News of a Kidnapping

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News of a Kidnapping

Gabriel Garciá Márquez 1997

Introduction
Author Biography
Plot Summary
Key Figures
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
Further Reading

Introduction

Gabriel García Márquez was approached by his friends Maruja Pachón de Villamizar and Alberto Villamizar in 1993 to write a book about the ordeal surrounding Maruja's abduction. García Márquez recalls that he was working on the first draft when he realized "it was impossible to separate her kidnapping from nine other abductions that occurred at the same time in Colombia." García Márquez decided to broaden his work to include the stories of all these captives, which lengthened the project to almost three years. The result is News of a Kidnapping, which was first published in Spanish in 1996 and in English the following year. In this work, García Márquez takes on the gargantuan task of describing the kidnappings and captivity of ten people. He depicts their families' reactions to these events as well as their efforts to free the hostages, but also attempts to place the entire incident in the context of Colombia's long-standing war on drugs and terrorism in general.

The fame of García Márquez—a Nobel Laureate—guaranteed that the American press would pay immediate and close attention to the work. Moreover, the drug problems of Colombia and the United States were—and remain so today—intertwined. The threat of extradition to the United States drove Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín cartel, to order the kidnappings. However, it is to García Márquez's credit that he roots News of a Kidnapping firmly within Colombian soil, for the violence that the drug industry has wrought upon Colombian society is astronomical, indeed, hardly comprehensible to Americans. News of a Kidnapping depicts a world almost as surreal as any of García Márquez's novels, one that may shock American readers but one all too well-known to Colombians.

Author Biography

García Márquez was born on March 6, 1928, in Aracataca, Colombia, a small town near the Atlantic coast. He was raised by his grandparents, who stimulated his imagination with stories of supernatural beings and Colombian history. García Márquez was sent to school near Bogotá, and he enrolled at the National University of Colombia in 1947 to study law. Also that year, he published his first short story in a Colombian newspaper.

By the following year, García Márquez had transferred to school at Caratagena and was also working as a journalist. His discovery of William Faulkner's work at this time inspired him to become a writer. After he moved to Barranquilla in 1950, he continued working as a journalist while also becoming involved with a group of young writers and intellectuals. García Márquez's reading of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis made him realize that serious literature could be based on fantastical ideas such as his own. He soon abandoned his law studies and decided to pursue a career as a writer.

In 1954, he moved to Bogotá and became a reporter. In 1955, he won an award for the story "One Day After Saturday" and published Leaf Storm, his first novella. His newspaper also sent him to Europe but soon thereafter was shut down by the Colombian government. García Márquez spent the next three years in Paris, France, devoting himself to writing fiction. He also toured Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In 1958, when he returned to Colombia, he published another novella, No One Writes to the Colonel, in a magazine, and it was published in book form three years later. In 1962, he published the short story collection Big Mama's Funeral and his first full-length novel, In Evil Hour. He also went to work for the Bogotá branch of a Cuban news agency, which led to extended stays in Havana and New York. He also lived in Mexico for a handful of years.

In 1965, he began to work full-time on the book that would be published to immediate acclaim in 1967, One Hundred Years of Solitude. This novel, replete with Colombian history and the magical realism for which García Márquez is known, led to his international literary celebrity.

García Márquez continued to write, producing several novels and novellas, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He undertook the journalistic project News of a Kidnapping at the behest of his friends, Maruja Pachón de Villamizar, a kidnapping victim, and her husband Alberto Villamizar. Just after producing this book, in 1996, a group called Dignity for Colombia kidnapped the brother of former president César Gaviria and demanded that, as condition for the release of the hostage, García Márquez be installed as head of state.

In the late 1990s, politics and journalism took up much of García Márquez's time. He contributed to the peace talks between the Colombian government and guerrilla groups by introducing President Andrés Pastrana to Fidel Castro, who facilitated talk with the guerrillas. He also helped restore relations between the United States and Colombia, which had been severely damaged after a major bribery scandal involving President Ernesto Samper. He has also been involved in negotiations to end the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In 1999, he became the majority owner of the weekly news magazine Cambio; he still maintains close contact with his staff. Today, García Márquez is seen as much more than a literary figure in his country—he is also a symbol of Colombian pride.

Plot Summary

The Kidnappings

News of a Kidnapping opens in Bogotá, Colombia, in November 1990 with the kidnapping of Maruja Pachón de Villamizar and her sister-in law, Beatriz Villamizar de Guerrero. Their abduction is part of a series of high-profile abductions launched by the Pablo Escobar drug cartel, which began the past August. The drug cartel is attempting to change a new governmental policy that could lead to their extradition to the United States should they surrender to Colombian authorities. These drug traffickers are collectively known as the Extraditables.

Eight men and women, all journalists except one, have already been taken and are being held captive. Diana Turbay, accompanied by a news team, was lured into a trap on August 30 when she was offered the opportunity to meet with a guerrilla leader. Marina Montoya was kidnapped on September 18 outside of her restaurant. Four hours later, Francisco "Pacho" Santos was taken from his car.

Maruja and Beatriz are taken to a house in Bogotá, where they share a small room with Marina. For the most part, they are treated harshly during their captivity; for example, they are forced to speak in whispers. Pacho is held in another house in Bogotá, but he faces more amenable conditions with friendly guards and regular access to books and newspapers. Diana's group, held captive in and around Medellín, are split up; throughout their captivity, they are forced to move numerous times.

The Extraditables

The first eight kidnappings are not publicly acknowledged by the Extraditables until October 30. However, Pablo Escobar acknowledges his responsibility in Maruja and Beatriz's kidnapping within days. The Extraditables declare that they will release the hostages and surrender if non-extradition is guaranteed, security for themselves in prison and their families is ensured, and police abuses in Medellín cease. However, President César Gaviria and his administration already approved a decree in September for the capitulation of the traffickers, and while it said that they could have the right not to be extradited, this would be determined on a case-by-case basis. Escobar rejects the decree because it does not state that he and the other Extraditables would definitely not be extradited.

By the time of Maruja and Beatriz's kidnapping, the government and the victim's families have had numerous contacts with the Extraditables. Former President Turbay and Hernando Santos, Pacho's father, attempt to negotiate with Escobar, but President Gaviria refuses to amend the decree at all. The government maintains that its sole position with regard to the narcoterrorists is that they surrender. By November 7, when Gaviria's administration issues the official decree stating the government's capitulation policy, which did not specifically state that the Extraditables would not be extradited, no progress has been made toward releasing the hostages. After Maruja's kidnapping, her husband, Alberto Villamizar, also becomes involved, but he has no more success in getting Gaviria to negotiate.

Death and Release

On December 14, a capitulation decree that modifies September's decree is issued, but the two greatest obstacles to surrender are still in place: the uncertain conditions for non-extradition and a fixed time limit on pardonable crimes, meaning that crimes had to have been committed before September 5, 1990. Escobar objects to the decree, but three Medellín leaders—the Ochoa brothers—who had determined to surrender back in September to begin the process of turning themselves in.

Following this decree, several hostages—Hero Buss, Azucena Liévano, and Orlando Acevedo—are released, but in January, when two drug leaders are killed, Escobar begins to order the execution of the hostages. On January 23, a guard comes for Marina. Her body is found the next day in an empty lot. After an autopsy, her as-yet-unidentified body is buried in a mass grave. The identity of her body is not established until the following week, after the Extraditables announce her murder.

On January 25, the police raid the house in Medellín where Diana Turbay and Richard Becerra are being held on a tip that Escobar is there. Forced by the guards to flee, Diana is accidentally shot by gunfire. She is taken to a hospital where she dies from her wounds. Some Colombians believe that this action was actually a rescue raid—an action which the captors previously had promised to respond to by killing the hostages. President Gaviria orders an investigation to look into the matter. Its findings, released in April, maintain that the decision to raid was based on the chance of catching Escobar. The investigation was unable to determine if Diana was shot by the police or by the captors.

On January 29, a third version of the capitulation decree is issued, which no longer includes a time limit for pardonable crimes and guarantees non-extradition. Although this final version was already in the works, many Colombians believe it is a response to Diana's death. The Extraditables announce that they will cancel the forthcoming executions as well as release one of the hostages.

Pacho has access to television and newspapers, so he knows about Diana and Marina. Maruja and Beatriz, however, are left to wonder what happened to Marina, although one of their guards reveals news of Diana's death. Toward the end of January, they begin to hear rumors that two hostages would be freed; on February 9, Beatriz is released. Once home, she is careful not to reveal clues that would lead to Maruja's whereabouts and a police raid. She also learns of Marina's death.

Negotiating with Escobar

When Maruja is not released, Villamizar decides that he must go to Medellín and meet Escobar face-to-face. His efforts to locate Escobar begin with a visit to the jail where the Ochoas are incarcerated, and they promise to give Villamizar's message to Escobar. Villamizar and Escobar correspond numerous times. Villamizar explains that, in exchange for releasing the hostages, the guarantees for his surrender were in place, his life would be protected, and he would not be extradited. Escobar, however, refuses to surrender because now he wants a guarantee that Colombia's Constituent Assembly will consider the subject of extradition. In April, negotiations improve when Father Rafael García Herreros offers himself as a mediator. Escobar agrees to meet the priest in Medellín, and the two men work out conditions for the drug leader's surrender, which focus primarily on security in his prison. Escobar orders the release of Pacho and Maruja to take place in a few days, on May 20. That morning, Father García Herreros meets with President Gaviria and gives him the details of his talk with Escobar. Maruja is released at 7 o'clock that evening, 193 days after her abduction. Pacho hears the news of her release on the radio, but minutes later, he, too, is released.

Epilogue

On June 19, 1991, in the presence of Villamizar, Father García Herreros and others, Escobar surrenders to the Colombian authorities. He is held captive in a prison in Medellín, which he quickly turns into a "five-star hacienda." He also continues to oversee his business affairs. When the government learns of this situation, Escobar is transferred to another prison, but he escapes in the process. A massive manhunt takes place, which ends with Escobar's death on December 2, 1993.

Key Figures

Orlando Acevedo

Orlando Acevedo is one of Diana Turbay's cameramen. The kidnappers free him on December 17.

Richard Becerra

Richard Becerra is one of Diana's cameramen. He gains his freedom after the police raid that takes Diana's life.

Hero Buss

Hero Buss is a German journalist who travels with Diana Turbay's crew. The kidnappers free him on December 11.

Pablo Escobar

Pablo Escobar is the head of the Medellín drug cartel. At the time of the abductions, Escobar's fugitive, shadowy identity has led some people to doubt his very existence. Escobar has risen from petty thiefdom to heading a multibillion-dollar, international drug industry. In his hometown of Medellín, Escobar provides jobs and charitable services to slumdwellers. After he is imprisoned, Escobar continues to run his drug business. He is shot and killed by Colombian authorities on December 2, 1993, a few months after his escape from prison.

Father Rafael García Herreros

Father Rafael García Herreros is the eighty-two-year-old priest whose efforts are instrumental in bringing about the release of the final two hostages and Escobar's surrender. Father Herreros's well-known television sermonette program "God's Minute," has been running close to forty years before the nightly news. Father Herreros takes it upon himself to volunteer to mediate between Escobar and the government. Escobar accepts this offer and soon after a meeting takes place between the men, the long ordeal—of the hostages and the government's battle with Escobar—ends.

President César Gaviria

President Gaviria took office a mere three weeks before the first kidnapping. Since his campaign, Gaviria worked to create a judicial policy that would bring about an end to narcoterrorism, and this policy became his first priority in office. Gaviria considered extradition an emergency measure that would pressure the criminals into surrendering. With the kidnapping of Diana Turbay and her news team, his resolve is put to the test. Throughout the months of the hostage ordeal, Gaviria refuses to accede to any demands of the drug traffickers that would tarnish the Colombian judicial system, which he is trying to strengthen. Gaviria is also personally touched by the narcoterrorists during this ordeal; shortly before Escobar's surrender, Gaviria's cousin and old friend is abducted and murdered.

Dr. Pedro Guerrero

Pedro is Beatriz's husband.

Azucena Liévano

Azucena Liévano is a young editor on Diana Turbay's new team. She takes notes during her captivity and later uses them to write a book about the experience. She is held with Diana, but on December 13 the kidnappers free her alone.

General Miguel Maza Márquez

General Maza Márquez, responsible for the investigation into the abduction, is the head of the Administration Department for Security. He has held this position for an unprecedented seven years, under numerous administrations, and he considers the war against the drug dealers to be his personal struggle to the death with Pablo Escobar.

Marina Montoya

Kidnapped three months before Maruja and Beatriz, the sixty-four-year-old Marina Montoya owns a restaurant but her political connections make her a target; her brother was the secretary general to President Barco, whose administration had begun the extradition policy and, at the time of the abductions, he serves as Colombia's ambassador to Canada. It is widely believed that Marina was kidnapped in retaliation for the government's refusal to comply with agreements made with narcoterrorists to bring about the release of her nephew, who previously had been abducted and freed. Many Colombians, including Marina, also believe that she has been abducted so that the captors had a significant hostage whom they could kill without thwarting the negotiations for their surrender. Marina develops a close relationship with her guards before the arrival of Maruja and Beatriz to the room where she is kept, and she has a difficult time adjusting to their presence. In the days before her death, Marina seems to foresee what will happen, and she is executed on January 23, 1991, her body tossed in an empty lot.

Fabio Ochoa

Fabio, the youngest Ochoa brother, is a top member of the Medellín cartel. He surrenders in December.

Jorge Luis Ochoa

Jorge Luis, a top member of the Medellín cartel, surrenders under the new decree in January. Of the three brothers, he is of particular help to Villamizar in his efforts to meet Escobar. He also tries to convince Escobar to surrender.

Juan David Ochoa

Juan David is a top member of the Medellín cartel. He surrenders under the new decree in February.

Gloria Pachón

Maruja's sister Gloria is Colombia's representative to UNESCO and the widow of Luis Galán, the former presidential candidate who made a lasting enemy of Escobar by trying to prevent the drug dealer from obtaining a role in Colombia's government as well as by supporting the extradition treaty. He was assassinated by drug traffickers in 1989.

Maruja Pachón de Villamizar

Maruja Pachón de Villamizar is a journalist and the director of FOCINE, the state-run enterprise for the promotion of the film industry, when she is abducted. Like the captives before her, she is kidnapped for political connections; her husband, Alberto Villamizar, is a well-known politician and her sister, Gloria Pachón, is the widow of Luis Galán. The drug traffickers hope that Maruja's kidnapping will put pressure on the government, through Gloria, to accede to their wishes. Maruja remains strong throughout her captivity, refusing to be intimidated by her captors. After Beatriz is released and she remains alone, however, she becomes disheartened, unsure that her husband is doing all he can to win her release and convinced that she will remain hostage for a long time to come. Maruja is released on May 20, after more than six months in captivity.

Rafael Pardo Rueda

Rafael Pardo Rueda is President Gaviria's advisor on security. Under the previous administration, he was in charge of negotiations with the guerrillas and the rehabilitation programs in war zones, and he achieved the peace accords with the M-19 guerrillas. He acts as the mediator between the Colombian government and Maruja and Beatriz's family.

Guido Parra Montoya

Guido Parra Montoya is Escobar's attorney. He was arrested on suspicion of abetting terrorism the year before. He is involved in negotiating the release of the hostages, but he vanishes in February 1990 after overstepping his authority. He is found dead in Medellín three years later.

Nydia Quintero

Nydia Quintero is Diana's mother. She lobbies President Gaviria to change his decree and thus secure the release of the hostages.

Francisco Santos

See Pacho Santos

Dr. Hernando Santos

Hernando Santos is Pacho's father. Along with his close friend Dr. Turbay, he makes early efforts to negotiate with Pablo Escobar and free the hostages.

Pacho Santos

Francisco Santo, nicknamed Pacho, is the editor in chief of the newspaper El Tiempo. Pacho is abducted from his car and taken to a house in Bogotá. Unknown to Pacho, he narrowly escapes death in January, when Marina Montoya is killed instead of him. Toward the end of his captivity, Pacho plans a prison breakout, and his failure to do so leads to thoughts of suicide. Pacho is released a few hours after Maruja, on May 20.

Dr. Julio César Turbay

As president of Colombia, Dr. Turbay allowed the extradition to the United States of Colombian nationals for the first time. Along with his close friend Hernando Santos, he makes early efforts to negotiate with Pablo Escobar and free the hostages.

Diana Turbay Quintero

At forty years old, Diana Turbay is a well-known journalist who directs a popular television news show as well as a magazine, both of which she founded. She is also the daughter of former president Julio César Turbay. Diana always held as a central concern the desire to bring peace to her devastated country.

The kidnappers lure Diana with the promise of a meeting with Manuel Pérez, the priest who commands a major guerrilla group. Diana ignored the advice of others and accepted the invitation, most likely because she hoped to open a dialogue on peace between the guerillas and the government. The journal that Diana keeps during her captivity becomes the primary record of this experience; Diana is shot during a police raid on the house in Medellín where she is being held, and she dies soon thereafter.

Alberto Villamizar

Alberto Villamizar, Maruja's husband, is a well-known politician, who counts among his friends President César Gaviria. In 1985, as a representative in the legislature, Villamizar helped pass the first national law against drug trafficking. He also stopped passage of a bill introduced by politicians friendly to Escobar that would have removed legislative support for the extradition treaty. As a result of this action, an assassination attempt was made on him in 1986.

Villamizar aggressively pursues the release of his wife and sister. He urges President Gaviria to alter the decree so that Escobar need not fear extra-dition. As a last resort, he decides to meet with Escobar himself. Although he is unsuccessful in this effort, Father Herrerros is able to serve as his emissary, and eventually, the men secure the hostages' release and Escobar's surrender.

Beatriz Villamizar de Guerrero

Beatriz Villamizar de Guerrero is Maruja's sister-in-law and press assistant at FOCINE. She is abducted solely because she is with Maruja at the time. She is released on February 8, 1991.

Juan Vitta

Juan Vitta is a writer on Diana Turbay's news team. He sinks into a deep depression during the kidnapping, which leads to a deterioration of his overall health, already compromised because of a prior heart ailment. Because of this, the kidnappers release him on November 26.

Themes

Violence

The violence inherent to Colombian society, made so apparent by News of a Kidnapping, has been a long-standing characteristic of the country. A political assassination in 1948 set off a wave of killings between vying parties; it became known simply as "La Violencia." Just as some peace was returning to Colombia, guerrilla groups began to launch their own offensives.

By the 1980s, the drug traffickers were imbuing the country with their own brand of terrorism and violence. In the hands of the drug traffickers, Medellín became one of the most dangerous cities in the world. In the city's first two months of 1991, a massacre took place every four days and about 1,200 murders were committed; of these, almost 500 police officers, upon whom Escobar placed a bounty, were the victims. However, the police also made their contribution to the escalation and randomness of violence. Believing that most of the young men and boys who lived in the Medellín slums were working in the drug industry—there were few other economic options available—police officers engaged in indiscriminate killing. In his attempts to negotiate with the government, Escobar demanded that these actions be brought to an end. National and international human rights organizations protested these human rights abuses as well.

Violence is so commonplace in Colombian society that, in many instances, a violent act draws little attention or reaction. As just one example among many, when Marina's son goes to Medellín in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate with Escobar, he notices a girl lying dead by the side of the road. When he points this out to his driver, the man replies without even looking, "One of the dolls who parties with don Pablo's friends."

Terrorism

Colombia of recent decades is rife with terrorism. The guerrilla groups initiated actions, such as the M-19's assault on the Supreme Court, and the drug cartels quickly embrace such strategies as their most effective means for achieving their goals. By 1991, Medellín has become the center of urban terrorism. Journalists, law enforcement officers, politicians—anyone who attempts to thwart the drug traffickers, or even speak against them—can become a ready victim. Oftentimes, the acts of terrorism committed against these targets affect many ordinary Colombians. García Márquez notes that a car bomb set off in February, which killed three low-ranking officers and eight police agents, also killed another nine passers-by and injured 143 others.

The goal of the narcotraffickers in launching the kidnappings is primarily to gain leverage in negotiating with the government and thus avoid extradition. This strategy places a great deal of pressure on the government; García Márquez explains that "after the first bombs, public opinion demanded prison for the terrorists, after the next few bombings the demand was for extradition, but as the bombs continued to explode, public opinion began to demand amnesty."

As President Gaviria continues to withstand the pressure to bargain with Escobar and his cartel leaders, the acts of terrorism escalate. Marina is executed, and more hostages are threatened. When Gaviria eventually agrees to take extradition off the table, García Márquez writes that the president "did not propose negotiations with terrorism in order to conjure away a human tragedy," but rather, "to make extradition a more useful judicial weapon in the fight against narcotraffic by making non-extradition the grand prize in a package of incentives and guarantees for those who surrendered to the law."

It is noteworthy that in the narcotrafficker's drive to pursue this goal, as well as to protect their families and workers, nothing is scared. In March, Escobar threatens to blow up fifty tons of dynamite in one of the country's most historic cities. Dissuaded from doing so, he still maintains, "If police operations in Medellín continued past April, no stone would be left standing in the very ancient and noble city of Cartagena de Indias."

The United States

Although in other media, García Márquez has made public his objections to the extradition policy, in News of a Kidnapping he makes few references to the role the United States plays in Colombia's drug wars. However, the northern neighbor's pervasive presence is seen throughout the book—and throughout Colombian society as it is enveloped in the narcoviolence. García Márquez notes the horror that the prospect of being sent to the United States to stand trial and inevitable incarceration evokes in the Extraditables, who are so "terrified by the long, worldwide reach of the United States" that "they went underground, fugitives in their own country." Fear of extradition leads Escobar to order the kidnappings because he hopes they will provide him with bargaining chips. It also contributes to his death. About to be transferred to another prison, Escobar thinks that the government is actually going to kill him or even turn him over to the United States, so he escapes, leading to the exhaustive manhunt that claims his life.

Topics for Further Study

Many reviewers have said that News of a Kidnapping is a piece of nonfiction that reads like a novel. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Find out about the current situation in Colombia. What is the status of the drug trade and what is its relationship to the United States?
García Márquez, as well as his reviewers, have pointed out economic benefits that the Colombian drug trade brought to the country. Find out more about these economic effects as well as the drug trade's effects on society in general. Analyze the cost benefit of the drug trade for Colombia.
In the 1980s, both Colombia and the United States declared a War on Drugs. Find out about the American "war" and compare the two.
García Márquez has played a significant role in the politics and policy of his country. Learn more about the author's sociopolitical activities, particularly those he is currently undertaking.
Imagine that you were writing a novelization of News of a Kidnapping. How would it differ from García Márquez's work? Which characters and events would you focus on? How would you introduce Colombia's history of drug trafficking? Write an outline of the novel.
Find out more about the extradition treaties that Colombia and the United States have signed in the past. How did most Colombians react to these treaties and why? How did most Americans react to them and why?

Style

Narration

García Márquez undertook the project that became News of a Kidnapping at the behest of Maruja Pachon de Villamizar, one of the captives, and her husband, the politician Alberto Villamizar, who was instrumental in winning the release of his wife and the surrender of Pablo Escobar. The book originally focused on Maruja's ordeal, but eventually García Márquez decided to include more of the personal remembrances of the other victims as well. Most likely because of this initial focus, García Márquez chooses to open the book with the kidnapping of Maruja and Beatriz, even though these women are the final captives taken by the Extraditables. After exploring their capture, their families' reaction to the news, and their impressions, the narrative delves back several months to chronicle the eight kidnappings that came before it, eventually catching up again to the present, November 1990.

The narration focuses on the victims, describing the conditions the different hostage groups face and their responses to their captivity. It also focuses on their families, showing their efforts to keep up the spirits of the captives. As the captivity lengthens, negotiations become more complex and involve more people—President Gaviria, members of his administration, high-ranking leaders in the Medellín drug cartel, a priest—and the narration carefully explores the relationships between these people and details the actions they take. The narration also includes background about Colombia's drug wars over the past few decades, which is necessary to understanding the significance of the events that García Márquez recounts. The Colombian government faces considerable difficulty and pressure, particularly from the families of the captives, as it attempts to create a workable drug policy that will lead to the capitulation of the drug kingpins.

García Márquez's skill as a writer allows him to mesh all of these complex elements into one cohesive narrative. As Bonnie Smothers writes in Booklist,"[H]e tracks the story like a detective, weaving in the voices of all the players, [and] ferreting out the nuances in their relationships."

Audience

News of a Kidnapping was written in García Márquez's native Spanish and then translated into other languages. García Márquez knew that his work would attract foreign readers, most of whom would have little knowledge of the machinations of the Colombian drug wars and the relations between the government and the narcotraffickers. Because his work is directed at this foreign readership, as well as at readers in his own country, who already had a familiarity with the kidnappings, he gives background about the perils of late twentieth-century Colombia. Despite this background information, many readers may have difficulty putting all of the events that García Márquez reports in perspective. In Commonweal, Joseph A. Page chastises the American publisher's "failure … to provide background information, a simple chronology, or even an index" as "inexcusable."

Reportage

News of a Kidnapping, a piece of reportage, is based on real events and populated with real people. García Márquez draws on interviews, media broadcasts, newspapers, and diaries kept by several of the hostages to produce this account. While his text is imbued with illuminating details about 1990 Colombia as well as about the mindset of the captives, García Márquez maintains the requisite objective tone of the journalist. He makes no judgements about any of the people that figure in the narrative. Instead, he lets the bare facts speak for themselves, as when he writes about Marina being taken from the room she shares with Maruja and Beatriz (and two guards) to her execution, "The fact was brutal and painful, but it was the fact: there was more room with four people instead of five, fewer tensions, more air to breathe."

As an eminent, well-respected Colombian who has played an important role in the country's recent diplomatic and political life, García Márquez also speaks for the Colombian citizenry in News of a Kidnapping. He uses the word "we" in relating how Colombians react to the kidnappings, to Escobar, and to the drug war in general. He calls the drug wars "the biblical holocaust that has been consuming Colombia for more than twenty years"; the details that he provides throughout the book seem to prove his assertion.

As with many works of reportage, readers may question whether García Márquez sticks completely to the facts. In an interview with World Press Review, García Márquez stated that the book "does not contain a single line of fiction or a single fact that has not been corroborated as far as humanly possible." However, in creating this work, García Márquez, in part, draws upon individual memories of an extremely harrowing period.

Historical Context

The Rise of Drug Trafficking

Narcotics emerged as a major national problem in the late 1970s when Colombia began exporting a great deal of marijuana to the United States. With the profits from marijuana, drug leaders diversified their operations to include cocaine trafficking. Two major drug cartels—Mafia-like organizations—evolved, one in Medellín and the second in Cali. The Medellín cartel was led by Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, and a few other men. Escobar bribed and threatened government officials to ensure their cooperation. He also attempted to get involved in the government himself and was elected to the Congress as a member of the Liberal party.

The Drug War

Violence grew along with the drug trafficking. In 1984, Medellín traffickers assassinated President Belisario Betancur's minister of justice, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, who had taken an aggressive policy against drug dealers. Betancur invoked his state of siege powers, and extradited thirteen drug dealers to the United States. The Medellín cartel, calling themselves the Extraditables, immediately began a campaign against extradition, which included targeting the treaty's prominent supporters. Drug kingpin Lehder was extradited to the United States in 1987, where he stood trial and received a life sentence plus 135 years. (He was released in 1996.) The Medellín cartel launched an unsuccessful hit on the minister of justice, assassinated the attorney general, kidnapped a candidate for mayor of Bogotá, and bombed a newspaper office, a commercial airliner, and the national police agency.

This narcoterrorism led to an enormous rise in Colombia's murder rate; in 1989, homicide was the leading cause of death in the country. The destructive effects of this violence were perhaps most readily apparent in the 1990 presidential campaign, as three candidates were assassinated, including the poll-leading Luis Carlos Galán. This action led President Virgilio Barco Vargas to declare a War on Drugs, which involved concerted repression of drug dealers. While several leading drug traffickers were arrested or killed, Escobar responded with his own wave of terrorist attacks. Barco also used the weapon of extradition, promising to enforce the new treaty with the United States that would send drug dealers to America to face prosecution and punishment. Barco believed that extradition was an effective resource against drug-related criminal activities.

The End of the Medellín Cartel

César Gaviria Trujillo, elected in 1990, also held a hard-line antidrug policy, but he believed that extradition should be only one way to fight the war on drugs. Instead, he favored strengthening the Colombian justice and penal system to deal with traffickers nationally. He implemented a policy of plea bargaining, often combined with a reduction of sentences, to win the surrender of drug traffickers. The rewritten constitution of 1991 declared extradition to be unconstitutional, removing the issue from both Colombian politics and the War on Drugs. These efforts led to the surrender of most members of the Medellín cartel, notably Pablo Escobar in 1992. After escaping thirteen months later, in July 1993, Escobar immediately began to carry out internal purges of his organization and launch another terrorist campaign. A special unit tracked down Escobar in December, and shot and killed him, which also brought the end of the Medellín cartel.

The Colombian Economy

One of the reasons that drugs became such big business in Colombia was the troubled economy. Colombia had long been wracked by economic woes. While the discovery in 1985 of a large petroleum reserve was a major boost to the declining economy, the drug trade also provided enormous benefits. The drug industry made annual trade balances positive whereas they were negative for legal goods. Drug dealers put a great deal of money into the construction and the cocaine refining businesses, invested in other businesses, and were a major source of employment. Drug dealers also provided charitable contributions to poor neighborhoods.

During the early 1990s, Colombia entered a new economic order. Gaviria's government lowered tariffs on imports, provided fewer subsidies for the poor, and lessened the government's role in the economy. However, in 1996, inflation rose, gross domestic product declined, and unemployment hit a new high. By 1998, Colombia was in its worst recession since the Great Depression.

Critical Overview

News of a Kidnapping—like any new work by García Márquez—received a great deal of attention when it was first published in Spanish in 1996, and the following year, in English. A welter of reviewers focused their attention on the myriad aspects of the book: its style, the events it depicted, the state of affairs in Colombia, the drug wars. While this book was a marked departure from the magical realism that characterizes García Márquez's fiction, few reviewers found this to be cause for complaint. The dramatic events that García Márquez has to work with easily provided what John Bemrose called in Maclean's,"thrillerlike momentum." Indeed, as Michiko Kakutani pointed out in The Houston Chronicle, García Márquez "uses his novelist's instinct for emotional drama to give the reader a wonderfully immediate sense of his subjects' ordeal: their spiraling hopes and fears, their fantasies of escape, their desperation and despair." She was not alone in comparing this book to García Márquez's "most powerful fiction." R. Z. Sheppard's commentary in Time that News of a Kidnapping"brings together the world's two best-known Colombians, symbolically locked in a struggle for their nation's soul"—García Márquez and Pablo Escobar—illustrates the inherent narrative power of this nonfiction story.

García Márquez started out his career as a journalist, winning important prizes in that field, and reviewers noted that his skill had not lapsed. Wrote Sheppard, "One can almost hear García Márquez asking, Who? What? Where? When? and Why? on every minutely detailed page." Page also pointed out that the "terse" style of the book "reflects a conscious choice to let the hostages tell their own stories without impressing upon them the stamp of García Márquez's imagination."

Reviewers, however, also noted that the fantastic elements of the crime, and the drug wars in general, brought the book closer to García Márquez's magical realism. Colombia presents a world hardly imaginable for most American readers, a world where law enforcement officers, Congressional representatives, and journalists are gunned down at the will of criminals. As Robert Stone challenged readers of the New York Times Book Review,"[L]et us imagine that we have a President who carries five bullets in his body as the result of an assassination attempt by drug traffickers. Let us imagine that Lady Bird Johnson and Amy Carter have both spent time in the hands of kidnappers." As Kakutani pointed out, books like News of a Kidnapping remind the reader that the "magical realism employed by García Márquez and other Latin American novelists is in part a narrative strategy for grappling with a social reality so hallucinatory, so irrational, that it defies ordinary naturalistic description."

Criticism

Rena Korb

Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she explores the surrealistic aspects of Colombia in 1990.

To many North American readers, the world described so starkly in García Márquez's News of a Kidnapping is a world hardly fathomable. Upon its publication, numerous reviewers pointed out that the fantastical story could have been drawn from the pages of one of García Márquez's magical realist novels. However, as García Márquez has stated on several occasions, every event in the book represents the truth as best the former journalist could uncover it—testament to the sad fact that in 1990, what North America found to be surreal and shocking, Colombia perceived as quite ordinary. To García Márquez, and to countless of his fellow countrypeople, the assault on the journalists is merely "one episode in the biblical holocaust that has been consuming Colombia for more than 20 years." His statement should really come as little surprise to readers who have any knowledge of modern Colombia, for the country itself, as Olga Lorenzo puts it in Quadrant, is "a place where … all civil institutions and even civility itself have largely failed."

The perverse history of contemporary Colombia is made manifest in the book's opening pages. After her abduction, Maruja tries to find out exactly which group has taken her; the ensuing exchange between captive and captors succinctly reveals the perverse nature of Colombian society. To her query, "'Who are you people?"' one of the men replies that they are from the M-19, which she instantly recognizes as a "nonsensical reply" since this former guerrilla group has been rehabilitated. Only five years previous, a commando unit from the M-19 had taken the Supreme Court building hostage, leading to a bloody ten-day battle between the guerrillas and the Colombian army, a battle which claimed the lives of some one hundred people, including half of the Supreme Court Judges. Yet, as a result of peace accords, by the time of Maruja's kidnapping, the M-19 has been legalized and takes an active part in Colombia's political life, even "campaigning for seats in the Constituent Assembly." The group that once was one of the Colombian government's most fierce enemies now is potentially responsible for rewriting the country's constitution.

What Do I Read Next?

García Márquez's novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), originally begun as a piece of journalism, is based on a historical incident in which a group of brothers vow to murder the man who ruined their sister's honor. García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature for this work.
Max Mermelstein married a Colombian and soon found himself enmeshed in the world's most powerful drug cartels. In Inside the Cocaine Cartel: The Riveting Eyewitness Account of Life inside the Colombian Cartel (1993), Mermelstein, a star witness against Pablo Escobar, recounts his involvement with the cocaine traffickers, including his eventual betrayal of them.
The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (1998), edited by Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda, collects some sixty selections of literary journalism written by authors from different countries and in different time periods.
The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now (1995) is a collection of Alma Guillermoprieto's essays that originally appeared in The New Yorker. Her essays explore Latin America in the early 1990s, including the effects of the Medellín and Cali cartels on Colombia's economy and political culture.
García Márquez won international celebrity in 1967 with publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude. This novel, steeped in the magical realism tradition, is an epic tale of the Buendía family as well as the turbulence that characterizes Latin America, from the postcolonial 1820s to the 1920s.
Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915) tells the story of Gregor Samsa, who one day awakens to discover that he has turned into a gigantic insect. García Márquez claims this novel as one of his literary inspirations.

Maruja's response to the man's reply is equally telling: "'Seriously.… Are you dealers or guerril las?"' In her casual reference to these groups, both of whom have plunged Colombia into serious violence and waves of terrorism that continue to claim the lives of thousands, Maruja demonstrates the sangfroid that Colombians have been forced to adopt. This is the same variety of composure that is seen in Hernando Santos as his nephew tells him that he has to relate some "very bad news." When Hernando discovers that Pacho has been kidnapped he "breathed a sigh of relief," declaring, "'Thank God."' These two reactions to news of a kidnapping aptly demonstrate, as Lorenzo points out, how Colombians "live with a constant, primitive fear on the one hand, yet on the other an almost complacent acceptance of violence."

Pacho's kidnapping is equally revealing, beginning with his abduction from his car, which looks like an "ordinary red Jeep" but actually has been bulletproofed, subtly reinforcing the fact that in Colombia, nothing is what it seems to be. García Márquez's narrative also makes it clear how unreal is Colombia's present situation. As soon as Pacho is deposited in an empty room in the safehouse, he "realized that his abductors had been in a hurry not only for reasons of security but in order to get back in time for the soccer game between Santafé and Caldas." However, the abductors want "to keep everybody happy"; they give Pacho a bottle of liquor and leave him with a radio so he, too, can follow the game.

Unfortunately, their plan does not succeed, for Pacho, a devoted Santafé fan, gets so angry with the tie score that he cannot even enjoy the liquor. This paragraph is a surreal masterpiece. Each sentence presents an utterly ludicrous proposition, but the one that builds upon it is even more so. The paragraph's culminating lines, however, bring the narrative back down to earth and remind Pacho, along with the reader, of the danger inherent to the situation: "When it [the game] was over, he saw himself on the nine-thirty news on file footage, wearing a dinner jacket and surrounded by beauty queens. That was when he learned his driver was dead."

Throughout News of a Kidnapping, the media plays a powerful role, contributing to the overall absurdism that sometimes overtakes the menacing situation. For example, it provides fodder for even more bizarre incidents at the different safehouses. The newspaper reports on Pacho's kidnapping are "so inaccurate and fanciful they made his captors double over with laughter." Meanwhile, Maruja's guards' reactions to a family television program celebrating her birthday are even more astonishing; they express their hope that "Maruja would introduce them to her daughters so they could take them out."

The media's dissemination of information between the captives and their families also verges on the surreal. After a frantic call from one of Maruja's captors about the medicine she needs to take for her circulation problems, a "mysterious announcement appeared at the bottom of the screen during the sports segment of a television newscast: 'Take Basotón."' In keeping with the lack of reality, "the spelling was changed"—the medicine is really Vasotón—"to keep an uninformed laboratory from protesting the use of its product for mysterious purposes." Overall, however, the media fails to fulfill its supposed role of broadcasting truthful information, and this may stem from the fact that the media blitz about the kidnappings resembles entertainment rather than reportage. This inadequacy is perhaps nowhere so succinctly expressed as in a special correspondent's question to a sports editor upon learning that the last two hostages will be released: "'What do you think of the news?"'

Of all the hostages, Pacho, the journalist, maintains the closest relationship to the media and follows current news sources. However, his ties to the media take on an uncanny aura. His family uses the editorial pages of El Tiempo to publish personal notes to communicate with him. Toward the end of his captivity, depressed at his failure to escape, Pacho determines to take his own life. The next day, he reads a newspaper editorial in El Tiempo, ordering Pacho "in the name of God not to even consider suicide." Later, Hernando Santos tells his son that the editorial had actually been on his desk for three weeks, but "without really knowing why he had been unable to decide if he should publish it, and on the previous day—again without knowing why—he resolved at the last minute to use it." Ironically, the guard who had the job of bringing Pacho the newspaper each day had a "visceral hatred of journalists"; in a sense, his anger represents the abductors' failed attempts to isolate their hostage.

" In this world, the bizarre becomes commonplace, the absurd becomes real, and one of the deadliest men alive can also be a man of honor."

Escobar himself is the most potent symbol of the surrealism of Colombian society. One of Escobar's haciendas near Medellín is something of a private playground with a zoo populated by "giraffes and hippos brought over from Africa." At its entrance, Escobar displays, "as if it were a small monument, the small plane used to export the first shipment of cocaine." More tellingly, however, is the way the Colombian citizenry reacts to the kingpins, particularly Escobar. As García Márquez writes, "Years earlier the drug traffickers had been popular because of their mythic aura.… If anyone had wanted them arrested, he could have told the policeman on the corner where to find them." In his hometown, Escobar is seen as a modern-day Robin Hood for his charitable works in the barrios. "At the height of his splendor, people put up altars with his pictures and lit candles to him in the slums of Medellín," García Márquez tells readers. "It was believed he could perform miracles." More privileged Colombians, such as the politicians, businesspeople, and journalists, are similarly taken in by the Escobar charisma and power. After meeting the drug kingpin, even Father García Herreros declares, "Escobar is a good man."

Further, the methods that Escobar, a "legend who controlled everything from the shadows," employs to throw the police off his tracks mirror the utter lack of reality and openness in Colombia; "He had employees who spent the day engaging in lunatic conversations on his telephones so that the people monitoring his lines would become entangled in mangrove forests of non sequiturs and not be able to distinguish them from the real messages." While García Márquez is simply reporting the facts, he also is making important narrative choices. By using words such as lunatic and non sequiturs and emphasizing that "real messages" are actually being conveyed, García Márquez heightens the absurdism inherent to Escobar and his society. Escobar delivers one such "real message" to Villamizar in person: "If any of you feels unsafe, if anybody tries to give you a hard time, you let me know and that'll be the end of it." In this world, the bizarre becomes commonplace, the absurd becomes real, and one of the deadliest men alive can also be a man of honor.

Toward the end of the book, Villamizar visits the Ochoa brothers in prison; their entire families are present and the wives "acted as hostesses with the exemplary hospitality of the Medellinese." Villamizar and the three brothers work together in order to devise a plan to get Escobar to agree to a meeting. This collaboration between the politician who prevented the extradition treaty from being blocked by law and three leaders of the Medellín cartel lends a final note to the surrealist atmosphere of Colombia in 1990.

Source:

Rena Korb, Critical Essay on News of a Kidnapping, in Nonfiction Classics for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

David Remy

Remy is a freelance writer who has written extensively on Latin American art and literature. In the following essay, he examines García Márquez's use of fictional narrative techniques.

Like The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (1986), a piece of journalism that was later adapted into book form, News of a Kidnapping (1997) chronicles actual events that, at first glance, may read as fiction. The book examines a turbulent period in Colombia's history, one that presaged an even more violent time to come. According to García Márquez, he wrote this book so that the "gruesome drama" of the kidnappings would not "sink into oblivion." One of the reasons why News of a Kidnapping succeeds as both reportage and literature is García Márquez's use of fictional devices and techniques to reveal, in poignant and memorable detail, the lives of ten individuals held hostage.

In 1990, barely three weeks after César Gaviria took office as Colombia's president, a series of kidnappings occurred that directly challenged his authority and focused the attention of a nation already divided by civil war. The Extraditables, a group of narcotraffickers led by Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín cartel, abducted various members of the media to guarantee that they would not, as their name indicates, be extradited to the United States, where an effective and unyielding judicial system awaited them. "We prefer a grave in Colombia to a cell in the United States," was their rallying cry. As García Márquez points out with irony, the only choice the drug traffickers had to save themselves was to place themselves in the custody of the state. Before Escobar and the Extraditables are willing to capitulate, however, they engage in "indiscriminate, merciless terrorism" to force the government's position.

To tell the story of such a campaign and the effect it had upon Colombian politics and society required a narrative framework that would accommodate many points of view. García Márquez describes how he solved this problem in the book's Acknowledgments. Upon realizing that the kidnappings "were not, in fact, ten distinct abductions—as it had seemed at first—but a collective abduction of ten carefully chosen individuals, which had been carried out by the same group and for only one purpose," he revised the book's structure. Had García Márquez written solely about the abduction of Maruja Pachón and the attempts of her husband, Alberto Villamizar, to negotiate her release, the narrative would have become, in the author's words, "confused and interminable." The book's narrative structure would have been insufficient for a story of such wide scope.

By narrating events from the perspectives of several characters, a technique he has used often in his fictional writings, García Márquez offers a panoramic view of the crisis and the people it involved. The author also imbues News of a Kidnapping with a sense of humanity that makes it easy for the reader to identify with the plight of the hostages. This narrative approach renders the ambiguity and the complexity of their ordeal with a degree of verisimilitude greater than mere journalism could afford.

García Márquez opens the book in medias res (in the middle of things) by describing the abduction of Maruja and her sister-in-law, Beatriz. This creates a sense of immediacy that serves to make the abduction more indelible in the reader's mind. Knowing that Maruja and Beatriz were the last of the journalists to be abducted, the reader begins to wonder about the eight previous kidnappings and how they were orchestrated. García Márquez sows the seeds of speculation in the reader's mind and thus brings into play an essential ingredient in the act of storytelling: the reader's imagination. Had he told the story of Maruja and Beatriz's abduction in the past tense, the event would not have been rendered as vividly and, consequently, the narration of the other eight kidnappings would not have unfolded with as profound a sense of anticipation on the part of the reader.

García Márquez then describes the abduction of Diana Turbay, the director of the television news program Criptón, and her film crew. The reader is now aware of how the first and last kidnappings occurred. There is a unifying thread to these abductions, and it is through the use of flashback that García Márquez is best able to reveal Escobar's motive. Furthermore, the use of flashback adds more depth to Maruja's story, which is told in present-time and serves as the central focus of the book. By narrating events out of chronological order, García Márquez establishes a dramatic tension within the book that fosters the reader's understanding of Colombian society and politics. Every abduction since the first, that of Diana Turbay and her crew, builds upon the one preceding it, intensifying the drama and suspense. Not until the reader comprehends the final kidnapping in the context of the previous ones can García Márquez begin to explore in depth the Extraditables' demands for amnesty.

Though News of a Kidnapping is written in an unadorned, journalistic style—the sentences tend to be declarative, and there is a marked absence of simile and metaphor otherwise found in García Márquez's novels and short stories—it is not without symbolic power. The author uses symbols sparingly but to great effect in recreating the hostages' experience of captivity. He also uses symbols to reveal traits that are essential for understanding character.

In describing the room in which the three women are held captive, García Márquez selects a few details to create an atmosphere of disorientation. Outside there is the sound of heavy automobile traffic. The women believe they are near a café, for they hear the sound of music very late at night. Occasionally, a loudspeaker announces religious meetings. They hear the sound of small planes landing and taking off, yet the women have no idea where they are. Marina Montoya, the older woman who shares a room with Maruja and Beatriz, espouses theories about what will happen next, arousing fear in her companions. Captivity has heightened the women's senses to the point where they have difficulty distinguishing between truth and fantasy. "At night the silence was total, interrupted only by a demented rooster with no sense of time who crowed whenever he felt like it," García Márquez informs the reader. The women's isolation is complete, for not even the laws of Nature can abide under these conditions.

" García Márquez sows the seeds of speculation in the reader's mind and thus brings into play an essential ingredient in the act of storytelling: the reader's imagination."

As their period of captivity lengthens, the women cannot be sure if they are being held in the country or in the city. Once again, García Márquez introduces the rooster as a symbol of disorientation. However, the rooster's crowing at all hours of the day and night also provides a clue about the women's location, "since roosters kept on high floors tend to lose their sense of time."

Another hostage, Francisco "Pacho" Santos, the editor-in-chief of El Tiempo, experiences a similar phenomenon.

A disorienting detail was the demented rooster that at first crowed at any hour, and as the months passed crowed at the same hour in different places: sometimes far away at three in the afternoon, other times next to his window at two in the morning.

The rooster is again described as "demented," thus emphasizing the absence of reason in a world riddled with doubt and fear, only now its crowing possesses a ubiquitous quality previously nonexistent. The rooster can be heard both near and far away. Pacho eventually compounds his despair by attempting to use the rooster's crowing to gauge his position in both time and space. "It would have been even more disorienting if he had known that Maruja and Beatriz also heard it in a distant section of the city," adds García Márquez.

Cock-crow, a symbol for the hour of judgment, is heard often and at various times throughout the day instead of only at dawn. The hostages speculate as to when they will be released—or, what is perhaps foremost in their thoughts: when they will be executed—and the symbolic crowing of a rooster emphasizes the uncertainty and anxiety they experience. The cock crows at random and, in light of Escobar's actions, the release or the deaths of the hostages seems equally as arbitrary. García Márquez sums up this experience by telling the reader that, prior to his release, Pacho spent a sleepless night tormented by the "mad rooster—madder and closer than ever—and not knowing for certain where reality lay."

In addition to using symbol to create an atmosphere of disorientation among the hostages and to reflect their inner states of mind, García Márquez uses symbol to delineate specific character traits. Father García Herreros, a priest and the host of a television program entitled God's Minute, serves as an intermediary between Villamizar, who acts unofficially on behalf of the government, and Pablo Escobar so that negotiations for the release of the hostages may continue. His presence helps Escobar overcome his reluctance in dealing with Villamizar, and it also makes it easier for Escobar's men, many of whom are devoutly religious, to turn themselves in once an agreement has been reached.

Father Herreros is a man of many contrasts. García Márquez describes him as an ascetic who "ate little, though he liked good food and appreciated fine wines, but would not accept invitations to expensive restaurants for fear people would think he was paying." He is an honest, trustworthy man, if slightly misguided by his good intentions. García Márquez draws attention to the fact that Father Herreros wears contact lenses to improve his vision, and that he must have his assistant, Paulina, assist him with putting them in and taking them out, for he has never learned to do so himself.

Many obstacles must be overcome before the remaining hostages are set free, as Escobar's demands change constantly, but throughout the negotiations there is the fear on the part of Villamizar and others that Father Herreros, with his reputation for erratic behavior, will prove a liability and cause the negotiations to end abruptly. This fear proves unfounded, however, for he succeeds in meeting with Escobar and, together, the two men compose a document stating the conditions for the drug lord's surrender. As the priest prepares to leave Escobar's compound, complete with giraffes and hippos wandering about the grounds, one of his contacts falls out. He tries to put it back in but cannot. Escobar, ever the gracious host, offers to have Paulina brought to help him, but the priest refuses. Before he leaves the compound, Father Herreros, his lens not yet restored, says a blessing for Escobar's men.

García Márquez notes the priest's contact lenses in order to underscore his naïveté and lack of foresight in dealing with the narcotraffickers. At a press conference announcing the terms of Escobar's surrender, Father Herreros describes the drug lord as "the great architect of peace." He goes on to say that, despite circumstances, "Escobar is a good man." How could the priest have forgotten Escobar's violent past? Rather than condemn Father Herreros for his error in judgment, García Márquez focuses instead on Escobar: "No Colombian in history ever possessed or exercised a talent like his for shaping public opinion. And none had a greater power to corrupt."

García Márquez's use of fictional narrative techniques in News of a Kidnapping affords him greater freedom to tell the story of "one episode in the biblical holocaust that has been consuming Colombia for more than twenty years." By telling the story from the perspectives of several kidnap victims, García Márquez unifies their experience at the same time he offers the reader a broad panorama of the complex personalities and events that make this drama not only an engaging work of journalism but a landmark of literature as well.

Source:

David Remy, Critical Essay on News of a Kidnapping, in Nonfiction Classics for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

Josh Ozersky

Ozersky is a critic and essayist. In this essay, he discusses García Márquez's literary art, and how it is hidden beneath the surface of his novel.

García Márquez is one of the most famous writers in the world, but not for books like News of a Kidnapping. García Márquez, who received the Nobel Prize in 1983 and whose novels are read in nearly every language, is associated with a surreal style called "magical realism." News of a Kidnapping, on the other hand, seems to be journalism of the starkest kind. Ten people are kidnapped by soldiers of Pablo Escobar's drug cartel. They are prominent people drawn from the very upper crust of Colombian society. One is the daughter of a former President; another is a famous former soap-opera actress with high political family connections; others are prominent journalists. They are kept under armed guard for six months, and there is every reason to think they will be killed. Eventually, all are released and survive, except for two. García Márquez describes their ordeal, and that of their friends and families, in a book that joins Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood on the short shelf of masterpieces that define crime journalism and the novelist's art.

But News of a Kidnapping is not merely a journalistic account of some kidnappings; it is a novel (of sorts), and one not as far removed from the author's trademark "magic realism" as it might seem. Because García Márquez was originally a journalist, and has spent much of his adult life in the journalistic world, he knows a lot about how news is written. As a result, News of a Kidnapping is written with a very level, factual-sounding tone that suggests the most orderly and observant kind of reporting. Even the title suggests journalism.

In fact, the book is written with an artfulness that conceals as much as it tells. For example, García Márquez tells us in his introduction that the book's genesis came in 1993, when "Maruja Pachon and her husband, Alberto Villamizar, suggested I write a book about her abduction and six-month captivity, and his persistent efforts to win her release." García Márquez tells us that he realized immediately that the story could not be told without also telling the story of the other nine people who were kidnapped simultaneously by Escobar's forces, for the purpose of persuading the government not to extradite them to the United States. Pachon and Villamizar, though, would be "the central axis, the unifying thread, of this book."

What do we learn from reading this introduction? Because García Márquez is so skilled a writer, it behooves a reader to pay close attention to what he or she is being told. The book is gripping, and it's easy to get lost in the story. But consider that first sentence of the introduction: "In October 1993, Maruja Pachon and her husband, Alberto Villamizar, suggested I write a book." There are several facts, just below the surface, that readers would do well to bear in mind as they read. (There will be others later; and other facts readers won't be told.)

One fact readers can gather if they look closely lie in the couple's names. While it is fairly common in America for wives to keep their names, it is far less so in a Roman Catholic country like Columbia. And in fact, nearly all of the major characters in News of a Kidnapping are elite professionals, members of a wealthy class at the very topmost level of Colombian society. Readers hear of the "ghetto boys" who guard the hostages, and war against the police, but hear very little else about them, such as why they are so willing to die for Escobar, or why the police kill them indiscriminately in the Medellín ghettos.

" News of a Kidnapping is a masterpiece; but a masterpiece closer to fiction than to reportage."

This is not to say that News of a Kidnapping is somehow flawed because it is not a sociological treatise on all levels of Colombian society. On the contrary, as an artist, García Márquez isn't obliged to tell us anything he does not think will further his purposes. But insofar as News of a Kidnapping presents itself as more-or-less transparent journalism, readers are obliged to think about what they aren't reading.

Beyond his choice of subjects, García Márquez displays supreme literary craftsmanship in his mastery of time and space. Many of his greatest novels, including his masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, follow many characters over long periods of time. News of a Kidnapping would seem to be an exception, but actually the cross-cutting, multiple perspectives, and meticulous editing would do great credit to movie directors Stephen Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. Readers hardly notice at times as they move from one hostage cell to another, and thence to the office of President Gaviria, and from there to the shadowy settings in which Pablo Escobar moves.

García Márquez also has the novelist's gift for finding the perfect detail, and weaving it into his story. Marina Montoya, the former actress, even under the severest physical and psychological distress, takes care to keep her nails trimmed and painted. It's a poignant and revealing detail, and it makes this woman more real to us, rather than just a "damsel in distress" or faceless victim. When Marina is summoned to what she knows is her imminent murder, she takes special care to make up her face and do her nails. When her body is found, it is unrecognizable at first, because her killers have shot her through the face; but she is eventually identified by her beautiful nails. This is a heart-rending detail, and it simultaneously gives readers an emotional purchase on Marina's death, as well as giving the story the ring of truth. And it is easy to overlook the groundwork that García Márquez has done earlier in the book, preparing us for this moment with his numerous references to Marina and her manicures. As García Márquez told a journalism seminar in 1996, "one must keep the reader hypnotized by tending to every detail, every word.… It is a continuous act where you poison the reader with credibility and with rhythm."

As a result of this kind of literary art, readers feel that by the time they are done reading the book they have gained a deep and varied understanding of the complexion of Colombia. They have been high and low, inside the minds of men and women, young people and old, and felt the tension of so many different desperate interests clashing over the fates of the hostages. The upshot is that readers walk away from News of a Kidnapping feeling that what they have read represents not just the truth about Colombia, but beyond that some kind of universal human truth. The author, after all, is a great novelist, and has done his level best not to present the kidnappings as a melodrama. The book is dedicated to "all Colombians, guilty and innocent."

It is here where readers would do well to bear in mind the technique of magic realism. With magic realism, supernatural events are thought of as normal—the appearance of an angel, say, or a man levitating off the ground—and treated in precisely the same detailed, matter-of-fact tone that is used in News of a Kidnapping. Magic realism isn't effective because amazing things happen; it's effective because those things are woven seamlessly into the texture of everyday life. When people read of two defenseless women being abducted, or of armed captors having a party for their hostages, and even becoming close to them, in one way it seems unimaginable, surreal; but García Márquez never lets any event become too amazing.

One side effect of this style, however, is a certain flattening. Because everything is described in such a concrete, detailed, and prosaic way, we tend to lose sight of everything beyond the frame of what readers are being shown and told. García Márquez means for this to happen; but that doesn't necessarily mean that readers need to be unaware of it. News of a Kidnapping is a masterpiece; but a masterpiece closer to fiction than to reportage.