By Sijin Kurian Title: Law of the Jungle
Author: John Otis
Publisher: William Morrow, 2010
On February 13, 2003, three American contractors (Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes, and Marc Gonsalves) were kidnapped by the FARC in Colombia. They would spend more than five years as hostages in the hellacious southern Colombian jungle, before they were heroically rescued along with several other hostages, such as Ingrid Betancourt, in a daring attempt by the Colombian army. In Law of the Jungle, John Otis, an award-winning journalist who has spent two decades covering Latin America, manages to capture all of the complexities regarding the capture, the years the Americans spent in captivity, and the successful rescue attempt of them and their fellow captives.
From the whole reason as to why there are American military contractors in Colombia (or around the world for that matter), the warning signs about their single-engine Cessna that crashed, the bungled rescue attempts, the soldiers uncovering the FARC stash, the relationships between the hostages, and to the incredible rescue attempt, Otis presents the facts in a way that is riveting, informative, and painfully heartbreaking. As elections, negotiations, and missions unfold around Colombia, what may have been victories for Colombia and the U.S. were not necessarily good for the hostages themselves and could have put their lives in danger as the FARC could have deemed them no longer useful and summarily execute them. Not only are the main factors and players of the events examined, but also the people that are generally not mentioned but whose lives were heavily impacted. When two companies of the Colombian army stumble upon a FARC money stash of millions of dollars, Otis follows several of the people who took the money and the misfortune that followed upon them. Some soldiers give the money to their poor families or try to make a better life for themselves, and are either ostracized by locals or killed by hitmen. There are Colombians who are kidnapped and their poor health prevents them from making the journey through the jungle, so their FARC captors put a bullet in their head. There is also the other side shown of Colombians in FARC-controlled areas killed by the right-wing paramilitaries. If Otis is accused of showed any bias in his reporting, then that bias is shown toward the victims on all sides of the conflict in Colombia.
The narrative cuts back and forth between different perspectives following the timeline of events. While the Americans are held hostage and moving from camp to camp, we see what the army and the governments in the U.S. and Latin America are doing not only in trying to rescue the hostages, but also on a macro scale in dealing with the FARC as a whole. We also see how the news about the Americans being kidnapped was buried behind the larger story of the war in Iraq, as it had just started around the same time, and also how the politics involved between the U.S. and Colombia possibly prevented a rescue attempt when the Americans initially crashed and before they were captured. It all plays out as if it were a blockbuster thriller, as there are so many twists and moments when you’re on the edge of your seat hoping that people make it out alive, such as John Frank Pinchao’s survival in the jungle before being rescued just as the Colombian army gave up on finding him. Law of the Jungle is a fascinating look at an incredible event, while also bringing to light the tragedy of the conflict in Colombia and painfully reminding us that there are people still held as hostages, not only in Colombia, but around the world.
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