A Catholic hostage will narrate her experiences

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Ingrid Betancourt

SALT LAKE CITY - Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian presidential candidate who was kidnapped and held for six years by a rebel group, will be a guest speaker at the McCarthey Family Foundation Fifth Annual Lecture Series on Oct. 23.

“The reason that Ingrid Betancourt is coming here is to continue the McCarthey Family Foundation that focuses primarily on independent journalism,” said Phil McCarthey, coordinator of the lecture series.

Ingrid Betancourt was a Colombian presidential candidate in 2002 but was kidnapped and became a global symbol of freedom and human resistance after she spent six years in captivity, held in the jungle by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

After her rescue, two years ago, she has continued to dedicate her life to democracy, freedom and peace, as well as campaigns for the release of more hostages held captive by FARC.

One of the reasons that Betancourt was invited to the McCarthey lecture series is because “she is an amazing woman; what she went through in those six and a half years in captivity in the Colombian jungle is an amazing story and what kept her going and how she figured how to continue to survive,” said McCarthey.

Betancourt recently finished writing a book, “Even Silence Has An End,” in which she tells her story. Betancourt, who grew up in France and settled in Colombia in 1989, was beaten, underfed, forced on epic marches through virgin rainforests and threatened with a bullet in the head at all times. She nearly died from hepatitis. A few months into her captivity, she realized that the disease, rather than the violence, posed the greatest risk to her survival. Stripped of family, friends, status, at one point even her name, she had to consider how she was to avoid going mad. What, she asked, is the essence of a human being when everything that defines her humanity has been taken?

“It was a battle, not only with the guerrillas, but with ourselves,” Betancourt wrote in her book. “With the inner us. Because we lost the compass of what was good and what was right. In captivity, everything is upside down. I still today have nightmares, of those kinds of situations we went through.”.

During her “unbelievable trip,” Betancourt kept her Catholic faith, making a crucifix and a rosary from jungle plants, McCarthey said. “And on one of her darkest days she was almost ready to give up she flipped on the radio and heard this light voice in the jungle – it was Pope Benedict, and she said how that encouraged her spirit to continue to live her life with dignity.”

Betancourt wears the rosary she made around her wrist even now.

“She was really fighting, almost like a crusader,” said McCarthey.

At the presentation, Betancourt will talk about her experience and also about the importance of independent journalism.

“The journalist were very involved in her release; during her captivity the journalists were demanding her release and they were very active when she returned,” said Mary Kay Lazurus, director of MKL public relations firm, which is helping to coordinate the event.

The Fifth Annual Lecture Series, which is free and open to the public, will be Saturday Oct. 23, at 7 p.m., at the Rowland Hall St. Mark’s Philip G. McCarthey Campus, 720 S. Guardsman Way. Doors open at 6:15 p.m.