2026年53日 / 美国东部时间晚上7:00 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
作者
安德森·库珀 《60分钟》通讯员
安德森·库珀是CNN《安德森·库珀360度》栏目的主持人，自2006年起为《60分钟》供稿。他对重大新闻事件的出色报道为他赢得了电视界顶尖新闻人的声誉。
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阿莉扎·查桑 数字内容制片人
阿莉扎·查桑是《60分钟》和CBSNews.com的数字内容制片人。她曾为PIX11新闻、《纽约每日新闻》、《内幕版》和DNAinfo等媒体撰稿。阿莉扎负责报道热门新闻，常聚焦犯罪与政治领域。
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安娜贝尔·汉夫利格
研究人员兼观鸟向导迭戈·卡尔德龙·佛朗哥曾被哥伦比亚马克思主义反政府武装绑架并劫持为人质。多年后，他决定向昔日的绑客们介绍观鸟活动，认为这或许能让其中一些人获得向导的新职业。
哥伦比亚革命武装力量——这个以西班牙语首字母缩写FARC闻名的极左翼组织，于2004年绑架了卡尔德龙·佛朗哥，并将他关押了88天。该组织与哥伦比亚政府陷入了长达数十年的冲突。2016年达成和平协议后，近1万名武装分子放下武器，开始寻找工作。卡尔德龙·佛朗哥认为这些前武装分子可以成为优秀的森林向导。于是他向其中一些人介绍了观鸟。
“我们完全忘了彼此的身份，他们不会想，‘哦，这就是那个15年前被我们绑架的人，你知道吗？’”卡尔德龙·佛朗哥谈及这段改变了的关系时说道，“鸟类能让你与他人紧密相连，我想这就是它们拥有治愈力量的原因。”
为何选择观鸟
据卡尔德龙·佛朗哥介绍，全球约有11000种鸟类，其中约2000种可以在哥伦比亚见到。这个南美国家的鸟类种类比世界上任何其他国家都多。
哥伦比亚多样的地理环境——包括安第斯山脉、亚马逊丛林、沙漠和草原——造就了该国丰富的鸟类种群。数十年的冲突也起到了一定作用。政府、左翼游击队、右翼准军事组织和贩毒团伙之间的冲突，让哥伦比亚许多地区因过于危险而无法开发。结果，许多鸟类栖息地得以保留。
“该地区长期存在非法武装组织，这阻止了人们前来砍伐和烧毁栖息地，”卡尔德龙·佛朗哥在塔塔马国家公园附近的蒙特祖玛雨林生态旅馆说道。
- 哥伦比亚拥有近2000种鸟类。探索一些观鸟者蜂拥而至前往观赏的物种。
卡尔德龙·佛朗哥将如今在哥伦比亚担任观鸟向导比作维多利亚时代的探险家。
“这是因为维多利亚时代的所有探险家都在环球航行、探索各地并发现新物种，”他说，“而由于我们……动荡的过去，你仍可以在哥伦比亚，看看那些与世隔绝的山脉，说不定就能发现科学意义上的鸟类新物种。”
哥伦比亚的暴力历史
根据一份国会报告，20世纪60年代，哥伦比亚的左翼团体组建了游击队组织，包括FARC和民族解放军（简称ELN）。哥伦比亚政府随后支持组建准军事团体，但这些团体后来演变为服务于私人利益的非法武装。左右翼武装组织都依靠贩毒获取收入。
克罗克国际和平研究所的何塞菲娜·埃查瓦里亚·阿尔瓦雷斯表示，数十年的冲突导致超过45万人丧生，其中大多数是手无寸铁的平民。整个冲突期间，约有5万人被绑架。
2004年，卡尔德龙·佛朗哥和两名同事在哥伦比亚北部山区进行考察时被FARC武装分子劫持。
“他们根本不相信我们是观鸟者，你知道吗？以为我们是生物学家，”他说。
FARC索要赎金，卡尔德龙·佛朗哥的父亲凑齐了约3万美元将儿子赎回。
在分裂的国家治愈旧创
哥伦比亚的和平依然脆弱。去年，哥伦比亚保守党参议员、总统候选人米格尔·乌里韦·图尔瓦伊在波哥大西部的一场竞选集会上遇刺，两个多月后不治身亡。今年4月底爆发的暴力事件造成20人死亡，官员将此事归咎于拒绝解除武装的FARC派系。
但如今的旅行安全程度仍远高于十年前。鸟类的吸引力已成为日益壮大的生态旅游业的重要组成部分，该行业为哥伦比亚经济带来了数百万美元的收入。
被FARC释放三年后，卡尔德龙·佛朗哥创办了一家企业，在哥伦比亚带领观鸟之旅。他经常住在米歇尔·塔帕斯科及其家人拥有的一处农场里，该农场位于塔塔马国家公园的入口处。
米歇尔·塔帕斯科 《60分钟》
塔帕斯科于20世纪90年代搬到这座农场，以躲避哥伦比亚东部右翼民兵的暴力活动，却没料到左翼FARC在她的新家附近活动。她表示，2008年，该游击队组织的成员绑架并杀害了她的伴侣，留下她独自抚养五个女儿。
她曾想过离开这个地区，但最终决定留下，为偶尔到访的游客提供住宿来创业。随着和平协议达成后越来越多的观鸟者前来，塔帕斯科得以翻新场地，并将其重新命名为蒙特祖玛雨林生态旅馆。
马科斯·格瓦拉最近住在这家旅馆。他曾是一名FARC游击队员。如今，他是一名摄影师。2019年，他在FARC前战斗人员的安置营结识了观鸟向导迭戈·卡尔德龙·佛朗哥，他表示卡尔德龙·佛朗哥给了他第一份摄影师的工作。格瓦拉说，在遇见卡尔德龙·佛朗哥之前，他对观鸟一无所知。
“迭戈给了我们参加讲习班和培训课程的机会，”格瓦拉在谈及自己和安置营里其他前FARC武装分子时说道，“观鸟成为了我们的一扇门——不仅通向自然保护，也成为我们创收的途径。”
Once a hostage of Colombian rebels, he decided to teach his former captors birding
May 3, 2026 / 7:00 PM EDT / CBS News
By
Anderson Cooper 60 Minutes Correspondent
Anderson Cooper, anchor of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” has contributed to 60 Minutes since 2006. His exceptional reporting on big news events has earned Cooper a reputation as one of television’s preeminent newsmen.
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Aliza Chasan Digital Content Producer
Aliza Chasan is a Digital Content Producer for “60 Minutes” and CBSNews.com. She has previously written for outlets including PIX11 News, The New York Daily News, Inside Edition and DNAinfo. Aliza covers trending news, often focusing on crime and politics.
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Annabelle Hanflig
Diego Calderón Franco, a researcher and birding guide, was once kidnapped and held hostage by Marxist rebels in Colombia. Years later, he decided to introduce his former captors to bird-watching, thinking it might provide some of them with new careers as guides.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a far-left group known by its Spanish acronym FARC, captured Calderón Franco in 2004 and held him hostage for 88 days. The group was embroiled in a decades-long conflict with the Colombian government. After reaching a peace agreement in 2016, nearly 10,000 fighters gave up their guns and started a search for work. Calderón Franco thought the former fighters might make good forest guides. So he introduced some of them to birding.
“We totally forgot who we were. They weren’t thinking, ‘Oh, this is the guy we kidnapped, you know, 15 years ago,’” Calderón Franco said of the changed relationship. “Birds connect you so much and I think that’s why they have this healing power.”
Why birding
There are roughly 11,000 bird species around the world and some 2,000 of them can be found in Colombia, according to Calderón Franco. More species of birds live in the South American country than anywhere else in the world.
Colombia’s diverse geography, which includes the Andes mountains, Amazonian jungles, deserts and grasslands, contributes to the country’s large bird population. Decades of fighting also play a role. The conflict between the government, left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and narco-traffickers made many parts of Colombia too dangerous for development. Many bird habitats were preserved as a result.
Diego Calderón Franco 60 Minutes
“The fact that there were illegal armed groups in this area, you know, like, for so long prevented just people [from] coming and slashing and burning the habitats,” Calderón Franco said at the Montezuma Rainforest Ecolodge near Tatama National Park.
- Colombia has nearly 2,000 types of birds. Discover some of the species birders flock there to see.
Calderón Franco compares being a birding guide in Colombia today to being an explorer during the Victorian era.
“It is because all these explorers from the Victorian age, they were circumnavigating the globe and exploring and finding new species everywhere,” he said. “And because [of] our…troubled past you can still be in Colombia, look at that isolated mountain range and you might find a new species for bird for science.”
History of violence in Colombia
In the 1960s, leftist groups in Colombia formed guerrilla organizations, including the FARC and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, according to a congressional report. The Colombian government responded by backing the creation of paramilitary groups, but those later evolved into illegal armies serving private interests. The organizations — both left and right wing — used revenue from drug trafficking.
More than 450,000 people were killed over decades of conflict, most of them unarmed civilians, according to Josefina Echavarría Alvarez of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Around 50,000 people were also kidnapped throughout the conflict.
Calderón Franco and two colleagues were on an expedition in the mountains of northern Colombia in 2004 when they were seized by the FARC.
“They didn’t believe that we were bird watchers, you know? Like, that we were biologists,” he said.
FARC asked for a ransom, and Calderón Franco’s father scraped together around $30,000 so his son could be freed.
Healing old wounds in a divided country
Peace remains fragile in Colombia. Last year, Colombian conservative senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay died more than two months after being shot during a campaign rally in western Bogota. And violence erupted in late April, leaving 20 dead in an explosion officials blamed on a faction of the FARC that refused to disarm.
But travel today is still much safer than it was a decade ago. The lure of the birds has become an important part of a growing ecotourism industry that brings in millions of dollars to Colombia’s economy.
Three years after he was released by the FARC, Calderón Franco launched a business leading birding tours in Colombia. He regularly stayed at a farm, owned by Michelle Tapasco and her family, located at the entrance to Tatamá National Park.
Michelle Tapasco 60 Minutes
Tapaso moved to the farm in the 1990s to escape violence by right-wing militias in eastern Colombia, not realizing the left-wing FARC was active around her new home. She says members of the guerrilla group kidnapped and killed her partner in 2008, leaving her with five daughters to support on her own.
She thought about leaving the area, but decided to stay and build a business providing lodging for the occasional visitors. As more birders came after the peace deal, Tapasco’s been able to fix the place up and rebrand it as the Montezuma Rain Forest Ecolodge.
Marcos Guevara stayed at the lodge recently. He was once a FARC guerrilla. Now, he’s a photographer. He met birding guide Diego Calderón Franco at a resettlement camp for ex-FARC combatants in 2019, and he says Calderon Franco gave him his first job as a photographer. Guevara said he knew nothing about birding before meeting Calderon Franco.
“Diego gave us the chance to attend workshops and training sessions,” Guevara said, speaking about himself and other former FARC fighters at the resettlement camp. “Birdwatching became a doorway for us – not just into conservation and preservation, but also as a way to generate income for ourselves.”
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