Idealism and a determined woman
13 October 2013, 18:05 PM
UPDATED
14 October 2013, 18:54 PM
In 1986 Virgilio Barco, previously mayor of Bogota, is elected president of the republic. He wants to reform the economy and wage an all out war against the drug cartels. Carlos Galian 46, is assassinated. Ernesto Samper becomes president through the money supplied by drug traffickers.
After the initial publication of the book in 2002, Colombia's former president sued Ingrid Betancourt. He denied any financial transaction with the Cali cartel or dealings with Colombian drug lords or the killing of witnesses to the impeachment proceedings against him. Later a defamation campaign was also launched by the press to the effect that Colt Company had financed Betancourt's election. She was caricatured as Ingrid 'Betancolt.'
Betancourt was taken hostage on 23 February 2002 by the leftist Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionaries de Colombia or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). After six and a half years in captivity, on 2 July 2008, she and 14 other hostages were rescued by Colombian soldiers posing as workers of a non-government organisation.
Betancourt entered politics at the age of 32 and sought the endorsement of the Liberal Party to which her mother belonged; her father was in the Conservative Party. The ideological difference between the two parties was small; both had an equal number of corrupt officials. Her aunt discouraged her, as a woman, from becoming involved in messy politics. She responded, 'We want clean politics, and we are not going to quit, we'll go all the way against corruption, against the mafia's takeover of our institutions, of democracy, all the way.'
Betancourt was a senator in Colombia's national legislature, founder of a political party, and was fighting for democracy which was 'being sacrificed for the well-being of the few…international criminals determined policy and political assassination….a way of life.' Her political party Oxygen was floated before her election to the senate and became 'an unavoidable force on the political chessboard.'
Betancourt won the election, by the highest number of votes, and proved that Colombia was ready to combat corruption. This was four years after her separation from her husband. She has been hugely influenced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda and other Latin American writers. She completed her education in France, married and later separated from a French diplomat in 1990. He never wanted to set foot in Colombia.
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