Herbert “Tico” Braun
Author and Professor of History, University of Virginia
November 11, 2003
“Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia”


“Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia” is a book composed of many voices. Its author, Colombian born Historian Herbert “Tico” Braun shares the voice of the protagonist in this reading.
In 1988, business man Yakabo Jake Gambini, Braun’s brother in law was kidnapped and held by Columbian Guerrillas for more than four months. Some of the language shared in his story is strong and may not be suitable for younger viewers.

So, here I was, thirty-two years old. I had just bought me a small company in Columbia that did pipe inspections for the oil companies. We started picking up some work here and there, but during the next years, it really got rough.

In 1970, things started picking up. I did not give myself a salary. Every cent we could get a hold of why we put it right back in to buying some more equipment. I just had a feeling that it was going to be alright. You say God damn, let’s go for it. You are forty-five to fifty years old. You are feeling good. You say to hell with it. Let’s make a run for it. We hit it just right.

By 1979, we were doing very, very well. We must have had 350-400 people working out there for us. There is a lot of luck too. Anybody who says that they are in complete control of their destiny is kidding themselves. You look at anybody who claims to be, who claims to have done it himself, to be a self made man, and at some point in their lives, they had a tremendous stroke of luck.

Mine was when I had a chance to buy that company. But, work is the basis of it you know. You work your ass off to make it work. We got along fine with all the workers except for once back in 1981 when about twenty or twenty- five employees in Savanna started up a union. We went through three or four months of pretty hard negotiations. It was very unpleasant because a couple of times, they almost burned the truck. I was dumbfounded by the whole thing. We had always paid very good salaries. But, if they wanted a union, that was their right. We reached an agreement and signed a union contract. About forty percent of the people wanted to get in. In about a month, about five or ten percent wanted to get out. After six or eight months, everybody got out except for three or four of the leaders. They came to me and they said, “Well, what is going to happen to us?” “Are you going to fire us?” No, I said. I am not going to fire you. You all are good employees. You work hard. They are still working with us down there today.

When they came, I thought they were workers from a rig who were looking for me so that I could help them out somewhere. Then I saw all the guns and I knew. We must have traveled ten or twelve miles. He was having trouble shifting. They were having trouble keeping up with each other, one car going ahead. They would cuss. It was a sandy road and the truck in front of us stopped. The other one pulled up behind us. They made me get into the other one. Same guys and I was in the middle again. We did not talk. No conversation. Nothing was said. I tried to see if I could grab the steering wheel and go off into a ditch. Crash! Get away! Escape!

I had a small space to walk around in about five meters long and one meter wide. All day long, back and forth, I must have walked twenty- five miles. I never did have feelings like that before. It was a completely different kind of feeling that I had in me where you are almost in despair. Not despair, really, but you are berating yourself so much. It is that feeling of saying Jesus Christ you dumb ass! What the hell are you doing here? It was all so unnecessary. Why didn’t you listen to Ursula? I was angry at myself. But, I was more disgusted with myself for all the pain that I was putting everyone else in for having done something so ridiculous. It was strictly a mental thing. It wasn’t healthy. I had to get out of it. Would it have led to mental depression?

I urinated a few times on that first day, but the next morning, I had to take a shit. I knew I could not just move about. I could not just go off into the shrubs or anything like that. They made a hole for me about a foot and a half wide off to one side about forty feet or so. It is a terrible feeling. You tried to pick your time when there wasn’t that many people around or there wasn’t a girl on guard. If you knew there was a girl on guard for the next four hours, you would try to see if you could go before it was her time to come on. You would go with a man. It was a silly thing in a situation like that you know. But, you still have certain…

One time that I really had to go, they switched guards on me. It was this girl. I waited around a while, but they did not change her. Finally, I told her. I said, Hey, I have to go to the bathroom. She called one of the men. They were considerate. They respected. Walking down there with a guard behind you, you have a man that is standing guard over you. It is terrible. Just having this man there with a gun, it was the most demeaning thing of all. It made me feel angry that I was in a situation like that or that a situation like that even existed. Even the prisoners in the hardest jails have a toilet right there and at least they do not have to ask anybody. It is a natural function. They should not be any situation in this world where a man has to ask if he can go do a natural function. I think that is a basic right, but I had to wait for them to say OK.

It was a thing of ups and downs mentally. I had seen butterflies. If a butterfly landed on my head, you know, that was a good sign. Boy, you are going to get out. That old butterfly landed on your head. It picked you out. Any little sign…

They told me many times that they were sorry that they got me. I felt like telling them, you all are talking about being just to everyone and about human rights but what has happened to my human rights? If you take my human rights and justify it, you can take the rights of ten million people and justify it. Human rights are human rights. If a man is starving on the streets and he is completely poor, at least he is free. He might have economic problems and sick children, but at least he is free. He is not having someone tell him when he can go take a shit. It is worse than being in a concentration camp. There you may have one hundred prisoners and ten guards, but one man and twelve guards? That is tough. You have no rights. You have no freedom, only your mind, fortunately.

It is worse than death. Your body has been taken completely from you. You are subject to their will. Your family is subjected to their will. This is against everything that I have ever lived for. It is a completely wrong thing to handle you like a horse or a dog that you are going to barter or negotiate over. It makes you feel like you are a pound of meat. That is a bad feeling. They are holding all the aces. They have got your body. I would rather have died in the kidnapping attempt than be left there like a dog in the ditch.

We moved to the third camp. I had gotten to know Ricardo and the other ones a little bit. We were not friendly, but at least we were getting to know each other. Jesus, you live with someone for twenty days, you know. You are able to identify everyone. You are able to pick up on their daily habits. I felt comfortable with them and they were getting used to me too.

I was no trouble to them. They told me that many times. I made up my own bed. The only thing they did for me was cook and wash my clothes. They would not let me wash them. I never asked them for anything. It puts you in a bad situation. I don’t care who it is. People will respect you more if you show some kind of a moral standard. Don’t show weakness. I guess I also did it for my own self-respect so later on I could say that I did not let them get me down. I was still me.

They told me I could have whatever I wanted. Booze, or wine; I always refused. That is the last thing that I wanted, to have my mental capacity influenced by alcohol. If I had started drinking with them, it would have placed us in a different kind of situation. When a man drinks, conversation always starts. You let yourself go. I did not want to feel like they were my drinking buddies. No way at all! These people were holding me prisoner.
Ricardo told me about some of them that would ask for women and they got them women. Why, hell! I could no more have gotten a hard on out there than the man in the moon. If they had gotten me a woman as beautiful as Raquel Welch, I would have done nothing sexually. That was the last thing on my mind. The sex drive was gone. Completely. The situation that I was in did not warrant me thinking about sex. I did not think about women and that is very unusual for me. In fact, when he told me about them requesting women out there, I could not quite believe it. I mean here is a man who has been kidnapped. His family is trying to negotiate his release and he is thinking about getting sex? Those two things did not make sense to me.

The creeks are always nice. Clear, running water. Sometimes, there would be a break in the trees and I would be out there in the middle of the creek with the sun shining down. It is very quiet, very restful. Taking a bath was a luxury, beautiful water. They would give me a pan, which is the same one that they give me in the morning to brush my teeth and wash my face. I would soap myself real good and take that pan and throw water on me. That first pan of cold water, it never ceased to shock me how cold it was. It was very relaxing and refreshing. The irony of it, here I was in the middle of a creek washing myself. Cold water with a guard standing over me made me wonder what the hell are you doing here? You think to yourself Jesus Christ, how many more days am I going to be out here? During the whole day, always in the back of my mind was one thought. Is somebody going to come today? Am I going to get out?

Every night they gather around. It is far enough away that I could not quite hear them very well. Each night one of them had to prepare a lecture on some subject that Ricardo had assigned. The labor movement, the role of women in guerrilla organizations, they talked about the political system in Columbia. They talked about the Communist Party, the Bolshevik revolution, the guerrillas in El Salvador, all kinds of subjects. During the day, they took out their manuals and studied.

I did not allow myself to take a nap in the daytime. It was tempting. It would have been a way of killing time and they told me, “Theo.” They all called me Theos. “Why don’t you take a siesta?” But, I don’t want to do that. If I took a nap, I would not sleep at night.

Night was the best time of the day. I would lay there under the mosquito netting and with darkness coming in, I had my privacy. They could not observe my face or see my eyes. I never could figure out how long I stayed awake. One hour, three hours? Once I fell asleep, it would be a good solid sleep. Every once in a while, I would wake up because they would constantly be putting their flashlight on me. I guess it was for security. I got to know who was on guard by how many times they flashed on me because some did it constantly and some did it very few times. It would wake me up a little bit. I would turn over so that the flashlight would not hit my eyes and go back to sleep.

By this time I was reeling and then he said, “Do you know how much that guy over there makes? He earns six thousand eight hundred dollars a month!” That was exactly my monthly salary to the cent. They were getting their figures just right. I never did get over it that they had all those facts. But, they were never sure how good their information was. It was hearsay. What they wanted me to do was confirm it. I never did. I never did respond. It was something in me. I had made up my mind. Maybe it was part of my early Army training. You give your name, rank and serial number. Nothing else. Don’t give any information, but it was tough. There were some tough days there and you were never really sure when the talk would stop and the action would start. That was their plan. Just keep me off balance. Maybe they figured that I would break and start talking or crying.

The more I thought about it, the less I liked it. I started figuring out how many men they could arm. A thousand dollars per man or maybe two thousand dollars per man would be three thousand men that they could man or arm or six thousand men at a thousand each. That was a disaster. It got to the point where I did not want them to get one cent.

The feelings all ran together. I wanted to get out. I wanted to see my family again, but my freedom would give them more arms and ammunition and more power to be able to keep fighting. All I knew is that people were being killed and kidnapped. Many women and their families were crying too. I did not want my freedom to give them more money so that they could expand their operations. What in the world can I do? As more of these facts were brought out and more information was fed me, I kept playing the deaf mute.

There were days where I could not eat or drink and days where I would think about suicide trying to really make up my mind about what I could do. I saw these pieces of tin can, of an old sardine can. I took it and put it in water and that night I ate it. I swallowed it. And glass, little pieces of that too, about three quarters of an inch long. I could not swallow it by itself. I wrapped it up in a little piece of toilet paper and I swallowed it. Stupid!

Then I ate wild mushrooms. They would bring me these corn meal cakes and I would take a big chunk of it in my mouth and I would swallow it without chewing on it to see if I could choke on it. There was this bush with long thorns. Nobody was watching me. I took some of those thorns and wiped them in my shit and then I wrapped them up in paper and when it was dark, I would scratch myself with them. I was trying to get typhoid or something. You do all kinds of crazy things.

I finally came to the conclusion to quit eating. That was the only way to do it. Starve yourself to death. This way, then you might still have a chance of getting out if they got shook up. If they don’t, then after a while, I will be in a coma and you won’t give a damn.

My pants were getting bigger and bigger. You waste to nothing. Your bones all start coming out, your legs, your arms. A couple of times they cooked chicken and they offered it to me. I would eat a little bit and just say I was not hungry.

I felt like I had a good life, a full life and I was very happy with it. If this situation was going to continue much longer, I would rather be dead and gone. Finished, not cling on to a life that is useless or meaningless or dependent on other people’s whims and their likes and dislikes. Is life so important that you have to live that way? How long was I going to be out there? Another six months? Another year perhaps? Maybe I had become mentally deranged.
On October 2 or 3, I cut it all out completely. I prayed to the good Lord to give me the strength to be able to go through with it and not be tempted or that hunger pains and thirst would get to me.

I came to the conclusion that if I did not eat, then I would not have to shit and that gave me great pleasure.
You know, they watch you every minute, twenty -four hours a day. But, I found a way to bug them, to annoy them, make them worry. All at once, it was hey we got this man and that’s it? No, no. All at once, I had control. It took me a while to get there, but I found a way. Not completely, but I had control over certain phases of my life. I would sit on a log in the stream or a rock and get undressed slowly, pour cold water on top of my head. It was so cold, but it felt so good and refreshing. It shocked you into feeling good. I had put some of the water in my mouth and I spit it out. I guess a few drops would go down my throat. I guess you might call that cheating, but it was all right. I would wash off, soak myself, I could not stand, I would notice how skinny I was getting. God damn! I would say to myself. How can this be happening? I would wash my feet and my underwear and I would dry myself. One of the guards would come by and hold me while I tried to put on my pants. I would tie them up with a little piece of rope that I had found to keep them from falling down. I would put on my socks and my boots. They would have to hold me going back up.

In the whole time I was out there, I never looked in a mirror so I had no idea what I looked like with my beard and my face and my hair. They trimmed my beard once or twice and they trimmed my fingernails a few times.
I thought about my life. This is a hell of a way to go. Here is a man who has been fairly successful in his life with a family and a wife who loves him, who enjoys food and wine and drinks. Here I was on some forsaken hillside in Columbia and I did not even know where I was. Twelve or eight people guarding me and the height of irony was that I was starving myself to gain my freedom. Maybe I would die on this forsaken hillside and even be buried there and nobody would even know.

I knew that there was going to be a move. Something was happening, but I was not sure what. We got on the boat. Two men came out from across the river. I could see that one of the men, a younger fellow was in charge. We went down the river about a quarter of a mile. At a house, they let me off.

Everybody looked me up and down and we all went down the river together. It was an aluminum type skiff with a motor on it that went pretty fast. The guy maneuvering it knew the rivers, the sand bars and the curves real well. They offered me some food and I said, no. I am not really hungry. Finally, I had a little bit of fruit as I was waiting there.

Finally, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around. It was Cesar. I said how are you doing? He said “Fine. How are you doing?” I said fine and then I don’t know, I guess he said we are going to go because even when I saw him, I did not know if I was going to be able to get out. But, yes I was getting out. It was time.

I got up early. I got into Bogota and landed at that little hangar we always used. You were there. I talked to you and said thank you. You all told me that Ursula was in town. At first, I was a little disturbed, but then I was glad. All my children were fine. Everybody was fine. What a day! Jesus, what an adventure! What a way to end thirty years of working in Columbia.

In Houston, I got up early as usual around 3:30 or 4:00 and made my coffee. I went outside and got the New York Times. I sat out there and smoked a cigarette and drank my coffee. I looked out sitting on the wall at the entrance to the driveway. It was a beautiful morning. I gave my thanks to the Lord for letting me be there and that everything was alright. How lucky I was to be able to sit there and drink this coffee, have a cigarette, read the newspaper. As I opened it up, there it was, all the information about Bush winning the election. I was happy. I felt like no one else could feel as happy as we did. He had just won the election and I had gotten my freedom.
You know, ever since I had gotten out, I had been with somebody. One, two, three or four people, but at this time, in the morning, I was out there. I was just by myself. I really had time to think about it, the real meaning of being out. It is quite a feeling. Yes, indeed. A man every once in a while needs his privacy.

Thank you.