Political Report # 1190 There's Still Time for Peace in Colombia

Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos in September 2010.  Sara Rojas / Flickr By Kieran Duffy, Jacobin

The past couple weeks have been full of ups and downs for Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos. On October 2, he suffered a surprise defeat when Colombian voters narrowly rejected his peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). After four years of negotiations with the rebels, it seemed his plan to end the fifty-two-year conflict - the plan he had hoped would define his presidency - had come to nothing. As he negotiated with the deal’s opponents in a desperate bid to find a compromise, many Colombians feared that the country would be plunged back into war and that a unique chance for peace had been lost. Less than a week later, Santos was no doubt in a cheerier mood. The Nobel Committee had just announced it would award him its peace prize, making him only the second Colombian Nobel laureate. The august body praised Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least 220,000 Colombians and displaced close to six million people.”

Political Report # 1082 Peace in Sight: Historic Agreement between Colombia and the FARC By Miguel Salazar, Research Associate at the COHA

Featured Photo: Colombians protest for peace (2008). From: Marco Suárez

On Wednesday, September 23, 2015, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño pledged to end the country's internal conflict by March 26, 2016. Following La Violencia-Colombia's infamous civil war lasting from 1948 to 1958-the polarization of the country's political parties and ideological factions has led to a continuation of violence throughout Colombia. The left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) were initially formed as an armed peasant movement in 1964 that demanded comprehensive land and social reforms. Since then, the government and right-wing paramilitaries have waged a violent conflict against the FARC in rural Colombia that has resulted in a total of 220,000 deaths and over 5.7 million displacements.[1]