But more and more reports have revealed what really happened, including a $20 million payoff to free the hostages. A FARC communiqué accused the two guerrilla leaders guarding the hostages of selling out to the government to free their prisoners (El Tiempo, Bogotá, 7/11). The whole episode looks increasingly like a Jessica Lynch-type media-Hollywood invention. (Lynch’s “heroic rescue” from her Iraqi captors turned out to be a complete Pentagon fabrication.)

While initial reports said it was a strictly Colombian operation, the NY Times (7/13) revealed that, “The U.S. played [an] elaborate role...including the deployment of more than 900 American military personnel...earlier this year...to locate the hostages.” This also included “Hundreds of American support personnel...on the ground in Colombia,...a frenzied intelligence-gathering operation located in the U.S. Embassy here....intercepts of the rebel group’s radio systems, human intelligence, satellite imaging” and piloted surveillance aircraft. U.S. “military and intelligence personnel [were] alongside Colombian officials planning the operation” — all part of the $600 million per year “aid” U.S. rulers give to Colombia.

Mrs. Betancourt, the three Pentagon mercenaries and the Colombian soldiers looked pretty healthy and in good shape after these many years of captivity in the jungle. Some time ago, the media said Mrs. Betancourt was on the verge of death because of mistreatment. Mrs. Betancourt herself, supposedly a “humanitarian” liberal, went on to embrace the two death-squad heads here: President Uribe and General Montayano (army chief), and racist anti-working class Presidents Sarkozy and Bush in France.

Compare this treatment Betancourt and the others got to the thousands of workers and youth brutally killed by the Colombian army and its paramilitary death-squad thugs. Or to the thousands held captive and tortured by the CIA and the Pentagon in Gitmo and other “secret jails” worldwide.

While the evil Empire (the U.S. bosses and their allies) is striking back in South America, the so-called “Bolivarian socialist” movement led by Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales is compromising more and more with the forces led by U.S. imperialism. Chávez has even attacked the movement in Venezuela for protesting today’s visit here of Colombia President Uribe.

Chávez has called on the FARC to give up its weapons because its guerrilla war gives U.S. imperialism “an excuse” to act in a pro-war manner. Even Fidel Castro has criticized the FARC, telling it to free all the war prisoners it holds. FARC is being pressured to join the “political” struggle, meaning become an electoral party. But when it tried that a decade or so ago, forming the Patriotic Union and participating in the electoral process, the Army and the death squads murdered thousands of its supporters.

Chávez has toned down his rhetoric, even asking Venezuelan capitalists opposed to his “Bolivarian socialism” to join with his government to increase production. Chávez wants to look “moderate” to gain a better deal from an Obama-led White House. After all, Chávez, despite all his anti-imperialist rhetoric, has not stopped selling oil to the U.S. while seeking deals with other imperialists like China, India and Russia.

Republican candidate McCain was actually in Colombia during the “rescue” operation, probably tipped off beforehand, and tried to use it to score political points.

While Chávez and Fidel opportunistically criticize the FARC, FARC’s politics are not that great either. Long ago FARC gave up any claim to Marxism. Its aim is to make a deal with a section of the Colombian bourgeoisie.