Peace draws near for guerrillas
After 50 years of fighting between Colombia’s government and the Farc rebels, both sides are close to reaching a deal in March. This generation of leftist fighters could be the last to stay in the jungle.
NORTHWEST COLOMBIA // Rebel leader Juan Pablo carries with him a new telescopic assault rifle and a heavy heart. A commander of the 36th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ( Farc), he has spent 25 years plotting ambushes and assembling land mines.
Now peace is within reach as talks between the guerrillas and the government near conclusion in Cuba.
For the first time, the 41-yearold is thinking about a future outside his jungle hideout. His dream is to return to the poor village he left as a teenager and run for mayor.
“This war is going to end without victors or vanquished but lots of suffering on both sides,” said Mr Pablo, the son of a street vendor. “It’s false to say we arrived defeated to the negotiating table. They dealt us some heavy blows, of course, but 51 years of war against an enemy backed by the most powerful army in the world (the US army) has not made us cower, because the injustices that led us to take up arms are still occurring.”
That mixture of pride and trepidation about the future is common among the Farc’s 7,000 fighters, many of whom came from poor rural upbringings.
The Associated Press made a rare, three-day visit to a secret Farc camp in Antioquia state this month to see how the region’s oldest leftist insurgency is preparing for a peace that looks closer than ever.
Decades of fighting between guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the armed forces have, according to government figures, left more than 220,000 people dead, about 40,000 disappeared and more than 5 million driven from their homes.
But after president Juan Manuel Santos travelled to Cuba last September and shook the hand of the Farc’s top commander, both sides felt confident enough to predict a final deal as early as March. This generation of Farc guerrillas would be the first to abandon its stated aim of overthrowing the government and instead fight for their ideals at the ballot box.
Thanks to a unilateral Farc ceasefire, it has been months since gunshots rang out in this remote corner of the Andes.
Still, the rebels show no sign of letting down their guard after a decade-old government offen- sive that more than halved their troop strength.
The guerrillas recall how during 1980s peace talks that ultimately failed, the Farc set up a party known as the Patriotic Union as its political arm. In just a few years, more than 3,000 leftist activists, rebel sympathisers and two presidential candidates were gunned down by paramilitaries, often in collaboration with state security forces.
Even as the camp maintains a wartime footing, the guerrillas have begun holding twice-a-day peace assemblies.
On a recent day the first one was led by Yira Castro, a commander. Listening attentively was Juliana, whose path to the Farc was born as much from personal tragedy as political ideology.
Her companion, Alexis, spoke of what he saw as the banality of relationships in the outside world. “In the Farc we never touch money. Everything is given to us, from medicine to cigarettes. That’s why there is no dependency in which she expects me to provide for her,” he said. “Between us there is only love.”
Talk came to an abrupt halt as an unfamiliar aircraft flew overhead a second time, setting nerves on edge.
“Politics is a lot tougher than war,” said Anibal, another commander.
“You pay for a mistake on the battlefield with your life, but an error in the field of politics brings down an entire organisation,” he said.