News of a KidnappingConsumed these past twenty years by a "biblical holocaust," Colombia has endured leftist insurgencies, right-wing death squads, currency collapses, cholera epidemics, and, most recently and corrosively, drug trafficking. Returning to his days as a reporter for El Espectador, Gabriel Garcia Marquez chronicles, with consummate skill, the period in late 1990 when Colombian security forces mounted a nationwide manhunt for Pablo Escobar, the ruthless and elusive head of the Medellin cartel. Ten men and women were abducted by Escobar's henchmen and used as bargaining chips against extradition to the United States. From the testimonies and diaries of the survivors, Garcia Marquez reconstructs their bizarre ordeal with cinematic intensity, breathtaking language, and rigor. We are drawn into a world that, like some phantasmagorical setting in a great Garcia Marquez novel, we can scarcely believe exists'but that continually shocks us with its cold, hard reality. |
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abduction Alberto Villamizar Andrés armed asked Avenida Boyacá Azucena Barrabás bathroom began Bogotá bosses called captivity César Gaviria Colombia communiqué Constituent Assembly Damaris death decree Diana Turbay doña door driver drug traffickers Edith Grossman everything Extraditables Father García Herreros felt Francisco Santos friends Gabriel García Márquez gave guards Guido Parra hand happened heard helicopter Hernando Santos Hero Buss hostages Itagüí journalists Juan Vitta kidnapping killed knew later letter lived looked Luis Carlos Galán majordomo María Marina Montoya Martha Nieves Maruja and Beatriz Maza Márquez Medellín minutes months morning negotiations never night Nydia Ochoa Ochoa brothers Pablo Escobar Pacho Pacho Santos police President Gaviria prison radio Rafael Pardo release seemed shouted stopped surrender sweatsuit talk television tell thing thought tion told took turned voice waiting walked wanted wife