Radio Shows Help Colombia Kidnap Victims

B O G O T A, Colombia, May 17, 2001 -- For the thousands of people taken hostage in Colombia every year, there's one source of hope — special radio broadcasts on which they might catch a 30-second message from their family.

Colombia has the world's highest rate of kidnappings — 3,000 last year alone. The kidnappers are usually leftist rebels or right-wing paramilitary groups, holding people ransom to raise money.

Their victims are often ordinary Colombians. This week a paramilitary group kidnapped 207 farm workers at gunpoint, although they released them two days later.

"Kidnapping has been sort of widespread into a general mass industry," says Manuel Teodoro, the anchor of CMI, a popular television news show. "There are people who kidnap. There are people who insure you against kidnapping. There are people who are middlemen for kidnappers. … There are the victims. There are the victim's family."

Six Hours In Line

The victims' families have one way to send messages to their loved ones — via special call-in shows on several radio stations in the capital, Bogota, and around the country.

They line up at the stations, willing to wait as long as necessary. "Six hours to get a 30-second spot," says Herbin Hoyos Medina, creator of The Voices of Kidnapping on Bogota's Caracol Radio. Hoyos came up with the idea in 1994, after he was kidnapped himself and held for 17 days.

The families send messages of love and encouragement: "We send you a hug and a kiss" … "Nestor, my love, wherever you are, think and feel that we are with you" … "Please never lose faith."

Carlos Pantano, whose wife was kidnapped one year ago, visits Bogota's Inravision station devotedly each week. "This message is for Liliana Segura," he says into the microphone.

A Lifeline For The Hostages

The radio broadcasts are beamed throughout Colombia, but the target audience is up in the Andean mountains, the rebel hideouts where most of the kidnap victims are held. Transistor radios and batteries are a lifeline to hostages desperate to know they've not been forgotten.

Alexander Olivos, a mid-level government employee, was held for nine months by one of the rebel groups in the mountains.

"I cried so much. To hear my children, you cannot imagine how much that meant to me," he recalls.

Olivos says the rebels wanted to keep the hostages healthy, so they allowed them to listen to the radio broadcasts.

"Without the radio, it would have been total desperation. The messages were like vitamins to help you live. For me, a message from my wife was life itself. It was hope."

Olivos was released in December, part of a group of more than 40 political hostages. He says that all of them had heard the radio messages, and were given hope.