De-escalation in danger

Keep the conflict in mind. Soldiers patrol the old town of Bogotá in the La Candelaria district at the end of May

Keep the conflict in mind. Soldiers patrol the old town of Bogotá in the La Candelaria district at the end of May

José Rivera is a cautious man. That's why the former guerrilla only meets in public places and places where he doesn't stand out in the crowd of people and his cell phone can't be easily located. "At home I would endanger my family and those around me, that's not an option," says the man with the almost white beard, the cheerfully sparkling eyes and the wiry stature, apologetically. Rivera, almost 1.70 meters tall, is a former guerrilla of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia (FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Until 2015, he was active as a simple fighter in several regions of the country, in the Cauca, Arauca, Caquetá, Guaviare and Santander. "After that, I was part of the team that observed the peace process for us, the FARC, accompanied the demobilization and reintegration of the guerrillas and guerrillas and helped with problems," remembers Rivera, sipping his cappuccino in a shopping center in the center of Colombia's capital Bogotá.

Rivera is one of around 13,500 guerrillas and guerrillas who signed the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the left-wing FARC in November 2016 and laid down their arms. »I was in Bogotá at the time, but I wasn't there for the act in the Teatro Colón, just a stone's throw from Parliament. The agreement was ceremoniously signed - with a ballpoint pen made from a cartridge," recalls the 70-year-old. He is sure that he made the right choice back then.

“We have decided to give up the armed struggle, but we have also committed ourselves to continuing our fight for a different Colombia,” says Rivera. The basis for this was the 323-page peace agreement, which was something like a compass on the way to peace for the majority of former guerrillas and guerrillas. »For many of us, the agreement was the roadmap that would gradually solve all of Colombia's problems - especially the land question. “It was and is the essence of the conflict,” explains Rivera.

Even ten years after the signing of the agreement that provided hope for peace, little has changed. Depending on the source, 700,000 to 1.1 million hectares of land have been distributed to small farmers in the past four years under Gustavo Petro's government. “This is positive, but nothing more than a cautious start given the ten million hectares that should have been redistributed according to the peace agreement,” says the former guerrilla, rubbing his hand over his chin.

In the meantime, Rivera also considered whether five or ten hectares of land could also be a solution for him and his family. But he rejected the idea of ​​moving to the country. »I grew up in Bogotá, in Tunjuelito. In the 1950s and 1960s, the district was something of a focal point for many people fleeing violence from the countryside to the city. Like my parents, they dared to make a new start in Bogotá,” explains Rivera. He grew up in the big city of Bogotá and is interested in culture, cinema and Colombian society.

Despite the peace agreement in 2016, the violent conflict continued to simmer until 2020 - only to escalate again afterwards.

He would have liked to have studied sociology, as did Camilo Torres (1929–1966), priest and legendary fighter in the left-wing guerrilla ELN (National Liberation Army). But that was just as impossible back then as studying audiovisual art, which Rivera is currently pursuing. It's something of a homage to his father, who couldn't finance his studies in the early 1970s because José had nine siblings. »My father was proud that I graduated from high school. He placed me at a state vocational school. That’s when I trained as an electrician.”

José Rivera's life at the time took place in an atmosphere characterized by curfews, labor disputes and odd jobs. He worked as an electrician in maintenance at Colombia's leading airline, Avianca, and organized his colleagues as an active union member. “We led labor disputes and sometimes went out at night to paint slogans against the strictly neoliberal company,” he remembers with a smug grin. But they were caught by the police, Rivera was arrested and released from Avianca. “My name ended up on a blacklist—I couldn’t get a job because I was in a union,” he remembers, taking the last sip of his cappuccino.

That gave him something to think about and radicalized him. Back then, the transitions were fluid in Tunjuelito anyway. Several armed groups were active there, from the FARC, but also the ELN and the city militia “April 19th Movement” (M-19), which negotiated a peace agreement with the government in 1990 and became a party. Rivera was well-connected in grassroots nonprofit organizations in the district. He worked for children and youth organizations such as Crecer Unidos (Growing Together), painted, did crafts with young people and awakened their creativity. Rivera sought contacts with independent critical theater groups such as La Candelaria, is still in contact with their director Patricia Ariza today and is now enjoying being active again in the cultural sector of the Colombian metropolis.

Things were different at the end of 1979. It was then that he decided to take up armed struggle. There was no specific trigger for this - it was a gradual process, remembers Rivera, taking a seat on one of the sprawling benches in the shopping center, where there is little going on. The aging former guerrilla likes the anonymity. "I was a simple FARC guerrilla for 35 years, then I signed the peace agreement in 2016," he says in a quiet voice. "For me, the armed struggle was the way to change something in this country and to ensure more social justice," he admits frankly. For the past 20 years he has been active in Arauca, the border region with Venezuela, where the armed conflict has not ended to this day. This is typical for Colombia, where the violence never completely stopped, especially in the country's border regions with Venezuela, Peru, Panama and Ecuador. Despite the 2016 peace agreement, the conflict continued to simmer until 2020 – only to escalate again thereafter.

Despite the peace agreement that was once presented with so much hope, the number of members of armed groups has risen to 27,000 in recent years, but the number of child soldiers has also increased, according to Colombian human rights organizations such as Indepaz. Since 2020, according to Indepaz, there have been almost 100 shootings of three or more defenseless people per year. There have been more than 300 deadly attacks on volunteers in the past two years. The human rights organization Human Rights Watch spoke in a report of a sharp increase in the recruitment of child soldiers, especially since 2022. According to the Office of the Ombudsman of Colombia, which heads the Defensoría del Pueblo de Colombia, an agency that protects human rights, armed groups have recruited at least 1,500 children since 2021, with a particularly high increase to 384 cases in 2023 and 625 cases in 2024. Approximately 30 percent of these child soldiers are between ten and 14 years old, and a disproportionate number of them come from indigenous communities and remote regions.

The reasons for the escalation of the conflict are varied, says Stefan Peters, director of the German-Colombian Peace Institute in Bogotá. »It is undisputed that the peace process and the agreement did not only have friends from the start. Above all, the planned agrarian reform was a thorn in the side of the elites." A problem that further worsened when two years after the signing, the arch-conservative Iván Duque became president.

The right-wing extremist President Abelardo de la Espriella announced a tough policy and wants to bomb guerrillas, criminal gangs and paramilitaries.

He succeeded Juan Manuel Santos, under whose presidency the peace agreement was negotiated. Duque did only the bare minimum to fulfill the obligations of the agreement. José Rivera also confirms that the “renta básica”, a kind of basic provision for the 13,500 guerrillas, was paid out on time. But many of the measures set out in the peace treaty were not implemented and were instead postponed. This included not only land reform, but also community development plans and programs to replace coca cultivation, which is the basis for the production of cocaine and therefore a main source of income for many armed groups.

Stefan Peters also says this, but at the same time points out that the state and its organs have not moved into the regions formerly controlled by the FARC as agreed. "Other armed groups have stepped into the vacuum and have established and expanded illegal economies, including the mining of gold and other precious metals, coca cultivation, but also extortion, human trafficking and more." De facto, Colombia never emerged from the cycle of violence, although 13,500 guerrillas and guerrillas were permanently withdrawn from the conflict and integrated into civilian structures. This is a clear success of the agreement, said Peters. But this is hardly noticed by the Colombian public anymore because armed groups are active again in ever larger parts of Colombia.

Abelardo de la Espriella, the new President of Colombia who was sworn in on August 7th, is now taking offensive action against this. He has announced a tough policy and does not shy away from bombing guerrillas, criminal gangs and paramilitaries. These attacks have replaced dialogue; the new president wants anything other than to stick to the peace agreement.

This is no surprise for Rivera, as de la Espriella had already announced all of this and more during the election campaign. "But of course I had hoped that the Pacto Histórico" - the left-wing party of former President Gustavo Petro - "would win the election so that crucial processes such as the land reform that has just begun can be pursued under a President Iván Cepeda," says Rivera, frowning disapprovingly.

During the election campaign, de la Espriella had already announced military rather than political solutions. He is supported in this by the USA, which sent 300 soldiers to the first joint anti-drug operation between the two countries on Tuesday last week. In mid-October, de la Espriella also ordered that unpopular works of art be removed and books banned from libraries. He announced that it was his moral and political duty to prevent “cultural spaces from being taken over by social communism.” The government even had objects of high symbolic value, such as the ballpoint pen made from a rifle bullet with which the peace agreement was signed in the Teatro Colón on November 24, 2016, removed from an exhibition at the National Museum. Sacrilegious for some, overdue for others. Resistance then formed against the decision in the form of the first demonstrations against the martial president, who occasionally poses in front of body bags containing killed guerrillas. Rivera also wants to take part in the next demonstration against the president, which is announced for mid-November.

One reason for this is that many of the former guerrillas and guerrillas now fear for their state “renta básica”. The agency that makes the payments has laid off a number of employees. “We fear that our payments will be stopped,” says Rivera, pointing out that 40 percent of the 13,500 former FARC fighters are 60 years old and older and no longer have a chance on the job market. There is a fear that the government could financially undermine the provisions of the peace agreement by, for example, cutting the budgets for important institutions such as the judicial body “Special Justice for Peace” (JEP), which is responsible for investigating and punishing war crimes, or the unit for searching for those who have been forcibly disappeared. Experts like Stefan Peters also share this concern and hope that international pressure will prevent de la Espriella's government from taking such steps.

This is also what Rivera, who recently kept in touch with former MPs from the Comunes party, wants. Since 2021, this has been the name of the party that former FARC guerrillas and guerrillas founded in 2017 under the then name Fuerza Alternative Revolucionaria del Común, also abbreviated to FARC. Part of the peace agreement was permission for the guerrillas to form a party and take part in elections. However, in the March general elections for the 172-member House of Representatives and the 108-member Senate, Comunes won less than one percent of the vote, as in previous elections. This time, however, a special rule was eliminated that guaranteed her five seats in the 2018 and 2022 elections, thus giving her the opportunity to appoint Andres Camacho as Minister for Mines and Energy from 2023 to 2025. Now the former FARC guerrillas and guerrillas are no longer represented in parliament, and their party, which was hardly active anyway, lost its party status. Rivera also admits the party's low response. In his view, the reasons for this are varied. »Perhaps we were naive, because for many of us the peace treaty was something like a joint government program. We assumed that we had a common interest in implementing it, in changing the structures in Colombia - building a more social country," he remembers. In any case, under de la Espriella we are a long way from that.