Tense election will test Colombia’s fragile peace
In the moist heat of El Bagre’s harsh climate, Wilson Leudo fights off mosquitoes as he recalls how a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the Farc, paid a visit to his family home in 2002. “He offered us a million pesos (£260) for my 14-year-old sister,” he says. “We refused, but the next day she’d gone. He just took her.”
It would be two years before he saw his sister again. She had been repeatedly raped and forced to work as a cook, before managing to escape.
Just months later, Mr Leudo’s brother would also disappear. “They tried to recruit him, but he refused to join their struggle, and for that, you pay a heavy price.”
Mr Leudo tells his story with ease, but it does not hide his pain.
His suffering is not an exception in this impoverished town on the banks of the river Nechí in northern Colombia. Its 35,000 residents have been scarred by conflict, as their communities played host to both the Farc and their paramilitary rivals.
Today’s presidential election is the first in Colombia since the disarmament of the Farc under the terms of the peace deal signed in November 2016. The agreement ended five decades of conflict with the Marxist rebels, which killed 220,000 and displaced seven million.
The front-runner is Iván Duque, a conservative former senator, who viscerally opposes the peace agreement. He is backed by hardline former president Alvaro Uribe. Mr Duque’s rival is Gustavo Petro, the leftist former mayor of Bogotá and an ex-guerrilla of the M-19, which gave up its arms in the Nineties. Mr Petro is the most successful progressive candidate in Colombia for generations.
While economic reform and corruption have been talking points during the campaign, the election is seen by many as a second vote on the country’s troubled peace process. The Colombian people narrowly rejected the peace deal with Farc in a 2016 referendum, and despite changes made to appease the electorate, there remains strong opposition.
A recent Gallup poll found that 70 per cent of Colombians think the peace process is on the wrong path. Many feel that the sentences offered to ex-Farc guerrillas were too lenient.
In 2016, Mr Leudo voted “yes”’ in the referendum. “I had high hopes for Colombia’s future, but where is the justice?” he says. “We need a president with authority. That’s why I’m voting for Duque.”
His voice croaks for the first time. “They tell us I should forgive, and I can do that. But who will help me find my brother’s body?” he asks.
“Duque says he will reform the accords, but he hasn’t said exactly how,” said Sandra Borda, a political analyst from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Bogotá. “He uses euphemisms to not scare people, but there is no doubt he would try to overhaul the peace agreement.”
Mr Duque has pledged more punitive measures for the former combatants. An ex-Farc commander in El Bagre, speaking on condition of anonymity, offered a chilling warning. “People say we’re getting away without justice. But the government is not giving us what they promised either. If they try and change the rules of the game, we won’t stand for it. Peace is not guaranteed.”
The nearby village of Puerto López is surrounded by hectares of illicit plantations of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. Places like this are now the front line in the fight for peace. Armed groups here have always fought for control and access to coca. When the Farc left in 2016, their guerrilla cousins, the ELN or National Liberation Army, became involved in a turf war with the criminal successors to the paramilitaries.
“It’s no secret that the coca fuels the conflict,” says community leader Jairo Rodríguez. “But it also provides subsistence for so many people. If they want peace, they need to give us something else to live off.”
Mr Duque’s strong-hand approach would involve re-instating aerial eradication, suspended in 2015 over health and environmental concerns. Mr Petro favours programmes of rural development aimed at replacing the dependence on the coca leaf.
“Petro understands the countryside,” said Mr Rodríguez. “He is the only chance to remove this dependency on coca and provide real alternatives, which will result in a lasting peace. Duque’s plan to force people to eradicate their crops and give them nothing in return will just sustain the violence.”
The amount of coca growing in Colombia has reached an all-time high despite eradication and substitution programmes created as part of the 2016 peace deal. The goal was to eradicate 50,000 hectares by the end of May 2018, but the UN has certified just over 6,000 hectares free of coca.
According to a report from a major peace advocacy group, the government is also failing to meet its commitments to families registered in the crop substitution programme, where the coca is replaced with vegetables or other products. Of the 60,000 coca-growing families involved, only 7,000 in eight of the 43 regions concerned are receiving the promised financial assistance.
In Puerto López, coca substitution programmes are due to start in September, but local officials say they are struggling to recruit farmers.
“I would love to sign up to replace my crop, but I know the government is not fulfilling its promises. I can’t afford that risk,” says Hernan, a coca farmer, who asked not to give his surname.
It is a risk, which is not just financial. Armed groups involved in the drugs trade have targeted those involved in the coca substitution scheme. One group representing coca farmers says 35 of its members have been murdered in the past two years.
Mr Rodríguez scans his surroundings cautiously to check nobody is listening in. “People don’t want to sign up because they know the government has run out of money, but they also know they could get killed. The government cannot keep us safe,” he says.
At the local Petro campaign office, the mood is downbeat. There is no sense of victory here.
“The peace process hasn’t healed our country,” says a Petro supporter, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s just exaggerating our differences. If we can’t overcome these now, we never will.”
‘They tell us I should forgive, and I can do that. But who will help me find my brother’s body?’