Along the River
that Flows Uphill -
from the Orinoco
to the Amazon
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Richard Starks
Miriam Murcutt
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Lost in Tibet
Along the River that Flows Uphill - from the Orinoco to the Amazon
by Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt
FARC guerrillas
FARC is a Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. It is a narco-terrorist organization that once was a left-wing guerrilla group with political goals, but in the past twenty years has morphed into a criminal gang that trades not just in drugs, but also in gasoline, gold and people. It now claims some 20,000 ‘members’, many of them recruited by force, so it is able to dominate as much as one-third of Colombia - an area the size of Switzerland - primarily along the lawless borders that Colombia shares with Venezuela, Brazil and Peru.More recently, says the book, Along the River that Flows Uphill, FARC has branched out into hijacking, extortion and kidnapping, running up huge profits that, more often than not, are laundered through American banks. Failure to pay a FARC demand almost always results in death for the victim, but immediate payment is often followed by further demands - and then by the dumping of a bullet-ridden body.
FARC has kidnapped literally thousands of people. In one year alone - 1998 - it took 1,016 victims, holding them in the most appalling conditions. Many have been captive for more than ten years, shackled like slaves. Others have simply been shot.
Most of FARC’s victims are Colombian nationals - which is why they don’t receive the international attention they deserve - but thirty-two have been American citizens. In 2008, in a daring rescue, says Along the River that Flows Uphill, the Colombian army secured the release of the three Americans - Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell, and Marc Gonsalves. They had been captured in 2003, when their plane crashed near Florencia in southern Colombia. Before his release, Thomas Howes spent six months fettered by the neck to another hostage, a 55-year-old Colombian senator named Luis Eladio Perez. The two men were separated by just fifteen inches of chain.
The rescue that saved the three Americans also brought freedom to Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate with dual (French as well as Colombian) citizenship, who was abducted in 2002. She was FARC’s best-known captive. Earlier, FARC had released a Betancourt associate named Clara Rojas - a one-time contender for Colombia’s vice-presidency, who was also captured in 2002.
When Rojas was released, she brought with her a batch of letters written by other hostages still held in the jungle. They described how they, too, were tied or chained by the neck for periods of years - meanwhile suffering from malaria, diarrhea, tropical parasites, and a variety of other life-threatening conditions. In one of the letters, a hostage named Luis Mendieta - in his first communication to his family in five years - described the way he had been chained to two other hostages when he was so weak he had to crawl to visit the latrine.
"I had to drag myself through the mud to relieve myself, with only my arms, because I could not stand up," Mendieta wrote. "Then someone ordered chains placed around my neck, tethering me to a stick." He had, he said, "reached the conclusion that kidnapping’s suffering knows no limits. But it is not the physical pain that wounds us; nor the chains that we wear around our necks that torment us; nor is it the incessant ailments that afflict us. Instead, it’s the mental agony, caused by the irrationality of all this. And it’s the anger produced by the perversity of the bad, and the indifference of the good."
Mendieta has been a prisoner for more than ten years. There is no indication he will soon be set free.
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�
Richard Starks
and Miriam Murcutt
"Just because we are out of the drama, doesn't mean we've forgotten the horror the remaining hostages and their families are going through." Astrid Betancourt, sister of former FARC hostage, Ingrid Betancourt.