SOGAMOSO, Colombia — The guerrilla swung the boy up on his shoulders in the cold mountain air.
"Come on," he said, looking up at the child. "There's a big animal in the woods that gives presents to children."
Then the guerrilla and 3-year-old Oscar Ricaurte disappeared into the fog.
The boy's mother, Leticia, could not speak. She could not move. Her arms hung limp. When will I next hold my son? she thought.
A female guerrilla commander barked an order: "It's time to go. Move it." Leticia climbed in the back of a four-wheel-drive jeep. As it rattled down the dirt road, she sobbed uncontrollably.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday January 02, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 43 words Type of Material: Correction
Kidnapped boy -- A headline in Wednesday's Section A on an article about abductions by Colombian rebels said a boy was held nine months. He was held without his mother for that length of time, but he was in captivity about a year.
For months, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest rebel group, had held Leticia and Oscar for ransom. When negotiations bogged down, the guerrillas sent Leticia home in hopes she would push to speed things up. They kept Oscar.
As months passed after her March release, Leticia fought to hold on to that last vision of her son, like a dream that shifts and fades after waking. Every few weeks, the guerrillas called her and her husband, Gonzalo. They asked for as much as $100,000 in ransom, an impossible sum for a family making $12,000 a year.
Twice the couple reached a deal with the guerrillas. Two times they paid the price agreed on. And two times the guerrillas kept the boy anyway, demanding more.
"You had better save the money you have," the callers told them once last spring. "You can use it to pay for the suit your boy will wear at his funeral when we send him back to you in a bag."
Colombia's leftist guerrillas, who have been battling to seize power for nearly four decades, have made kidnapping into a lucrative business. They are believed responsible for at least two-thirds of the nation's estimated 3,000 annual abductions -- half the reported kidnappings in the world. Police believe the groups make $150 million a year from ransom money.
In the last few years, the rebels have increasingly targeted children. In 1997, fewer than 100 children were kidnapped. In 2002, the last year for which complete statistics are available, the number was nearly 400.
Kids are easier to snatch than businessmen surrounded by bodyguards. They pose little risk of escape. Families want the kidnappings ended quickly. And parents will pay nearly any price for their children.
Most parents pay and get their children back. But not all. Many children have been held for years, forgetting that they ever had another family. Some have been killed.
Leticia and Gonzalo fought to keep up hope, even when Oscar's birthday came and went. Even when the calls stopped after the army launched an attack in the area where the guerrillas were holding the boy. Even when spring turned to summer and summer to fall.
They focused on Christmas. It would be nearly a year since the kidnapping. They hoped the guerrillas would free the boy for the holiday.
"You cannot imagine what this is like," Gonzalo said earlier this year. "To have a child and not know where he is. To have someone threatening to kill him. To have someone threatening to kill us. How do you go on with your life?"
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Oscar's kidnapping began in an unusual way: First, rebels abducted his father.
They seized 66-year-old Gonzalo Ricaurte on Dec. 18, 2002, as he went to tend a dozen cattle he owns on a small ranch outside of his hometown, Sogamoso, where he works as a professor at a technical college. They forced his car to stop, beat him, and took him to their camp in the Andes foothills near a town called Sacama, 60 miles northeast of Sogamoso.
Gonzalo was mystified by the abduction. Besides his modest salary, the family assets amounted to their home in a middle-class neighborhood, a small vacation house, an empty lot and the cattle.
He spent three weeks in a clearing under soaring trees. He bathed in a stream. He relieved himself in a ditch. He spent his nights in pain, trying to find a comfortable position on a bed of leaves beneath a blue plastic tarp.
Soon, the rebels realized that kidnapping Gonzalo was a bad idea. His age and injuries made movement difficult. Worse, he was the sole owner of his family's bank accounts and property. Nothing could be done without his signature.
One day in early January, a guerrilla commander named Julian told him that he would be freed to come up with $100,000. Julian told Gonzalo that his wife and son would take his place as collateral.
"Kill me here," Gonzalo said.
On Jan. 9, the guerrillas woke him and marched him to a nearby road. There, standing in the headlights, were Leticia and Oscar. The couple had no option but to agree to the swap. Earlier, Julian had called Leticia and threatened to kill Gonzalo if she refused. And now, Gonzalo realized that Leticia would be killed if he refused.
They exchanged frantic words, then prepared to part. Oscar raced over and grabbed his father's leg. The two had always been close. But now, Oscar seemed to clutch him fiercer than Gonzalo had ever remembered.
"No, Daddy, I want to go with you," Oscar cried.
