I moved away and crouched down in the corner of my hut, cupping my hands over my ears. I wanted to be sure I heard properly. Gloria’s children had been kidnapped at the same time as their mother. The guerrillas had stormed their building and forced everyone out in the street in pajamas. Her youngest son, who hadn’t woken up, had been spared during the raid, as had his father, who was away traveling. The guerrillas were demanding an outrageous ransom for their release. The father, thinking it was for the best, managed to get his wife elected, in absentia, as the local deputy for their department. At that time the general impression was that so-called political prisoners had a greater chance of getting out than the economic prisoners, above all more quickly, because the guerrillas had entered into peace talks with the Colombian government and a demilitarized zone had been allocated to FARC. It turned out to have been the wrong move when the peace process failed. Gloria was separated from her children.
