DEEP in the Colombian jungle, miles from any town or hospital, Clara Rojas
prepared to give birth in a muddy tent surrounded by the heavily armed
leftist guerrillas who had taken her hostage in February 2002.
The guerrillas had promised that a doctor would be brought to the camp to help
her. But when Rojas went into labour and began to suffer complications, the
only person to hand was a guerrilla wielding a kitchen knife.
“I wanted my baby to be born naturally,” Rojas said last week, as she spoke
for the first time about an extraordinary six-year hostage ordeal that ended
earlier this month. “But I couldn’t dilate normally. There were no doctors
there. I left everything in the hands of God.”
The guerrillas had supplies of anaesthetic and Rojas was drugged while one of
her captors slit open her abdomen with his knife. Her son Emmanuel was born
by amateur caesarean section in April 2004.
He was a true jungle baby and the remarkable story of his conception, birth
and turbulent childhood has transfixed Colombia since Rojas was freed after
the controversial intervention of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
In a series of interviews Rojas, 44, talked freely about the anguish and fear
she suffered as a captive of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the
rebel group known as Farc.
She talked of jaguars that lurked in the jungle, deterring escape attempts,
and of snakes and tarantulas that she believed were released by her captors
near her tent to frighten her into submission.
Yet she did not directly address the one issue that most of Colombia was
discussing. Emmanuel was conceived more than a year after she was taken
captive. Apart from acknowledging that the child’s father was one of her
captors - who may never have known that she became pregnant - Rojas has so
far shed little light on what was evidently a unique relationship.
In their early reactions to Rojas’s release, most Colombians have been
profoundly touched by her ordeal and apparently ready to allow her time to
adjust to her hard-earned freedom. Yet questions are inevitably being asked
about the identity of Emmanuel’s father, where he may be now and how the boy
eventually turned up in a Bogota orphanage with a different name.
Knowledge of the child’s existence first became public in a 2006 book by a
Colombian journalist who had interviewed the rebel leaders. Manuel
Marulanda, Farc’s commander, was quoted as saying: “The boy is a little bit
of us [the captors] and a little bit of them [the captives].”
Early last year another hostage, a police sergeant named Frank Pinchao,
escaped and confirmed Emmanuel’s existence. At the time there was much
discussion of the so-called Stockholm syndrome, in which captives try to
befriend their captors.
The Bogota media have mostly glossed over the circumstances of Emmanuel’s
birth - Cambio magazine ran a feature on “sexual relations between kidnapper
and kidnapped” without mentioning Rojas’s name. Yet internet forums have
been less discreet and several angry voices have been heard.
“Clara Rojas is now allied to Farc,” claimed Deszo Jivansky in a post to a
Bogota newspaper website. “She committed a mortal sin and slept with a
guerrilla.”
Others remembered previous speculation that Rojas might have been raped. But
in the interviews she has given since her release, she has made no
suggestion of coercion. “Did she consent or not? That is Clara’s problem,”
noted one contributor calling himself Scorpio.
Others have been more sympathetic. “It’s sad to see the lack of respect and
humanity among some people on this subject,” complained Rosario Torres Ruiz.
Another comment, by Thelemus Cassandros, summed up the view of many: “She was
in a vulnerable psychological state and we shouldn’t judge her for the
decision she took at that dark moment.”
Several Bogota psychologists agreed that judgment of Rojas should not be
harsh. Professor Emilio Meluk of the National University wrote a 1999 book
on kidnapping, based on the experience of 280 Colombian victims. He found
that sexual impulses were invariably governed by anguish and fear.
“If there is a sexual relationship, it tends to be a survival strategy,” Meluk
said. “It’s really a relationship between two liars, each with a different
objective: one wants to control and the other wants to get out alive.”
Rojas was a pretty, dark-haired lawyer in her late thirties when she teamed up
with her friend Ingrid Betancourt, a well-known Colombian politician who was
running in the 2002 presidential elections on an environmental ticket.
Refused the use of an army helicopter to visit remote districts, the two
women headed into the jungle interior by car and were seized by Farc rebels.
At that moment the guerrillas were interested only in kidnapping Betancourt
and told Rojas that she could go free. But the two women had known each
other for 16 years and Rojas refused to leave her friend. It was, she
admitted later, a “fateful” decision that caused both women unimaginable
grief.
Despite the threat from jaguars and other jungle predators, the women and
several other hostages were bent on early escape. Yet when their chance came
after two months of captivity, they made a mess of it. “We didn’t know which
way to run,” Rojas said. “One of us was saying this way; the other, that
way. We never succeeded in getting our bearings. It got dark and we were
caught.”
The setback hurt relations between Rojas and Betancourt, who each blamed the
other for their plight. They were chained to trees at first and were later
separated for long periods. Betancourt remains a hostage and Rojas has not
seen her for three years.
By the time Rojas discovered she was pregnant she had already lost contact
with the baby’s father. “I had no way of telling him, he never returned and
I don’t know if he is alive or dead,” she said. “It was a very critical
moment for me because despite my circumstances I wanted to have the baby.”
She said her fellow hostages never shunned her: “They told me they would
support me whatever my decision.”
She asked her captives to get her help from the Red Cross, but the Farc
commander decided that she should give birth on her own in a tent about 40
yards from the other hostages.
Rojas was anaesthetised after going into labour and awoke to find a guerrilla
sewing up her abdomen. “He said, ‘Be quiet, don’t move. You’ve got a boy and
he’s doing well’.”
The captives and their captors joined forces to make baby clothes and shoes
from scraps of cloth and animal skin, but Rojas was worried about her
child’s health. Emmanuel had apparently broken an arm during the caesarean
and he was also suffering from leishmaniasis, an insect-borne skin disease
that is also known as “Baghdad boil”.
Rojas asked if the boy could be sent to his grandmother in Bogota and on
January 23, 2005, the day she remembers as the worst of her captivity,
Emmanuel was taken away by the guerrillas.
It was not until her release this month that Rojas discovered what had
happened to her son; he was first given to a rural peasant and then placed
in a Bogota orphanage under the name Juan David Gomez.
Mother and son were reunited last Wednesday and are getting to know each other
in private in Bogota. But their full story has yet to be told.
Who are we to even pry into the circumstances of Ms. Rojas' baby's birth? We certainly cannot begin to comprehend her psychological or emotional state. That the child survived in the jungle is good news indeed, and to be reunited with Mom is even better.
rkarlebach, Tulsa, USA
Open your eyes!!!! If any other civilized group (US Army, British, Colombian army....) would have done to a prisoner what these barbaric people did to these women, it would be all over the news!!!!! Amnesty International, the UN would have a field day. ....but it's these leftist guerillas and....
Alex, Sumter, USA
Hopefuly this article can show to UK and the rest of the wold the kind of killers and terrorist are this rebel groups. They are a problably 5,000 guerillas with high profit in cocaina business, but Colombian people are more than 40 millions, and the president is supported by more than 87% that relectd him..
Do the math, and conclusions by yourself
cranberry, Leeds, UK
It is so easy to write about the jungle, and judging people, or whatsoever, sitting behind a desk.....
alejorey, Bologna, Italy