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Ingrid Betancourt tells the story of her captivity in the Colombian jungle, sharing teachings of resilience, resistance, and faith. Born in Bogotá, raised in France, Betancourt at age 32 gave up a life of comfort and safety to return to Colombia to become a political leader in a country that was being slowly destroyed by terrorism, violence, fear, and hopelessness. In 2002, while a candidate in the Colombian presidential elections, she was abducted by the FARC. She spent the next six and a half years in the depths of the jungle as their prisoner. Chained day and night for much of her captivity, she succeeded in getting away several times, always to be recaptured. The facts of her story are astounding, but it is Betancourt's indomitable spirit that drives this very special account, bringing life, nuance, and profundity to the narrative.--From publisher description.… (more)
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Betancourt’s imprisonment caught the attention of the world. As a dual Colombian-French citizen-diplomat, several world governments tried to engage the Colombians for her release. Each year she was captured, at least one rescue attempt or negotiation was started, but it wasn’t until 2008 that she was freed from captivity. Her experiences in the jungle prison are both harrowing and enlightening. While there are some to dismiss her retelling of the events as either politically motivated or self-serving, they are still true. While imprisoned, she endured not only physical torture, but also news of her father’s death. Through all this, she still find ways to connect with those around her and not fall too deeply into despair. It is a long tale, told with excruciating detail, and very much demands your attentions. A lengthy but ultimately necessary book.
She is a powerful, brave, driven woman, and those character traits are what kept her alive in the harsh and unkind
Sadly, though, most of her captors are as interchangeable in personality and name as are her camps and walks through the immense jungles of Collombia. And what can you do to change this fact of her book? Her experiences are intense, and she conveys that she felt as unhappy and helpless as her writing. For this reason this book is worth reading to understand a bit better the feelings and experiences of someone in such straits.
This book was really long. When it comes to
The first escape attempt we read about in the author's book, when she tells us a bit about herself, explains their disgust with her:
"they'd been told that I had run for president of colombia. I belonged, therefore, to the group of political hostages whose crime, according to farc, was that they voted to fund the war against farc. As such, we politicians had an appalling reputation. We were all parasites, prolonging the war in order to profit from it. Most of these young people did not really understand the meaning of the word 'political'. They were taught that politics was an activity for those who managed to deceive and then amass wealth by stealing taxes."
"In the 1940s, Colombia was plunged into a civil war between the conservative party and the liberal party, a conflict so merciless that those years were called la Violencia -- 'the violence.' It was a power struggle that spread from the capital of Bogotá and brought bloodshed to the countryside. Peasants identified as liberals were massacred by conservative partisans and vice versa. The Farc was born spontaneously as The peasants' effort to protect themselves against that violence and to safeguard their land from being confiscated by the liberal or conservative landlords. The two parties reached an agreement to share power in government and end the civil war, but the farc was not a part of it."
"*The official initials are f a r c - EP, which in Spanish stands for Colombian revolutionary armed forces - people's army."
On the day before the author's daughter was to turn 17, she asked the commander if she could bake a cake to honor her daughter. She was granted this request, and the guerillas spontaneously made a party:
"FOr a few hours, these young people changed as if my magic. They were no longer guards, or terrorists, or killers. They were young people, my daughter's age, having fun. They danced divinely, as if they'd never done anything else their entire life. They were perfectly synchronized with one another, dancing in that Shack as if it were a ballroom, whirling around with elegant self-awareness. You couldn't help but watch. Jessica, with her long, curly black hair, knew that she was beautiful. She moved her hips and shoulders, just enough to reveal the contours of her curves. El mico was a rather ugly boy, but that night he was transformed. The world was his. I wanted so much to have my children there! It was the first time I thought this. I would have liked for them to know these young people, to discover this strange way of life, so different and yet so close to theirs, because all adolescents in the world are alike. These young people could have been my children. I had known them to be cruel, despotic, humiliating. I could only Wonder as I watched them dance whether my children, under the same conditions, would not have acted the same way."
The guerillas are cruel towards the animals in the jungle:
"The guards had seen them, too. Through the bushes I watched as they grew excited and gave the order to load their guns. I couldn't see anything anymore, I could only hear their voices and the monkey's cries. And then a first detonation, and a second, and yet another, the sharp sound of branches cracking and the thuds on the carpet of leaves. I counted three. Had they killed the mothers to capture the babies? Their perverse satisfaction in killing disgusted me. They always had good excuses to give themselves a clean conscience. We were hungry, we hadn't eaten a real meal for weeks. All that was true, but it wasn't a good enough reason. I found hunting difficult to tolerate. Had I always felt like this? I was no longer sure. I'd been profoundly upset by the business with the guacamaya that Andres had killed for pleasure, and by the death of Cristina's mother. She had fallen from her tree, and the bullet had gone through her stomach. She put her finger in her wound and looked at the blood coming out. 'she was crying, I'm sure she was crying,' William had said to me with a laugh. 'She showed me the blood on her finger, as if she wanted me to do something about it, and then she put her fingers back in the wound and showed me again. She did that a few times, and then she died. Those animals are just like humans,' he concluded. How could you kill a creature that had looked you in the eye, with whom you've established contact, for whom you exist, who has identified you? Of course, none of that mattered anymore when you had already killed a human being. Could I kill? Oh, yes, I could! I had every reason to think I had the right. I was filled with hatred for those who humiliated me and took so much pleasure in my pain. With every word, every order, every affront, I stabbed them with my silence. Oh, yes -- i, too, could kill! And I would feel a pleasure in seeing them put their fingers in their wounds and look at their blood as they became aware of their imminent death, waiting for me to do something. And I wouldn't move. I would watch them die."
Another kidnapping victim, lucho, a fellow senator of the author's, was a diabetic. There was no insulin for him in the Guerilla's camp. Occasionally he would fall sick, and there was danger of him falling into a coma. When the farc was angry with the prisoners, they would refuse to give them the medication they needed:
"Gira, the nurse, came through the prison door. She was doing her rounds among her patients to say that there was no more medication.
'Reprisals.' said pinChao behind me, almost imperceptibly. 'They're going to tighten the screw.'
She walked right by me, staring at me, her gaze full of reproach.
'Yes, look at me carefully,' I said to her. 'Don't ever forget what you see. As a woman you should be ashamed to be part of this.'
She went pale. I could see she was trembling with rage. But she continued her rounds, without saying a word, and went out.
Of course I should have kept my mouth shut. Humility begins with holding one's tongue. I had a great deal to learn. If God didn't want me to be free, I had to accept that I wasn't ready for freedom. This notion became a lifebuoy."
One thing I enjoyed reading about in this book was the fauna of the jungle, the Amazon basin. The author was constantly attacked by insects, some of them so tiny that you couldn't see them, yet they would dig under your skin. She was attacked by many different kinds of animalitos.
BetanCourt was a fastidious observer of the Dynamics constantly going on between herself, the other hostages, and the guerillas, and which were constantly changing.
As an aside, I got sick of the author's always talking about God's plan for her to be kidnapped and held in captivity for more than 6 years. I can't believe anyone would believe that b*******.