BOGOTA, Colombia: Few people have seen the 3-year-old boy born to a leftist rebel father and an upper-class politician mother who was kidnapped by Latin America's biggest guerrilla army five years ago.
Yet little Emmanuel is soon to become the face of Colombia's legions of kidnap victims, the centerpiece of an international campaign by President Alvaro Uribe to draw attention to their suffering and pressure their captors to free them.
Since birth, Emmanuel has been raised in the captive arms of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The FARC abducted his mother, Clara Rojas, and her anti-corruption crusading boss, presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, as they campaigned in 2002 in a southern rebel stronghold.
Rojas and Betancourt are among some 60 prominent hostages, including three U.S. defense contractors, that the FARC wants to swap for its hundreds of imprisoned comrades.
News of Emmanuel's birth and extraordinary upbringing have provoked a wave of soul-searching in this conflict-tortured country.
"We can't keep living the way we are in this country, where a child is abused like this since birth, a child who has no type of rights," said Ivan Rojas, the boy's uncle.
Capitalizing on widespread sympathy for Emmanuel — television programs commence with a plea for his freedom — the Uribe government says it plans to launch within days an international awareness campaign on how the FARC treats its hostages.
It "will show the levels of cruelty of this organization that has reached the point where a human being is born kidnapped," said Vice President Francisco Santos, who was abducted in 1990 and held for eight months by minions of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Santos' office was unable to provide details of the campaign, saying it was still being designed.
With leftist rebels, far-right paramilitaries and common criminals all kidnapping for money or political ends, Colombia has one of the world's highest abduction rates. Nearly 700 victims were snatched last year alone according to an official count, and the anti-kidnapping organization Pais Libre estimates more than 3,000 people are currently being held.
For years, Clara Rojas was overshadowed by Betancourt, who as a dual French citizen became a cause celebre in Europe.
That changed last year when a Colombian journalist published a book revealing that Rojas had given birth to a baby boy conceived in a relationship with one of her guerrilla guards. Little information was provided on the child or the father.
Last month, a police officer named Jhon Frank Pinchao escaped from the rebels after nine years in captivity and revealed Emmanuel's name, wrenching hearts with the news that mother and son are kept apart.
"They don't leave the baby with her," Pinchao said. "They let her see him and all, but it's the guerrillas who care for him."
He also said the hostages who tried to escape, including Betancourt, were made to sleep with thick metal chains tying their necks to trees for months at a time.
Pinchao's statements, while welcomed for confirming that Clara and her son are alive, were cause for more anxiety for the family.
"If all the time Emmanuel is in an environment of the jungle, helicopters flying overhead, and as he grows up all he's seeing are men in uniform, he's growing up to be a guerrilla," Ivan Rojas said.
He said the ordeal has been hardest on their 76-year-old mother, also named Clara, who "feels she could die at any moment and never see Clara again."
On Tuesday, the elder Clara circulated a letter addressed to Emmanuel.
"You have no idea of the risks you face. You need your mother ... to catch you, to reach out to you when you trip and when you fall," she wrote. "We want you free, dear Emmanuel, so one day you will grow and you can read these lines. I just hope it won't be too late for me."
E-mailed requests for an interview with the FARC went unanswered. The 15,000-strong rebel army, fighting for more than four-decades for a leftist revolution, has retreated deeper into Colombia's jungles and mountains since Uribe put it on the defensive after being elected in 2002.
The campaign to highlight Emmanuel's plight comes after two weeks of unprecedented moves by Uribe to seek the FARC hostages' freedom.
At what he said was the urging of newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Uribe is unilaterally releasing nearly 200 imprisoned FARC rebels, obliging them to sign a statement renouncing the guerrilla movement.
On Tuesday, Uribe freed a high-ranking guerrilla commander, Rodrigo Granda, in the hopes that he would act as an intermediary to restart talks with the guerrillas.
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