Draft:Kidnapping and Assassination of Chester Bitterman

The kidnapping and assassination of Chester Bitterman, an American missionary in Colombia was a major terrorist event which received coverage in worldwide media for nearly seven weeks in early 1981. It was an important test for the newly-elected Reagan Administration and an unprecedented challenge for Colombia. The kidnapping lasted for a total of 47 days, involved interventions from many sectors, official and otherwise, and ended with Bitterman being shot to death on a bus. These events brought into sharp focus dilemmas when dealing with terrorists which have become abiding themes of modern life.

Background and Context
For decades, since the Bogotazo of April 9, 1948 until the present day, Colombia has experienced guerrilla warfare. This has taken the form of kidnappings, assassinations, extortions and ethnic cleansing as well as major terrorist attacks against embassies and government institutions. Consequently political insecurity has been a daily concern of Colombians for generations.

Guerrilla violence in Colombia, and violent governmental responses that often follow, generally involve only Colombians. But on one occasion, in 1981, an American was captured and eventually lost his life. The kidnapping and assassination of the American missionary Chester Bitterman in Colombia was a major terrorist  event for that country, the USA and the world. President Ronald Reagan had been elected, in part, on the assertion that his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had failed in his management of the Iranian hostage crisis. Yet, only weeks into his presidency, Reagan was faced with an intractable hostage crisis of his own. The challenge for Colombia was also unprecedented since it involved a citizen from its main supporting country, the USA.

The Bitterman tragedy was one of the first introductions to a style of terrorism has become widespread and worldwide today, the capture of innocent civilians and their use as political pawns. It introduced ethical questions which are still unanswered:  how to respond to terrorist outrages without losing one’s humanity, how to balance empathy for victims against the political cost of negotiation, the use of disinformation, the role of Western institutions in provoking terrorism in developing countries and the emotions and cycles of violence generated by unpunished attacks.

Kidnapping and Demands
By January 1981 Chester ‘Chet’ Bitterman, 28, an American missionary from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had already spent fifteen months in Colombia as a member of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), associates of Wycliffe Bible Translators. He, along with his wife Brenda Gardner and two young girls, were planning to translate the Bible into the language of the pre-literate Carijona Indians. The Bittermans were based at the SIL center of Loma Linda (province of Meta) but Chet had been suffering from biliary colic and had come to Bogotá for a gall bladder operation.

Bitterman’s kidnapping lasted for a total of 47 days. It began at dawn on January 19, 1981 when six armed men and a woman enter the guest house of the SIL in a northern suburb of Bogotá claiming to be ‘police’. Once inside they captured him in the presence of his wife, girls and other SIL personnel. The captors had first asked for the SIL director, Albert Wheeler, but, not finding him, took Bitterman instead. The gunmen searched the house, and SIL documents and electronic equipment were also taken.

Three days later, on January 22, the kidnappers released a statement. They identified themselves as the M-19, a Colombian guerrilla movement, and claimed the SIL was a front for the CIA and had installed American missiles in a lake at its Loma Linda center. They communicated their two demands in a letter directed to American President Ronald Reagan: that SIL leave Colombia immediately and that their manifesto be published in The New York Times and the Washington Post. If both demands were not met in one-months’ time, Bitterman would be killed.

In the following days both the Colombian and American governments defended SIL’s presence in the country, denied its involvement with the CIA and insisted they would not negotiate with terrorists. On January 24, the SIL stated formally that it would not leave Colombia and urged Bitterman’s capturers not to shed innocent blood.

Claim the kidnappers are not M-19
On January 26 Colombian television was interrupted (a communication tactic used at the time by M-19) with a broadcast claim that M-19 did not have Bitterman in their possession. They claimed the Colombian government had captured him ‘to discredit their movement’. The same claim was made the next day by M-19 prisoners in the ‘La Picota’ prison. The Colombian Ministry of Defense immediately qualified these claims as ‘absurd’. On January 28 a communiqué bearing the M-19 logo was sent to the news media threatening to kill Bitterman on February 19 (one month after his capture) if SIL did not leave Colombia. On January 29 photos of masked armed men surrounding Bitterman were sent to the media. Behind them was the M-19 flag. Based on these conflicting claims, the media and some military officials began to speculate that the kidnappers were a dissident M-19 faction.

Claim SIL is a front for the CIA
The SIL had been in Colombia for several years before the kidnapping and their presence had sometimes provoked controversy. Their approach was accused by the guerrillas and by religious and governmental organs of being detrimental to indigenous cultures and their access to the tribes of being used for evangelical proselytizing. The SIL denied this. On January 30 the SIL invited journalists to their center at Loma Linda, which the kidnappers claimed was a clandestine CIA base, to inspect it and document there was no American military or intelligence presence. On February 2 the Colombian government and the US Embassy in Bogotá declared their full support for the SIL and disclaimed any attachment to the CIA. On January 25 and again on February 2 an intense manhunt by the security services for the kidnappers’ hiding place took place in Bogotá and other locations in Colombia. Both searches were unfruitful.

Signs of Life
On February 5 a message from Bitterman was received by his wife claiming he was healthy and was being well-treated. On February 6 his wife sent a message back to him, along with a plea to his capturers for his life. Additional photographs were sent a week later showing Bitterman playing chess with his captors.

Contradictions, Confusion and Stalemate
On February 7, there was another interruption of Colombia television in which the M-19 again claimed to not be holding Bitterman and on the 9th they said they refused to answer for his life. On February 11, a message also claiming to be from M-19 repeated death threats against Bitterman and said the SIL was ‘an affront to Colombian sovereignty’. On February 15, three journalists were kidnapped in Bogotá and taken on a several hour’s drive to an unknown location at which masked men, claiming to be from M-19, received them and asked to be interviewed. During that interview the masked men denied they were holding Bitterman or that there was any division within the M-19. Only one of the guerrillas met the journalists unmasked, their leader, Everth Bustamante García. The journalists were then driven back to Bogotá and released. On February 17 a cassette was received at a radio station with evidence Bitterman was still alive. It claimed there were ideological differences between the M-19 and a dissident group within the organization who’d captured him. On February 20, one day after the threatened execution date, M-19 announced it had prolonged the sentence until March 6 in order to give SIL more time to leave the country. Meanwhile the M-19 announced the candidacy of its founder and leader, Jaime Bateman Cayón, for the Colombian presidency. On February 27 another journalist was kidnapped and taken to the headquarters of ‘Auto-Defensa Obrera’, a leftist guerrilla group, where he was given information similar to that given to the three previous journalists. From the information given to this journalist it appeared that this organization was closely aligned to M-19. They also denied involvement in Bitterman’s kidnapping.

Assassination
Intensive negotiations between February 19 and March 6, involving a Protestant pastor, a Catholic priest, journalists, SIL representatives and the kidnappers, failed to arrive at an agreement. The latter would only accept a SIL departure from the country, a condition SIL refused to meet. During the final days more than a dozen secret telephone contacts took place mainly involving the SIL and journalists on one side and the kidnappers on the other, but without Colombian authorities present. In the final marathon session the kidnappers gave their names as ‘Chucho’ and ‘Genaro’. The latter man’s style and strong Paisa accent was said by journalists to be similar to that of one of the leaders in the M-19 takeover of the embassy of the Dominican Republic the previous year.

In the early morning of March 7 Bitterman was killed by a single bullet to the chest in a kidnapped minibus on a Bogotá street. The bus driver, who’d been bound and blindfolded, gave the alert around 5.30 AM. The authorities arrived, found Bitterman’s body draped in a M-19 banner, transported it to the Institute of Legal Medicine for identification (by his wife, Brenda, and the SIL head, Albert Wheeler) and performed an autopsy. Toxicology tests suggested Bitterman had been drugged before being shot. The periodical El Tiempo announced the death as follows:"The American citizen Chester Allen Bitterman, an official of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, kidnapped on January 19 by a dissident group of the M-19, was murdered in the early hours of yesterday morning inside a bus in Bogota.  The crime occurred a few hours after a marathon telephone press conference between all the media and two men speaking on behalf of the subversive group, who identified themselves as Chucho and Genaro, who announced the execution."

Governments
The Colombian president, Julio Cezar Turbay, was one of the first to respond to Bitterman’s death, calling it ‘vile and despicable’. The government spokesman, German Zea Hernandez, reiterated that SIL could stay on in the country until its contract was over in 1995. It was still in the country as of 2024. Turbay later received Bitterman’s family in the Presidential Palace to offer his condolences. President Ronald Reagan sent his personal condolences to Bitterman’s parents and widow. American Secretary of State, Alexander Haig also condemned the killing.

M-19 and factions
On January 30, 11 days into the kidnapping, two contradictory circulars both signed by the M-19 were made public. One, originating in Cali and signed ‘Comando Superior Provisional del M-19’, strongly criticized the M-19 commander, Jaime Bateman Cayón, for compromising with the enemy by running for election. It called him a ‘clown’ and expelled him from the movement. It blamed the CIA for Bitterman’s abduction. The other circular, originating in Medellin and signed by the ‘Comando Superior’ (with signatures from Bateman Cayón, Ivan Marino Ospina and Carlos Toledo Plata—the acknowledged leaders of M-19), accused unnamed ‘inferior commanders’ within M-19 of usurping their authority by kidnapping Bitterman.

After Bitterman’s death the same M-19 hierarchy  blamed the killing on their own dissident organization, now named ‘Coordinator Nacional de Base, M-19’, at that time led by Everth Bustamante García. The wording of the declaration signed by the three leaders of M-19 (Jaime Bateman Cayón, Ivan Marino Ospina and Carlos Toledo Plata) was as follows:"'...after a thorough investigation and considering that those who executed Bitterman are militants with a warmongering and terrorist spirit towards our organization and want to lead the M-19 movement to a situation of internal war, since they have put their personal interests above the organization, we point out as directly responsible for the death of Chester Allen Bitterman the following persons: Evert Bustamante García, intellectual; Carlos Vidales Rivera, 'Luis'; Jorge Rojas Sánchez, 'Genaro', material author.'"Other authorities have pointed out that it was Bustamante’s organization which was holding Bitterman. This faction had sent a twenty-page manifesto to the newspaper El Bogotano denouncing Bateman and, to prove its authenticity, included Bitterman’s credit cards and a handwritten letter from him to his wife Brenda. Later the same organization sent her his college ring, which she identified as authentic.

‘Coordinador Nacional de Base, M-19’ had already been accused of assassinating another notable personality in a similar manner to Bitterman. On February 15, 1975 the president of Colombia’s largest workers’ union, Jose Raquel Mercado, was killed, like Bitterman, by a single bullet to the chest fired at point-blank range. Both men had been held in a similar hideaway in Bogotá for long periods while their captors negotiated. This dissident organization had also distributed pictures of Mercado playing chess with his captors before his murder.

The role of Bustamante, alias ‘Marcos’, in the Bitterman affair has never been clarified. The role of Carlos Vidales Rivera (1939-2014), a M-19 member until 1979, is unclear as well. Even less is known about Jorge Rojas Sanchez (1950-1987) who was killed in his native city of Pereira. ‘Genaro’, as Rojas Sanchez was nicknamed, participated in the negotiations the last day before Bitterman died, and, by the account of the M-19 itself, was the man who pulled the trigger.

Bustamante, at the time and ever since, has maintained he had nothing to do with the kidnapping or murder. On February 14, 1981, men sent from Bustamante kidnapped three prominent journalists from Bogotá and took them to his hideaway where he informed them he was not involved, nor was the M-19, in Bitterman’s kidnapping. In that interview Bustamante argued that the M-19 does not kidnap ordinary individuals.

In his most recent denial of involvement, published in 2016, Bustamante cites the interview as proof of his innocence. However an M-19 spokesman, during the kidnapping itself, dismissed the interview as a publicity stunt. On February 21, 1981, a week after the interview, in a call to the newspaper El Espectador, the spokesman said that the claim that the M-19 didn’t have Bitterman ‘was just a "show" put on by Jaime Bateman Cayón and Bustamante, who were only interested in increasing their political standing’.

In the same published denial Bustamante also cites the amnesty granted him in 1990 to prove his own innocence. Law 77 of December 22, 1989, like the amnesty law approved three days before Bitterman’s murder, excludes guerrillas involved in egregious acts like the killing of Mercado and Bitterman. Both these assassinations are attributed, by some experts, to the organization Bustamante headed at the time.

After living several years in exile in France, Bustamante himself emerged from the M-19 in 1990 into mainstream Colombian politics and was elected senator and then mayor of a large Colombian city, Zipaquirá. Over the decades since his amnesty he has become a senior political figure in a number of Colombian administrations. But from as early as March 12, 1981, five days after the murder until as recent as 2016 and 2019 questions have been raised about his involvement.

In 1981 the periodical El Tiempo stated that:"'Everth Bustamante García, alias 'Marcos' and indicated as the intellectual author of the murder, was born on July 18, 1948, in Zipaquirá; son of Vicente and Beatriz; lawyer, political leader.  He has a height of 1.76 meters, dark brown complexion, citizenship card number 11.330 of Zipaquirá.  He is a top leader of the M-19 and was responsible in Bogotá for the movement's internal leadership, and is apparently the grassroots coordinator.  He has a long history as an activist of the Anapo Socialista and his direct contact to join the movement was Luis Francisco Otero Cifuentes.  He is being tried as an absent defendant in the verbal court martial being held in La Picota.'"In a letter the next day to the same periodical Bustamante denied any involvement in the Bitterman affair and placed the entire blame on the CIA. . More recently, in 2014, the periodical Semana stated that:"‘Everth Bustamante was the head of the national grassroots coordinator and it was under his leadership that the North American Chester Allan Bitterman, who was only a translator working for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, was kidnapped and murdered.’"Bustamante reacted by writing the editor of the journal claiming defamation and protesting his innocence, but again, in 2019, questions were raised about his involvement by investigative journalists at the media outlet Las2Orillas.

Bustamante clashed on several occasions with the M-19 leader, Bateman. The former had already been a politician in Zipaquirá before joining M-19 and would reenter Colombian politics in 1990 after receiving his amnesty for M-19 activities. Bateman candidacy for presidency in 1981 may have generated more rivalry between the two men. Bustamante had positioned himself as a Marxist-Leninist to the left of Bateman in his early years while undergoing a dramatic transformation into an ultra-rightist, aligned with Alvaro Uribe, in his later years.

Conspiracy?
The question of culpability has never been clarified. David Stoll, in his 1982 book Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators in Latin America, catalogues the long and checked history of the SIL in Colombia. In reference to the Bitterman killing Stoll imagines several possible sets of actors: Just before Bitterman's kidnapping, Cromos magazine released a poll showing that two M-19 leaders were the most popular people in the country. President Turbay was in tenth place, behind a beauty queen. Sixteen days after Bitterman's execution, Turbay claimed that M-19 forces had been trained in Cuba and broke off relations with that country, a move widely attributed to pressure from Washington.

Before and after Bitterman's death, M-19 leaders denied responsibility and blamed one faction, which also denied any connection before and after the assassination. At a meeting of the two M-19 groups on February 14, they called the communiqués in their name "false" and pointed the finger at military intelligence, perhaps even the CIA, which, they said, was trying to divide and discredit the movement. The kidnappers continued to claim to represent the M-19 faction, as did the government. As the two sides have undoubtedly infiltrated each other, the third possibility of a consortium is possible. To embarrass the M-19 and perhaps remove moralistic Bible translators and informants from para-governmental coca and marijuana plantations, for example, a provocateur might have persuaded M-19 hardliners to take the conspiracy theory to its logical conclusion. Still, if an M-19 faction actually accosted Bitterman without any para-official help, it would have found ample reason to pretend that it had not done so. On January 24, five days after the kidnapping a spokesman at the US Embassy in Bogotá, Alfred Laun, also observed that “for us, paradoxically, this type of kidnapping seems very similar to those being committed now by right-wing groups in El Salvador. Despite not having the same ideals, groups in that country and those who kidnapped the SIL associate here are acting very similarly, using almost the same methods”.

As Stoll and Laun suggest, the murder may have been committed by another secret group—left-wing, right-wing, ultra-religious or a combination thereof—who stole M-19’s identity for their own purposes. M-19 later sent condolences to Bitterman’s widow and Bustamante, to his parents. Most authorities, however, still assert that the preponderance of the evidence points to the M-19 or a dissident group therein, and have urged Bustamante, the only leader still alive, to reveal what he knows.

Triggermen
Concerning the actual triggermen, the periodical El Tiempo reported the following on March 9, 1982:"Hugo Oswaldo Chávez Urrutia, assassin of the American linguist Chester Allen Bitterman, and 16 other guerrilla members of the M-19 high command in Bogotá, were captured by the intelligence service of the Brigade of Military Institutes, in one of the harshest blows to the subversive organization.  General Diaz Sanmiguel described the guerrilla who cold-bloodedly murdered Bitterman as very dangerous and identified him as Hugo Oswaldo Chavez Urrutia, alias Martin, the third most important man within the so-called National Base Coordinator of the M-19 after Heber Bustamante and Ivon Consuelo Izquierdo, alias Julia.  ...the BIM commander said that he fully confessed to having assassinated the linguist Bitterman on March 7 last year when he formed the 'Manuela Beltran' column of the M-19 base coordinator. Finally, the BIM commander said that there are versions that Herber Bustamante left the country and is in some Central American nation, possibly in Cuba or Nicaragua."Hugo Oswaldo Chávez Urrutia was later released in May, 1983 under a general amnesty for guerrillas.   There is no trace of him after that.  Bustamante reemerged in 1990 to take advantage of the amnesty granted M-19 guerrillas and became a leading Colombian politician, eventually supporting the government of Alvaro Uribe. undefined On March 9, 1981 the Colombian government had declared that anyone associated with the Bitterman murder would not be granted amnesty.

Several of the other 16 M-19 guerrillas captured were said to be involved with the kidnapping of Bitterman according to general Gustavo Matamoros but it was not clear which ones.

On March 10, 1982 El Espectador reported the following:"...of the capture of persons indicated as material authors of the murder of the North American citizen, among them an individual identified as Boris Hernando Castillo Horam, who according to 'El Espacio' of January 18 of the current year, was also a member of the so-called 'Coordinadora Nacional de Base' (National Base Coordinator)."Nothing further is known about this man.

SIL
The standing of SIL improved significantly in the wake of the Bitterman assassination. From being frequently criticized in the Colombian press and in political and Catholic circles, it gained considerable media support. Although its contract with the Colombian government was to end in 1995, it was allowed to remain on in Colombia and is still present in 2024. Worldwide its recruitment rose by more than seventy percent in the year after Bitterman’s death and financial contributions increased by 22% that year.

Christian community
There was widespread ecumenical support for SIL, including from the previously-skeptical Colombian Catholic church. ‘The blood the martyrs is the seed of the church’, became the leitmotif of Chester Allen Bitterman. Memorials were built in his honor and he continues to be revered by the evangelical community as an example of Christ-like sacrifice.

Bitterman family
Bitterman’s mother and father were received by the then Colombian President Julio Cezar Turbay, when they visited the country shortly after the murder. They promised to forgive their son’s killers and expressed a wish to meet and speak with them. It is unknown whether they did. Brenda Gardner Bitterman and her two young daughters left Colombia the day after her husband’s burial in Loma Linda. Nine months later she remarried. She and her new husband continued to work for SIL.

Further Reading:

 * Estes, Steve (1986). Called to die: The story of American linguist Chet Bitterman, slain by terrorists. Zondervan Press:  Grand Rapids, Michigan. ISBN 978-0-310-28381-2.
 * Stoll, David (1982). Fishermen of men or founders of Empire? The Summer Institute of Linguistics in Latin America.  Zed Press: London.  ISBN 978-0-862-32111-6.

External Links:
Chet Bitterman at Find a Grave

Wycliffe Bible Translators

Summer Institute of Linguistics

19th of April Movement (M-19)

Carijona tribe

Columbia Bible College

Columbia International University (CIU), Columbia, South Carolina, USA