After a Long Trek Across Colombia, Hostage Advocate Not Ready to Rest

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Gustavo Moncayo's small-town life of quiet anonymity was marked by daily church services and a two-block walk to the public school where he taught social studies. On special days, he said, he'd play his flute.

That was before he became a household name -- a man who made a 600-mile, Forrest Gump-like walk across much of Colombia, finishing early this month, to draw attention to the plight of the estimated 3,000 people being held hostage in this country. Among those victims is his son, a soldier captured by rebels a decade ago.

The 46-day odyssey by Moncayo generated so much attention that it prompted Colombian President Álvaro Uribe to meet him in Bogota's central square for an impromptu debate. There, with the political theater televised nationwide, the two men argued about an intractable problem that afflicts thousands of Colombian families: how to free civilians and soldiers held hostage by the Marxist guerrillas who have been waging war here since 1964.

Moncayo, 55, of southwestern Narino province, has stayed in the plaza since the debate, sleeping in a big white tent with his family. From there, he ventures off to meet with diplomats, university students, Colombian congressmen and, on Monday in the capital of neighboring Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez. Chávez invited "the professor," as Moncayo is known here, and a dozen other relatives of hostages to Caracas to discuss ways to resolve the crisis.

In a few weeks, people across Colombia have come to see Moncayo as a folk hero who, through a mix of stubborn determination and unabashed optimism, can make things happen, even if those things have nothing to do with kidnapping. It's a role that Moncayo says he has undertaken reluctantly.

"I managed to awake what no one here has awakened in Colombia," said Moncayo, who has a salt-and-pepper goatee and wears a white T-shirt with the image of his son. "I at no moment when I left home had the intention of becoming an important person."

That the wiry, garrulous father of five has become the hope for so many families underscores the mounting frustrations people here feel with the government's inability to secure the release of the kidnapping victims, most held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The hostages include policemen and soldiers, politicians, three U.S. Defense Department contractors and Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian author with dual French citizenship whose liberation has become a priority for France's new government.

The rebels have demanded that the Uribe government demilitarize two towns in southwestern Colombia for talks that could lead to an exchange -- jailed rebels for dozens of civilian prisoners -- a proposal that Moncayo and many other relatives of hostages support.

But Uribe, who was elected on a pledge to fight the rebels without quarter, has rejected the proposal. Speaking in the central square, moments after meeting Moncayo in his tent, Uribe said the rebels would forcibly recruit minors, traffic in drugs and kill opponents -- as the group did when a previous government ceded a huge region for peace talks that disintegrated in 2002.

"I won't hand over one millimeter to the criminals," Uribe said, flanked by his ministers and jabbing his finger in the air.

Chávez, who has had cordial relations with Uribe despite ideological differences, has offered another, surprising proposal aimed at brokering a deal.

He said Venezuelan territory could be used for negotiations and, if talks are successful, for an exchange of rebels and hostages.