On the present day, 2008, when the church begins meditating on the passion of Christ, I do not make Ingrid Betancourt the equal of Jesus. I mention them together only because we have lately been aware that, if Mrs Betancourt was released and could regain her political position, she would devote herself to relieving of their hardships all of the crucified on earth, whose sample, the FARC who have detained her as a hostage, she has mixed with under duress for six years.

March for the liberation of Íngrid Betancourt, in the photo Cristina Fernández (President of Argentina), Astrid Betancourt (sister of Íngrid) and Lorenzo Delloy (son of I. Betancourt).
Photo : Presidencia de la Nación Argentina (Wikimedia)

For years I have stated that the more impressive are protests rallying and marching to clamor loud for Ingrid Betancourt’s release, the more pricey the hostage and the less willing the Colombian guerilleros to part from the human shield she has been so far against the army busy hunting them down.
But there’s something else:
Luis Eladio Perez, a former parliament member lately released by the FARC, has disclosed that he had talked with Ingrid Betancourt a lot. She has pondered deeply and changed her mind, he said. Notably, she has ended up realizing that the FARC’s rebellion and violence have not resulted from a personal ambition of a few leaders of men, but from human causes much deeper and widely shared. Deep in her prison jungle, Ingrid Betancourt, although the FARC keep submitting her to want and humiliation, warns that this rebellion can’t be resolved by the military and that negociation alone on a humanity basis is the way out.
Mr Perez claims to have seen Ingrid Betancourt recording her thoughts in notepads that the FARC have never taken away from her. She knows that there are deux Colombias: a wealthy urban Colombia and a destitute Colombia (a pattern of society also in existence in a lot of countries on earth) and that nothing conflicting between them can be resolved by traditional political plans.
It seems that Ingrid Betancourt has worked out a plan of peace a lot closer to love and wisdom than law. Would she had understood what The Sign says from beginning to end, that is, politics like its mater religion does more evil than good, despite good intentions, because it is based on a system which holds on with law and suppression of the intractable?
Could the painful passion Ingrid Betancourt has gone through lead to a happy end of the problem that the FARC have raised in confrontation with Colombia’s central powers and, by extension, to happy measures towards all the crucified on earth, notably in other parts of Latin American?
Nicolas Sarkozy, given information on Mrs Betancourt’s expectations by Luis Eladio Perez, may have suggested that France could welcome the guerilleros from the Colombian jungle in case their country would not reintegrate them into society after they lay down their arms.