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MRTA



I was taken hostage by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) on December 22, 1996.  I was held for five days and released with 400 other people.  For the five days I stayed in a 14 by 15 foot room with 28 other men.  I found a spot under a table in the far corner of the room.  After we were captured the MRTA threatened to throw hand grenades into our rooms.  I wanted to be in the least exposed position.  Two good friends got with me under the table to sleep each night --- John Crow and Don Boyd.  We talked about many things --- mostly the past.  We didn't talk about the future.

The first morning the MRTA leader, Cerpa, announced that they were going to shoot the Foreign Minister of Peru at 11:00 a.m. and then start throwing bodies out the front of the building until their demands were met.  John Riddle, the Embassy Economics Officer, came to our room and said that things did not look good.  He told us we should be prepared for the worse.  The men in my room began looking around for scraps of paper and began writing notes and putting them in their pockets.  I understood.  They were writing messages to their families that would be found on their bodies if they didn't make it out alive.  I thought of the Civil War battle of Cold Harbor and how the Union troops under Grant received orders for an assault the next morning on Lee's trenches defending Richmond.  They understood the lethal nature of the task and began writing notes for their famiies which they pinned to their bodies.  I wrote my wife of how much I loved her and the children and how much I wanted to hold them one last time.  

Michael Maxey
Lima, Peru

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