Interview Ingrid Betancourt and Juan Manuel Santos: anatomy of the most audacious rescue operation in history
"Today I am here to finish what I started, with the conviction that Colombia is ready to change course." Ingrid Betancourt announced this Tuesday, in a Bogotá hotel, that she is returning to the political arena as a candidate to be the presidential candidate of the Esperanza Center. The coalition, with a centrist tendency, was formed by a handful of
political veterans from different movements to beat Uribismo
and the radical left led by Gustavo Petro.
When they presented it last year, they received criticism because among the initial candidates, who were joined on Monday by a former minister, there was not a woman. Now Ingrid Betancourt, who will be the eighth of said formation to attend the primaries on March 13, is not only the female record, but
one of the best-known faces and the standard-bearer, or so she claims, of the fight against corruption.
that has always eaten away at the foundations of the Colombian State.
Although in Colombia he is a controversial character, who has as many followers as detractors, he arouses enormous admiration and respect outside these borders. And,
for many, his figure is the image of reconciliation, of the victim who suffered the horrors of the armed conflict for six and a half years
and decided to bet on a peace process with his torturers. But that it has been very harsh with the guerrillas in their appearances before the special court that judges them.
"They have accused me of going back to my house to get political benefits. Well, yes, I have come to claim the right to fight with my extended family for the Colombia that I love," he said in his appearance, which was attended by some of his rivals, such as the former governor of Antioquia, Sergio Fajardo, the Esperanza Center's favorite so far in the polls.
"I was kidnapped campaigning against the same political machines,"
she said, adding that they needed the presence of a woman and that in the electoral panorama there are only "bad options, extreme right, extreme left," and hers is " the option of the center, the option of the heart", with which they yearn to "build a new world. We are going to transform Colombia from our entrails, with our faith placed in God. We are going to rekindle free citizens to love".
Kidnapped in February 2002 by the FARC in the south of the country, when she was campaigning for the presidency, she was released in 2008 thanks to the Army's audacious Operation Jaque.
He settled in Franca, studied theology in Oxford, England, and made sporadic trips to his native country.
Although she used to say that she did not contemplate participating in an electoral contest and was one of the main promoters of Centro Esperanza, she ended up changing her mind.
"Ingrid Betancourt is an important brand in the country,
with her arrival, the Esperanza coalition reactivates a media agenda that was missing.
And with the unclear outlook of the other candidates, she will be a competitor to be reckoned with" Carlos Suárez, director of the firm Power and Strategy, tells this newspaper.
"She is a great political leader, a victim of the FARC's atrocities and with the moral authority to give her opinion on the conflict that continues to torment the country. And
she is going to take votes away from candidates like Sergio Fajardo and Alejandro Gaviria in the coming weeks,"
he told her .
political analyst Yesid Lancheros tells EL MUNDO. "He doesn't have much of a chance, according to the polls. And if he loses, I don't think I'm betting on him being anybody's vice presidential ticket."
Betancourt began his political career very young, in 1994, with
a campaign in Congress distributing condoms at traffic lights in Bogotá to shield citizens from corruption.
She won a seat and in the following legislature, already as a senator, she formed her own party -Oxígeno Verde-, and in 2001 she left the legislative chair to try to reach the presidency. Although at that time she did not mark more than 1% in the polls, the kidnapping cut short her career and was a martyrdom for her and her family.
His son Lorenzo, then a teenager, suffered terribly from his prolonged absence. And now, twelve years after his mother's freedom, he managed to get a US court to order the FARC to
pay him 36 million dollars.
Because he was born in California and is a US citizen, he was able to sue seventeen guerrilla commanders in 2018, almost all of whom were imprisoned in the United States for drug trafficking, for "damages and losses arising from acts of international terrorism committed by the FARC and its members." , read the complaint. "His mother was taken from him during his formative years, causing him to suffer emotional anguish that he still suffers from," his lawyers alleged, and even, they claimed, he had trouble reestablishing ties with his mother.
Their lawyers also argued that "the FARC
wanted to intimidate the Colombian population to influence the policy of
the United States
Government (...) and the defendants are terrorists who have caused deaths and incited international terrorism."
It should be remembered that John Frank Pinchao, the National Police non-commissioned officer who shared the kidnapping with Betancourt and managed to escape after eight years in captivity, is presented on the Congressional lists by the Hope Coalition itself.
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