Exceptional Circumstances by Bartleman James;

Author:Bartleman, James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2015-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Rojas never spoke to me again. Despondent, I left for Bogota shortly after we reached the camp. I hadn’t found out what the priests from Quebec had told him about the FLQ, but in the state I was in, it didn’t matter. When back at our apartment Heather reacted badly, calling me sneaky and dishonest when she learned I had been to see Rojas, I made no effort to defend myself. When O’Connor sent a message to Ottawa demanding I be recalled, I didn’t protest. When he told me he had withdrawn his permission for me to marry Heather, I said nothing. When Señora Lopez called to ask me what had happened, I hung up, unable to deal with her. I didn’t care whether Longshaft would fire or promote me when I sent him a detailed report on the botched expedition. For what it was worth — and that would turn out to be not much — I marked my report “For Canadian Eyes Only” to keep it out of the hands of the CIA.

The following week, the Bogota newspapers carried stories with banner headlines on what they called “The Slaughter at Sucio.” Rojas was identified and blamed for inciting his men to plunder the town. No mention was made of the presence of a foreign diplomat monitoring the engagement. A spokesman from the ministry of the interior said the raid would set back the efforts of the ELN to win over the Llaneros for decades — but that might have been self-serving propaganda. Then, several weeks later, the television stations of Bogota interrupted their regular programing to bring a special message to the people from the president announcing the death of the ELN leader.

The next day the newspapers carried photos of Rojas, lying dead on a stretcher as soldiers of an American-trained ranger counter-terrorism battalion posed for pictures around his body. His chest was pierced with bullet holes and it was evident he had been executed after being captured. By that time I had emerged from my funk, and was able to think more clearly. I knew I should have been upset by his death, but I wasn’t — at least not initially. That would come with the passage of years whenever I thought back to the sight of Rojas weeping for his revolution in Sucio and to the nighttime conversation we had in the church. For the moment, the image that came to mind was of Rojas, completely out of touch with reality, rushing to perform the last rites to the policemen shot down without mercy after he lost control of his men. I couldn’t help blaming him for their deaths.

I nevertheless called Señora Lopez, intending to express my condolences, but nobody answered the phone. I went to the shelter and hammered on the door until one of the employees let me in.

“The police took her away in the night, Señor. I don’t expect her back.”

In the evening edition of El Fuego, the national newspaper, I read a

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