Kidnapped by Farc guerrillas in 2002, Clara Rojas spent six years in captivity in the Colombian jungle, where she fell out with her fellow hostages and had a son by one of her captors. But before his first birthday, the boy was taken from her. Now free and reunited with her child, she is working to rebuild both their lives
A RADIANT SMILE spreads across Clara Rojas’s face when she recalls the reason why she chose the name Emmanuel for her son. “I read in a Bible the guerrillas gave me that the word means ‘God is with us’. I felt instinctively that this should be the name of my child, because what had happened was like a miracle. Emmanuel was a miracle.”
“Miracle” is one way of describing the story of Emmanuel, born in captivity in the sweltering heat of the Colombian jungle, the result of a liaison between Rojas and one of the Farc guerrillas who had kidnapped her and her friend, Ingrid Betancourt. The boy was taken from his mother when he was just a few months short of his first birthday. In the years that passed before they saw each other again, Emmanuel was given another name by a farmer entrusted with his care. The child was to end up in a home for destitute families in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, before being traced, against all the odds, and identified through DNA tests.
It is an extraordinary story – one of which Emmanuel, now six years old, is blissfully unaware. As Rojas talks about the past, Emmanuel, dressed in a Batman T-shirt and waving a Harry Potter wand, plays in the hallway. They have come to Britain for a short holiday. Rojas plans to take her son to Oxford to show him where the Harry Potter film was shot. Emmanuel’s face lights up at the prospect.
Their story opens at a Farc roadblock on a dirt road near the town of San Vicente del Caguán, deep in the guerrilla-controlled region of southern Colombia. Farc – the acronym stands for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – is the oldest and largest group within the country’s constellation of rebel factions. From Marxist beginnings in the early 1960s, Farc has evolved into what critics say is nothing more than a narco-cartel, dependent on cocaine trafficking and kidnappings to sustain a campaign underpinned by increasingly muddled ideology. Some Colombians talk of un conflicto absurdo, sin fin, an absurd war without end, fought for the sake of fighting.
Rojas, a lawyer then in her late 30s, had travelled to Farc territory with Betancourt, the high-profile French-Colombian politician who was running for president at the time. The two women had become close friends while working together years before. When Betancourt decided to run for office, she asked Rojas to oversee her campaign. The Colombian authorities warned the women against visiting San Vicente. It was February 2002 and fragile talks with Farc had just broken down. “There were risks . . . Maybe we should have thought more about it before making the decision to travel there. It was naive,” Rojas says.
The women’s vehicle was stopped by Farc guerrillas, and so began an ordeal that was to last for five years, 11 months, two weeks and four days for Rojas, and even longer for Betancourt. Theirs was a nightmarish existence. When the women were not on forced marches with fellow hostages through dense jungle in 40-degree heat to avoid army patrols, they were encamped at rudimentary bases where they were often kept in chains. So heavy was the foliage of the giant trees overhead, it often blocked out sun and sky, creating a sense of living in a “constant twilight”, as Rojas puts it.
GRAINY VIDEOS RELEASED by Farc at the time show Rojas, her face tense and haggard, with Betancourt. Both are dressed in the military fatigues they were ordered to wear in captivity. The image is a world away from the elegant, poised and serene Rojas of today, who tells her story with a firm insistence that she will not remain hostage to the past.
“Many times in the jungle I thought I was not strong enough for this. I went through so many hard days,” she remembers. Some of her darkest moments came after the two women tried to escape but were recaptured. Their punishment was to be chained together for a month. “I was terrified. I felt like an animal in those chains.”
Rojas returns again and again to her faith when recalling what helped sustain her during the long days and nights. “When I felt really, really alone, and I didn’t have anybody to talk to or confide in, I would turn to God,” she says. “I read the whole Bible. It was a real consolation. My faith gave me strength, and made me believe I could resist.”
Rojas has never divulged the circumstances that led to her pregnancy in mid-2003. She has previously said she was not raped but “nor was it a love story”. The realisation that she was carrying a child prompted a whirlwind of emotion. “Of course, like every woman, I was happy because it is a wonderful thing to know that you are going to be a mother. But I was also very, very worried because I didn’t have my freedom and I knew it would be very difficult to properly care for my baby in that situation.”
Her fellow hostages reacted with much hostility. Some demanded to know the father’s identity. Betancourt, whose friendship with Rojas had deteriorated under the strain of captivity, was coldly dismissive. Rojas recalled others behaving like “hyenas”. With army helicopters circling above and scores of guerrillas around the camp, the imminent arrival of a baby heightened tensions among the captives. “We had many things that pushed us. We had the army behind us, some people were sick and they needed support, others felt isolated. Some people were very worried for me, but they didn’t know what they could do.”
Rojas was banished to a makeshift cabin away from the others and told she would have to give birth without medical assistance. When the time came, Emmanuel was delivered via Caesarean section by a guerrilla more accustomed, Clara later discovered, to helping cows calve. Using a carving knife and anaesthetic, he conducted the operation by the light of a single 100-watt bulb connected to a generator. Emmanuel suffered a fractured arm during the birth.
Mother and child had eight months together. Rojas sang lullabies and sewed baby clothes from scraps of blankets. Emmanuel played with wooden toys carved by the guerrillas. Rojas says motherhood brought forth a sense of inner strength that surprised her. “I am a very quiet person, but suddenly I became very forceful. I knew I needed to fight for Emmanuel’s life and mine. That gave me the strength to do things I never thought I could.”
One morning Rojas noticed a small lesion on Emmanuel’s cheek. He had developed leishmaniasis, a parasitical infection which can be fatal. The baby was taken away for medical treatment, but Rojas was not allowed to accompany him. She would not see her son again until her release in early 2008.
“I could think about nothing but my child,” Rojas says of the years of separation. “I dreamed that he would obtain his freedom, that he would know my family. I thought of him going to school and living his life. It was like a form of therapy for me. I tried to think positively and take care of myself because I believed I would meet him again.
“Of course, there were times when I had negative thoughts, because, with the passing of time, when the weeks turned to months and then years, with no news of him, it was very difficult. But I never lost hope, hope that we would find each other again.”
IT WAS ONLY WITH THE publication of a book on Farc in 2006, four years after the last video images of the women were released, that Rojas’s mother learned that her daughter was still alive – and that she had a child. The book quoted Farc’s commander, Manuel Marulanda, as saying: “The boy is a little bit of us and a little bit of them.” A year later, a policeman, who escaped after being held hostage by Farc for nine years, revealed that Rojas and her son had been separated. The story gripped Colombia and triggered much soul-searching in a nation wearied by decades of the Farc insurgency.
“If Emmanuel dies,” wrote Héctor Abad Faciolince, a prominent Colombian novelist, “it would be a terrible indictment of how far the country has sunk. If Emmanuel doesn’t start school and doesn’t grow healthy and strong, we will be the most savage country on earth, the dirtiest, the worst.”
It later transpired that Farc had handed Emmanuel over to a farmer, who told doctors the boy was his nephew, named Juan David Gomez. The baby’s arm was still not properly healed, and he showed signs of severe malnutrition and symptoms of malaria. Suspecting abuse, the doctors brought the child to hospital, where he was later taken in by the state welfare agency. In April 2006, Emmanuel was transferred to a home in Bogotá.
It was there, shortly after she was freed in January 2008, that Rojas and Emmanuel were reunited. Her eyes shine when she recalls the moment he walked towards her with arms outstretched, whispering “Mama” as they embraced. “It was incredible. I felt him so close. Our bond had remained strong,” she says. “I could not believe how much he had changed. The last time I saw him, he was just a baby. He could only sit up and he had three words: ‘Mama’, ‘water’ and ‘bottle’. Now, he was more than three years old, he was able to run and he had such brightness in his eyes. It was a very special moment.”
I ask Rojas if Emmanuel, with his almond-shaped eyes and mischievous smile, resembles his father. “In fact, I think he is like me,” she replies, as she tousles his hair. “His face is closer to his mother’s, especially his hair, right?” She says the father – if he is still alive – may not know about his relationship to Emmanuel because they moved camp around the time she realised she was pregnant.
“I didn’t tell him because I didn’t have the opportunity,” she says. “We were separated and I didn’t know where he was. I haven’t had any information or news about him since, but I am afraid that he has already died.”
Farc is said to prohibit physical intimacy between its guerrillas and captives. One freed hostage has said that the child’s father was rumoured to have been removed from his post or killed. Rojas says she decided not to talk about Emmanuel’s father or disclose his identity, for her son’s sake.
“I think it is better for him, and for both of us,” she says. “Maybe in the future I will think differently, but now I believe it is important for Emmanuel to have a quiet, calm life.” She acknowledges that the day will come when Emmanuel asks those questions himself. “I think about it a lot. This is not the right time to speak to him about it because he is too young. When he asks me in the future, maybe it will be possible to talk about what happened, but now the most important thing is to try to live a normal life, to give Emmanuel a normal life.”
Only once has he inquired about the kidnapping, asking: “Mama, why didn’t you come and fetch me earlier? I missed you so much.” Rojas replied that she was far away and the people she was with would not permit her to see him.
ROJAS WROTE A bestselling book about her experience, which is soon to be published in English. One of the chapters, titled “Misunderstandings” – deals with the fragmenting of her once-close friendship with Ingrid Betancourt.
According to Rojas, the hardship of life in the jungle dragged Betancourt down into a melancholy that later turned to spitefulness. She cast Rojas out from the French lessons she gave fellow captives and took away a dictionary the guerrillas had given Rojas. Other hostages have levelled similar accusations against Betancourt since their release. “Some of the guards treated us better than she did,” one claimed.
Betancourt has made no comment on the criticisms – her own account is to be given in a forthcoming book. Rojas, who greeted Betancourt at Bogotá airport after the latter’s dramatic rescue in July 2008, is reticent about revisiting the matter. “At one time she was my friend. I tried to understand what happened with her. That’s it. I don’t have any hard feelings for her,” she says. “I am happy that she obtained her freedom. I know she is with her family, and she is getting on with her own life. To tell you the truth, I don’t think about it very much.”
Sometimes, when the rains come to Bogotá, where Rojas and her son now live, she thinks of those still held by Farc.
“I remember the problems the rain caused us in the jungle and I worry about them. I know how they suffer,” she says.
But she would prefer not to dwell on the past. “I believe it is not good to return to the past, especially one in which you have suffered a lot. I lost six years of my life, but I have my child and we are both alive. I look only to the present and the future. The past is past.”
