What would my father think of the peace deal with his kidnappers?”

A daughter recalls what it was to have her father held hostage by FARC rebels for 265 days

It is the closest the country has ever come to ending its conflict, the longest war in the Americas. Yet on October 2, when Colombians will have the final say on the peace deal by voting in a referendum, the decision will not be simple. Under the agreement, FARC fighters will receive amnesty for crimes.

The first person I wanted to call when I heard that Colombia’s government and the country’s largest leftist rebel group had reached a peace deal last week was my father.

In 1999, my father, Jaime Correal Martinz, was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. He was captured by a gang on his way home from work; driven high into the mountains outside Bogota, the capital; and turned over to the rebel group, which held him for ransom for more than eight months.

While my stepmother, Samantha, negotiated with the rebels and took care of my younger siblings Nicolas and Lorena in Bogota, and I finished my sophomore year of college in the United States, my father was moved from camp to camp, hidden under the jungle canopy as military planes swarmed above. He slept in 38 different places.

He wasn’t targeted for any particular reason. At the time, kidnapping for ransom was rampant in Colombia, one of the ways the rebels financed the insurgency, along with trafficking cocaine, and he was presumed to be wealthy.

What would my father think of the peace deal with his kidnappers?

While my father was being held, his travel company went out of business. We lost everything. And we were among the lucky ones. The 52-year conflict, involving the FARC, the military and brutal right-wing paramilitaries, is believed to have claimed more than 220,000 lives, left 40,000 people missing and displaced more than five million.

Cause for celebration

The news that the rebels have agreed, after four years of negotiations, to permanently lay down their arms, disband and join the political system is a cause for celebration for some. It is the closest the country has ever come to ending its conflict, the longest war in the Americas. Peace in Colombia, the elusive dream of millions who have marched in the streets, seems within reach. President Juan Manuel Santos called the accord the door to “a new stage in our history.”

Yet on October 2, when Colombians will have the final say on the deal by voting in a referendum, the decision will not be simple. Under the deal, FARC fighters will receive amnesty for crimes such as drug trafficking.

Those who confess to crimes like kidnapping and executions will be subject to five to eight years of restricted mobility, but no prison time. During that time, they are expected to perform work in communities affected by the conflict. The deal faces significant political opposition, and many Colombians are furious.

My father seldom mentioned his time with the FARC after he came home. Once, at the grocery store, he pointed to a package of crackers. “That’s what they gave us to eat during marches,” he said. Another time, he told me that rubber boots made a good pillow if you slipped one inside the other.

Hostage’s ordeal

A decade later, he told me more. Yes, he was fed, even given cigarettes. No, he wasn’t kept in chains. But he was held alone for six months, confined to his leanto, or caleta, where at night he lay awake thinking, or listening in secret to a radio programme that aired messages for hostages.

He was also forced to trek for days over punishing terrain. Once, when the military moved into a FARC-held area, he walked for 11 days straight, climbing a mountain pass in driving rain.

My father saw the complexity of the conflict from up close: the FARC’s capacity for cruelty, but also the helplessness, if not innocence, of some young fighters. A few of his armed guards were just 13. Many fighters had been taken from their homes and forced to join as children.

One of these fighters played a role in his release. On my father’s 265th day in captivity, as he languished in a camp with several hostages, gunfire erupted outside their caletas. It was the Colombian military. They fired machine guns, threw grenades. When the noise stopped, a soldier wearing a bandanna approached. “Guys,” my father remembered him saying, “you’re free men.” The rebels had fled.

My father died in June, after a series of strokes, at 63. In the end, the conflict outlived him, if only by a couple of months.

With somewhat more effort, he let go of the rancour, the outrage at what had happened, quite senselessly, to him and to our family. Like so many victims of Colombia’s conflict now, in his time, he chose peace.

“Did you know Jaime wanted peace with the FARC?” Samantha texted me over the weekend, adding a little heart.

That did not mean that he had forgotten. He carried what he saw in that jungle within him forever.

220,000 people are believed to have lost their lives in the 52 years of conflict that also saw 40,000 going missing and five million displaced from homes.