Colombia: the end of peace, return to conflict

Five years on, broken promises are the main feature of the peace agreement signed between the government and the FARC guerrillas. President Ivan Duque's party are doing all they can to de-legitimize it. Money disappears, and useless bureaucracy flourishes in what many say is a mafia state.

Despite the commitment of the ex-guerrillas, more than 90% of whom have disbanded in some areas, the process of re-integration and re­ organisation has stalled. The process lacks a transformative and systemic vision, so that while some farmers have eradicated coca the substitute crops have not arrived, and also require years to produce a harvest. These farmers are now forced to work as labourers in areas where coca still grows, often 200 Km away. And fumigation -now supported by Biden's administration- destroys food crops as well as coca, and poisons the area with Glyphosate, a chemical banned in many countries because it causes cancer.

The film "Bajo Fuego" (Under siege), directed by Sjoerd van Grootheest and Irene Velez-Torres, focuses on the processes of land re-distribution and coca crop substitution since the peace accords in 2016 and the return to war in Cauca province, and follows Briceida Lemos and Leider Valencia, a peasant family in the Cauca region of Colombia. Colombia is the only country in Latin America that has not gone through a process of land reform since the colonial period, and as Sjoerd says: "What is happening now is not land reform either, it is just a proposal for the government to buy a few million hectares from private owners, and even that is not happening."

ThePrisma spoke to Ivan Grootheest, after the film was shown at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London.

The full interview with links and stills can be accessed on the Prisma Multicultural Newspaper site, where it was first published, here: https://theprisma.co.uk/2022/01/24/colombia-the-end-of-peace-the-return-to-conflict/