AT NOON yesterday in a jungle village in southern Colombia, left wing rebels at last handed over 60 government soldiers captured during fighting last August and 10 more captured in January 1997.
The ceremony was coordinated by the International Red Cross. "I'm in good health, everything is fine, they treated us well," said the first soldier to climb down off a Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter the army lent the Red Cross to bring the captive troops from an undisclosed jungle location.
The Colombian army had previously described the kidnap as "a disaster", permitting the rebels to "internationalise" the conflict.
Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces, (FARC) is the oldest insurgent group in Latin America, with 10,000 members and a sizeable rural support base, notably among coca farmers. Last August the rebels launched their largest ever offensive, occupying a dozen towns, sacking banks and shops and destroying a military base in Las Delicias, Putumayo province, where 27 soldiers were killed and the rest taken prisoner.
The Colombian government tried to negotiate their release several times, but met determined opposition from the army, which refused to meet rebel demands.
Army chief Harold Bedoya has accused the FARC of being the "largest criminal organisation in Colombia", ahead of the nation's drug cartels. The FARC taxes drugtraffickers in areas under their influence, while guaranteeing minimum wages for small farmers, a business which netted $700 million in 1995 alone. Last year 80,000 coca farmers blocking towns and highways, in protest against coca eradication, were met with grenades and bullets, driving them closer to the rebels.
The leader of the FARC rebels, Mr Manuel "Deadeye" Marulanda, has been in the mountains since 1949, when violence between liberal and conservative followers left 250,000 dead and displaced a million people.
Mr Marulanda helped to organise self sufficient farming communities known as "independent republics", a successful experiment in regional autonomy. The liberal and conservative parties eventually agreed on a power sharing pact in 1958 which lasted until 1974, but turned on the dissidents. A third of the army was sent to destroy Marquetalia, capital of the `republics'. The communities fled once more, while militants set up armed self defence groups which became guerrilla columns and later the FARC in 1964.
The lack of media attention and international pressure the young soldiers contrasted sharply with the Lima siege, a reminder that in Latin America some lives are worth more than others.