Pubdate: Thu, 07 Mar 2002
Source: Village Voice (NY)
Section: Press Clips
Website: http://www.villagevoice.com/
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Contact:  2002 Village Voice Media, Inc
Author: Cynthia Cotts

HARPERCOLLINS AUTHOR KIDNAPPED IN COLOMBIA

Almost Famous

Revolutionaries are often master self-promoters, so it's only natural for a 
PR professional to turn political activist. Case in point: on February 24, 
Harpercollins publicity director Justin Loeber e-mailed U.S. Journalists, 
announcing that colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt had been 
kidnapped by left-wing guerrillas and urging the media to use "the power of 
publicity" to call attention to her plight. With the magic of PR, he 
suggested, we might save her life.

Loeber's motives are not entirely altruistic. Two months ago, HarperCollins 
published Betancourt's memoir, Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to 
Reclaim Colombia, which was a bestseller in France and Colombia but has 
languished in the States.

Nevertheless, this is an appealing cause for publicity. The left-wing 
guerrillas, or FARC, kidnapped 40-year-old Betancourt because of her high 
profile, and they are holding her and an estimated 200 other hostages, whom 
they hope to release in exchange for guerrillas currently being held by the 
government, sometime after the presidential election on May 26. Though 
Betancourt is trailing in the polls, her central platform, eliminating 
government corruption, is one that sorely needs to be addressed.

Loeber likens Betancourt's kidnapping to "censorship" in a country where 
freedom-fighters are often "annihilated." If she were American, he 
suggests, "she could be the next Daniel Pearl."

The connection may seem tenuous--until his kidnapping and murder in 
Pakistan, Pearl was a wise-cracking Wall Street Journal reporter, while 
Betancourt was known as an earnest political reformer. But like Pearl, 
Betancourt "provides a face that most Americans can relate to," says writer 
Mark Schapiro, whose profile of Betancourt appears in the April issue of 
Elle. Not only does she "look like an American soccer mom," he says, but 
"her English is perfect, she's attractive, and she's very smart, sincere, 
and articulate." While Pearl's wife is expecting her first child, 
Betancourt is the mother of two children whom she sent to live outside of 
Colombia after receiving a death threat in 1996.

Story-wise, the most appealing thing about Betancourt is that she is likely 
to remain alive, and any journalist reeling from Pearl's death might find 
cause for hope in reporting on her plight. But Loeber says it won't do any 
good to "fly down and crash a piece" when the hostage is released, as one 
prominent TV anchor has offered to do. "We need news people and America 
now." The timing of the Elle article is sheer coincidence. Last fall, after 
hearing about the memoir, senior features editor Ben Dickinson assigned a 
profile to Schapiro, who was headed to Bogota on other business. Schapiro 
attended the launch of the candidate's presidential campaign and a holiday 
dinner with her family; the result is the first U.S. magazine profile of 
Betancourt.

Bogota is known territory for Schapiro, who has written about Latin America 
and Eastern Europe for Harper's, The Atlantic, and The Nation. "I have 
covered Colombia for the last five years," he says, "and I love the 
country's spirit and culture. It's a dynamic, interesting place with great 
energy, a lively opposition, a lively press, and a lot of freedom." One of 
the reasons he wanted to write about Betancourt was "to show that there's 
more to this country than drugs and corruption."

Drugs and corruption are, of course, the central themes of Betancourt's 
career. But first she had to make the transformation from privileged 
daughter of a French ambassador to privileged wife and mother to privileged 
member of the Colombian congress, to which she was first elected in 1994. 
Following the model of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, 
who was assassinated in 1989, she chose corruption as the main plank of her 
platform, criticizing drug lords, politicians, and industrialists alike. 
Then she was shocked--shocked!--to find herself the subject of smear 
campaigns in the press. In the book, she recounts how her lawyer told her, 
"My child, you don't realize what a monster you've challenged. They . . . 
don't have anything on you, but they will stop at nothing to discredit you."

Despite the warning, Betancourt did not stop speaking truth to power. In 
1996, she went on a hunger strike to call for an independent investigation 
of former president Ernesto Samper, who had allegedly accepted 
contributions from the Cali cartel. In 1998, she formed her own political 
party and was elected to the Colombian Senate with a record number of 
votes. When current president Andres Pastrana failed to deliver on a 
campaign promise to fight corruption, she publicly denounced him for his 
betrayal.

In a recent book review, The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung found it 
difficult to take Betancourt seriously, given her "air of combined noblesse 
oblige and naivete." Even Schapiro admits that his subject has "a little 
bit of the savior complex. She sees herself as the Joan of Arc of Colombia, 
and for that reason she doesn't have a lot of support in the 
intelligentsia." Nevertheless, he says, "She is heroic in her ability to go 
up against extremely established powerful figures in Colombia. She's made a 
lot of very powerful enemies."

A brief report cannot do justice to the implications of Betancourt's 
kidnapping for Colombia. But Schapiro believes, as do most observers, that 
the FARC has blown whatever credibility it once had as a political force. 
He predicts that the latest kidnapping will unintentionally contribute to 
the election of Alvaro Uribe Velez, a right-wing candidate whose proposal 
for an all-out military attack on the guerrillas is now picking up support 
from Pastrana and the U.S.

Betancourt's book argues that military intervention alone cannot put a dent 
in the Colombian drug trade. Indeed, she says that if the U.S. wants to 
control the flood of drugs across our borders, we must support campaign 
finance laws that will prevent drug lords from controlling the government, 
the legislature, and the judiciary in her country. Given that she has 
risked her life to make this point, she probably knows what she is talking 
about.

Interested parties are encouraged to send e-mail to  expressing support for Betancourt's policies 
and calling on Pastrana to hold off on military escalation that could 
endanger her life and those of the other hostages.
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