Published on Tuesday, January 8, 2008
By JENNY CAROLINA GONZALEZ
This town of 4,000 deep in Colombia's southern jungle, ironically named The Return, is where the boy now known as Emmanuel began his long journey from a guerrilla hostage to freedom. To Colombian government officials, neighbors and friends, he was a very sick child named Juan David Gómez Tapiero. But DNA tests showed he is almost certainly Emmanuel, born in captivity to a politician kidnapped by FARC guerrillas. His story created worldwide headlines when the FARC offered to release him, his mother, and another hostage to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. But few people, including FARC leaders, knew at the time that the guerrillas no longer had the boy. A visit by The Miami Herald to this largely jungled region some 310 miles south of the capital city of Bogotá produced the first detailed account of Emmanuel's path from El Retorno to headline-maker, though many questions remain unanswered.
In early June 2005, José Crisanto Gómez, a 37-year-old peasant, arrived here by boat after a one-day trip from his tiny village of La Paz, according to several residents. La Paz was then under the control of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a leftist guerrilla group better known as FARC. Gómez arrived with two sickly children, seeking medical care for them. One, a boy of about 11 months, had what medical personnel here described as one of the worst health profiles they had seen: malaria, a broken arm, severe malnutrition, anemia, a high fever, diarrhea and leishmaniasis, a serious skin disease common in the jungle.
"It was depressing"The public clinic here immediately transferred him to the hospital in the provincial capital, San José del Guaviare, only 17 miles but a 40-minute drive away. ''It is not common to receive children in the [bad] health that Juan David arrived,'' said Rosario Neira, director of the San José hospital. "It was depressing, everything that had come together on just one child. It made for sadness. Anyone would have fallen apart before this child, with so many diseases,'' she added. "He didn't raise his eyes. He got toys but did not pick them up. He did not stand but dragged himself on his butt. He cried but no tears came because of the malnutrition.''
Given what is now known about the boy, his poor health is not surprising. Emmanuel was born in a FARC jungle camp to one-time vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas, kidnapped by the rebels along with presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt nearly six years ago during a campaign trip to a rural area. The father was reported to be a rebel who had a consensual relationship with Rojas.
Similar accountsOne El Retorno resident who says José Crisanto Gómez told him the full story in confidence recalled that Gómez had said the boy was left in his care in La Paz by FARC fighters during a battle with Colombian army troops. The rebels promised to return for him in a week. A close friend of Gómez's wife, Liliana, 24, said she also was told that the FARC intended to leave the child for only a few days. The friend, who asked for anonymity because of concerns for her safety, added that the FARC wanted the child's broken arm treated by Liliana's stepfather, a folk healer.
"Just an instrument"The friend and the El Retorno resident both insist that not until about two weeks ago did Gómez begin to suspect that the boy was the son of Clara Rojas. They also deny rumors that Gómez was a member of 12,000-strong FARC, Latin America's oldest and most powerful guerrilla group. ''He was just an instrument. What blame can he have if the only thing he did was lend a hand? Besides, it is a common practice for the guerrillas to leave their children in the care of other families,'' said one Gómez neighbor, who also asked to remain anonymous because of fear.
"They were very poor"The boy remained with the Gómez family in La Paz for 30 to 45 days, according to the family friends. But seeing the boy's health worsening -- and one of his own sons ailing -- Gómez decided to make the trip to El Retorno with the two boys. Gómez apparently did not have the FARC's permission for the trip, the El Retorno resident said. And once he was there, the guerrillas threatened him. So the whole family -- Liliana, their six other children and Liliana's stepfather -- fled La Paz and moved to the El Retorno neighborhood of El Quindío, a poor section of dirt streets and houses made of zinc sheeting. ''They were very poor. Sometimes they had nothing to eat. When there were days when it was two in the afternoon and they had had no breakfast, I would give something to the youngest,'' said Liliana's friend. "The grandfather went often to the slaughterhouse to see if he could find some bones."
Desperate, Gómez took the ailing baby to the El Retorno's public clinic on June 15, saying that the boy was the son of a niece, Martha Tapiero, who had died. Emmanuel's health improved at the San José hospital, but the day after his arrival there he was declared a ward of the government's Colombian Institute for Family Welfare. On June 28, 2005 he was stable enough to be transferred to a government facility in Bogotá for treatment of his broken arm, malaria and leishmaniasis, according to Neira, the director of the San José hospital. "We sent him on [to Bogotá] because he required a superior level of care than we could offer here," Neira said.
Asked about a boyIn Bogotá, while recuperating from surgery on his arm, the child was placed with a foster family. But Gómez kept track of the boy through a Family Welfare official in San José, said Jhon Valdéz, who spoke to Gómez in his role as the El Retorno representative of the federal government ombudsman's office. "He knew where the child was and was very interested. The reason he could not go to see him was because he had no money," Valdéz told The Miami Herald. He added that Gómez not only wanted the child back because of the FARC, but because he had grown fond of the boy. Early last year, Gómez, then working in construction, made a failed attempt to win a seat on the El Retorno municipal council, saying he wanted to represent the thousands of peasants forced by the war to flee the countryside for more urban areas.
ThreatsThe Gómez family suffered another blow last April when Family Welfare officials ruled the boy had been abandoned, jeopardizing Gómez's ability to recover the child. The officials argued that Gómez was too poor to care for the child and had failed to prove that he was related to the boy. Gómez unsuccessfully appealed to Valdéz, the ombudsman. Last June, the FARC began to press him for the child's return. By November, the demands had turned into threats, and Gómez decided to try to get the boy back now claiming that he was the boy's father, Valdéz said. "He never told the FARC that the child was with [Family Welfare]," Valdéz said. "He told me that the boy was his life insurance, and that if he revealed where he was, they would kill him.''
DeadlineValdéz said that on the afternoon of Dec. 26, after the FARC had given Gómez a Dec. 30 deadline to hand over the child, Gómez went to his office and revealed the whole story in confidence -- still unaware of the boy's true identity. By that time, Chávez had gathered a slew of international observers to supervise the hostages' release and sent several aircraft to the city of Villavicencio, on the edge of Colombia's jungle, to await the promised release of Emmanuel, his mother, and former Congresswoman Consuelo González. Valdéz said he counseled Gómez to turn himself in to authorities. Gómez agreed to but waited until Dec. 29 -- after he had received his monthly salary from his construction job. That afternoon, the family abandoned their house in El Retorno and went to San José. On December 31, Gómez, contacted other authorities who immediately called the police. He repeated his story, and the family is now under the government's witness protection program. The same day, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe announced that his intelligence agencies had received information that Emmanuel was not under FARC control and was likely the same boy under care of a foster mother in Bogotá.
SurpriseIn El Retorno, the news that the hostage-boy Emmanuel had in fact lived among them surprised many of the residents. "Never did we imagine that child had been here," said restaurant manager Lorena Amado. "It's a good thing they found him. Maybe now," said Neira, the San José hospital administrator, "he will get all the love that he's been missing."
