As Colombia Nears Peace, Child Soldiers Seek Path

CALDAS, Colombia — Mélida was only 9 when guerrilla fighters lured her away and, over the next seven years, turned her into a child soldier.

Her family thought she had died in battle. Then Mélida suddenly returned to her village at 16. Only her grandfather recognized her. The very next day, the military surrounded her house. “I found out my own father had turned me in,” she recalled.

Colombia is nearing a peace agreement with the rebels to end a half- century of fighting. The country is divided over what role former rebels should play in society.

“There are times when I think about returning to the guerrillas because this life is hard here,” said Mélida, now 20.

The rebels say they don’t recruit children. Yet during a recent visit to a FARC camp by The New York Times, a half- dozen soldiers as young as 15 said they had been recruited.

In government rehabilitation centers throughout Colombia, minors told similar stories of being spirited away by rebels. Fabio, now 19, said he was kidnapped by rebels at 9. By the time he was 13, he said, his commanders began sending him to slit the throats of government soldiers as they slept. Freddy said he joined the FARC at 14 to avenge the killing of a cousin. He deserted at 16.

Mélida said that when her captors came to her house along the river, they drew her attention by saying they had soup in their canoe. They brought her to a distant camp. Mélida’s father, Moisés, a traditional healer of the Amazon’s Cubeo group, was away at the time. He went to the guerrilla camp near the village and asked to meet the commander. “I said, ‘I came for my daughter,’ ” he recalled. “He said she wasn’t there.”

In the camp, Mélida had been renamed and began her schooling on the history of communism, the FARC and Darwin’s theory of evolution. She was also learning to make land mines. “I said, ‘I want to go home,’ ” she recalled. “But they told me, ‘Once you enter a camp, you cannot leave.’ ”

Once, a 20- year- old and his 14-year- old sister disappeared before dawn. Mélida joined the search for them. When the pair were found, they were shot dead. Mélida remembered feeling no remorse that day. She was 12.

Years after she was kidnapped, rebels passed through her village and mentioned Mélida to her family. “They said she had died in an attack,” her father recalled.

In reality, a commander in his 40s had taken an interest in her. One day, when she was 15, he asked her to wash his clothes. She was later given a birth control implant and the commander forced her into a relationship, she said.

At 16, she asked the commander if she could visit her family. Carrying a pistol and a grenade, she made her way back home. She says she does not know why her father turned her in.

The soldiers interrogated Mélida at one base after another, she said. After two weeks, she was taken to a rehabilitation center. The center’s director said Mélida arrived angry. At night, she began sneaking out with a man named Javier, whose mother was a cook there.

In 2004, Javier’s brother, a soldier, was killed by a FARC sniper. His family never forgave the guerrillas. Despite this, Mélida and Javier were falling in love.

Mélida was forming another relationship, with her father, who began visiting. But communicating was a challenge: Mélida had lost some of her fluency in Cubeo, their indigenous language.

She was getting to know her cousins, María and Leila, themselves former FARC members. Javier’s mother, Dora, was teaching Mélida to cook and clean.

Mélida became pregnant. Dora pulled her aside. “I told her, ‘Now you have something to fight for that’s not the revolution.’ ”

Her daughter, Celeste, was born last year. But the anger remained. “She told me she was raised for war, not to care, not to be a lover,” Javier said.

Recently, Mélida’s cousin Leila committed suicide. Dora says Mélida is too strong to take her own life. But she worries Mélida might return to the guerrillas.“She is a good mother and puts her daughter first,” Dora said. “But she also tells me she is bored and doesn’t like this life. And I tell her: ‘If you want to leave, then leave. But think of the girl. Leave Celeste with me.’ ”