Captivating Captive

Comments (0) By Sebastian del Mármol Thursday, Oct 21 2010

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Most of us will never know what it is to be held captive as minutes turn to hours, days turn to weeks, and eventually months turn to years. Ingrid Betancourt knows that feeling well. The former Colombian presidential candidate was trapped in a vast jungle for six and a half years at the mercy of terrorist group FARC. “My entire being undertook a curious path that led to the hibernation of my body and soul, waiting for freedom like the coming of spring,” she writes in her new book, Even Silence Has an End. Though she was held in a tiny barbed-wire enclosure with as many as ten other captives, Betancourt never gave up. She refused to answer to anything but her name and tried to escape on five occasions, only to wind up in the impenetrable jungle when she did. After her last attempt, she was chained to a tree by her neck for 24 hours and then beaten. After being freed in 2008, she promised to wear perfume every day for the rest of her life and never deprive herself of cake or ice cream. Betancourt will talk about her experiences, small pleasures, and titanic sufferings this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Campus.
Sat., Oct. 30, 7:30 p.m., 2010