In a box 290 days.
It was a prefabricated cage, if I extended my arms I would hit the walls, I never saw the light of the sun and music was blasted from two speakers at full volume day and night.
To go crazy
They gave me violent narcocorridos so that I wouldn’t hear what was happening outside and I did my bowels in a portable cooler. The last few months I lived naked, without a mattress and with a plate of beans a day, they pressure you to talk and betray the negotiation.
Let’s go back to November 29, 2016.
Before I took my son to school like every day, that day I took five minutes to thank God that everything was going so well for me, I had a good job, a nice house and I was happy with my wife and with my children, a three-year-old boy and a 1-year-old baby.
I was grateful to be privileged.
Yes, and 45 minutes later, I was intercepted by eight hooded men in a van.
What helped him in his captivity?
The first thing I did was to remember the talk of a man who had been kidnapped for 257 days, and I discovered that that man had all the qualities that I did not have.
That must have been frustrating.
The man was clear that God was with him. My faith was quite fragile, in fact at that time I wanted to kill God. One of my first decisions was to talk to God and myself, and I did it out loud.
What else was proposed?
The man insisted on exercising, he was a marathon runner and I got tired climbing five flights of stairs, but I started moving like a caged lion and ended up doing 200 squats and 10 km a day. And the third pillar I put into practice was not to obsess over hating my captors. They entered the box three times, once for the life test and twice to spank me, they were wearing bacteriological suits, I never saw their faces.
Could he control his emotions?
Those nine and a half months were like a gestation process for a new human being. I went through all the emotions, angers and despairs, but I came out of it in a Zen state, although it didn’t last long: I lived a time of great fury.
What has changed in your life?
I don’t see the human being the same. Writing my story was a catharsis, at first I cried, for three years I went back to the box every day. It was such a long kidnapping that I broke down, I wanted to kill myself, but then I picked myself up, strengthened myself and created an armor that helped me survive.
What has he discovered about himself?
That I am encouraged in adversity. In the box I had three very powerful anxiety attacks that I had to master with my mind. In me there was the good Beto and the bad Beto who kept telling me “they will kill you, your children will forget you”. My priority was to stop thinking, for that dialogue between good and evil to stop.
Who won?
The negative thinking that increased at night and prevented me from sleeping, but suddenly I was able to turn the omelet.
With?
I had never meditated, but I began to pray and go inward, and I found a whole wonderful world within me and an incredible strength, a self-disciplined Beto that could go where it wanted; and I had a moment of lucidity in which I told myself that I would not feed on my memories but on the moments I lacked to live.
Does it hold that fort?
Yes, and I am much more empathetic now. When I came out, I needed hugs and now I give them and I interview people who have been kidnapped to tell them that they will move on. It hurt me a lot, when I was released, to find little empathy even from people very close to me. Kidnapping is taboo in Mexico.
Has your resource been emotion or reason?
The first months in the box I cried five hours a day; then my armor was formed and the rational part killed the emotional part so it wouldn’t end up with me. When I got out I couldn’t cry for months, I brought back the tears by reading the diary my wife wrote during the kidnapping.
Did he survive for his family?
At first yes, but there came a time when I asked myself: what about your will to live? I realized the need to love myself first. For me, I will exercise and take care of myself, because I want to live, eat the world. One of my superpowers was being my best friend.
Have you thought about the human being?
I want to think that we are still more good people than bad, what happens is that the good ones are poorly organized. Greed and money bring out the worst in us.
Your essential learning?
That life is today and it must be lived with intensity; I know the value of time. I no longer ask, I just thank. I live with a lot of freedom and I know how to enjoy myself much more than before.
