All Venezuela, Colombia and a big part of the world followed closely the process of freeing two prominent hostages –former congresswomen Clara Rojas and Consuelo González– from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, after their initials in Spanish), today at an of course indisclosed location in the Colombian jungle. It was like watching people come back to life, which in a way is true: the two women had been kidnapped for more than six years. As I write this post, the two are flying to Caracas to meet with their family.

Of course I am more than happy that they are alive and well; no warm-blooded human being could not rejoice to the fact of a family reunited after so much time. Rojas’ case is particularly rough: she had a baby while in the jungle, which had been giving to a family of peasants in 2005, who in turn had to take him to a hospital since he was in such a critical health state (leichmaniasis, typhoid fever). The baby even had a broken arm and cigarrette burns on his body, signs of torture, which made the hospital turn it over to the equivalent of Social Services in Colombia, since they thought he was the victim of child abuse. The FARC demanded to the peasant’s family to return the child by December 30th or else, so the man searched protection in the government. The boy was confirmed to be Rojas’s son just yesterday.

But there is a huge twist in this story: the president of my country, Hugo Chávez. He was requested to be the mediator between the Colombian government and the FARC, due to the ideological resmeblance between them. At first, Chávez turned this into a circus. No discreet acts on his behalf, oh no. Even Oliver Stone came down here to film the liberation. When there was a delay in the delivery of Rojas and González, FARC blamed it on the government, and Chávez almost immediately sided with them (he had already broken ties with president Álvaro Uribe over the initial spat). When the truth finally came out, that FARC didn’t have the boy and were unsuccesful in recovering him, and with all the tremors coming from homke, Chávez apparently understood that this could not be used as a personal show to improved his battered international image. So, quietly and respectfully, he received the coordinates where the two women would be released, and requested in writing that two Red Cross helicopters take off from Venezuela into Colombia and pick them up.

Of course, this has raised a turmoil on the user comments on the site of the newspaper where I work. Those who support Chávez basically scream “All hail might Chávez!”, and start saying Nobel peace prize. Those who oppose him –like me– simply cheer that the women are free, and lament that Chávez is partying with somebody else’s hat. And it was confirmed when, during initial statements, he send warm regards to Manuel Marulanda, the commander of the FARC, and hoped to form a leftist movement in Latin America. Nice going: ally yourself with people who have indiscriminately kill, blow up, torture and of course kidnap people, all for political purposes. That only increased my doubts that this was for “humanitarian” reasons.

But hey, two women are returning with their families. That should be the focus here. Hallelujah. But there will be questions later.