Our guerrillas, our sidewalks : a journey into the violence of Colombia

This remarkable book tells the story of one man's kidnapping in Colombia from the first-person perspectives of all those involved: the guerrillas, the victim, his wife, his friends, and his brother-in-law, Herbert Braun. In this second edition, the author has added a new chapter that recounts the endurance of Colombia and Colombians in the face of escalating kidnapping and violence, explores the current political situation in Colombia, and reevaluates his own complex response to the guerrillas. In the pre-dawn hours of June 24, 1988, Texas oilman Jake Gambini, who built his fortune by working in Colombia for more than thirty years, is kidnapped by Marxist guerrillas outside a small rural town. His struggles against the physical indignities and the psychological terror to which he is subjected by his kidnappers form the grim backdrop of this compelling story. Leftist historian Herbert Braun, a Colombian and brother-in-law of the victim, leads the reader to an intimate view of contemporary Colombia and the decades-long violent insurgency aimed at bringing about a new, more democratic government and freeing the nation from control of foreign oil interests. In Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks we walk beside Braun on the streets of Bogota. We read the newspapers, hearing the voices of journalists, politicians, military men, drug barons, and death squads. We are next to him as he negotiates with the guerrillas in one fruitless telephone conversation after another. We come face to face with the guerrillas, with the ideals and the despair of impoverished men and women living in lonely isolation in the countryside, fighting for years with little to show for their sacrifice. Told through the eyes of the oilman, the historian, and the guerrillas, this fast-moving account offers a complex understanding of the conflicting actors in Colombian politics. It brings the reader close to the kidnappers and the guerrillas and, in the end, is a story of a man who refuses to accept the power that the guerrillas hold over him during his captivity, a man whose actions bring his abduction to a stunning conclusion.