Water, Blood and Butterflies: Why the End of Colombia’s Brutal Civil War Won’t Bring Peace

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Le Monde diplomatique – English edition | 1/16/2017

Until only recently, the town of Ituango was accessible by a single dizzying, two-lane highway  that snakes through the lush Colombian cordillera. The nearest city, nearly a full day away, is Medellin, known to the world as Pablo Escobar’s lair, and to the locals as the place where they could exchange their crops for quick cash. Insurgents with the main rebel faction – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym, FARC – would lay in wait during the last half of the country’s 52-year-old civil war, forcing bus companies to retreat until only one was left, making the most of daylight to avoid ambushes. Since the Colombian government and the FARC insurgents signed a ceasefire in June, however, bus carcasses have become more a memory than a roadblock.

Ituango’s rugged landscape wasn’t just a flashpoint for Colombia’s internecine war, but the town itself was also, in a profound way, a hostage of the conflict. After a series of incursions in the 1970s, the FARC saw the money-making potential of its tucked-away fields, and its strategic gateways to both the Pacific rim and the Caribbean, and decided to plant its flag and, more importantly, coca. Similarly, the army saw a combat advantage in the town’s mountainous vistas – then frequented by lovers and children – and installed military bases, while paramilitaries converted Ituango’s abandoned hotels into torture chambers. Like jungle predators, each sowed landmines to mark their territory. The only actor not attracted to the municipality’s forbiddenness was the state; surveyors, threatened by a topography seemingly pregnant with menace, stayed in their offices to draw the municipality’s comically straight borders.

After voters last month unexpectedly rejected an initial peace agreement, Colombian lawmakers last week unanimously ratified an amended treaty, designed to bypass the electorate this time around. The ceasefire signed in June has held, and Ituango – which is identified as one of the towns where the FARC would surrender their weapons and transition to civilian life – has not reported a kidnapping in 20 months. But while the paramilitaries have receded, the army has scaled back its patrols and FARC rebels have already begun to holster their guns, the state has now staked its claim to the one resource in Ituango left untouched by war: the majestic river Cauca.

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