Letter from Medellin

Historical Memory, Reconciliation, and Justice in Gustavo Petro's Colombia

It’s midnight in Medellin, and a live band blasts cumbia at a raucous street party, a Maranada festival celebrating the beginning of Christmas season in Colombia. I was invited here, but it’s a street party, so neighborhood folks meander in and out. Pretty young ladies in shiny dresses sway to the music, a barrel-chested man doles out shots of aguardiente in plastic shot cups.

“Ten years ago, this party wouldn’t happen,” shouts David (alias), my friend of the moment, over the blaring music. “Even this conversation, people were scared to talk. Now, everybody talks.” 

As we shout-talk over the music, he confides that his father was killed by a bomb when he was four years old. His only memory of his father is constructing a red truck Lego set with him on Christmas Day. “Actually, I think this memory exists,” he says, “but I actually don’t know if I made it up.” 

Lights and grooves at a Maranada Festival in Medellin

It’s an apt confusion. The conscious creation of historical memory commands center stage in Colombia these days. New museums memorialize Colombia’s fifty-year civil conflict, and a robust tourism economy both markets and chafes at the country’s history of violence. Meanwhile, a special Transitional Justice Court holds public hearings at which ex-combatants detail their human rights abuses in front of victims’ families in exchange for amnesty. 

I had come to Colombia because I was interested in seeing what effect a government-backed process of reconciliation and truth-telling was having on a deeply polarized society. If reconciliation is possible in Colombia, might there still be hope for the U.S. and our calcified, polarized politics? I was curious to see if, seven years after the landmark 2016 Peace Accord with the FARC rebel group, Colombians considered reconciliation successful? 

At the street party, David explains that after his father’s killing, his uncle became the regional leader of the paramilitary Auto Defensas de Colombia (AUC). In the late 1990s the FARC controlled between 30% to 40% of Colombia’s territory. So in the 2000s, under the “mano dura” administration of President Manuel Uribe, Colombia’s military and the AUC launched a merciless campaign to defeat the FARC. This was supported by U.S. money ($7.7 billion between 1996 and 2016), training, and technology under Plan Colombia.

Now his uncle dances past us in jeans and a polo shirt, twirling his petite blonde wife in a chic dress. It’s his party, but it’s not a partisan affair. Ex-FARC combatants are there, too–including his nemesis at the height of the conflict, one of the most notorious FARC commanders, then known as Karina. They are now both affiliated with a post-conflict NGO, Aulas De Paz.

Not that the conflict is over. Despite the 2016 peace treaty that demobilized most of the FARC soldiers (over 14,000), there are still some holdouts and new dissidents–though they are essentially criminal enterprises (narcotrafficking, illegal mining, rural extortion rackets) with an ideological facade. Still, much has changed since I first visited Colombia in 2008, then as a tourist, when taxi drivers in Santa Marta murmured about intense fighting in the mountains a half hour away.

“Twenty years ago, there was violence in about 800 of Colombia’s 1100 municipalities,” says Fernando Callado Bryce, a post-conflict and reconciliation expert, over green tea in Bogota’s upscale Chico neighborhood of designer clothing stores and Instagram-ready bleached wood eateries. “Now, about 200 municipalities have violence. So it’s a lot better.” 

But after thirty years working in reconciliation, Bryce has grown skeptical of its effectiveness. “Reconciliation is a thing now, it’s an industry. And I’m not sure if it works, at least on a large scale.” He began his career facilitating reconciliation workshops in rural, indigenous communities in Guatemala after their civil war. It was most effective when it was a simple meeting in a circle of victims and perpetrators led by a respected local leader.  “The simpler, the less sophisticated the mechanism, the less media, the less chance for emotional manipulation, the more effective it is,” says Bryce. “The maximalist approach that Colombia is now taking, in a country that still doesn’t have a state monopoly on violence in 20% of the country, is it realistic?” 

Angela Gomez, anthropologist and physcologist, on a rooftop terrace in Bogota’s Candelaria district. She has extensive experience with transitional justice cases and with remote communities most affected by conflict violence.

President Gustavo Petro has touted a “Paz Total” or “Total Peace” as his goal. Many see his election as a chance to save the peace process after neglect by his predecessor, Ivan Duque. The June 2022 election of Petro, the first leftist President in Colombia’s history, and a former M-19 guerrilla fighter, was a watershed moment for the Western Hemisphere’s fourth most populated country. Not only did it raise a former guerrilla to the presidency, it also placed an Afro-Colombian environmental activist from the long-neglected Choco region, Francia Marquez, as Vice President.  

Angela Gomez, an anthropologist and psychologist, has seen first-hand the effects reconciliation and truth telling can have on individuals. She has worked with international NGOs and lived in remote communities that have no state presence, and bore the brunt of civilian atrocities during the conflict. Sitting on a rooftop terrace at a hotel in Bogota’s Candelaria neighborhood, where poorer residents from the hills mix with tourists and university students, she explains what really matters to victims. “What victims really want to know is the truth, and the details: what happened, who gave the order, how was my loved-one killed,” says Gomez. “Because the imagination is a terrible thing. Imagining all the horrible things that could have happened is worse than knowing the exact details of the murder.” 

For Gomez, the question is does the public accounting of the conflict, the special truth commissions, does any of it penetrate everyday Colombians? “The majority of people living in Bogota and Medellin, they don’t care,” says Gomez. “I know reconciliation works on individuals involved. The trick is how to you lure in people not directly involved to care?”

Many of the everyday Colombians I talked to were skeptical of the peace process, feeling the FARC was given too cushy a deal, getting amnesty and monetary payments to help reintegrate into society. “I never carried arms nor kidnapped anyone,” barked Oscar, a Medellin taxi driver, “but they get money for doing nothing and I still have to drive this damn taxi everyday? How is that fair?”

Colombia’s taxi drivers are among the most gregarious and politically engaged in the world.

I interviewed three different former FARC combatants, and for them, reintegration is far from a golden parachute. Having lived a rugged, subsistence lifestyle in the jungle for years, their skills don’t translate to a modern, capitalist, and pandemic-ravaged Colombian economy. Some still live in fear of their lives—despite the government’s guarantees of security, over 350 ex-FARC combatants who signed the 2016 peace agreement have been killed. Another 500 social leaders have also been murdered. There are still many enemies of peace and reconciliation, but it’s hard to know who is doing the killing. 

All three of the ex-FARC combatants I spoke with were women, and they grapple with a complicated legacy. Karina, who rose to become one of the fiercest and most feared commanders in the group, saw herself as a victim of FARC’s aggressive recruitment, and attributed her decades-long loyalty to a search for parental approval. She grew up very poor and isolated, her parents were illiterate farmers, and victims of La Violencia between the Liberals and Conservatives in the 1950s that preceded and led to the rebel movements. They didn’t want her to join “the boys in the mountains” as the FARC was referred to their small village. Her parents didn’t give her their blessing, but her father told her, “if you are going to be a guerrilla fighter, be a good fighter.”

Elda Neyis Mosquera Garcia, top ex-FARC Commander then known as Karina.

The two other women I spoke to talked of their time in FARC as essential to finding their identity and purpose as young women recruited out of Bogota. They talked of a highly disciplined but joyful life in the 1990s and early 2000s—of rising before dawn to drink coffee, read Marxist literature, and discuss the news from a Socialist perspective. There were swims in pristine lakes and at night sometimes theatrical skits. There was an earnest, though flawed, attempt at an egalitarian lifestyle.

As the military conflict intensified under Uribe and Plan Colombia, security concerns eliminated the daily pleasures. Bedtime began at dark (6pm in Colombia year-round) everything had to be moved under canopy to avoid aerial surveillance, phones and computers were reserved for only one person in a unit due to computer chip tracking, and bombardments increased in frequency and intensity. As Valentina, an ex-FARC combatant put it to me, her eyes widening, “Your country is very fierce.” (“Tu pais es muy feroz.”)

Ex-FARC guerrilla and miliciana Valentina showing off the line of beer brewed by one of the many ex-FARC run business. She travels with personal security. Over 350 ex-FARC have been killed since the 2016 Peace Treaty, with widespread impunity.

But ex-FARC combatants have also welcomed the new era, having children for the first time (it was prohibited by the FARC during the conflict). Some have pooled their money to create small businesses. I spoke to Valentina at Casa Cultura La Roja, a café in Bogota run by former FARC combatants, while her six year old daughter played video games on her phone and peppered us with questions.  “Politics was never just a political discourse for us,” says Valentina “Politics is an activity.” Artistic portraits by demobilized combatants line the walls, and beer brewed by ex-combatants is for sale.

The most powerful cases of reconciliation I encountered were completely independent and self-motivated. Almost everyone has some connection to the conflict, and come up casually.¹ Around 1am at the Maranada festival in Medellin, I met a twenty-something politologo (someone who studied politics and works in some politics-adjacent space) who was working with former Colombian soldiers who had served prison time. He invited me to an event later in the week to meet some of them.

So a couple days later I sat across Wilson and Ronaldo (aliases), two former Colombian military soldiers in their thirties, at a café at the bustling Terminal Norte train station. As Christmas approached, Colombians, especially in Medellin, adorn every nook and cranny with Christmas lights and Christmas trees. The city was drowning in flashing lights, and a huge Christmas tree towered three stories high in the train station. (In my modest, family-run hotel there were at least nine Christmas trees of various sizes).

Medellin at night at Christmas time

The flashing lights and holiday spirit stood in stark contrast to their bracing stories, and the empanadas and fresh juice I ordered went untouched until after we talked. They detailed their lives growing up in rural Antioquia, enduring violence, exploitation, and extortion by various armed groups--EPL, FARC, AUC, Colombian military--who took turns maniacally controlling their remote villages. Wilson’s uncle was slaughtered by his cousin, a FARC leader, because his uncle had married the sister of an ex-EPL (rival rebel group) member. “He took his baby daughter out of his hands, and killed him with a machete in front of his wife and mother,” recounted Wilson flatly. Wilson survived in makeshift shelters in the mountains for months when pressure to join a rebel group was too intense. 

They finally fled with their families to Medellin, but shortly thereafter they were picked up on the street by Colombian military men, ushered into a paddy wagon, and told they had to complete their year of national military service, obligatory for all Colombians.

They were transported to the Caribbean coast, more than a day’s journey by road, to train as soldiers and fight rebel groups in the mountains south of Santa Marta. They endured abusive training by their superiors, having to run and maintain balance between burning tires and sewage water while being beaten. They believe it was a form of psychological breaking.

For eventually they were foot soldiers in staged massacres in which innocent young men who’d been kidnapped and dressed up in FARC rebel fatigues were killed in fake combat missions. It was a policy orchestrated by top military commanders to increase enemy casualty numbers during the height of Uribe’s offensive against the FARC in 2002-2008. Known as the False Positives scandal, over 6,400 innocent, mostly poor, rural young men were killed in this way. 

As Ronaldo recounted to me his confusion and fear the night he fired on the supposed combatants, who had been planted there by his commanders, his hands shook, and his voice wavered. (After our interview he texted me to say he hopes I see him as a normal person. I assured him I would have probably done the same as him, faced with violence for not following orders. He thanked me for the opportunity to tell his story in full, as he is still trying to forgive himself, even as he also sees himself as a victim.)

A bridge Wilson and Ronaldo built for a poor community in Itagui on the outskirts of Medellin.

Wilson said he never fired his weapon during one of these False Positive actions, but was sent to prison anyway for nine years because his unit was implicated. In the special military prison, Wilson and Ronaldo could finally pursue an education. They became expert builders, and now run a scrappy but successful contracting business. A couple days after talking to him in the train station, Wilson invited me to his house, a basement apartment in a poor communa (like Brazil’s favelas) in Medellin’s hills where he lives with his parents, grandmother, and two younger siblings. He is immensely skilled, having made every piece of furniture for the cramped apartment, plus wood carvings and paintings that adorn the walls.

Later, Wilson and Ronaldo showed me a concrete bridge they were building over a ravine that had only crumbling wooden planks on the outskirts of Medellin. Children had been falling into the ravine, especially after heavy rains when the rickety bridge flooded. It was a community of internally displaced people from the countryside. For weeks they toiled with other former military implicated in the False Positives scandal, sinking pillars into the steep ravine, pouring concrete, soldering metal railings. A week after I spoke to them, they sent me photos and videos of the inauguration of the bridge. Community members held white balloons. Cardboard dove cut outs had been affixed to the bridge’s railing. It was a small gathering, and they had opted to not invite press. Wilson texted me, “This was the best process we’ve done, and nobody knows about it but us.”

1. In Soacha, a working class city outside of Bogota, I strolled past a bohemian neighborhood bar with wood benches and reggae blasting on a sunny afternoon. I smiled approvingly, this was my kind of joint. Walking back a few minutes later Richar, the laid-back kind-vibes proprietor, invited me in to drink chicha, a fizzy, fermented drink. Richar it turned out was also a theater artist. He was lounging with his best friend from childhood, Jaime Pachon, who was recovering from back surgery. Jaime had a firm handshake, gave me his first and last name on introduction, and was country strong, in sharp contrast to Richar’s loose-limbed, gangly bearing. Jaime had grown up farming in the countryside (working half days from first grade on, and full time after fifth grade, as was typical of his generation growing up on farms).  He had no political inclination at the time, but the FARC was terrorizing his village and stealing his cattle. So he joined the right-wing AUC, and at fifteen years old was in charge of 40 men. Jaime eventually left the AUC because, “what they were asking me to do was too ugly,” and joined the Colombian military, before becoming disillusioned there as well. Neither Jaime nor Richar felt it at all strange that they were best friends despite having had such different adolescent experiences.

Sharing chica with Rubiela, whose son was a False Positives Victim, Richar, propietor and theater artist, and Jaime, farmer and ex-AUC and Colombian military soldier in Soacha, Colombia.