Word: colombian
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...became a cause celebre in much of the world during her captivity, especially in Europe, the three U.S. military contractors were, until their rescue, little more than a tragic footnote in the U.S.-backed war on Colombia's narco-guerrillas. The Americans were kidnapped by Marxist rebels of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) on Feb. 13, 2003, after the single engine on their drug-surveillance plane conked out in southern Colombia. Not only did they crash on top of a platoon of insurgents, but they had the bad luck of being snatched just weeks before the U.S. invasion...
...Stansell's roundhouse provided the coup de grace in the three men's action-packed new memoir of their capture, survival and deliverance. Out of Captivity: 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle, published this week by William Morrow, reads like a postcard from a rain forest gulag as the authors recount forced marches, escape attempts, and encounters with snakes, tarantulas and malaria as well as meals of chicken-head soup...
...book, and in the authors' interview this week with TIME, the men make it clear that it wasn't just jungle fare that left a bad taste in their mouths. Some of their more unpleasant memories are saved for fellow hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian who was kindapped while campaigning for the Colombian presidency and was rescued along with the Americans and 11 other hostages last summer. The authors describe the married Betancourt as carrying on an affair with a Colombian hostage, acting like a privileged blue-blood - "a frickin' princess" in Stansell's telling - bossing around the other...
...Like many hostages before them, the three gringos admit that living alongside their fellow prisoners proved almost as challenging as dealing with their prison guards. Colombian readers have been fascinated, if not irked, by their description of Betancourt, who was nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize and whom other freed prisoners have praised for her courageous, selfless behavior in the jungle. But as Gonsalves told TIME, achieving harmony among a diverse group of strangers can be trying even in the best of circumstances. He cited an experiment in which scientists put a bunch of rats in a small...
...with the help of billions in U.S. military aid, the Colombian Army has laid waste to many FARC units and squeezed their supply lines. Shortly before the Americans were rescued, their diet consisted of coffee, rice, lentils and, of all things, popcorn - the smell of which almost tipped off a team of Colombian and American Special Forces hot on their trail. Though the military offensive made life harder for the hostages, it also filled them with hope. "We were exhausted, we were starved and our supply lines were getting torn up," Howes says. "But it was a good feeling knowing...