Читать книгу From Darkness Into the Light - Marino Restrepo - Страница 8

I was born in Anserma, a coffee-growing town full of tropical charms in the Andes Mountains of Colombia. I enjoyed a healthy life there, both physically and spiritually, until I was 14 years old. My family was large, with a Catholic tradition dating back several generations. During my childhood and early teenage years I was involved in different activities in the countryside and in my hometown, and enjoyed a happy life. The sixth of ten children, I was the first boy who managed to survive. My first two brothers died very young. Three brothers and four sisters are still alive. My grandfathers, both on my mother’s and my father’s side, were two patriarchs who owned large coffee plantations; they were respected and admired by many, and had the political and social power that provided us with support, opportunities and protection.

My life in the church was rich and constant. Since I played the first trumpet in the school band, I got to participate in all Holy Week religious processions and this was the most exiting experience during that time. My town was located on a mountaintop, with two main streets running through it. At that time, streets were made of stone; they looked like abysses with lines of houses on both sides that reached down to the mountain base. Walking in the procession, carrying the images of saints was a real odyssey. The images had to be carried by several men since they were very big and heavy; most of them had been brought from Spain during the Colonial period. When the procession passed through one of those stone streets or abysses, there was a concern that people and statues might fall down; fortunately, nothing happened, at least during the time I participated. Town prostitutes would close down their brothels for the whole week and participate in the processions. They covered the distance on their knees, weeping and crying over their sins. They would resume their regular business on Easter Monday, as if they had paid their debt and could ask for a new loan. The rest of the inhabitants did practically the same, since their spiritual lives did not change much after Holy Week, an exception being those who were already loyal to God. You see, I grew up in the Catholic religion that by then had started to show signs of decay and which in time led many of us to the spiritual abyss our Church is in today.

In the middle of these religious contradictions, my spiritual life developed with a good dose of superstition inherited from both the Spaniards and natives. I do not think my case was any different from the rest of our Latin Christian culture. Nevertheless, I grew up in an atmosphere of good relationships with relatives and a large number of friends of my age; we were very close since we were born in a small town where everybody knew each other. All this contributed to strength in my character that would became a valuable tool in my life.

Before I was 15, I moved to Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, where I lived for 5 years. I married at the age of 20, went to Hamburg, Germany, and lived there for 6 years. Then I settled in the United States where I have been since.

The years after leaving my hometown were characterized by an early rupture from my family, church and values. One or two years before leaving my town, the rumblings of a youth revolution began to reverberate from the United States and England. Elvis Presley and the Beatles started to be heard everywhere, even in distant places like Anserma.

Mass media was very limited at that time. In Colombia there was only one TV channel administered by the State and political powers. However, mass hysteria over these new idols reached all young people. Thus, my very first goal became to learn English, which I soon accomplished after moving from my uncle’s house to the house of an American community called YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) in Bogotá. I found out a couple of years later that they were Protestant. It was there where I figured out what these mysterious and powerful idols were singing and where I had the chance to meet many American students there on an exchange program.

In less than two years, everything had changed. Visiting students were no longer the clean and healthy youngsters who loved Christ and the Church, but longhaired boys and girls, dressed carelessly with bright colors, and exhibiting a strange attitude never seen before. Behind all this was the spirit of the 1960’s that offered total “liberation” from the so-called “establishment”. I did not understand the real meaning of all this but this weird, unconventional world that I witnessed was very attractive to my provincial spirit. Slowly, and mainly because of my first love affair with an American girl, I began to discover the secret surrounding this new attitude, this rejection of the “establishment”. My girlfriend invited me to try marijuana. Under its strange sensation and effect, she began to tell me how youth would be the salvation of the world that had been corrupted by the adults. She also told me that the Vietnam War had to end and that love and peace was the only way to accomplish this.

As she conveyed all this, I could see in her beautiful blue eyes a never dreamed of promised paradise. Everything seemed so beautiful under the effect of that drug. Her beauty, combined with her 1960’s vision of changing the world, were an alluring invitation to join this “legion of angels” whose mission was to save the world. Walking the streets of Bogotá, holding hands with this “heavenly missionary”, I felt like I was on a cloud of happiness. I did not realize that not a soul around us could guess what we had in our hearts and even less understand the hallucination so much marijuana was causing in our brains. We would walk the streets with a group of six or seven boys and girls. I was the only Colombian in the group. They would pay for all my expenses as I could not afford their life style. Marijuana made us very hungry, necessitating many meals. We rented cars and went camping to different sites in Colombia, especially to “magical” places like pre-Columbian archaeological parks.

Although this first group of “missionary angels” was in Colombia for all of three months, it seemed but a day because of the permanent hallucinatory effects the marijuana had on us and all the ‘trips’ we made while high.

Free love was also talked about in those days. I had never had sexual relations with any girl before. My American girlfriend not only taught me everything about sex but also introduced me to an activity that never stopped until I found the Lord at the age of 47. The day they were about to leave, I felt as if something terrible was about to happen. What would I do without them? And so I told them, “I’ll go with you”. This made them all happy, particularly Donna, my girlfriend. I had my passport issued very quickly and then went to the American Embassy to get my visa. I had never been to a Consulate before and had no idea of what the process would be like. Besides, I had nothing to worry about since I was with the “saviors of the world”. I was completely surprised when I discovered that “my saviors” were considered the worst criminals by their own people. A formally-dressed woman who looked like the ladies I had met at the YMCA took me to a separate room and asked me whether any of the young men had offered me drugs like marijuana, LSD and many others I had never heard of before. I looked at her and realized how serious the situation was. “No, I have never heard of that,” I retorted. She replied, “Those you are with are losers and you should not go with them anywhere; I would suggest that you go back home and carry on with your life as if you had never met them”. When I left the room and looked at them, it became apparent that we had fallen off our cloud onto a hard surface called reality. I walked out holding Donna’s hand, and neither she nor I spoke for quite a while. Two days later, I was completely alone after seeing them off at the airport. They gifted me the monies for my plane ticket to Miami, Donna’s stereo and Beatles’ music and enough marijuana to enable me to lock myself in a room for a couple of days.

My loneliness did not last long. Two days later, some knocks at the door woke me up. A new “missionary of love” named Cindy appeared in my life, and her blue eyes were even more beautiful than Donna’s. Cindy had met Donna and my other friends at the airport in Miami. Cindy was on her way to Peru to visit a friend she had met in California but changed her ticket and decided to spend some time with me in Bogotá after talking to Donna and the rest of my friends. Donna had asked Cindy to be considerately loving towards me since I was very lonely. I immediately established a relationship with her as close as the one I had enjoyed with Donna; it had been Donna’s idea and everything seemed to be perfect. All this was like living in a different world. How could I possibly explain the situation to the people who knew me? It was impossible.

Like Donna, Cindy also introduced me to drugs but this time to something even more extraordinary. She first asked me, “Have you ever had a trip?” A little surprised, I looked at her and said, “Only here in Colombia”. She roared with laughter for quite a long time but I could not understand why. After a while she took out a big book about the ruins of the Incas. From the inside of it, she took two full pages full of round, colored circles, one page being orange dots and the other purple. She said, “Each little dot that you see here contains 400 micrograms of LSD; if you take it, you will have the most incredible mind trip, without having to go anywhere. I took about 10 trips with my friends in California, and on the last one it came to me that I had to come to South America because the magic is here in the energy of the Amazon and the secrets of the Incas.” She continued to give me an esoteric lesson on South America. Then she said, “In two days, I will turn 17 and I want to celebrate my birthday with a special trip by the sea using the round, purple circle trip.” I replied, “The sea is very far away from here and the ticket is very expensive”. She said, “Don’t worry. I’ll treat you”.

I lived in a never-ending fantasy that I liked more and more each day. The very next day, we were on our way to a city in Colombia’s Caribbean region called Santa Marta. It was there that I experienced with Cindy the LSD trips she had talked about; they took me to a completely new dimension that I would simply describe as an opening to the doors of perception. Suffice to say, I did not manage too well (nor do I think anyone can). Most of my friends from that time went through those doors and did not come back.

Without realizing it, just over three months had passed since my initiation into the drug scene of these psychedelic messengers. The physical changes in my appearance could be readily seen. I had forgotten to shave my not-fully-developed beard and I had not had my hair cut. I wore Cindy’s clothes and some of Donna’s shirts and jeans. No wonder waiters thought I was a foreigner. Cindy rented a small apartment in the north of Bogotá; for me, the rent seemed astronomical but Cindy did not seem to care. Her father was a famous cardiologist in San Francisco who was providing for everything.

Cindy’s apartment became the central meeting place where activities never stopped. She left me in charge of that treasure that kept everyone revolving around us: the two famous pages bearing orange and purple dots. In a few weeks, more and more Americans started to show up; they were running away from the army or came because they had heard the rumor that the best marijuana grew in Colombia. The strange thing was that we never found it. Donna and her friends had brought the first marijuana I tried from the States. Little by little, the first manuals on how to cultivate the drug, printed in San Francisco by a company called High Times, began to arrive. Soon after, the first shrubs of Colombian marijuana began to grow.

The course of my life with Cindy changed. Too many people would come to our apartment to take a “trip” for several days, and as a result, we ended up having intense love affairs with other “psychedelic angels”. We became like brother and sister; this adventure in her apartment lasted two years, after which we moved to a small farm in the countryside outside of Bogotá. Then things took on a mystical dimension due to the discovery of hallucinogenic mushrooms in a place called La Miel. Located near a crystal-clear river that bore the same name, La Miel was a renowned paradise for fishermen. We turned the place into a center of psychedelic activities. It was there a few years later that a great tragedy occurred. I went there for the first time with my friends from Bogotá. Some of us stayed in that region for three months. We would eat mushrooms and talk to the trees, all the while carrying a copy of the Bible with us. When we returned to Bogotá, we found out that many of our friends were admitted to rehabilitation centers. These and many others never recovered their sanity. Psychiatrists completely ignored the effects of hallucinatory drugs and made many mistakes diagnosing some of our friends, who, in turn, were practically destroyed by erroneous treatments. Those of us who withdrew from treatment for a while did not have much trouble regaining reality after a certain time.

In two years, my hair had grown much past my shoulders and my beard was at chest-length. It was 1970 and rock-and-roll fever invaded Colombia. Hundreds of young people had run away from their homes to join different communities around the city where they lived together. In Bogotá, the “Calle Sesenta” (meaning 60th Street) became a famous psychedelic center run by eager young dealers and traders who dressed like hippies, as all of us at the time were called. Drugs like marijuana and LSD were already in the hands of dealers who were only interested in money, and who did not share the spirit of love and peace that had initially motivated the movement.

That same year, Cindy left Colombia and went back to San Francisco. She was addicted to heroin and died of an overdose. Her death broke my heart and I began to concern myself with what was going on around me. Many of our rock-and-roll heroes had died the same way, but nobody seemed to care. This new movement became increasingly intense and continued to spread all around the world.

The next and most dangerous stage began when another group of Americans introduced the tarot card, some old esoteric treatises, Voodoo and Candombe, and all sorts of practices originating from eastern paganism, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism and hundreds of yoga schools offering the seven levels.

All leaders of eastern paganism (or gurus, as they were known) had their heyday and dedicated themselves to conquering souls in western countries like Colombia. Occult metaphysics and all kinds of magic and superstition were the gods of the New Age who captured the peace and love spirit of the 1960’s. Many of my friends in Colombia were trapped by eastern paganism to the point of becoming apostles of these sects; they created large local centers and their lives mirrored the eastern culture, especially their clothing and food choices. I was completely seduced by the supernatural fantasy of those magical, philosophical ideas. Although I studied them all with great interest, I was never a disciple or follower of any of them because my interests were more in the arts and music lines.

In the late 1960’s, I met a girl with whom I shared my life for about a year; we seemed to be meant for each other. We stayed together for all that time, without having other relationships, something not normal for the lifestyle upon which I had embarked. In the course of only four years, I had had love affairs with innumerable Donnas and Cindys from all over the United States, and with a similar number of Lolas and Marias from my own country.

My last relationship came to a climax when I was 20 and my girlfriend got pregnant. Most of her family was involved in politics, worked for the government, and had a lifestyle that our own generation really hated. To them, we were the trash of the world. The news of my girlfriend’s pregnancy was not well received in her family and she was advised to have an abortion. Although we were contaminated with all the magic, occultism, eastern paganism and other spiritually poisonous currents, it was impossible for us to commit such a crime. Moreover, her relatives made it very clear that they were morally superior to us. Some weeks later and after facing many difficulties, we married in a Catholic church in Bogotá. A few days later, they suggested we to go to Germany where they would help us find work. The truth is that they wanted us to be far away from them, so that we would not damage their reputation.

When we arrived in Germany in the middle of a severe winter, the first thing we had to change was our diet. Being vegetarians, we were undernourished and that could affect the baby. Moreover, we had no idea how to follow a vegetarian diet without risking malnutrition. The same spirit flying in the skies and hearts of young Americans had influenced most young people in Germany. Without much difficulty, we joined different groups and kept the same habits for a while. After learning German, I entered the School of Liberal Arts at the University of Hamburg.

After the arrival of our first baby, our life as a couple changed due to our difficulty in coping with “the establishment” against which we had rebelled. That “establishment” hated us because of the way we dressed, thought, acted and lived. We coped by finding a neutral territory where we could enjoy the benefits offered by “the establishment” without losing our revolutionary identity of “love and peace”. In order to do so, we had to change our clothes and appearance; my hair went back to almost normal; I had my beard cut, but kept a big mustache that annoyed people of “the other dimension” (as we called them). However, I managed to get a job with which to cover our basic expenses. An act of charity on the part of my wife’s family led her in securing a trivial diplomatic job for the Columbian Government. We spent six years in Germany. Less than two years after our first baby was born we had our second child.

Meanwhile, my life continued to be closely related to the psychedelic world at the university through my artistic work and the music I listened to, studied and composed. I took advantage of every single opportunity that presented itself. I often traveled to Berlin and visited the traditional Kuhdam Boulevard, a set of blocks with hundreds of coffee shops, bars and rooms with small live stages side-by-side on many blocks of the boulevard. I took my guitar with me and, under the effects of drugs, played all the songs I knew to my new friends from Europe and the United States. This way, I kept the spirit I had brought from Colombia alive, and became more esoteric, metaphysical, astrological, superstitious, spiritualistic and alchemistic. A large eastern pagan movement led all this spiritual activity. Our heroes — the Beatles and many others — were the most fervent followers of these mystical currents and had a great influence on us. It was almost impossible to meet a group of young people anywhere without hearing a magical or mystical comment of some sort. Our whole lives were guided by occultism. The only thing my wife and I shared, as a couple, was the rock-and-roll concerts. They became our focal point and we would attend them after feeding our babies. Tickets were very expensive and buying them meant not having adequate funds for everything else, but we did not care. The concerts became our church.

Little by little, the life and union between my wife and myself began to change. We no longer thought the same way. She began to feel nostalgic of her roots and I got increasingly involved in my artistic-psychedelic world. At the end of 1976, we decided to go back to Colombia. Most of our former “love and peace” friends no longer had mystical experiences. On the contrary, their lives were now focused on partying with alcohol and cocaine. To make things worse, American drug-trafficking mafias had built a paradise in Colombia from where they produced and dispatched drugs to the rest of the world. Many liquor and cigarette smugglers — unscrupulous people who were used to breaking the law and enforcing their will by killing — joined the drug business. Strong and powerful organizations appeared, and all the upper-middle class friends with whom I had shared my psychedelic life in Colombia began to finalize negotiations with American drug dealers using their knowledge of the English language and culture. A few months after arriving in Colombia, my marriage came to an end and my life started to go downhill due to my use of alcohol, cocaine, the bad deals I had made and my lustful nature, sparked by the use of all these drugs.

I went to the United States where I began a troubled and confused life — separated from my love of the arts and music. I spent some time in Florida and New York; my life became immersed in a world of bars, cocaine and women who were as decadent as I — a world full of anxiety due to the separation from my children and wife. Nothing seemed to fill that emptiness. My spiritual life that I viewed as the last step on a magical ladder — full of gifts and power — was no more than a devil’s sham, but I was completely unaware of that at that time. Later on, my artistic connections and acquaintances in New York led me to start a new life in California. I got involved in an activity that would take 20 years of my life and that kept me moving between the cinema, television and music, in a world of drugs and lust. Hollywood seemed to be the great Mecca for this type of life. The same spirit that had baptized me to the world of Donna in Colombia, through that first marijuana cigarette in 1967, was still orienting my life in California. It was no coincidence that coming from the same dark force, it would beckon me, giving one last shake before leaving me in perpetual spiritual darkness.

My artistic life began again in California and helped me somehow to fill the emptiness and anxiety that had caused me to waste away during the previous four years. At the same time, my magical and esoteric activity increased considerably. California could well be the world center of the New Age movement and its spiritual darkness. Esoteric prophets, new metaphysical or spiritualistic sects, the most important centers of satanic masonry, along with the most active satanic churches of America were — and still are — thriving in California. Many evil characters had infiltrated Hollywood as famous writers working for the most prestigious film studios, or as producers of the greatest movies ranging from Disney’s productions for children to Warner Brothers’ horror movies. This spirit began to grow in the 1960’s when the “love and peace” generation was born, and has increased ever since in San Francisco Bay. The most obscure movements are promoted from Hollywood; they are shown as entertainment, as fantasy, as an expression of the seventh art, whose only purpose is to supposedly enrich our daily lives. Much could be said about this topic, but I would have to ask the Lord to give me the opportunity to write another book on this vast and obscure subject.

In 1986, a partner from Colorado (with whom I composed several songs over the span of two years) and I managed to sign a contract with Sony Music in New York (CBS Records at that time). Our contract was for five records and the operating budget was favorable. This opened a new chapter in my artistic life; the long worldwide tours we undertook illustrate the advantages that few multinational companies can afford to offer. A few months after signing the contract, my wife arrived from Colombia on a surprise visit to tell me that she had been diagnosed with cancer. The news made me very sad; in spite of our separation of several years, we were still somewhat like husband and wife, enjoying a good friendship and having a lot of respect for each other. In other words, we were best friends because we knew each other’s life perfectly and there were no secrets between us.

A few months later, we decided it would be better for our children to live with me since she was already very ill and could not take care of them properly. By then, they were young teenagers. This meant a big change in my lifestyle. Initially the children went to a boarding school for a year. Then they came to live with me permanently. My frequent music tours made the first years very difficult. In a way, this new responsibility of taking care of my children made me abandon many destructive activities in which I had previously engaged that were leading me towards an abyss. In 1992, my wife, after much suffering, died in Colombia. The cycle of emotions and experiences of my former life that began in the 1960’s had come to a close.

Notwithstanding, I was still involved in occult practices. In 1993, my youngest brother died in a sea accident on the island of Antigua under unknown circumstances. Six months later, my father also passed away from a brain hemorrhage. In 1996, only two years after these deaths, another brother shot himself to death during an argument with his wife after having consumed some alcohol at a party. Two months later, my mother died in my arms, totally emaciated by all these family tragedies. After being notified of my brother’s death at the end of 1996, I flew to Colombia for the funeral. It was held in Pereira, a small city located in the coffee-growing region of Colombia, an hour’s drive from our hometown. My mother had been living there for the past 35 years.

It was not easy going back to Colombia after a fourteen-year absence. The country had changed a lot in every aspect; even the currency changed in appearance. Some things had changed for the better, like the number of job opportunities, but other things were worse than before, as evidenced by the violence, intolerance and moral decay in all levels of society.

Seeing my sisters again after several years was rather difficult because of the situation we were going through. My mother who was still living at the time was so full of grief that it was almost impossible to look into her eyes. My brother’s funeral took place about four hours after I arrived. I was very surprised to see so many relatives in the church. I had not been exposed to such a gathering, or even to a funeral, since I was a child. I had forgotten that my family was so large. The days that followed were sad and full of grief for my sisters and me. Our mother was now terminally ill and there was nothing we could do for her but wait, since doctors had given up all hope of her recovering. I was so distant from God that the word miracle was neither part of my vocabulary, nor that of my sisters. People, including my own family, seemed to go very often to church. However, their spiritual qualities were not really evident. Religion did not seem to have changed in all those years. It seemed quite the same to me. Two months later, after enduring long nights of anguish, my mother died. I could still feel the smell of incense from the last funeral, and there we were again, attending another one even more painful and difficult than the last. After these two funerals, my sisters and I talked about who would be the next since we were heading toward death in a very close sequence. In less than four years, five members of my family had died.

In the year that followed, I adopted the food habits and easy-going, bohemian lifestyle that was common in Colombia. While experiencing this idealism that was no more than ancestral nostalgia, I flew between Los Angeles and Colombia three more times before my eventual kidnapping. My last trip before being kidnapped was in November of 1997. I wanted to spend Christmas with my sisters to share the sadness with them caused by the absence of so many relatives.

To be honest, now that I look back, I see that the biggest attraction for me in Colombia was the intensive party-life in small towns like mine. While driving along the busy highways of Los Angeles, the only thought that came to my mind was being in the arms of one of those beautiful and “easy-going” girls that abound in Colombia. Alcohol, drugs and women were still controlling my life. My only thoughts were in that direction and I felt I could easily satisfy them in Colombia.

I arrived in Colombia that Christmas full of enthusiasm for the upcoming Christmas carnival that would last until January 14th. I had to be back in Los Angeles on that day to begin a four-week U.S.A. tour with my band. For the past three years I had been experiencing financial difficulties due to my involvement in the film merchandising business. Hollywood produces all sorts of merchandise to promote films, and this industry has become gigantic worldwide. Thanks to the contacts I had made for so many years, I had managed to obtain exclusive deals. That Christmas I had particular commitments with many investors. Our business had serious problems with the IRS and the entire investment was in jeopardy. I was responsible for many people’s money. However, everything seemed to be under control. I did not know at the time that I would soon be kidnapped and held hostage for six months in the jungles of Colombia.

On December 11th I arrived in Pereira where my mother had died and three of my four sisters were still living. I began to plan great parties for those days. In the afternoon of December 25th, I left for my hometown, all the while feeling very tired and dizzy as a result of the party we had had on Christmas Eve which lasted until 7 a.m. After driving for less than an hour, I arrived in Anserma and went to visit friends and relatives until midnight. I was so tired that I had no energy to drink or dance anymore. In this region of the country, Christmas parties go on for several days. At midnight, I left to spend the night at an uncle’s farm located near the south entrance to the town, close to the urban area. When I arrived, I was surprised to find the gate closed, for my uncle would always leave it open when he knew I was coming. One of my nephews was with me and I asked him to get out of the car to open the gate. The moment he opened it, a group of men holding guns, with their heads covered, jumped out of the darkness. A few seconds later, they put my nephew in the rear seat of my car. They opened all the doors and, like hungry dogs, looked for anything they could find. They forced me out of the car, tied my hands, covered my head and took all my belongings.

At first, I thought I was being robbed, a crime very common in Colombia. Then the situation grew worse. The six men got into my car, made me sit in the back seat, and began driving down the road at high speed. Once we were out of town, they stopped the car; four of them got out and took me with them, while the other two left with the car, taking my nephew with them. Being left on the road and without knowing what was going on, I started to think that they were going to kill me and dispose of my body somewhere in the mountains. But that was not their plan. They tied a rope around my waist which two men held, one from the front and one from the back. Then they made me walk through the mountains all night long with the hood still covering my head.

We arrived at what seemed to be the main house of an abandoned farm in the countryside and they took me to what sounded like an empty room, judging by the echo. I was left there alone for the rest of the day; late at night they took me out, led me to a road and put me again in the rear part of a car in which we rode for a long time. I heard them saying that the police and the army were looking for me, and so they had to take me to another place. After a long trip at high speed on an unpaved and very bumpy road, my body was left in bad shape since I could not avoid banging and hitting myself against the car. As a result of this ordeal, my body was bleeding and bruised all over. Then we got out of the car and began to walk again for several hours; this time I could tell we were in the jungle because instead of hearing urban birds singing, I heard sounds that could only be heard deep in the jungle. Although I had been born in a small town and lived as a child in the countryside, walking tied up and blindfolded in the jungle at night made me very nervous and increased the panic caused by this terrible odyssey.

The humidity made it difficult for me to breathe through the acrylic hood that covered my head. This affected the circulation in my blood, causing my arms and back to hurt. The alcohol I had consumed for the last three days had sapped all my energy; each step made me feel closer to a heart attack. Many hours later that seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived at our destination. They removed my hood to show me my new surroundings. The situation seemed to get more and more complicated. The place they showed me was not exactly the Ritz Carlton Hotel. It was a house that had been abandoned a long time ago and was now overgrown with trees with branches coming out of what should have been windows and doors. It seemed more like a cave than a house. They covered my head again and steered me to the cave and threw me into it. Upon landing, I heard a lot of fluttering and realized that I was surrounded by thousands of bats. The floor on which I had fallen was rotten and covered with bat excrement. I did not know what was worse: the smell of the cave, the mixture of rotting substances or the constant rain of excrement that increased every time I moved. The threat of being attacked by all those winged creatures reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s film, “The Birds.”

At the same time, thousands of bugs came out of the excrement and crawled into my clothes, biting me from head to toe. Each bite produced a different itch. Some of them felt like electric shocks; others produced big skin inflammations all over my body, while still others caused intense itching. They all felt like separate attacks, injecting their own brand of poison. Soon, my whole body was completely covered with a variety of bites and inflammations. I could not scratch myself since my hands were still tied up. The lack of circulation in my arms made my body numb. I did not move because I was afraid to disturb the bats again. My situation could not have been worse. My first days transpired in this way: isolated, in much pain, in utter darkness, even unable to untie my hands; I did not want to receive the food I was offered once a day. All I desperately wanted was to finish this ordeal and die. On the third day, a small hope of being able to escape arose in me. I started to call for my captors, thinking that they might remove me from this cave and once outside I might have a chance to escape. I called for them. I had no energy and my voice was failing me. The idea of causing panic among the ‘dwellers’ of the cave with the least movement prevented me from further efforts.

After a while, one of the captors came. I don’t know whether it was to give me something to eat or if he had heard my voice. He pulled me out by my feet — something they had not done before — took the hood off and asked me if I wanted something to eat. I could not see anything for a while. I was afraid to open my eyes since I had been completely blinded by the darkness of the cave for three days. Afterwards, I realized it was sunset. The soft sunlight allowed me to look inside the cave.

I became even more afraid when I saw the extended array of spider webs that had probably been there for several years. I had never seen anything of this magnitude before. They looked like the curtains of a big, macabre stage scene. Their surface was covered with a greenish slime. Slowly I began to observe the biggest and most hairy spiders I had ever seen. They seemed to know that I was looking at them. I realized I had made a big hole in one of those large spider webs where I had been laying for the last three days.

The captor who took me out of the cave explained that they had no food because the group that was supposed to pick me up hadn’t arrived yet. He did not say whom they were waiting for or what they were planning to do with me. I did not dare ask any questions. I had lost all hope of surviving and — just to get it over with — felt like running away so they would capture and kill me quickly. However, I did not have the strength to do so.

After a while, another criminal arrived with a bunch of green plantains and a can he probably had found nearby, with dirty water for me to drink. I suppose that under different circumstances anyone who had neither eaten nor drunk for several days would have considered the offer a real feast. However, I felt very weak and was not interested. When they noticed that I did not accept their food, they again put the hood on and bound my hands, this time at the front, which helped my blood circulation.

The two men reminded me of a pair of hungry wolves that had finally hunted their prey down, and after searching around found a cave where to hide it, in order to share it later with the rest of the pack. Then they threw me back into the cave. Twelve days passed and no one appeared. Sometimes I could hear them arguing, and saying that they would wait one more day for them to appear or they would have to kill me. Thank God they did not. I had no idea what this was all about. Every other day, they would come and give me something to eat, which I began to accept. Living in that cave turned me into another bat. I had already learned the communication system between adults and their young bats; those high-frequency sounds gave me severe headaches since I was in the middle of that signal traffic. The excrement that fell during the day, after the early morning feeding time, had a horrible smell and increased the activity of all those bugs on the floor whose feeding zone included me. Sometimes I could feel huge armies of bugs coming into the cave to get some food for their own group. I could almost understand the negotiations that took place in order to decide the type and size of the prey they would take out, which included my skin and blood.

One night, after spending 15 days in this hellish cave, I heard a large group of people arriving at night. They grabbed me, untied my hands and removed my hood. I felt great relief. My blood began to circulate again causing me great pain and many cramps. However, being out of the cave, untied and free of the hood was like being in heaven even though their intentions involved killing me. Suddenly nearly 80 men wearing military clothes surrounded me. I could easily notice that they were not military soldiers; they rather looked like a group of actors in a Poncho Villa’s film. Yet, this was real life. They all appeared to be under 18. The only man that seemed to be over 30 began to talk.

This man did not look at me while speaking; he kept moving around me. In a voice loud enough for all to hear, he explained that I had been kidnapped and sold to them by the men who had taken me to the cave. He identified himself as the commander of the group that belonged to one of the largest guerrilla-groups in Colombia.

This caricature-like commander showed me a list with the names of all my sisters, their correct addresses and telephone numbers. He told me I would have to pay him an incredibly large amount of money as ransom. He also stated that that was just a small amount of the fortune I supposedly had. Then he went on telling me that my initial kidnappers wanted me dead after the ransom was paid, because they were afraid of me going after them since they were from my hometown and I had recognized them. I found out later that these men belonged to a well-known family from my village that had failed in the drug-trafficking business, and that they were paying off their debts by kidnapping people. The commander threatened to kill my sisters one by one if I refused to pay the ransom they requested. I cannot express in words everything that went through my mind while being the focal point of this absurd trial on a dark night in the middle of the jungle. My emotions underwent subtle changes: from anger to fear, pain to anguish, revenge to bravery. I could feel the look of all those malnourished jackals preying on me, without having enough flesh to feed them all. Everything that ridiculous commander said was celebrated with laughter by these jackals. After a while, he offered me a drink of aguardiente (strong Colombian liquor). He ordered his men to tie me up again and return me to the cave blindfolded. He said they would be back in one or two days to take me to another locale. The six men who had originally sold me disappeared and another group of youths stayed on guard outside the cave. Everyone else had left.