Blogdolfo’s Weblog

By Adolfo Flores

DIE FAST AND QUIET
WHEN THEY
INTERROGATE YOU
OR LIVE SO LONG
THAT THEY ARE ASHAMED
TO HURT YOU ANYMORE
- Jenny Holzer

Juancho stood in front of his parents apartment complex and entered. The receptionist offered to announce him, but Juancho refused. He walked up a flight of stairs and knocked on the door.

“He’s alive!” Screamed his sister while she threw her arms around him.

His family hadn’t seen him for four months. In those four months Juancho was tortured and detained by the Colombian guerrilla, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, (FARC). The Bogota native has been living in the United States for over seven years under political asylum.

According to the Office of Immigration Statistics of the Department of Defense the number of Columbian asylees in the United States in 2006 was 2,964, making up 11.4% of all asylees in the country. However the number of asylees has decreased in recent years, in 2004 there were 4,368 and in 2005 they were 3,361.

While most people get involved with the guerrilla for the political ideologies, the dream of owning and operating his own business is what caused Juancho to become involved with the guerrilla. He had started his own cleaning company and another selling communication technology throughout the world.

“My error with the guerrilla was that I had the brilliant idea to generate work and employment without their permission,”Juancho said sarcastically. “I didn’t know that I needed their permission.”

When a man entered Juancho’s office he treated him like any other potential client, until the man identified himself as a FARC member. He explained to Juancho that he had not asked for permission to operate a business. Juancho replied that he had done everything necessary through the government. The man then ordered him to go to a restaurant and order his favorite food, if not they would kill him.

“He told me to order steak with yuca and fried banana,” Juancho said. “They knew what my favorite.”

Juancho followed through with his orders and arrived at the restaurant by bus. Once there he took a seat while the restaurant filled up and ate his yuca. Suddenly someone said “its time” and everyone in the restaurant stood up. They took Juancho into a car and after some miles they pulled over. They had to travel by horse. His hands were tied and a black bag was placed over his head. At which point breathing became difficult and the heat only made it worse.

The group and Juancho arrived to a mansion in the middle of the jungle. The path to the mansion was so narrow the horses couldn’t venture towards it. Once inside, Juancho, was treated like a guest and felt as comfortable as he could, given the circumstances.

He had a meeting with the guerrilla leader, who Juancho refuses to name, who explained that he needed to pay the FARC. The guerrilla leader, fourth in command, told him that they were a government within the government, with their own arms and financial groups. Paying them wasn’t a problem for Juancho.

“I was having a moral conflict because I didn’t want to pay for bullets that would shed blood over my country,” he said.

One day later, Juancho made the trek back home remembering what he experienced in the mansion as a mini-kidnapping that would not be his last.

In exactly a week he was visited by the paramilitary who informed him that they knew he was paying the FARC and that Juancho needed to pay them the same amount. This made Juancho immediately suspicious.

“First off it was how soon they came to see me,” Juancho said, “and secondly why the same amount?”

Three days after the military visited him and said that since Juancho was paying the guerilla and the paramilitary, he had to also pay them for protection. They also asked for the same amount the other two groups asked for.

“Those who understand what was happening internally know that the war is a mock battle”, said Juancho, who studied the violence in Columbia in college. “That’s how violent were are that we have a major in the study of the violence of our country.”

Juancho explained how these three organizations were working together. The military calls the guerrilla and tells them that at 7 p.m. they are to shoot in a certain place. They have fifteen minutes until the military arrives. The military then shoots to where the guerrilla was and to the media it looks like they’re fighting against the guerrilla.

Peace is not in the interest of the military, Juancho said, because they get paid double when they’re in conflict. The guerrilla, the paramilitary and the army are fighting no one.

“Then there’s 35 million idiots getting shot at, believing that the military is defending (the people of Columbia),” Juancho said.

Juancho began planning how he would get out of his predicament alive without supporting the corruption that plagued the nation. In two months he dissolved his companies causing them and him to become bankrupt.

The FARC wasn’t happy because Juancho intended to outsmart them. One day as he walked down the street an SUV drove up to him and the guerrilla kidnapped him. He traveled on the floor of SUV.

They took him to a house in an unknown area and placed him in a room where they told him that since he no longer had the company’s he didn’t need to pay them anymore, but that he still had to pay them for the months he owed them. The most important reason he was being kept was to make an example out of him to show what happens when you attempt to mock the FARC.

“You are going to learn your lesson, no one makes a mockery of the guerrilla,” they told him.

Juancho knew that he wasn’t in Bogota because the house was hot and Bogota was cold. His bare room smelled of waste, vomit and death.

He was always tied up and beat everyday, but he considered himself in a better position than the other people in the house. He could hear when woman were being raped, when people were being tortured and when they were beating someone to death.

Juancho could hear when they were torturing people while they had their family members on the phone. It hurt him to hear them suffer because in the time that he was there the people became his family.

Juancho wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that his family was never called. The guerrilla didn’t call because they weren’t holding him for ransom. The fact that he only ate once a day didn’t bother Juancho, but the fact that he didn’t have the liberty to go to the restroom by himself did. Not having freedom is one of the worst feelings in the world, he affirmed.

Juancho defined torture as simply not being able to see his family and know that they’re fine. The abuse he received was an addition to his torture.

His faith in god and his attempts of making the best out of his circumstances is what helped him persevere. During his time there Juancho would tell jokes, sing and talk to his fellow prisoners.

“But it was hard when we were interrupted because someone was being beaten to death,” he said.

The FARC used scare tactics to control their captives, knowing this Juancho tried not to let the abuse get the best of him, something that bugged the guerrilla. He would also sing, pray and talk to his captors as well. He would ask them how many people they had killed and reminded them that they could never take the deaths off them.

“This is all a game, there is no war,” Juancho would tell the guerrilla members. “A war does not last this long. World War II lasted for five or six years and ours has lasted for 60 years.”

One day a new guerrilla member that was very violent arrived at the house and began beating Juancho everyday. The third day Juancho broke his ties and began chocking his aggressor. While he was chocking him, Juancho would kick the guerrilla member’s body with his knee.

“What does it feel like? What does it feel like?” Juancho would ask him. “I’m not going to kill you because im not a murderer, but I want you to know what it feels like.”

The scars on his hands are a testament to the price he payed for the incident. The guerrilla came in and tried to stab him, Juancho would grab the blade with his bare hand. Then they grabbed his hand and began to saw away at his thumb so he would learn his lesson. They stopped cutting after they cut through part of his bone.

Four months after he was captured they ordered him to shower and change into new clothes. Blindfolded they took him in a car to Bogota where he was ordered to sit in a bench in a park for two hours and afterwards take a bus home. They warned him that if he left before the two hours he would be killed. He sat there for four hours.

Juancho filed for political asylum and was surprised at the speed he was granted political asylum. Now in the United States he has a family and works in Virginia to help the Latino community. He also payed of his dept to the guerilla once he arrived to the U.S.

It’s been more than seven years and the memories are as fresh to him as if they happened yesterday. To him the violence he lived through is a reflection of the state of his country.

“It’s very sad when the people in power, the politicians in power begin to worry more about filling their pockets with money,” Juancho said, “without realizing what is happening around them.”