Reason for Hope: Reflections on the Colombia Peace Process - The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

Over the last seven months, I’ve written about the many facets of the Colombia Peace Process. I began by framing the debate as a case study in the broader trade-off between peace and justice for countries emerging from civil conflict. I then laid out the many obstacles to the peace deal’s successful implementation, including a lack of support from the United States, low state capacity to restore internally displaced people to their homes, persistent violence against human rights defenders, and the influx of Venezuelan refugees. With every article I read, the prospects for a sustainable peace accord seemed less and less likely. In the right context, however, what Colombia has accomplished so far is nothing short of a miracle.

As I considered what topic to focus on for my last blog, I wanted to choose something a bit more personal than my previous entries. The idea came, unexpectedly, on a weekend trip a couple weeks ago to Gettysburg, PA, with the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. At dinner on Saturday night, I sat at the table with our bus driver, Carlos. The conversation drifted to politics, and Carlos brought up the example of Colombia as a reason to be optimistic—his parents immigrated had immigrated from Colombia to the United States, and compared to the stories he had heard from his grandparents from when they were growing up, today’s Colombia was far safer. I was surprised by his optimism, but through our conversation, I realized that my more pessimistic outlook was based on the context in which I was considering the peace process. Rather than looking at Colombian history from the past 50 years and using that as a reference point, I’ve compared the partially implemented peace deal to an impossible ideal. I have also relied primarily on the English-language press for my sources, prioritizing issues that may not be the most salient to people living in Colombia today. Both of these concerns—failing to look at the historical context and using a limited variety of sources—have influenced how I have told the story of the Colombian peace process.

When placed in the proper historical context with an emphasis on security, today’s Colombia begins to look more hopeful than the narrative that I have painted over the last several months. To understand why, we need to review what led up to the present moment in Colombian history. The FARC rebel group originated in a 10-year period of Colombian history known as La Violencia (The Violence), during which over 200,000 people died amid an armed conflict between the Liberal and Conservative parties. When, in 1958, the two parties ended the conflict and agreed to a system of rotating power called the Frente Nacional (National Front), not everyone was pleased with the arrangement. Some guerrillas decided to resist the government, including a Marxist group that would later name themselves the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Along with the 19^th of April Movement (M-19), the National Liberation Army (ELN), and other revolutionary groups, FARC engaged in a 50-year insurgency against the national government. The war cost the lives of another 220,000 people, 80% of them civilians.

This April 1948, file photo shows rioting and looting as a street car is overturned and burned during an uprising following the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in Bogota, Columbia. The 1948 assassination of populist firebrand Jorge Eliecer Gaitan sparked the political bloodletting known as “La Violencia,” or “The Violence.” The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are preparing for a peace deal, in Columbia’s half-century guerrilla conflict which has roots in the assassination, which they and the government say could be just weeks away. (AP Photo/E. L. Almen, File)

As the civil war raged between the Communist guerrillas and military, the country also dealt with violence from paramilitary groups and drug cartels. The military often collaborated with the cartels and paramilitaries, engaging in gross human rights violations and in some cases killing more civilians than those killed by the guerrillas. By the late 1990s, academics, journalists, and policy advisors were tossing around the concept of a “failed state” to describe the Colombian government’s lack of authority over its internal affairs.

Compared to the violence that the country suffered between the late 1940s and the early 2000s, today’s Colombia is far more secure. In 2017, President Juan Manuel Santos announced that the country had marked the lowest homicide rate in 42 years. At 24 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, Colombia’s murder rate remains far higher than the world average of 5.3. Still, using a historical context, this is a major improvement from the rates in excess of 70 intentional homicides per 100,000 that Colombia reached in the late 1990s. Colombia today is no longer engaged in a war with FARC. The major drug cartels—Medellín and Cali—have been disbanded. The language of failed states no longer applies to the country. On most dimensions of security, the outlook for Colombia is positive.

Supporters of the peace deal signed between the Colombian government and rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, listen to results of a referendum to decide whether or not to support the deal at the “yes” vote headquarters in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos recognized the referendum defeat. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

People within Colombia and outside of the country have a diverse set of views on the FARC peace deal, and no single story can capture the feelings of those who were primarily affected by the violence. Over the last several months, I’ve told a story about the many hurdles faced by the agreement, emphasizing how it could go wrong. Talking with Carlos helped me understand another story—one that favorably compares the status quo to the last 50 years and is hopeful about what the future holds.