‘Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle’
In February 2002, the guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, stopped Ingrid Betancourt’s car at a roadblock. Betancourt, a presidential candidate for the Green Oxygen Party, was taken hostage along with others in her group. She spent the next six years in the jungle, enduring unimaginable conditions – she was chained at the neck; deprived of sufficient food, water, and clothing; forced to move camp again and again; and often denied communication with other captives. In her gripping memoir, Betancourt recounts with clear-eyed candor not only the physical torments of her imprisonment but the mental ones too. (While she’s forthright about the sometimes tense relationships between herself and other captives, the book – published in late September – sheds no light on her announcement in early summer that she would seek millions in compensation from the Colombian government, a decision that enraged many of her countrymen.) Still, in the midst of so much awfulness, Betancourt continually finds sources of strength: “[S]ubjected to constant humiliation, I still had the most important freedom of all. No one could take it away from me. That was the freedom to choose what kind of person I wanted to be.”
Ingrid Betancourt
Moderated by Ricardo AinslieSunday, Oct. 17, 3-3:45pm, C-SPAN/Book TV Tent
This article appears in October 15 • 2010.
