The first two calls came in at 3:27 p.m. Suddenly, I had my brother in one line, my mother from Colombia on the other, breaking the news to me, as I ran errands in the Dupont Circle in Washington, DC: Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian presidential candidate kidnapped in 2002, had been rescued in a flawless military operation.
Three Americans and 11 other Colombian military personal were also rescued from the FARC, Colombia’s largest illegal guerrilla group.
At age 40, I can’t think of a more exciting and positive piece of news regarding Colombia’s sad history over the last 30 years. In my mind, this only competes with the killing in December 1993 of Pablo Escobar, the man who terrorized Colombia in the 90s.
‘Ingrid’, as folks in Colombia calls her, has become a symbol of Colombia’s struggles and is well know all over the world. Also a French citizen, she is idolized in France.
The phone calls continued to come in. While I picked up some medicine a local pharmacy, my sister in law phone me. She couldn’t resist commenting the news and was having a hard time concentrating at work. She told me she couldn’t access the Colombian media online.
Within seconds I updated my Facebook status, using my blackberry. Then I opened my virtual office at cozy Cosi Café and ‘twittered‘ on how eltiempo.com and elespectador.com, Colombia’s leading news sites, were down due to traffic overload. If they can’t give the news, I am doing it for them. How can such large media organizations not be ready to respond to such a story? They should know better. Elcolombiano.com, the third largest newspaper Colombian site, was up but loading took a long time.
I then turned to cnn.com, miamiherald.com, nytimes.com, lemonde.fr and lefigaro.fr, and they all had Ingrid’s breaking news, neatly leading the news report on this slow Wednesday summer day.
The phone rang off the hook. I then talked to an old pal of mine from the undergrad days. As a Colombian working for a bank in DC, she also can’t concentrate at work. “Increíble Andresillo”, she tells me, her voice sweetened by events, before she invited me tonight to her place to watch Caracol Television on the satellite system. This is one of those days when families gather to watch television for hours on; it’s one of those days each one of us will remember forever. The day Escobar was gunned down, 15 years ago, I was with José Antonio, my Colombian roommate at the time, in my South End walkup in Boston. On 9/11 I was in my Miami apartment. And the day the government announced the death of Manuel Marulanda “Tirofijo’, former head of the FARC, I was riding a bus from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, Louisiana.
For my non-Colombian audience, today’s news means that the FARC guerrilla group is getting weaker and weaker and that the Colombian government has the upper hand on this piece of the conflict. This signals the end of the FARC is well underway and that Colombia’s intelligence and military apparatus is energized after a serious of recent blows to the FARC.
On the political front, this means president Alvaro Uribe is stronger than ever and that he will likely use today’s successes to change the Constitution and pave the way, once again, for his reelection in 2010. Uribe’s apparent unwillingness to leave power is a growing and concerning problem.
Colombia’s troubles are far from over. Colombian cartels continue to export most of the cocaine consumed in the United States. The proceeds from the drug trade fuels violent groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
I wonder about Ingrid’s mental and physical health and how she will handle her release. I hope she is okay on all fronts.
I last saw Ingrid at Colombian event at a hotel in Blue Lagoon, Miami, around 2001. It could have been 2002. I’d have to check. She was an unstoppable force back then. She will most likely carry on with her political aspiration.
I am now talking to a friend in Boston, an American with a Colombian heart, who wants to know if the news she got via Facebook is for real.
“Ingrid está libre”, I tell her.
Andrés
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