COLUMBIA'S TRUTH-TELLER

Latin America's political class is having a hard time lately, and that is
all to the good. For years and years, the politicos have blamed their
countries' ills on the United States, the International Monetary Fund,
whatever's at hand, and never themselves, the thieves and demagogues. Maybe
things are changing.

In Argentina, politicians can't have a fancy meal in a restaurant without
middle-class patrons accosting them at their tables and letting them know
what they think of them in richly obscene Argentine Spanish, which has more
than a hint of Neapolitan gutter language.

In Venezuela, thousands are in the streets wanting President Hugo Chavez to
resign - after he, in effect, put the country's two corrupt political
parties nearly out of business.

Why? Because he has manifestly failed to improve the lot of most
Venezuelans, and the thievery continues just as in years past.

In Colombia, there is Ingrid Betancourt, long a gadfly of the country's
corrupt establishment. In "Until Death Do us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim
Colombia" - more memoir than manifesto and thus all the more convincing -
she details her struggle against that establishment, as well as the
infamous narco-traffickers, and hardly least, the Marxist guerrillas who
have also helped spread mayhem and murder in Colombia for more than three
decades.

As alert readers know, the author has recently been kidnapped.

The perpetrators: Colombia's feared Revolutionary Armed Forces, better
known by their Spanish initials, FARC. But, by her own account, she has had
so many death threats over the years from so many sources, that if it
wasn't the FARC, it would have been someone else.

Her fate is yet unknown, but her mother's request that the security forces
not look for her tells us much about the state of Colombia. Few have much
confidence in their ability to deal with the FARC and save a very
courageous, if at times quixotic, presidential candidate.

Her indictment of Colombia's political system runs deep. The police, the
courts, and politicians, especially in the legislature, are hopelessly
compromised by narco money.

The press - with a few honorable exceptions - get a much deserved roasting
for ineptitude and cowardice. Above all, she skewers Ernesto Samper,
Colombia's president between 1994 and 1998. Quite simply put, the author
charges (she is hardly alone in this) that Mr. Samper accepted campaign
contributions from drug kingpins and then labored to conceal it by, among
other things, silencing witnesses, permanently. (One potential witness, the
author says, was shot dead in the vagina.

Only in Colombia, it seems, can the killing be so obscene - and there is
worse in the book.)

Is all this credible?

The United States government certainly believes Mr. Samper was guilty of
taking the money.

Washington eventually decertified Colombia in its war against drugs during
the Samper years, meaning Colombia could no longer be eligible for aid.

The author's account rings true because few would have gone through all
this for so very little.

Certainly not for the publicity which often has been negative or a
political career that has shattered her family life, something described in
convincing detail.

Her faith in the Colombian electorate may be mistaken, however.

True, she won two congressional races, but her new party was not receiving
much support in the polls - at least before the kidnapping. But if she
manages to come out of this alive, it should be noted sadly that in
Colombia, the two major parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, which have
been around as long as Republicans and Democrats, are entrenched machines
where votes are another commodity.

In a desperately poor country, money still rules.

So do bullets.

Colombia's violence began in 1948, and although it has mutated several
times since, it shows no sign of ceasing.

The 19th century was no less violent and with all that lawlessness,
corruption, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and, of course, drug-trafficking
are all but inevitable. Still, the author isn't prepared to give up. Even
now she's probably ready to continue if she ever gets out of the FARC's
clutches.

But Colombia remains Colombia and it remains hard to believe anything will
really change, although a few Colombians like Ingrid Betancourt have borne
witness to the country's sorry state.

A caveat: The author convinces me she wants a better life for Colombians,
especially the underclass.Other than ridding the country of its corrupt
political class, it's not clear how she plans to achieve this. Her emphasis
on protecting Colombia's industries from foreign competition doesn't make
much sense.

If the poor are to benefit from a new Colombia, they must have access to
the same property rights their superiors enjoy.

It at least would be a good start. But taming the predatory political class
that Ingrid Betancourt has learned to loathe so much would be an awfully
good beginning, and I wish her and her colleagues luck in that quest.