In Colombia, Hostage's Letter Hits Home

That campaign irritated the powerful here and earned her enmity among the corrupt. But she became a star in France. Her book, "The Rage in My Heart," was a bestseller there, and the French media dubbed her Madame Colombia and the Warrior of the Andes.

Pulecio, herself a former Colombian senator known for her work with street children, says her daughter's letter reflects both passion and intellect.

"The beautiful thing about it is, in its literary side, it's divinely written," Pulecio said, sitting in the living room of her Bogota apartment. "There's nothing etched out. It's continuous, continuous, continuous, what she wrote. That shows her head is completely clear, despite the loneliness, the pain, all that she's lived."

Pulecio said the letter had answered many questions and concerns, directly or in messages transmitted between the lines.

Betancourt, who was kidnapped in February 2002 as she campaigned for president in southern Colombia, spoke of the deprivations in the jungle, where she has nothing to read but a Bible; how forced marches are a "Calvary"; and how living in tight quarters with male prisoners who have been held for as long as 10 years "is a problem."

"Before, I used to enjoy bathing in the river," she wrote. "Since I am the only woman in the group, I go practically clothed, with shorts, brassiere, T-shirt, boots, no matter if I look like a grandmother."

Betancourt is most affectionate when writing of her children, Lorenzo Delloye, 19, and Melanie Delloye, 22, college students raised in France, where their father is a diplomat. But the passages about her children are also bittersweet, as she recalls all she has lost.

"They are the same, and they are others," she wrote her mother. "And each second of my absence, of not being able to be there for them, of caring for their pain, of being unable to advise them, give them strength, show patience and humility in the face of life's blows -- all those opportunities lost for a mother poison the moments of infinite loneliness."

Betancourt tells her mother that the only connection she has with the outside world is through her battered transistor radio. Under the jungle canopy, Betancourt listens to a Bogota radio program that broadcasts messages to the hostages from their relatives.

"Every day I open my eyes at 4 a.m., and I prepare myself to be very awake to hear your message at 5," she wrote. "That's my daily fantasy, to hear your voice, feel your love, your tenderness."

Pulecio has probably become the best-known relative of a hostage. She's met with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and urged him to continue unilateral efforts to free hostages, even after Uribe ended Chávez's mediation role last month. Last week, she traveled to Buenos Aires, invited by the government in Argentina to attend the presidential inauguration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. She met with top French officials there and was invited to a meeting of Latin American leaders.

Pulecio has severely criticized the Uribe administration for making proposals that the FARC is unlikely to accept. "There are policemen and officers who have been in the depths of the jungle 10 years," she said. "And the Colombian government doesn't initiate a dialogue so they can be freed."

Pulecio said she has been invigorated by the outpouring of support, from ordinary people who stop her in the street and from governments as far away as Italy. But she feels she has to move fast -- it's clear from Betancourt's letter that time is not on her side.

"I do not have the same strength, it takes too much to continue having faith, but know that what you have done for us has made a difference," Betancourt wrote. "We feel like human beings. Thank you."