Hostage Nation by Victoria Bruce Page A

heard Trinidad say that his case would soon be resolved. Still, Trinidad did not agree to speak with Ochoa.
    Weeks into his kidnapping, a new commander appeared in the camp. “He told me that he came on behalf of Simón Trinidad to speak with me.” This was when Ochoa would find out what the FARC would demand for his freedom. Ochoa remembers that “the expression used was ‘You have to make a contribution to the war.’ And the contribution that they mentioned was one million
dollars.”
Ochoa was stunned. “[I told him] that even if I sold all my assets and my family’s assets, I could not raise that amount. And that would include my children’s, my wife’s, and all my relatives’. I offered ten million pesos [seven thousand dollars].” Ochoa’s insulting offer infuriated the commander, who admonished him for his lack of respect to the FARC and gave him a lesson in the business of extortion and kidnapping. He told Ochoa that the FARC would, under no circumstances, release anyone for less than fifty million pesos. In fact, if the FARC needed fifty million pesos, it would just go to a rural area where the big landowners lived and demand it from any one of them. If they didn’t pay, it would simply take away two or three hundred head of cattle. A few days later, the landowner would seek out the FARC, willing to pay the money so that the cattle would be returned.
    Eight days after Ochoa learned of the demand, he and his brother were moved out of their original camp. They began a march that lasted over forty-seven nights. Each day, they walked for six to ten hours—much of it in the rain. Their captors were mostly between thirteen and seventeen years old, and all were armed with semiautomatic rifles.Ochoa continued to believe that his relationship with Trinidad would help free him, and not a day went by that he didn’t asked to speak with his former friend. When the group of captors and hostages finally arrived in a camp, Ochoa and his brother were allowed to listen to the radio, but it was taken away immediately when the broadcast contained news about their kidnapping. “I complained about why it had been taken away from me, and the answer that I was given was that it was an instruction given by Simón Trinidad,” Ochoa says. But there was always a radio somewhere in the camp tuned to a news station, and Ochoa stealthily moved as close as possible to hear any news. “Commander Dumar would lower the volume so that I could not hear it. But he would allow me to hear other national and regional news broadcasts on the radio.” Ochoa also listened intently to the radio communications among the guerrillas, hoping to glean some insight into his future. The guerrillas spoke in code to one another over the radio, but it was soon apparent which words referred to what. One code word he heard over and over: “Whenever they referred to us, they would say the ‘calves’ or the ‘merchandise.’”
    What Ochoa did not hear or know, but could only painfully imagine, was what his wife of fifteen years, Carmen Alicia Medina, was going through to try to free him. After the kidnapping, the guerrillas contacted Medina and told her that she would have to hike alone into the Perijá mountains for a meeting with a midlevel commander named Octavio. Medina, who endured chronic pain from an injured leg, made several excruciating trips. “I had to go up a mountain, many hours, sometimes just to be listened to, just to be given an opportunity, asking God to give me strength. Not only to overcome the situation but also because I am deathly afraid of snakes. I was asking God to just please not let me find a snake.” Each time, she begged for information, but the guerrillas had nothing for her—no proof of life and no demand for money. Medina felt that the guerrillas were interested in her only because she continued to deliver the items that they