FRANCE:Not since 'Les Bleus' won the World Cup has the country known such euphoria, writes Lara Marlowein Paris.
THE TIES that bind Ingrid Betancourt to France are nearly as immutable as the newly freed hostage's love for her family. Moments after landing at a military base in Bogota on Wednesday night, Betancourt switched from Spanish into French, to thank "my sweet France".
The Colombian president Alvaro Uribe obviously deserved most credit for freeing Betancourt and 14 other hostages, but even French opposition politicians credited President Nicolas Sarkozy with applying the political pressure it took to force Uribe to act.
In her 12-page letter from captivity, widely published last December, Betancourt said, "When the night was darkest, France was always the beacon. When it was ill-considered to demand our freedom, France was not silent . . . I love France with all my soul." And France loves "Ingrid".
For years, her image has hung on the facades of hundreds of town halls around the country. She is universally, affectionately, known here by her first name. One radio announcer yesterday compared her to Marianne, the symbol of France whose bust sits in every mayor's office.
Not since France won the World Cup a decade ago has the country known such euphoria. "It's Christmas in July!" said Florence Aubenas, the journalist and former hostage in Iraq who campaigned for Betancourt's liberation.
For nearly 6½ years, the French have vicariously shared the ordeal of Betancourt and her family. By the time she was freed, she had come to represent the country as it wants to see itself: unvanquished resisters, not collaborators; the embodiment of civilisation in a brutal world.
Every front page of every newspaper showed the radiant Betancourt, her beauty miraculously unscathed by 2,321 days in disease and insect-infested jungles. French television interrupted programmes to broadcast her reunion with her children. There was scarcely a dry eye in the country as she walked down the steps of the presidential jet that had ferried Mélanie and Lorenzo from Paris, hugging and kissing her children, clutching a rosary in her right hand.
Betancourt is a heroine and a symbol, wrote Jacques Camus, in La République du Centrenewspaper. "For the liberation of Ingrid is above all her own victory, the victory of an admirable woman . . . and the most extraordinary thing is that she gives us the opportunity to share this victory, to affirm that the universal values of solidarity and commitment to a noble cause are stronger than anything."
Three centuries have passed since Betancourt's French ancestors emigrated to South America, but she spent almost half her life here. When her father Gabriel was Colombia's ambassador to Unesco, she sat on the knee of the Nobel Prize- winning poet Pablo Neruda in the family's vast apartment on the avenue Foch. Privileged though the Betancourts were, they had a social conscience. In Bogota, her mother Yolanda, a former beauty queen, founded El Albergue, a home for street children which she made her life's work.
Before Betancourt's abduction, her parents' separation when she was 12 was the great sadness of her life. At 19, she returned to Paris to study political science.
In a cafe on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, she met Fabrice Delloye, a French diplomat, whom she soon married. However after having two children with Delloye and following him to postings in Ecuador, the Seychelles and Los Angeles, she grew restless.
Back in Colombia, Betancourt's mother was campaigning for a presidential candidate named Carlos Galan, who had declared war on narco-traffickers. When Galan was murdered in front of Yolanda in 1989, Ingrid rushed to Bogota to be with her mother.
The daughter too became involved in politics, winning a seat in parliament in 1994, creating her Green Oxygen party in 1998, then taking a seat in the senate. Corruption was "the Aids of Colombia", Betancourt said, handing out condoms at traffic intersections.
In 2001, Betancourt was criticised for publishing her autobiography first in France, not Colombia. It was a best-seller in Paris, but hurt her at home. El Tiempo newspaper accused her of writing a book "without even blushing . . . in which she appears to be the only person of moral and ethical daring, the owner of the last incorruptible soul in Colombia".
Betancourt's 2002 presidential campaign against Alvaro Uribe never took off. She continued to denounce corruption and narco-trafficking and advocated negotiations with the Farc guerrillas. The right-wing Uribe promised a military solution to Colombia's violence.
On February 23rd, 2002, Betancourt was determined to travel to San Vicente del Caguan, 400km southwest of Bogota, in the middle of the war zone. The army advised her against it and refused to transport her in a helicopter, as it had other politicians. Betancourt had promised the mayor of San Vicente - one of the few who belonged to her party - that she would go. She and her entourage were kidnapped at a road-block. Stubbornness may have led to Betancourt's kidnapping, but it also enabled her to survive through six years of terrible hardship.
Now the French adore Ingrid Betancourt more than ever. Colombian public opinion has evolved too. Colombians initially resented so much publicity being given to one hostage out of 3,000. Later, they too were impressed by her courage and suffering. Today, she is reportedly the second most popular politician in Colombia, close behind Uribe.
Betancourt is expected to arrive at Villacoublay airbase outside Paris this afternoon, where she will no doubt receive a rapturous welcome.
Ingrid Betancourt was 18 years old when she announced, "I want to become president of the republic in my country." High political office may now be hers for the asking - in Colombia or in France.