Archive: All But Martyred

By Dierdra DeVries Moran

He didn’t even flinch. The tension—the fear—had so gripped him that when he looked back into the eyes of the 18 guerillas aiming their submachine guns at him he didn’t even move a muscle.

His friend Camilo was among them. “I’ll be with you till the end,” Camilo had whispered to him when disease had nearly killed him weeks earlier. Bruce Olsson was now directly in the line of fire, and one of Camilo’s bullets could be the one to end his life.

It was only six months ago in the jungles of Colombia, South America, that communist revolutionaries shackled Olsson to a tree and raised their weapons to execute him. When you consider all that Olsson has accomplished in the South American jungle, it is no wonder that the National Army for Liberation (the ELN) wanted him dead. Even some of its own guerillas had capitulated to Olsson’s cause.

Twenty-nine years earlier, at 18 years of age, Bruce Olsson had responded to God’s call to leave his home in Minnesota and go to South America. Though no organization had sponsored him and even his parents were against his decision, he arrived in Venezuela with 70 dollars and a heart full of faith.

A friendly college student ran into Olsson at the airport and took him to his home. After a series of remarkable events Bruce Olsson got his first look at the deep green jungles on the border of Colombia and Venezuela.

He was looking for the Motilones—the only Indian tribe the Colombian guide for tourists refers to as cannibals. No one had known a white person who had come in contact with the Motilones and lived to tell about it.

While picking his way through the jungle with some of the less hostile Yuko Indians about a year after he arrived in South America, Olsson at last made contact with the Motilones—but not in quite the way he had hoped.

His companions had stopped suddenly in their tracks, turned and fled. Olsson wheeled around to follow them, but he felt a sharp pain bite into his thigh, and he fell to the ground. He looked down to find an arrow in his leg and a pool of blood gathering around the wound. Looking up again he found himself encircled by nine dark-skinned, naked men with eyes as black as night. Each of them held a loaded bow aimed directly at Olsson.

“Friend!” he cried out in Spanish. Getting no response he tried again in Latin: “Friend!” Not taking their eyes from his, the men slowly lowered their bows. One of the natives moved toward Olsson, bent and yanked the arrow from his leg. The pain took his breath away.

The man poked Olsson repeatedly in the back with the arrow, at last prodding Olsson to his feet. The Motilones marched Olsson through the jungle to a large, egg-shaped, palm-thatched structure, one of the tribal homes in which 60 to 150 men, women and children live together. They kept him there for days.

Delirious and weak with hunger (they hadn’t fed him at all), Olsson stole away from the camp one night when the others had fallen asleep. Limping, he hiked for days through the vines and trees back to civilization where he received much-needed medical attention. But as soon as he could he returned to the jungle.

He camped out in the forest near another Motilone home and left gifts on a trail for the Indians to find. Many days went by, and the gifts were undisturbed. At last, though, Olsson found they were missing, so he placed more presents on the trail. When he returned to see if they had been accepted, however, a cold chill ran down his spine. Four arrows were stuck in the ground where the gifts had been; it was the Motilone warning that he should run for his life. Bruce Olsson knelt in prayer and arose with conviction. He knew what he should do.

He pulled up the arrows, laid them flat and placed more gifts on top of them. The peace offering was understood. He had won his way back into a Motilone camp.

Olsson lived with the Motilones from that day on. He gradually won their trust, and the Lord opened many opportunities for him to help the Indians.

He scribed the fascinating tonal Motilone language (Motilones can communicate with one another simply by tones created through whistling) and taught the Indians to read and write. He taught them to plant corn and store it for use during the  “hunger seasons.” He introduced medicines to their witch doctors, enabling them to cure some of the “evil spirits” that had often plagued the tribe. And Olsson brought the compassions of Jesus Christ to the Motilone people. Today Olsson says 99.9 percent of the 200,000 Motilones are Christians.

The Motilones began to spread the things Olsson had taught them to other jungle tribes along the River of Gold (the river which runs along the Colombian/Venezuelan border). With them they brought the Good News of Jesus Christ. But their movement attracted the attention of the ELN.

The army had moved in and planned to take control of the Indian people of the jungle, but Bruce Olsson and his Motilones were standing in its way.

At 11 a.m. on October 24, 1988, Bruce Olsson and 15 Motilones were canoeing on the River of Gold. They had been repairing a solar energy plant in a settlement at the head of the river. The current was rapid, and the sun was hot. As the men pushed ashore on the tree-lined beach one of the Motilones leaned over and whispered to Olsson, “Guerillas!”

The soldiers were perched on the bluff at the edge of the beach bearing submachine guns. Olsson kept his back to the guerillas, but a mist of bullets ripped open the side of the canoe. “Bruce Olsson,” one of the 40 guerillas shouted, “you are captured by the National Army of Liberation. All of you put your faces to the ground.”

The Motilones refused to obey and marched toward the guerillas. Olsson tried to move away but was stopped by another spray of bullets. The guerillas ignored the Motilones and closed in on Olsson. One of the guerillas shoved him to the ground and pushed the cold barrel of a machine gun against the back of Olsson’s neck. Bruce held his breath as he waited for the shot, but it did not come.

His captors forced him to his feet and shackled him; for three days they led him on foot along abandoned jungle paths toward their base camp. They traveled only by night.

They kept him shackled for several weeks. Two armed guerillas followed his every move, and anywhere from 28 to 80 guerillas guarded the camp where he was held. The ELN had convinced the guerillas that Olsson was dangerous.

Olsson prayed constantly that God would enable him to reach out to his hostile captors, and gradually opportunities became available.

Olsson learned that the guerillas, though they were quite intelligent, did not know how to read or write. He persuaded his captors to allow him to teach classes on literacy. He was a talented cook as well, and he would wake up at 4:00 each morning to help the cooks prepare the day’s meals for the camp. He taught them to ferment sugar to make yeast, and he taught them to make bread. He showed them how to use roots, insects and larvae to make delicious sauces. Soon Olsson’s captors had become his friends.

The superior officers (called responsibles) grew concerned about Olsson’s growing popularity. They felt he was usurping their power and causing division among the guerillas, so they kept moving him to different camps. Olsson’s reputation preceded him, however, and the guerillas at each camp to which he was transferred (he stayed at 12 different camps while in captivity) were eager to know and learn from Bruce Olsson.

In his sixth month as a prisoner Olsson contracted a deadly disease that plagued him with excruciating abdominal pain, high fevers, chills and nausea. One day he began to hemorrhage and lost nearly three quarts of blood.

His guerilla friends begged the responsibles to fly Olsson out of the jungle for medical help, but the responsibles refused. Instead, they brought in a doctor, who ordered a blood transfusion. Eighty guerillas argued over who would be allowed to give his blood for Olsson. Three were chosen.

After the transfusion, while Olsson was resting on a hammock, one of the guerillas who had given his blood came to him. “Do you know who I am?” he asked Olsson.

“Yes, you are Camilo,” Olsson replied.

“Yes, but do you know who I am?” the man insisted. As a seven-year-old boy little Camilo had attended a school Olsson had opened for Spanish speaking land settlers along the River of Gold. When Camilo’s mother needed an operation, Olsson had paid for it. When his brother was badly wounded in a jungle accident, Olsson had treated him. “We guerillas are not going to allow anything unjust to happen to you,” Camilo vowed. “And I will be with you until the end.”

Camilo’s words put him in great danger; he could have been executed for having demonstrated such disloyalty to the cause of the ELN.

As Olsson was recovering, the national level of responsibles was collaborating on what to do with him. Because of his good work among the guerillas, they decided they wanted him to become one of them; he would be responsible for community development and social services. When their national director spoke to Olsson about this he refused, saying, “I cannot work with people who are killing innocent Hispanics or that dominate Indians and bring them into a white man’s war.”

The director was enraged. The leaders trumped up charges against Olsson, and a few days later the national director presented the verdict: “We have found you guilty, Bruce Olsson.”

“Of what?” Olsson asked.

“You are guilty of crimes against humanity,” the director explained. The revolutionaries had found him guilty of killing 6,100 Indians and of bringing in Colombian troops by helicopter to fight against the revolution. Because he was so dangerous, they told him, he would be executed in three days.

Olsson was surprised at the charges, but he prepared himself to die. If God had been with him along the way—and Olsson was convinced that God had indeed led him to this point—then this may be the time for him to die. That he would leave in God’s hands.

The morning he was to be executed his guerilla friends refused to eat with him. They were too emotionally involved, they said. They were too broken with grief to be with him in such a way on his day of execution.

In the late morning the guerillas came and shackled him. They led him to a tree and tied him to it. Backing away, the soldiers retrieved their weapons. Eighteen guerillas, many of them his friends, raised their guns and pointed them at Olsson. He caught Camilo’s eyes, but they were empty. If any one of the soldiers did not follow orders he would be executed as well.

The command was given to shoot, and the contents of 18 submachine guns were fired at Bruce Olsson. When the smoke cleared the men could see Olsson still shackled to the tree. And he was still looking at them. The responsibles had loaded the guns with blanks.

Olsson watched as understanding crossed the guerillas’ faces—understanding and great relief. Their friend was still alive. They were all too exhausted to shout for joy.

Olsson later learned that, while he was being held captive, Indians from more than 50 language groups across the jungles had joined together on his behalf. Four hundred representatives of the 500,000 Indians of the land had met with the guerillas to demand Olsson’s release. The guerillas were backed into a corner. They had hoped that because of Olsson’s capture the Indians would submit to the ELN’s power, but they had instead risen up against the army. For the first time in the history of Colombia its jungle peoples had joined together for a common cause. The force of their unity was more than the ELN could stand against.

Deciding to release Olsson, the responsibles had staged his mock execution as a last-ditch effort to frustrate the Indians. They had hoped to psychologically derange Olsson so that the Indians could no longer trust him. Miserably, they had failed. On July 19, 1989, Bruce Olsson was released from captivity.

Along with the powerful new unity among the tribal Indians, the guerillas were faced with an even more pressing betrayal. About 60 percent of the base guerillas Olsson had befriended had become Christians and had begun to question their affiliation with the ELN. Six hundred guerillas separated themselves from the national movement.

The ELN leaders’ plans had backfired, so they moved out of the area and ended their attempts to control the Indian people.

Bruce Olsson says, “That I have been released is not the victory. The victory is that Christ lives and that He is conforming us daily into His image. The victory is that the Gospel is preached in the jungles of South America.”

The victory, Olsson says, is found in the words of Colombia’s president Cirvilio Barco: ‘We see a beacon of light. We see Motilones who know truth, who are resurrected in Christ. We must align ourselves up with God’s holiness. We must walk in the Motilone example.”

Bruce Olsson came to the United States in July and visited some of the nine United Methodist churches that support his work. He returned to Colombia in November, and he and the Motilones will take the Gospel of Christ to the people along the River of Gold that are now ready to hear of the compassions of Christ. 

Dierdra Moran is editorial assistant for Good News.