Ferleni Paz

Why the Toucans Weep Ferleni Paz

Unable to bear his grief when the rebel FARC army murdered his friend Agustin and this crime went unpunished, the protagonist of this first-person account posed as a prospective coca cultivator and infiltrated the so-called Red Zones, rebel-controlled areas of the Colombian Amazon. Seeking revenge more than justice, he intended to discover the secret relationship between the guerillas and coca growers and then publish a book revealing it. Soon after entering rebel territory, he became a political prisoner, where he endured the trials and challenges related in this story. He was tortured, chained, and exposed to disease-carrying bats and mosquitoes; he was forcibly inducted into a guerrilla squad as a Political Instructor and marched long distances into the jungle to teach revolutionary ideas to coca cultivators, FARC members, and mafia members. He was threatened with death by violence, malaria, poisonous vipers and insects, wild beasts, and the weather. He was in a physical and psychological fight to regain his dignity under the constant psychological abuse and risk of death at his captors' hands. He suffered the terrible threat that the rebels would kill his lovely wife and three daughters if he dared desert the guerrilla ranks. Compounding his tense situation in the middle of a plot to escape, he was involved in a forbidden romance with Paula Nicolasa, the fiancée of one of his captors. This narrative describes the writer's escape odyssey along with two of his captors and how, after surviving several attempts on his life from the rebel army, drug cartel members, and a corrupt police officer, he ended up as a political refugee in the USA, lone survivor of this adventure. This true story is full of mystery, action, and suspense, enlivened with humorous episodes and red-hot forbidden romance. It takes the reader through a dramatic reconstruction of the writer's experiences, including the uncertainty of being marched into armed conflict and being forced to deal with the human effects of corrupted, controversial ideologies tainted by the tax-free cash available through drug trafficking. It testifies to the violence, passion, love, hope, betrayal and sacrifice when cultures clash. It is a dramatic, compelling tale translated faithfully from the original Spanish with the same engaging literary style, that grabs the reader from the first page.