COLOMBIA: Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt has been held hostage since last year. Lara Marlowe in Paris talks to her daughter Melanie
Most Sunday mornings, when women her age usually sleep in after dates and parties, 18 year-old Melanie Delloye Betancourt makes a long distance phone call to a radio programme in Bogota, Colombia. It is still night there, and Ms Betancourt knows that somewhere in a mountain camp, her hostage mother may be holding a transistor radio to her ear, straining to hear news of her loved ones.
For Miss Betancourt, a literature student in Paris, calling in to "Las Voces del Secuestro" (The Voices of Kidnapping) is like throwing a bottle into the sea. In the more than 20 months since Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian presidential candidate, now aged 42, was kidnapped by the Marxist FARC guerrillas, her family have twice received video-cassettes proving she was still alive.
The most recent recording, made in May of this year, was not received until September. Melanie Betancourt was overjoyed to see her mother. "I was so impressed by her strength and courage," she says. "She showed such calm and serenity. She's completely isolated in the depths of the jungle, and yet it was as if she knew what we should do, as if she were showing us the way. Her lucidity and clear-mindedness, in total isolation, were amazing. She's a hostage, but her mind is free."
There are nearly 4,000 hostages in Colombia - 85 per cent of all hostages in the world - held by the FARC and ELM guerrillas, as well as right-wing paramilitary militias. The hostages are victims of a 40 year-old civil war that has claimed close to 200,000 lives; a left-right power struggle that degenerated into an inextricable tangle of murder and money, cocaine and arms trafficking.
The kidnapping of Ms Betancourt has drawn attention to the plight of the 4,000. "Even if mama comes back, we'll continue working for the hostages," says Melanie Betancourt.
She will arrive in Dublin today for five days, during which she will meet Trinity students, sign copies of the English edition of her mother's book at International Books in South Frederick Street, receive the Freedom of the County on her mother's behalf from South Dublin County Council, and talk to several Irish radio stations.
Ms Anne O'Connell, a French teacher at St Joseph's College, Lucan, founded the Ingrid Betancourt Support Committee Ireland.
"When you see someone fighting against the odds against corruption and drug dealers, it's astounding," she explains.
"Sometimes it's easier to see a hero from a distance, and we need heroes." There are now 280 Betancourt support committees in 27 countries.
Ingrid Betancourt, who holds dual French and Colombian citizenship, became a celebrity when she published the best-selling Until Death Do Us Part; My Struggle for Colombia in Paris in 2001. It tells of her crusade against corruption in the ruling class she was born to, of death threats against herself and her children Melanie and Lorenzo, now 15.
When Betancourt's previous book, Yes, He Knew, about the Cali drug cartel's financing of a former Colombian president's campaign, was published in 1996, Ms Betancourt took Melanie and Lorenzo to live with their father, a French diplomat, in New Zealand.
"She was always there for us, even when we had to live apart because of death threats," Melanie Betancourt recalls. "We were among the first people to have a web cam, and we had an appointment every day after school. For us it was 3 p.m., but for her it was 2 o'clock in the morning, and mama was always there on the screen, with her smile." Melanie Betancourt says the goal of her public appearances in Ireland is to persuade the Irish to ask President Alvaro Uribe's right-wing government to negotiate a hostage/prisoner exchange with the guerrillas.
Like her mother, Ms Betancourt is a passionate advocate of dialogue in Colombia. But her testimony is most powerful as a model of filial love.
"She is the person in the world who is closest to me," Ms Betancourt says. "Despite everything, I am very fortunate to have a mother like her. Not only am I proud of her as a politician, but I am forever grateful to her for everything she has given me in life."
Ms Betancourt began campaigning for her mother's release a year ago, at the age of 17, addressing the French National Assembly's foreign affairs committee. The following month, the French Foreign Minister Mr Dominique de Villepin flew to Bogata to express the French government's concern. Mr de Villepin was Ingrid Betancourt's professor at the Institut des Sciences Politiques, and remains a family friend.
One day soon, Ms Betancourt feels certain, her mother will be freed. She imagines the moment often. "It's a dream for me," she says. "I think we won't speak at the beginning. I think we'll need most to touch each other, to hug, to know that it's real."
For more information, see www.betancourt.info.