Peace talks in Havana and three short films about peace and conflict

Lately in Colombia there´s been a lot of noise and debate regarding the peace talks in Havana. Since 2012 the representatives of the Colombian government have been discussing with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) trying to reach an agreement and a solution to a war that has been devastating the country for over fifty years. The conflict between the Colombian State, the Farc, and other armed groups has created the biggest case of internally displaced population and an increasing number of victims (nearly 6.7 million people have registered to be repaired in the Victims Unit). The war has transformed the whole political panorama of the country and has bled out its finances.

Reaching an agreement between the Farc and the Colombian government seems difficult. This is not the first time that the two parties get together to discuss if there is a chance for a cease fire. The current talks in Havana have been the fourth attempt during the last 30 years to have formal talks with the FARC to end their insurgency. The two most important precedent talks took place during the administrations of President Betancur (1982-1986) and President Pastrana (1998-2002).

President Betancur reached out to the guerrillas in in 1982, afterwards the FARC announced they would establish a political party to compete in the mainstream political system.
Unión Patriótica (UP), was founded in May 1985 to bring some of Farc political reform ideas to the voters. The UP won national and local seats, in 1986 the party got eight congressional seats and six Senate seats in Colombia’s bicameral Congress. The UP also won in 1988 hundreds of city council seats and several mayorships. However, around 3000 members of the UP were killed, reportedly, by paramilitaries or drug traffickers, including its presidential candidates, who were assassinated in 1986 and 1990. Only few suspects were ever prosecuted. As a result the FARC withdrew from politics to concentrate on a military victory.

President Pastrana started negotiations in 1998. Five municipalities in the south-central departments of Meta and Caquetá were stablished as a “despeje” zone in which negotiations would take place, as it was demanded by Farc. The Pastrana government pursued negotiations with the FARC in a period when its power was ascendant and many Colombian state seemed to be weakening and might even fail. The FARC used the demilitarized zone to regroup militarily, launch attacks, grow coca on a large scale, and hold hostages. For most of Pastrana´s term negotiations were ongoing until he closed them down and re-took the demilitarized zone in February 2002.

The failed negotiations severely disillusioned the Colombian public and generated widespread support for adopting a hardline approach to security embodied in the presidential campaign of Álvaro Uribe, who took office in August 2002. This time there does not seem to be any fuzz about it as there probably was for previous attempts of peace talks. Colombian civil society seem to be able to live along the conflict and in case this talks fail, the country will go on living, baring the conflict for another fifty or sixty years (Beittel, 2014:13).  

However, according to the media the negotiations in Havana seem to go rather well. A couple of weeks ago the government broke the silence and revealed some of the point from the agenda that have been agreed. Even, in some of the meetings that I have taken part of within the victims unit, they seem to have confidence that within a year there is going to be a peace agreement.

I took part of that meeting because I was serving as a translator for a scholar from Harvard taking part of a process of internal evaluation. Since that meeting I started thinking about the possibility of a country without war. Against all odds, probably, maybe, the conflict will end. As a Colombian I think I can manage living along the conflict. For generations we have managed to go by our own business in the capital city, switching the TV off, as if there were no war or conflict. Most of our friends have been affected, directly or indirectly by the war, but we seem to thrive and live in a country with a developing economy. But after that meeting I could not help but wondering if this conflict, the Colombian war might have an end.

The work that is now being conducted in the victims unit to repair and compensate the victims is supposed to end. The scope of the law is ten years. In 2021 all the people who have registered as victims must have been repaired and/or compensated. The governemt has plenty of confidence that the conflict is going to be over.

There is supposed to be a turning point for the country. Colombia would probably have been sold to the highest bidders who auctioned for pieces of the country to sign that peace. I don’t think that any of the stakeholders in the Colombian war are going to resign so easily to their profitable shares of the war. The Colombian armed forces are not going to let go of their status and the millions of people who make a living of the war are not going to quite that for peace. Nor the thousands of militiamen who have fought for decades against the government and have the control of a big chunk of the drug trafficking business and territories are going to give it up just like that. Nor the State stakeholders deeply involved with using the war to profit.

Even though it still sounds difficult, according to what I heard there is a chance for some kind of peace in Colombia. The government is applying a system of transitional justice even when the conflict is not actually over. That might mean that they are actually relying on the peace talks to come to an end with a signed peace agreement. That would mean living in a different country, turning the page. Changing, facing new challenges. 

I just wanted to leave this text as a reflection, but I also wanted to share these three short films about people who have faced war and have tried to do something about it. I don’t think we, in the metropolis have seen the real face of war, but we still expect it to be over.