Ingrid Betancourt narrates her captivity: six and a half years in the heart of the Amazon rainforest as a prisoner hostage of the FARC. “Even Silence Has an End,” this book is a poignant testimony of those six years far from everything: her family, her friends, civilization, with the humiliation from her jailers, and the prohibition from moving or speaking.
Some were humane, others cruel. This book, written like a novel, also provides a description of Colombia with the Andes Mountain Range splitting the country in two, and the rainforest where the majority of her detention took place.
Indeed, she would change camps multiple times. Her failed escape attempts are recaptured immediately. Ingrid Betancourt describes the characters and mentalities of her guards, both male and female. She also details the rivalries with other detainees. Silence is perhaps the hardest thing; not the silence we usually think of, but the one of being alone, unable to communicate, a silence that denies human relationships, a silence intended to dehumanize you.
Her father dying in a hospital and not being able to be there, her children growing into teenagers, her mother—she could not contact them. She was unaware of world news or events. She was truly alone in the middle of an inhospitable country, where it’s either raining or unbearably hot.
Ingrid Betancourt provides a description of this forest and its numerous rivers and streams, a labyrinth; no roads, muddy paths, wild animals. Places where civilization has yet to penetrate. It is there that the FARC take refuge with the complicity of the peasants.
“Even Silence Has an End,” both a testimony of a woman whose courage is fortified by her Faith in God and a guide for anyone who might be tempted to venture into the virgin forest.
Thierry Jan
