Notica de un Secuestro.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

[About a Kidnapping], by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Barcelona: Mondadori, 1996.

In the early nineties the Medellin cartel, under the leadership of kingpin Pablo Escobar, carried out a series of kidnappings that Gabriel Garcia Marquez first saw as isolated incidents, but later came to consider as one collective crime. Noticia de un secuestro is an in-depth investigation of these abductions--part of Escobar's strategy to pressure the government to refuse to extradite drug lords--and of the maneuvers used to free the victims. In it the author exposes a violence-racked society in which the lure of fast cash is corrupting a generation of youngsters more interested in luxury than ideals or study.

Among those kidnapped were four women, all carefully chosen for their connections with the government or the media. Although the author does not overlook the male victims, he focuses mainly on the women. Maruja Pachon, from a family of noted intellectuals, was a prizewinning journalist and director of the state-owned company to promote film, where she worked with her sister-in-law and personal assistant, Beatriz Villamizar. Maruja and Beatriz were seized and stuffed into an automobile on a dark Bogota street, then taken to an Baroara Mujica is a novelist, essayist, and short story writer. A regular contributor to Americas, she is also a professor of Spanish at Georgetown University. unknown location where they joined Marina Montoya, who had been kidnapped sometime before. The sister of German Montoya, former secretary general of the government during the presidency of Virgilio Barco, Marina was almost certainly abducted in reprisal for the Barco government's failure to keep certain bargains made with the Extraditables--those drug lords likely to be extradited to the United States for prosecution.

In an earlier incident, Escobar's men had carried off Diana Turbay and several members of her staff. Turbay was director of the Bogota television news program "Cripton" and of the magazine Hoy x Hoy [Today x Today], as well as daughter of former president Julio Cesar Turbay, leader of Colombia's Liberal Party.

During the months that followed, Alberto Villamizar, Maruja's husband and Beatriz's brother, worked incessantly to secure the release of the victims, establishing communications with Escobar and his men as well as with government officials. Based on interviews with Villamizar, Maruja, Beatriz, and other victims and their relatives, Garcia Marquez paints a...