The Author

Toledo is currently documenting his life experience in a book in progress: “1,775 Days of Captivity – Survival and Growth”

Just after being released, Jorge Toledo started an investigation and discovery phase into the circumstances and events surrounding his arbitrary detention. The geopolitical nature of his detention added a high level of complexity to this exercise. Furthermore, the intricacy of navigating through memory to recreate events and details completed a cycle that began the experience documentation. Here is when Toledo begins the book project titled “1,775 of Captivity – Survival and Growth.”

Through a dynamic and poetic narrative, the book describes the events and circumstances surrounding the hostage-taking of Jorge Toledo in 2017, along with five other executives of CITGO Petroleum Corporation (later known as the CITGO 6) by the Venezuelan government, using its repressive system to perpetrate illegal, unfair and extreme detention, to achieve dark political goals using human beings as bargaining chips.  Beyond this event and journey through 1,775 days of brutal and extreme imprisonment, physical and psychological torture, and violations of fundamental rights, this narrative depicts his process to survive all these tragic circumstances.

The story travels through spirituality, mind control, and physical preservation; simultaneously, the courage to triumph over despair and hopelessness as a driver for creating value. Determination, strategy, action, discipline, courage, conviction, faith, and hope to survive this circumstance while using it as a process of personal growth. As a result, the transformation of “poison into medicine” and the answer to the question “Was this a tragedy or an opportunity?”.

The book also exposes what we know today as Hostage Diplomacy, a crime against humanity that has become a threat to the civilized world. The Hostage Diplomacy condition represented a paradigm shift for the US Government to implement the necessary strategy, actions, and diplomacy to achieve Toledo’s and his five colleagues’ release.

Jorge Toledo’s story is a compelling testimony of a tragic and traumatic event. As per Toledo’s own words: “If I don’t write about my own story, who is going to do it for me, and when?”. Furthermore, Hostage Diplomacy is a global issue and a case of national security for Countries in which their citizens are targeted by autocratic states. Toledo’s wrongful detention had full global media coverage during and after the detention, which makes the event an issue of global interest.

Jorge Toledo’s story brings the human perspective of adversity as a challenge to survive and an opportunity to bring the individual’s life to the next upper level. It is a story about personal growth and improvement, as well as overcoming adversity to reach a state of happiness.