Juan Manuel Santos talks with Ingrid Betancourt: "In politics, betrayal is almost the rule and not the exception"

Ingrid Betacourt and Juan Ramón Santos: portraits from the book 'A pending conversation', by Juan Carlos Torres. Alejandra Quintero

In Oxford (England), so far from Colombia,

A pending conversation

(Planet, 2021) was born, which is the story of two lives and the portrait of a country. The journeys of Juan Manuel Santos (Bogotá, 70 years old) and Ingrid Betancourt (Bogotá, 59 years old), two of the most prominent Colombian political figures of the last 30 years, cross dozens of times until they meet in an English pub, in the that they speak to each other as they have never done before. He, already former president, 2016 Nobel Peace Prize winner, grandfather of two grandchildren. She, a former presidential candidate, kidnapped for six years by the FARC in the jungle, grandmother of three.

Both were born in the cradles of Bogota's economic and political elite and grew up greeting the most powerful in the country in their living room.

In the nineties they landed in politics.

He was going to be director of the newspaper

El Tiempo

, in the hands of his family, but he preferred "power to influence."

She, who lived in France, decided to return to the country when Pablo Escobar killed the aspiring president Luis Carlos Galán, with whom her mother worked and on whom a large part of Colombian society had placed their hopes to break the ever closer alliance between politics and drug trafficking.

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• Santos and Betancourt, 'A pending conversation'

They began to learn almost hand in hand the ins and outs of Colombian power, which they now tear apart from their position as unrepeatable witnesses. Betancourt's kidnapping by the FARC guerrillas in 2002, an atrocious captivity that went around the world, brought them together forever in a movie rescue. Santos was the defense minister of Álvaro Uribe's government when Operation Jaque, in 2008, rescued Betancourt and other hostages without firing a single shot.

Ingrid and Juan Manuel were talking about this in an Oxford pub a couple of years ago. Uniting the visions, anecdotes and feelings of both from both sides of an episode in which they were protagonists. Santos thought that this was "a wonderful story" that had to be written. What followed were 40 hours of virtual conversation over 15 months, in the midst of the pandemic, moderated and ordered by the writer Juan Carlos Torres. The result is more than 500 pages of two key characters who “from the soul”, says Betancourt, tell their vision of a country that lived with war for more than 50 years.

Between mutual affection and admiration, the victim of the FARC and the promoter of the peace agreement with the guerrillas skin the Colombian reality.

They criticize or praise, without compassion or embarrassment, former presidents or ministers of the present and the past.

'A pending conversation' hit bookstores in Colombia this week, on the eve of a key electoral year for the country.

The authors talk with EL PAÍS, he from Colombia and she from France, in an

online

interview

, how the book was created.

QUESTION

.

A pending conversation comes at a pre-election time.

They will not say that it is mere coincidence.

INGRID BETANCOURT

.

It is a very important moment for Colombia.

Juan Manuel and I are like weaving our memories and our lives there, but in reality all this is the history of Colombia.

In that confluence of stories there is something that jumps out very strongly about how Colombia has lived, I would say, tied up.

Colombia has been kidnapped by corruption and Juan Manuel and I were touched very closely by those very strong battles.

I believe that this is what Colombia has to face now and that is why this book may be relevant to understand how all this moves.

JUAN MANUEL SANTOS

.

I think it is a coincidence, that was never programmed.

That it is published at this time, that the electoral panorama is so agitated, is, suddenly, a happy coincidence.

P.

In the book you are very critical of many politicians.

How do you think it will feel in Colombia?

IB

What was important to me was understanding the gear, how each person enters the system and how that has influenced for better and for worse.

It is something that Colombians have to reflect on.

The challenge of these elections is how we are going to get Colombia out of that tunnel in which we have been stuck, a tunnel of corruption, a tunnel of violence.

As I lived for a long time in the kidnapping tunnel, I am very sensitive to all this reflection in order to free ourselves.

JMS

I don't think [the book] is going to fall as a balm for many people.

It will not fall like a balm for this Government [of Iván Duque].

Ingrid and I are very critical of what has happened in these three years and of certain characters with whom, curiously, we had a lot to do with.

We analyze them and make some quite frank and acid comments at times, but it was what we felt and what we feel.

P.

The book is based on virtual conversations, relaxed.

When you read in writing your harsh criticisms against the current vice president Marta Lucía Ramírez, for example, did you think about publishing yourself?

IB.

What we really wanted to be was just what we had lived through.

Obviously there are comments that are harsh, but the situations we experienced were very harsh and what they did to us and we had to witness was very harsh.

I believe that this is also a testimony without compassion for ourselves.

We were very frank about the mistakes we saw in ourselves and in each other.

Yes there was a willingness to do a personal cleansing exercise, to say what we really thought.

JMS.

It was not a book to drive nails, but to reflect on events and characters with whom we had to see for a long time.

I believe that the trials were, as far as possible, fair.

P.

President, you say that the peace agreement could be a government program for two administrations.

If someone asked you to return to politics, would you do it?

JMS

No, I am retired, but I am absolutely convinced that there is a good part of the solution to the problems we have today. If one reviews the protests, what the young and the less young were demanding, a very important part is cooked in the peace agreement. I told President Duque: "I know that you have been critical of the process, but possibly because the agreement has not been read in its entirety, there are wonderful solutions to many of the problems." This agreement is going through its most difficult test, which is to have a hostile government, but which is obliged to comply with it because it is in our Constitution, because the international community has been very vehement in pressing for compliance. The next government is going to have an excellent opportunity to use it to fix a good part of the problems.

Santos: "The struggle for power brings out the worst in the human condition"

P.

Both are very critical of both Uribe and Gustavo Petro.

Are you betting on a candidate from the center?

What do you think of Alejandro Gaviria?

IB.

Uribism and Petrism are needed. They are the result of two caudillos, two people who do not let us look at the country with a more equanimous perspective, they are locked in their ideology. When it wasn't Petro, it was the FARC. There has always been that polarization that has made Colombians have to choose the least worst: "Well, as long as they don't kill, we are going to accept that they steal." The center has a moral obligation today to consolidate and seek a way out. This polarization has allowed, with the fear of the other, to justify all the excesses of some powers that have kidnapped Colombia. I know that it is difficult to put it in those terms, but I hear people speak and when I see that they feel that their opportunities have been stolen, I feel that they feel what I felt when I was in the jungle, that my opportunities to life.

JMS.

I do not want to enter to name candidates or people from the counter-politics.

What I can tell you is that the polarization that Ingrid talks about, who is not from Colombia, is practically the whole world, is a phenomenon that makes governance extremely difficult, makes it difficult to solve problems, makes it difficult for us to get out of the pandemic. and it hinders the greatest challenge that humanity has, which is climate change.

What Colombia needs is moderation, a person who reflects that moderation and who collects and helps the country, not to continue dividing it.

P.

What political books inspire you?

JMS

I am a big fan of biographies.

I've read a lot of Churchill.

The last one was Andrew Roberts, wonderful.

I am currently reading a

best seller

called

Humankind

, where what the author does is demonstrate that human beings are good and we were not born bad, sometimes we become bad.

There is something that says there: "In politics and in human behavior there can be many laws, there can be many regulations, regulations, but there is something that is much more powerful, which is shame."

When a president, a dictator, a leader loses the sense of shame, there you have to be very afraid.

Unfortunately, we are seeing many leaders around the world, and some in Colombia, who have lost their sense of shame.

IB

I am interested in sociological and anthropological essays.

I am very interested right now in the issues of poverty.

I am reading a Frenchman, Guillaume Le Blanc, who wrote about social invisibility.

And I'm also reading Adela Cortina, with her book on aporophobia.

Q.

Does a president have time to read literature?

JMS

No, but I was making an effort.

Every time I got on a plane, either it was something very important what they had to say to me or I asked not to be interrupted in my reading.

Q. You say

that during your kidnapping you asked for a Bible, could you read anything else in those six years?

IB

Sometimes magazines would arrive, but the guerrillas had the art of putting painful magazines in your hand with news that would kill you, such as the death of my father.

It was part of the torture.

That is why later I left the jungle to read and study, to compensate for so many years of intellectual emptiness.

Q.

Remember the kidnapping, does it hurt or heal?

IB

I think both.

It hurts because they are memories that are not pleasant, but it helps to heal because one takes a perspective of what was lived, one makes sense of it.

JMS

There I do want to put the spoonful.

Ingrid is for me the perfect example of a person who suffered so much, but who has the capacity and the strength to forgive, and that is the basis of reconciliation.

That is why I admire so much what Ingrid did after she emerged from her kidnapping, her confrontation in the literal sense of the word with her kidnappers, the way she supported the peace process and the way for the country to reconcile.

I don't think everyone has that strength and ability.

P.

Betancourt, would you return to Colombia?

I. B

.

Yes. Actually, I have felt in exile, but for many reasons it has been an exile that I have also appreciated.

When I came out of captivity I had an agenda that was to rebuild my family and that was my priority.

That is a circle that I am closing, that I have already closed, in which I can see my family as a united family.

The pains are there, the traumas remain, but there is a reflection and there is a lot of love.

That helps to see life with a lot of optimism.

Q.

Would you go back to politics?

IB.

Politics is part of my DNA, but what interests me is to use the experience I have had in my life to get Colombia out of the tunnel.

I feel that I have had the privilege and the karma of knowing the depths of many things, of their entrails: the FARC, Colombian politics, the encounters with cartels, with the paramilitaries.

I would like to put that at the service of my country.

That is my will, but I don't want to have a foray beyond that.

P.

In 40 hours of conversation, did you argue?

JMS

Yes, we have different opinions on many facts and many people.

But I think those discussions were for me a way of finding a denominator.

Like everything in life, arguments go, arguments come, and we find reconciliation there.

IB

We had moments when we debated loudly.

I was interested in what Juan Manuel said, which was information that I did not have about events and people who had crossed my life and had an influence on my decisions.

It was a discovery of many things together.

It marked me, I see Colombia differently after this exercise.

Q.

What was the most revealing for each of you?

JMS

For me, see Ingrid's strength.

It gave me great hope about what can happen to this country if we can get the majority of the people to channel their feelings in that direction so as not to get carried away by negative feelings of hatred, revenge, pride, love of power.

IB

We talked about very painful things, they were moments of very strong confession.

I understood that there were things that were bigger than oneself.

I was very hurt by everything that had happened at the time of my kidnapping, because they had accused me of being responsible, of having wanted me to be kidnapped.

What I understood with Juan Manuel's reflections is that in reality that had been a gear and it was the price to pay for the struggles that I had given in politics, which in any case they were going to charge me in one way or another.

That, to me, hadn't been obvious.

I needed like that filter and that perspective from Juan Manuel to understand things.

So I think there was also healing.

Betancourt: “I have been betrayed.

I have not felt, I have been.

It is a fact.

And that, obviously, I have paid for it "

P.

Betrayal is very present throughout the book [that word is repeated up to 29 times].

Are they still injured?

JMS

In my case, what I have understood is that, in politics, betrayal is almost the rule and not the exception.

The struggle for power brings out the worst in the human condition, and if you understand that, then you are not hurt.

I can say at this point in life that I live calmly, despite the amount of betrayal I have had.

Q.

Do you feel that you betrayed Uribe?

JMS

Uribe obsessively accused me of treason, but what I have always said: "What treason?"

He had a government program that was his three little eggs, he said.

The first was democratic security, the second was investor confidence, and the third was social cohesion.

If one analyzes the results of the eight years of my government in these three aspects, the country has never done better.

I say that his three little eggs turned into fighting cocks.

Later he accused me of treason because I made my peace with Chávez, but I made peace with Chávez to achieve peace, which was what he wanted, and he also accused me of treason because I did not name the ministers he wanted.

But the president was me ...

P

.

And you, do you feel betrayed?

IB

I have been betrayed, I have not felt, I have been.

It's a fact.

I have been betrayed, and that, obviously, I have paid.

P.

If Colombia were a book, what would it be?

JMS

One goes behind the classic books, a combination between

La Vorágine

[José Eustasio Rivera, 1924] and

María

[Jorge Isaacs, 1867].

IB

I would suddenly say that it is a book of the Bible, that of Job, in which all ills fall to Job and he is in a fight, because they say that it is his fault, and he comes into conflict with God.

The end is when Job realizes that what God is telling him is that he has the freedom to change things, that this is his great message of love, that God is not going to intervene out of respect for human freedom, but rather He wants Job to take matters into his own hands and make a difference.

I believe that Colombia is that: it has to take over its destiny and change course.

P.

President, in the book you say that you could write one about Hugo Chávez, are you already working on it?

JMS:

No, but I could write about my relationship with Hugo Chávez, because it is full of anecdotes.

He considered me his worst enemy in Colombia because I criticized him without truce or quarter.

It turned out at the end of life, when Chávez's coffin was there, that I ended up making him a praetorian guard there next to the president of Iran and all the allies he had.

It is a very beautiful and fascinating story.

P.

You also made a guard to the coffin of Gabriel García Márquez in Mexico.

What was your relationship with him like?

JMS:

He was convinced and passionate about peace. It was a very nice friendship. One day in Cartagena he invited me to lunch and when I arrived he was enraged, swearing. So I said: "Gabo, what's wrong?" “It is that I have been more than a day, like thirty hours, trying to discover what a game is called that the gamines play, they throw a coin against the wall and whoever is closest takes the coin. I have not been able to discover it ”. We went to lunch and he began to give me a lecture on the woodwork of literature, the importance of word precision. After that wonderful conversation, I began to read García Márquez with greater admiration, that very beautiful experience served me a lot in life because I became in a certain way much more demanding with myself in the way I write.

IB.

And so what was the name of the game?

JMS:

I never found out.

Five header titles

JUAN MANUEL SANTOS

'The Long Road to Freedom', Nelson Mandela

'One Hundred Years of Solitude', Gabriel García Márquez

'Churchill: A Life', Martin Gibert

'Team of Rivals', Doris Kearns Goodwin

'Ulises', James Joyce

INGRID BETANCOURT

'20 love poems and a desperate song ', Pablo Neruda

' Memories of a formal young woman ', Simone de Beauvoir

' Mrs. Dalloway ', Virginia Wolf

' Laudato si ', Pope Francisco

' The forgetfulness that we will be ', Héctor Abad Faciolince

A pending conversation

Juan Manuel Santos, Ingrid Betancourt, Juan Carlos Torres

Planeta.

2021

412 pages.

10.99 euros ("e-book")

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