In the Feb. 22 issue of The Guilfordian, I wrote a profile about a woman named Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian presidential candidate, and her struggle to reform the Colombian political system. On Saturday, Feb. 23, she was kidnapped by the FARC, one of the main rebel groups in Colombia.She had been traveling into an area formerly controlled by the FARC, which has now returned to the government’s control. Her purpose was to ensure the welfare of the people living in that area. The fear was that either government or anti-FARC paramilitary forces would attempt to punish the villagers for their participation with FARC affairs.

And she was going to campaign, to tell these people that there was a new option, that they could vote for Colombia’s future and help to rid the country of the corruption that has become endemic.

Her campaign against corruption has been seen by many to be the only hope that Colombia has to rise out of the poverty and degradation that have plagued the nation for so long.

I was there ten years ago, just before she began her campaign. I remember stepping off the plane and into a line of people waiting to get checked through the immigration checkpoint. I was16 at the time, and the soldier to my left holding the submachine gun looked to be my age, maybe younger.

The country was mired in poverty unlike anything I had ever seen before.

As my dad and I rode around in the back of a van, I looked at the shacks we passed. Some of them had walls made of tarpaper, the paper that goes underneath roofing shingles.

There were semi trucks on the side of the road, being dismantled for drug searches. I tried to speak to some of the locals about the drug trade and the government’s role in it, but none of them wanted to discuss it.

It was an atmosphere of fear, one in which people would just attempt to ignore what was happening rather than risk reprisals from the government or drug lords. And this is where Ms. Betancourt made her stand, challenging the government that she saw to be corrupt. She once said, “Corruption must be consciously confronted, and it has to be on the conscience of all Colombians so that we cannot be manipulated.”

Colombia desperately needs a fresh start. Ingrid Betancourt represents one of the best chances for her country. The work that she has already done pales in comparison with what she might do in the future.

But that is something we will only know if she lives through this ordeal.