasn't a colonel, and quit chaining me, but I was still isolated. Some people have an illusion that the FARC guerrilla are idealists, even disenchanted leftists who fight the injustices of Colombian society. The people who held me were illiterate or semiliterate children, mostly from 13 to 19 years old. Many came from broken homes, or no homes, and left the countryside or the slums to join FARC at age 12 or 13. They learned their moral values from FARC.
The term "narco-guerrilla" was coined specifically to describe FARC, in the early 1980s. FARC previously received funding from the Communist countries, via Cuba; from kidnapping; and from the narcotics traffic. Cuba no longer sends funds.
These people don't care whether their victims are good or evil. They only want money. And only money buys a victim out. There are a lot of liars in this world. Among those liars are kidnap victims who claim that FARC let them go without paying a ransom. My family and I aren't liars.
But FARC negotiates on ransoms, and the Hargrove family negotiated hard to get my price down as low as possible. It's a tricky business. When my family made its first offer, the response was: "For that amount, we won't even inform you where we leave his cadaver."
My family did an incredible job. They wouldn't give up. Without them, I'd be dead...or worse, held by FARC for years before my death.
I wish, deeply, that none of this had happened...but it did. I want to thank all of you who did whatever you could to help me, and my family.
"You don't know how many prayers were said for you, Tom," I've heard, again and again, since returning to Texas.
"I believe you, and I'm grateful," I respond. "It worked. But let me remind you that a lot of those prayers were said in Spanish. And in Tagalog, and Hindi and Kiswahili and Vietnamese and French and Korean."__Tom Hargrove
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