The first time I felt fear I was 41 years old. People have always said I was brave. When I was little, I'd climb the highest tree, and I'd approach any animal fearlessly. I liked challenges. My father used to say, "Good steel can withstand any temperature."
And when I entered into Colombian politics, I thought I'd be able to withstand any temperature. I wanted to end corruption; I wanted to cut ties between politicians and drug traffickers. The first time I was elected, it was because I called out, by name, corrupt and untouchable politicians. I also called out the president for his ties to the cartels.
That's when the threats started. I had to send my very young children out of the country one morning, hidden, all the way to the airport, in the French ambassador's armored car. Days later, I was the victim of an attack, but emerged unharmed. The following year, the Colombian people elected me with the highest number of votes. I thought people applauded me because I was brave. I, too, thought I was brave. But I wasn't. I had simply never before experienced true fear.
That changed on February 23, 2002. At the time, I was a presidential candidate in Colombia promoting my campaign agenda, when I was detained by a group of armed men. They were wearing uniforms with military garments. I looked at their boots; they were rubber. And I knew that the Colombian army wore leather boots. I knew that these were FARC guerrillas.
From that point on, everything happened very quickly. The commando leader ordered us to stop the vehicle. Meanwhile, one of his men stepped on an antipersonnel mine and flew through the air. He landed, sitting upright, right in front of me. We made eye contact and it was then that the young man understood: his rubber boot with his leg still in it had landed far away.
(Sighs)
He started screaming like crazy. And the truth is, I felt -- as I feel right now, because I'm reliving these emotions -- I felt at that moment that something inside of me was breaking and that I was being infected with his fear. My mind went blank and couldn't think; it was paralyzed. When I finally reacted, I said to myself, "They're going to kill me, and I didn't say goodbye to my children." As they took me into the deepest depths of the jungle, the FARC soldiers announced that if the government didn't negotiate, they'd kill me. And I knew that the government wouldn't negotiate.
From that point on, I went to sleep in fear every night -- cold sweats, shaking, stomach ache, insomnia. But worse than that was what was happening to my mind, because my memory was being erased: all the phone numbers, addresses, names of very dear people, even significant life events. And so, I began to doubt myself, to doubt my mental health. And with doubt came desperation, and with desperation came depression. I was suffering notorious behavioral changes and it wasn't just paranoia in moments of panic. It was distrust, it was hatred, and it was also the urge to kill.
This, I realized when they had me chained by the neck to a tree. They kept me outside that day, during a tropical downpour. I remember feeling an urgent need to use the bathroom. "Whatever you have to do, you'll do in front of me, bitch," the guard screamed at me. And I decided at that moment to kill him. And for days, I was planning, trying to find the right moment, the right way to do it, filled with hatred, filled with fear. Then suddenly, I rose up, snapped out of it and thought: "I'm not going to become one of them. I'm not going to become an assassin. I still have enough freedom to decide who I want to be."
That's when I learned that fear brought me face to face with myself. It forced me to align my energies, to align my meridians. I learned that facing fear could become a pathway to growth. A lot of emotions arise when I talk about all of this, but when I think back, I'm able to identify the steps I took to do it. I want to share three of them with you.
The first was to be guided by principles. Because I realized that in the midst of panic and mental block, if I followed my principles, I acted correctly.
I remember the first night in a concentration camp that the guerrillas had built in the middle of the jungle, with 12-foot-high bars, barbed wire, lookouts in the four corners and armed men pointing guns at us 24 hours a day. That morning, the first morning, some men arrived, yelling: "Count off! Count off!" My fellow hostages woke up, startled, and began to identify themselves in numbered sequence. But when it was my turn, I said, "Ingrid Betancourt. If you want to know if I'm here, call me by my name."
The guards' fury was nothing compared to that of the other hostages, because, obviously they were scared -- we were all scared -- and they were afraid that, because of me, they would be punished. But for me, beyond fear was the need to defend my identity, to not let them turn me into a thing or a number. That was one of the principles: to defend what I considered to be human dignity.
But make no mistake: the guerrillas had it all very well analyzed -- they had been kidnapping for years, and they had developed a technique to break us, to defeat us, to divide us. And so, the second step was to learn how to build supportive trust, to learn how to unite.
The jungle is like a different planet. It's a world of shadows, of rain, with the hum of millions of bugs -- majiña ants, bullet ants. I didn't stop scratching a single day while I was in the jungle. And of course, there were tarantulas, scorpions, anacondas ... I once came face to face with a 24-foot long anaconda that could have swallowed me in one bite. Jaguars ...
But I want to tell you that none of these animals did us as much harm as the human beings. The guerrillas terrorized us. They spread rumors. Among the hostages, they sparked betrayals, jealousy, resentment, mistrust.
The first time I escaped for a long time was with Lucho. Lucho had been a hostage for two years longer than I had. We decided to tie ourselves up with ropes to have the strength to lower ourselves into that dark water full of piranhas and alligators. What we did was, during the day, we would hide in the mangroves. And at night, we would leave, get in the water, and we would swim and let the current carry us. That went on for several days. But Lucho became sick. He was diabetic, and he fell into a diabetic coma. So the guerrillas captured us.
But after having lived through that with Lucho, after having faced fear together, united, not punishment, not violence -- nothing -- could ever again divide us. What's certain is, all the guerrillas' manipulation was so damaging to us that even today, among some of the hostages from back then, tensions linger, passed down from all that poison that the guerrillas created.
The third step is very important to me, and it's a gift that I want to give to you. The third step is to learn how to develop faith. I want to explain it like this: Jhon Frank Pinchao was a police officer who had been a hostage for more than eight years. He was famous for being the biggest scaredy-cat of us all. But Pincho -- I called him "Pincho" -- Pincho decided that he wanted to escape. And he asked me to help him. By that point, I basically had a master's degree in escape attempts.
(Laughter)
So we got started but we had a delay, because first, Pincho had to learn how to swim. And we had to carry out all these preparations in total secrecy. Anyway, when we finally had everything ready, Pincho came up to me one afternoon and said,
"Ingrid, suppose I'm in the jungle, and I go around and around in circles, and I can't find the way out. What do I do?"
"Pincho, you grab a phone, and you call the man upstairs."
"Ingrid, you know I don't believe in God." "God doesn't care. He'll still help you."
(Applause)
It rained all night that night. The following morning, the camp woke up to a big commotion, because Pincho had fled. They made us dismantle the camp, and we started marching. During the march, the head guerrillas told us that Pincho had died, and that they had found his remains eaten by an anaconda. Seventeen days passed -- and believe me, I counted them, because they were torture for me. But on the seventeenth day, the news exploded from the radio: Pincho was free and obviously alive. And this was the first thing he said:
"I know my fellow hostages are listening. Ingrid, I did what you told me. I called the man upstairs, and he sent me the patrol that rescued me from the jungle."
That was an extraordinary moment, because ... obviously fear is contagious. But faith is, too. Faith isn't rational or emotional. Faith is an exercise of the will. It's the discipline of the will. It's what allows us to transform everything that we are -- our weaknesses, our frailties, into strength, into power. It's truly a transformation. It's what gives us the strength to stand up in the face of fear look above it, and see beyond it. I hope you remember that, because I know we all need to connect with that strength we have inside of us for the times when there's a storm raging around our boat.
Many, many, many, many years passed before I could return to my house. But when they took us, handcuffed, into the helicopter that finally took us out of the jungle, everything happened as quickly as when they kidnapped me. In an instant, I saw the guerrilla commander at my feet, gagged, and the rescue leader, yelling:
"We're the Colombian army! You are free!"
The shriek that came out of all of us when we regained our freedom, continues to vibrate in me to this day.
Now, I know they can divide all of us, they can manipulate us all with fear. The "No" vote on the peace referendum in Colombia; Brexit; the idea of a wall between Mexico and the United States; Islamic terrorism -- they're all examples of using fear politically to divide and recruit us. We all feel fear. But we can all avoid being recruited using the resources we have -- our principles, unity, faith. Yes, fear is part of the human condition, as well as being necessary for survival. But above all, it's the guide by which each of us builds our identity, our personality.
It's true, I was 41 years old the first time I felt fear, and feeling fear was not my decision. But it was my decision what to do with that fear. You can survive crawling along, fearful. But you can also rise above the fear, rise up, spread your wings, and soar, fly high, high, high, high, until you reach the stars, where all of us want to go.
Thank you.
(Applause)
