Ingrid Betancourt

The Colombian senator and presidential candidate talks about drug trafficking, political corruption, guerrillas, the paramilitaries and how to fix democracy in her embattled nation.

By Damien Cave

Jan 15, 2002 | Would you love your country if it were ruled by drug lords, guerrillas and corrupt politicians? Would you risk your life and the lives of your children to serve it? Would you go on a hunger strike in order to fight for reform?

Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian senator and presidential candidate, has said yes to all of these questions. Her memoir, "Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia," is an impassioned personal account and a stinging indictment of the violent corruption that's strangled Colombia for decades. Told in the present tense, filled with harrowing details of death, love, loyalty and betrayal, it contains all the makings of a fast-paced Hollywood thriller.

Of course, the dramatic struggle is not unique -- countless thousands have suffered from the chaos that Gabriel García Márquez drew on in writing his novel "100 Years of Solitude" -- but Betancourt's story is especially powerful because the 40-year-old politician could have avoided Colombia's strife. She grew up pampered in Paris. Her father served as Colombia's ambassador to UNESCO while she attended French schools, married a French diplomat. Only later in life did she return to Colombia, when the guilt of living far away from the country's pain became overwhelming.

And with that return, followed by a decision to run for office, Betancourt's life changed forever. When her crusade against corruption and drug trafficking earned attention and a seat in the legislature, bodyguards became an everyday companion. Smear campaigns suddenly appeared and death threats forced Betancourt to send her children away, to live in New Zealand with their father, her ex-husband.

Neither the loss of her children, nor the power of her enemies, has managed to sap Betancourt's high dose of commitment. She's near the bottom of the presidential polls, her critics say she cares more for attention than reform and the Colombian press has largely ignored "Until Death Do Us Part," which came out in Colombia with the more combative title, "La Rabia in el Corazón" ("The Rage in My Heart"). But in France, the book is a bestseller, and Betancourt remains convinced that her message will resonate with those she cares most about -- the Colombian people.

Salon chatted with Betancourt, between stops on her American book tour, about Colombia, corruption and her unique campaign for reform.

What do you make of the news that President Andres Pastrana has broken off relations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC), the left-wing guerrillas who have been fighting against the government for decades?

In his position, I would have done the same. The problem is that the peace process was in crisis. The president has given a lot to the guerrillas and the guerrillas have given nothing in return.

The move of President Pastrana is also a strategy to regain confidence from the people of Colombia, to make them believe again that it is possible to negotiate but to negotiate in healthy phases -- those in which the government has not to be kneeling before the guerrillas, but where the conditions are put up front and met by the guerrillas and the government.

You note in your book that one of your goals is to break ties with the paramilitaries who often fight these guerrillas on the government's behalf, and who are responsible for most of the war's civilian massacres. How exactly do you propose to do this?

We have to recover our democracy first. We need to be sure that the people in the army -- the officials that have participated in illegal operations with the paramilitaries -- are imprisoned. They must pay for the barbarian acts that they have achieved. This is something that is not happening today in Colombia because the officials that have been related to illegal activities have the protection of the system. They act with impunity. They don't go to jail and there's no law enforcement.

So there needs to be judicial reform, not just democratic reform ...

Yes. If we really want to cut the ties between the paramilitaries and our state military, we need to be sure that our judicial system will work. In order to make it work, we need to be sure that corruption is not going to play a major role in its activities. We have to cut the alliance between politicians and drug traffickers. Those ties are what keep the system from working.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who agree with you on the trafficking issue but drug money is so intertwined with Colombian life, with everything from banks to the war to local village economies. How would you rid the system of this pervasive influence?

By going after the politicians that are serving the interests of the drug traffickers. If you do that, you will clean the system. If we have the possibility of having fair elections in Colombia; if we have a system where the elections will be transparent; if the officials who are counting the votes are neutral people who are not serving individual interests, then we will have a Congress that's representative of the Colombian population. And if they are representative of the population, we will be able to do the reforms that we haven't been able to do for a long time -- reforms in the judicial system and in the public administration.

There is a strong vein of anti-American sentiment in Colombia, and even here in the U.S. many Americans have a hard time supporting the drug war as it's being waged in Colombia. Where do you stand on the issue? To what extent would you welcome U.S. aid if you were president?

We have to welcome and be thankful for the aid we're receiving from the U.S. government. It has helped us a lot. But what we have to see is that this aid is primarily going to military issues. This is good to the extent that it has transformed our techniques, and given us technological support. But as long as our military has clandestine ties to the paramilitaries, we are not really doing what we should be doing. Because this aid will not be used properly; it will be used to defend dark interests. We need to be sure that the financial aid that the American government is giving to Colombia is arriving in the right hands. And I would say today that, because of the corrupt politicians who are everywhere in the public administration, the aid is in the wrong hands.

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