Gloria Polanco was sound asleep one evening in July 2001 when a team of armed commandos broke into her apartment and kidnapped her and two of her sons.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces, known as the FARC, claimed responsibility and held Polanco in captivity for six years. The Colombian state representative became another statistic: one of hundreds of people held captive by the terrorist organization, and one of dozens of politicians.
During those six long years, Polanco was shackled, forced to march for days through the mountainous jungles of Colombia, deprived of any news of her family and suffered serious health complications.
But Polanco’s nightmare went beyond the subhuman conditions under which she was held by the FARC. Her husband, a former governor from the state of Huila, paid a ransom for the release of their two sons three years after they were kidnapped. The boys were let go, but apparently the amount was insufficient. Polanco’s husband was shot and killed shortly afterward; all fingers point to the FARC.
When Polanco was finally released in late February, along with three other politicians, she thanked Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had been brokering a behind-the-scenes deal with the FARC for the release of some of the 700 hostages being held by the Marxist group. “You’ve given me the opportunity to live again,” she said.
For a few days, President Hugo Chavez basked in the limelight as the hero who was able to accomplish a task none of his Colombian counterparts could. But last week, after one of the FARC’s top commanders was killed during a Colombian military raid inside Ecuadorian territory, Chavez blew his lid and ordered thousands of his troops to the Venezuelan border. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, who seems to follow Chavez’s orders, broke diplomatic relations with Colombia, as did Nicaragua, another of Venezuela’s allies.
So, what’s wrong with this picture? Why is Venezuela threatening war with neighboring Colombia for an incident that occurred in another country? And why is Chavez claiming outrage over the death of one of Latin America’s most wanted terrorists, responsible for the deaths and kidnappings of thousands? Why is Chavez defending a terrorist group that finances itself through cocaine smuggling and kidnap ransoms of innocent people?
Is it possible that the president of the oil-rich sovereign nation Venezuela has been sleeping with the enemy? Could it be that his fury is more a response to the cache of detailed information surfacing in a laptop apparently owned by the FARC commander killed last week in Ecuador?
If the information in the treasure trove of documents being exposed by the Colombian government proves to be true, then Chavez will need an army of crisis-management experts to help him survive this latest battle. His popularity at home is dwindling, and his double-speak rhetoric is getting stale.
Chavez’s secret relationship with the FARC apparently dates back to 1992, when the Colombian terrorists provided Chavez with much-needed funds during a failed coup attempt. Chavez, according to the secret documents, has responded in kind by giving the Revolutionary Armed Forces some $300 million to keep them going. That would be $300 million belonging to the Venezuelan people that’s being used to commit atrocities in the name of Marxism and communism.
Here is a man who shamelessly mastered a coup by the release of kidnapped innocent victims whose lives are irreparably shattered, and flew them first to his presidential palace in Caracas and paraded them in front of his nation and on live television, all the while knowing he had achieved this public-relations coup by sleeping with the enemy.
What kind of decent human being -- let alone a president and leader of a country -- can financially and morally support a group of thugs like the FARC, which has massacred and tormented its own people for years?
If he is a man of peace, as he claims, Mr. Chavez should look Gloria Polanco in the eye and apologize for her agonizing six years in captivity. He should apologize for the three years her innocent children were held captive and apologize for the murder of her husband instead of meddling in the conflict between Ecuador and Colombia, which has nothing to do with him, and trying to destabilize the region in order to divert attention from his own problems.

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(Maria Elena Salinas is the author of “I AM MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER: LIVING A LIFE WITHOUT SECRETS.” Reach her at www
.mariaesalinas.com)
© 2008 by Maria Elena Salinas
Distributed by King Features Syndicate