At the beginning of the 70s, Paraguayan football was changing from amateurism to semi-professionalism, however there were already great players whose fame crossed borders, but there were other middlings who, with the help of some contacts, managed to leave the country to try their luck. That was the case of Francisco Solano López and Eusebio Borja, who in 1972 were sold to the Deportivo Pereira club in Colombia, where some other compatriots were already active.
With the intention of succeeding in coffee soccer, the compatriots put all their efforts to earn a place in the starting lineup, but they were never able to consolidate themselves and as the months passed they began to be relegated. In those years, soccer was not even a shadow of what it is today, everything was very precarious and the two Paraguayans went through many deficiencies in those months.
Both players ate poorly, slept worse in lodgings they could barely afford. Without playing, collecting coins, in the long days without sleep and with hunger eating their entrails, López and Borja were weaving other dreams to be able to be millionaires and that is how the bad idea arose of hijacking a plane and asking for a millionaire ransom, fleeing again to take refuge to Paraguay and live as they believed they deserved.
guerrillas
It was so that on May 31, 1973, the two soccer players boarded the HK-1274 plane owned by the Medellín Aeronautical Society, which came from Cali, made a stopover in Pereira and the Paraguayans who were located in the back of the ship boarded. As soon as the plane took flight, López and Borja put on balaclavas, firearms in hand and shouting “this is a kidnapping” they began a story that would change their lives forever.
As expected, everyone got scared and cries of despair began, but let’s go back to 1973, there was no technology to repel the kidnappers, nor did the crew know how to act in the face of this type of event, which was a novelty at the time. What’s more, two firearms were able to board the ship, a situation that today is almost impossible.
The two hooded men reached the cockpit area with ease, they demanded the pilot change course. Aruba, one of the hijackers yelled at the captain of the ship, Jorge Lucena. The destination the kidnappers wanted to go to was a small island in the Caribbean, perhaps thinking that there they would not be able to be located or extradited if something went wrong.
Although Aruba was a little less than an hour away, the plane did not have enough fuel to get there, so Captain Lucena asked the two men to make a stopover at the Medellin airport, and then plot the desired course. by men. So far, so good. When the situation was reported to the Medellín control tower, they were also told that they had been kidnapped by two men who said they were guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (ELN) and that they were asking for US$500,000 and the release of several of his “colleagues” from the prisons. While the plane was going to Aruba, the negotiations did not look good.
The Colombian authorities asked for the release of the hostages safe and sound, but only offered to pay US$. 20,000, since they had serious doubts that they were members of the guerrilla group they were invoking because the air criminals’ accent was not Colombian, for the police the men were Argentine, Uruguayan or Paraguayan, but never Colombian.
Between push and pull the plane was still in flight and the course was changed, now the hijackers wanted to go to Antofagasta, Chile, they reached that place, refueled and flew to Ecuador, more precisely Guayaquil. In Ecuador they took several of the passengers off , as a sign of wanting to collaborate.
Then the authorities gave the two men a briefcase with US $ 50,000, but it was not what the criminals demanded, so the plane took flight again. Now the destination was Paraguay, the ship touched the runway of the Presidente Stroessner Airport, it was already June 2, 48 hours passed of a long kidnapping and there a few more passengers and the stewardesses were released. A few hours later the plane took flight again heading to Argentina, a couple of hours later the ship touched the Ezeiza runway and the main door opened, the captain and a few passengers got out, the kidnapping ended.
Stockholm syndrome
The police were totally confused when those responsible for the flight told them that the hijackers landed in Paraguay. According to the victims, the kidnappers wanted to kill the stewardesses, so they reached an agreement with them. They were going to unload them in Asunción, they would fly to Buenos Aires and only then would they report that the two men were no longer on the ship, to prevent them from killing innocents. This was done and the two kidnappers managed to escape.
Later, as the investigations progressed, it became known that López and Borja, during the more than two days they shared with the hostages, treated them in a good way. They even talked about soccer, how bad they were having it in Colombia and other topics with many of the victims for what is believed to have developed Stockholm syndrome among them and ended up helping the two men to escape.
The Stronista police began to search for criminals, still not knowing that they were Paraguayans, the uniformed men were looking for two guerrillas.
When the kidnapping issue became public in Colombia, the Deportivo Pereira soccer players said that the two kidnappers were their Paraguayan teammates Francisco Solano López and Eusebio Borja, who disappeared.
López left his entire family in Colombia so he had nowhere to go when he returned to Paraguay. He took a public transport bus and paid the driver with a US$100 bill, then he traveled to the center of Asunción, went to eat at a bar where he also paid the bill in dollars. The stronista police “pyrague” soon reported a man who paid all his expenses in dollars.
It was so that two days after Francisco Solano López arrived in the country, he was arrested in a tenement by the police in his possession he had almost US $ 25,000, which led to the assumption that they split the loot with Borja.
While Lopez was being asked for extradition from Colombia, nothing was known about Borja, it seemed that the earth swallowed him. He was much smarter than his partner and did not distribute dollars everywhere, he blended in with the people and got lost. To date, nothing more has been heard of Eusebio Borja and he managed to take US$25,000 from the kidnapping.
For his part, Francisco Solano López, honored his namesake, the greatest hero of Paraguay, and fought for years not to be extradited, under the rule of victory or death. Under the argument that they were going to kill him in Colombia, he asked not to be sent to coffee lands. However, after three years he was extradited and tried in Colombia, where he was sentenced to five years in prison, after completing his sentence he traveled to Argentina, where he died in the early 1980s.
This story, told as such, seems to be a comedy; however, the first and only one carried out by two Paraguayans who went to succeed in sports was an aerial hijacking, but it was not. It could be said that Borja in the best of cases was the one who triumphed by committing the kidnapping, collecting the ransom and never being arrested.
