Tearful reunions after rebels seek ‘peace’

‘I hugged him, I cried’

EL DIAMANTE, Colombia, Sept 28, (AFP): Miriam Vanegas had not seen her son for 10 years after FARC rebels took him away into the Colombian wilderness. Now the fighters have signed a peace deal, and she has him back.

As the FARC -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- prepared to approve a historic peace deal signed on Monday, Miriam spotted Pablo Esteban in images filmed at a conference held by the force.

“He left when he was 13. They took him away,” she said. “I searched heaven and earth for him until last week, when I saw him on television in the conference.”

Dressed in a black dress with a blue and pink flower design, she can scarcely contain her tears as she recalls the reunion.

“I traveled six hours on a motorbike to get here,” she said of her journey along a remote path through the heat and humidity to the FARC’s base in El Diamante, western Colombia.

T. Jimenez

Recognized

There, a female FARC member recognized the boy in the photo Miriam held in her hand. She led Miriam to a camp where she found him, transformed into a young man.

“I hugged him and I cried,” she said, her voice trembling. “You do not know how happy I am.”

In this remote base in the grassy plains, hundreds of FARC fighters gathered on Monday to watch the signing ceremony on big screens.

They applauded when their leader Timoleon “Timochenko” Jimenez signed the accord and made a speech hailing the FARC’s transition to politics.

The agreement formally ends a conflict Colombian authorities estimate has killed 260,000 people, left 45,000 missing and uprooted 6.9 million.

After watching the signing, FARC members mounted a stage, dressed all in white, and sang the FARC anthem and the “Ode to Joy.”

“At last, we have a second chance on Earth,” a top commander, Carlos Antonio Lozada, told the gathering.

FARC fighter David Preciado celebrated the signing by playing football with his comrades in the camp.

He ran around on a mud pitch with bamboo goalposts, getting dirty, happy as a child.

He lost his left arm after he was shot in an ambush by the army. That slowed him down a bit on the pitch -- as did the lack of practice.

Normally “we are not allowed to play for reasons of public order,” he said.

Now in his thirties, David says he joined the FARC when he was 19 because he liked guns.