5 years of peace in Colombia: rowing with the ex-rebels

Colombia’s impassable rivers were war zones. Ex-guerrillas are now inviting tourists to rafting boat tours there. A success story after five years of the peace process, which at the same time shows its greatest difficulties.

The rubber dinghy shoots through rapids, is thrown back and forth by the brown water masses of the Rio Pato, which rears up foaming and then flows gently gurgling through dense jungle and wildly romantic gorges. Only a few rays of light fall through the lush green of ferns and creepers that cling to the steep, moss-covered rock walls. Drops of water fall down as if in slow motion.

Then, suddenly, the current picks up again: “Right forwards! Left counter-row”, calls out rafting guide Hermides Montiel against the noise and lifts his oar into the waves. He knows every boulder here, every shoal – after all, he has traveled the river all his life. In the past with a rifle, compass and self-made rafts, today with oars, plastic helmets and rubber rafts. “This used to be a red zone,” says the 46-year-old, “with a lot of fighting, a lot of violence”. He is part of this story himself.

Hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced

Montiel fought in the Farc guerrilla. The Rio Pato was their core area – as was the entire region around the city of San Vicente del Caguán in southeast Colombia, where the Andes meet the Amazon. Until the peace process five years ago, when around 6,500 guerrillas surrendered their weapons. Their reintegration into a civil life is one of the most important goals of the historic agreement between the Colombian government and the oldest guerrilla group in Latin America. Montiel belonged to the elite unit “Teofilo Forero”. Now he’s taking tourists through rapids.

“In the past, the river always meant danger,” says Ana Palma. She is 24 and grew up in the 1990s and 2000s – the height of the armed conflict in which not only the state and the guerrillas fought, but also right-wing paramilitaries and organized drug-related crime. At least 220,000 people died, other figures speak of more than 370,000. Millions of people were displaced in their own country.

The peace process has enabled her generation to get to know regions and people to which there was previously no access, says Palma. But her family could not understand why she went on a rafting tour to Caguán: “For them, the ex-fighters are still terrorists and murderers.”

“Nobody is born a guerrilla”

Is reconciliation possible in a country that has been through more than half a century of civil war? “We won’t get a second try anytime soon,” said Palma. She wants her children to be able to grow up in a different country to herself.

“You’re not born a guerrilla. Each of us has a story,” says Montiel. As a student, he was involved in the Unión Patriotica, a socialist party that emerged in 1985 from the political arm of the Farc and the Communist Party. Around 3,000 members of the party were murdered within three years. “I had three options: exile, death or guerrilla,” he says.

At 13 he joined the armed Farc, as did five other of his 13 siblings. Did he kill himself later? “Never directly, maybe in combat,” says the ex-guerrillero. But in this war many were killed who had nothing to do with him. “Today we row for peace.”

A single success story?

Caguán Expeditions is the name of the initiative, founded in 2017, with which he is now traveling. In 2019, the ex-fighters took part in the World Rafting Championship in Australia. The media response was great, international agencies took notice. And yet the rafting initiative is not just a success story: it also exemplifies one of the greatest failures of the peace process.

“We feel insecure because of all the things that happened,” said Montiel later under the canopy of his simple house in the ETCR Miravalle – a training and reintegration territory for the ex-guerrillas. Miravalle is located on a hill with a spectacular view over wooded hills and is closely guarded by the military and police. More than 280 former FARC fighters have been killed since the peace agreement was signed in 2016. These are numbers from the United Nations. “You ask yourself: when will it hit me?” Says Montiel.

Violence is increasing again

Some ex-guerrillas went into hiding again and, for their part, broke with the peace treaty. Including Montiel’s former comandante and co-founder of the rafting project, alias “El Paisa”. He is said to be active in a new guerrilla in the border area with Venezuela, together with other influential heads of the former FARC.

The violence is increasing again, Andres Cardona observes. The photojournalist comes from Caguán and has been documenting the conflict for years: “When the FARC withdrew, a power vacuum remained in many regions that the state never filled.” Other armed groups came.

Today there are new conflicts: It is about the control of regions that are strategically important – for mining and cattle breeding, as cultivation areas for coca or for drug and weapons smuggling. Violence against environmentalists and social activists is also worrying. “The situation is very confusing, even for us journalists,” says Cardona. “Because we no longer know who makes the rules where.”

“Committed to Peace”

There is a growing fear that history will repeat itself. Because San Vicente del Caguán has already been the scene of a peace process: at the end of the 1990s, the government created a demilitarized zone for this purpose, and the FARC took control of an area of ​​42,000 square meters. In the end there was one photo left: President Andrés Pastrana next to an empty chair. Farc boss Manulanda Vélez alias “Tirofijo” did not appear.

To this day, there are still different opinions about who has betrayed whom. In Miravalle there is a large concrete statue of “Tirofijo”, his face is emblazoned as a portrait on the walls of the houses. He never had confidence in the state, says Hermides Montiel, but he doesn’t want to go back to his old life either. “Where should we go?”

Montiel shows the little kingdom that belongs to him and his wife: a table, a refrigerator, a washing machine. “I made a commitment to peace,” says the ex-guerrilla. “I swapped my weapon for an oar. It stays that way. So far, at least.”