Constanza’s voice was trembling when she stood to address the guerrillas’ delegate. “You killed my mother,” she said. “You killed my two brothers, and you killed 48 members of my family circle.” She was face to face with a representative of the group responsible for the murders: the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, better known as Farc.
Nearby was a priest, and a delegate representing Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos. All were in Havana to seek redress for the eight million victims of the world’s longest-running civil war.
So long and so bloody is the conflict that many Colombians simply refer to it as La Violencia, an evil that has ravaged their nation for more than half a century. Pope Francis, who is due to visit Colombia early in 2017, is keen that this, the fourth set of peace dialogues to date, should succeed. “We cannot allow ourselves another failure,” he noted while in Cuba last year. Even if the looming deadline – March 23 – for signing off a peace deal is missed as both parties tease out critical final points, an end to war appears in sight.
This time, talks have focused on the victims. Eighty per cent are civilians, scarred by the murder of relatives, by rape, kidnapping or forced displacement. Asked to mediate, the Church brought 60 victims to Cuba.
“We thought it makes no sense to include victims on the agenda and not listen to them,” explains Archbishop Luis Augusto Castro, the mild-mannered president of the Colombian bishops’ conference. “In Cuba, they were able to express their grievances in front of Farc and the state.” For many, the experience brought relief. “Each victim thought that they perhaps had been the worst treated of all, but began to modify that view on hearing the stories of the others. We support peace because we value life. That has been degraded and trampled upon in Colombia.”
Some 220,000 have died in the conflict. Farc and Colombia’s army are far from being the sole perpetrators. Other guerrilla groups such as ELN (the National Liberation Army) are active still.
Until 2005, another major player were the paramilitaries, bloodthirsty right-wing self-defence groups founded by wealthy elites frustrated by insufficient state protection from the guerrillas.
The Church too has had its share of victims: bishops kidnapped and priests murdered. Some churchmen ventured into the jungle to beg guerrillas not to attack their impoverished communities. Archbishop Castro was formerly Bishop of San Vicente del Caguán, part of an area the size of Switzerland handed to Farc by a previous president during an earlier, disastrous peace bid. The archbishop persuaded Farc to free 60 kidnapped soldiers in exchange for a parcel of land. “Bishops have engaged in dialogue with the guerrillas for pastoral not political reasons,” he stresses.
In the approaching “post-conflict” era, he says, Colombian society needs reconstructing. “It is like a house that needs building on ethical and spiritual foundations, with a new politics, free from the social exclusion which has led to the fighting.”
Illiteracy is rife among Farc’s rank and file. Tales to rival those of the late Gabriel García Márquez circulate of wealthy kidnapped Colombians in the jungles teaching their teenage captors how to read and write. For some, joining Farc was simply a job option. Others wanted to avenge the murder of loved ones. The violence, says Archbishop Castro, has fuelled cycles of revenge. A 2014 survey cited vengeance as the cause of 79 per cent of all murders in Colombia. The way out of this trap is forgiveness, he argues: “It restores to the victim the dignity stolen from them by violence”.
Not all agree. Just as the talks divide opinion – cynics snipe that President Santos is handing Colombia to Farc – so does forgiveness, says Dr Andrei Gómez-Suárez of the pro-peace think tank Rodeemos el Diálogo. “Fifteen per cent of Colombians have been affected by the conflict, consequently there is polarisation about how you deal with the past,” he says. “Some say forgiveness equals lack of accountability, forgetting what’s happened. Others think forgiveness the only way forward. A third group are prepared to forgive some but not others.”
Compounding such tensions is dissent over the transitional justice system proposed to judge war crimes. Early confessions, for instance, will merit shorter jail terms – between five and eight years – if the guilty offer redress to victims. The accent is on restorative justice: reintegrating former guerrillas into society, so they have a stake and want to belong.
The arguments roll on. Yet, despite the question marks, instances of reconciliation are already occurring. In Havana, a tearful Constanza was approached by Ivan Márquez, the Farc representative. He apologised for the murder of her relatives and expressed admiration for her dead brother, Rodrigo. And then they embraced.
Bess Twiston Davies is a freelance journalist specialising in religious affairs
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