Íngrid Betancourt Pulecio (born December 25, 1961, Bogotá) is a Colombian politician, former senator, and anti-corruption activist. She is considered Colombia's most famous hostage, especially internationally. She was kidnapped by the FARC on February 23, 2002
while campaigning for the presidency, after she decided to campaign at
a very dangerous location and ignored warnings from the government,
police and military not to do so. As of the fifth anniversary of her
abduction, Betancourt was still being held.
Betancourt was born in Bogotá. Her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, was a former Miss Colombia who later served in Congress
representing the poor southern neighborhoods of Bogotá. Her father,
Gabriel Betancourt, was minister for the General Rojas Pinilla
dictatorship (1953-1957) and later a diplomat, posted to the embassy in
Paris, where Ingrid grew up. Their house was frequently visited by
leading Colombian personalities and intellectuals. She attended the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (known as Sciences Po),
an elite higher education institute. After graduating, she married a
fellow student and they had two children, Melanie and Lorenzo. During
the 1980s, she briefly lived in Quito, Ecuador, where she worked as an
aerobics instructor.
Her husband was in the French diplomatic service, and they lived in various places, including New Zealand. After the murder of Luis Carlos Galán,
a candidate for the Colombian presidency running on an
anti-drug-trafficking platform, Ingrid decided to return to Colombia
(1989) and do something to help the country. From 1990 onwards, she
worked at the Finance Ministry, from which she later resigned to enter
politics. Her first campaign distributed condoms (preservativos),
with the motto that she would be like a condom against corruption. The
south of Bogotá supported her, thanks partially to the name recognition
from her mother, who helped her campaign.
She was elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1994 and launched a political party, the Green Oxygen Party. During her term, she criticized the Samper
administration, which was accused of corruption (Galil case) and
accepting drug money for the electoral campaign. Sometime during this
period, she divorced her French husband, and later remarried, to a
Colombian.
She ran for Senator
in the 1998 election. The total number of votes she received was the
largest number of any candidate in that year's Senate election. During
her Senatorial term, death threats from an unknown quarter forced her
to send her children to New Zealand, thanks to the help of her
ex-husband.
As part of her campaign in 2002 (the election won by Álvaro Uribe Vélez), Ingrid wanted to go to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) at San Vicente del Caguán
to meet with the FARC. This had not been unusual — many public figures
took the opportunity afforded by the DMZ, created by Pastrana to
satisfy a FARC precondition for negotiations, to meet with the FARC.
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