Territorial Peace Five Years After the Peace Agreement in Colombia: An Analysis of the Discourse of the Former FARC-EP

Literature Review And Theoretical Discussion

Within the vast literature on peacebuilding, the territorial peace envisioned by the Colombian peace agreement is a very new element (Cairo, Oslender, Piazzini and Ríos, 2018). This type of peacebuilding is part of the maximalist framework that goes beyond the reductionist conception of peace as merely the absence of violence (Curle, 1976) and highlights the need to eliminate the structural and symbolic elements that are conducive to such violence (Rummel, 1998). In fact, according to the Kroc Institute (2017), the territorial component is the one aspect that clearly distinguishes the Colombian peace agreement from any other previous peace settlement in the world. This can be seen, for example, in the absence of any reference to the territorial dimension in the most important peace agreements on the Latin American continent, such as those reached in El Salvador in 1992 and Guatemala in 1996.

Although positivist approaches to the statistical and numerical study of peace are increasingly dominant – as seen in the works published in journals such as the Journal of Peace Research or the Journal of Conflict Resolution – it is essential to highlight the need for qualitative methodologies and discursive studies that focus on accounts and testimonies from the actors involved as a necessary complement. First, they enable us to articulate and reflect more critically on aspects that run the risk of being rendered invisible by methodologies of a statistical nature (Dedring, 1981). Furthermore, territorial peace, according to theoretical arguments put forward by Woodhouseet al. (2015) integrates structural elements (Galtung, 1969), such as poverty reduction and socioeconomic opportunities and others of a multidimensional nature (Azar, 1990), including the need for cross-cutting gender, ethnic, and territorial approaches and the strengthening of social and institutional capital, among others. The complexity of these approaches calls for moving beyond a merely numerical approach.

Any approach to territorial peace should avoid myth-making and utopianism. Thus it is necessary to abandon the ideas of perfection and completeness that usually surround this concept (Muñoz, 2000). Territorial peace must be understood realistically as an unfinished process under continuous construction and subject to a constant tension between pragmatism and transformation (Ríos and Gago, 2018). Consequently, addressing territorial peace in its essence implies considering social, political, economic and cultural aspects in a strictly local key and, by extension, from anecessarily singular and distinctive perspective (Koopman, 2020). Of particular importance, territorial peace is an intricate and ambitious issue, fueled by diverse ecological-environmental and multicultural elements (Iranzo, 2021) that put local communities and their interaction with the central level of government at the center of the debate (Rodríguez-Iglesias, 2020).

At the same time, the territorial view of violence has been extensively studied. Since the 1990s, the territorial perspective has dominated the understanding of violence and its relationship with factors such as the drug trade (Echandía, 2006), the absence of the state (Reyes and Bejarano, 1988), and the strategic routes of illegal activities (Salas, 2010). The signing of the Agreement with the FARC-EP has thus opened an important window of opportunity for peace studies, which, until now, have only been given residual importance. In recent years, different studies have focused not only on territorial peace but also on an epistemological renewal centered on a qualitative perspective and, in many cases, on a discursive approach (Cairo et al., 2018; Rodríguez-Iglesias, 2020; Lederach, 2020). This study has the added value of including accounts and testimonies drawn from interviews with leading members of the former FARC-EP. These voices generally receive minimum attention because of the predominance of works that focus on reproducing the discourse of the institutions, political elites, or actors such as, for example, communities of victims. Nonetheless, the accounts of the guerrillas themselves require attention if the tensions, expectations, and contradictions surrounding territorial peace are to be effectively explored.

Methodological Aspects: Narratives And Interview (Geo)Political Research

(Geo)political discourse, understood in this paper from its overlap with peace research under the critical perspective of political geography, allows us to delve into the meaning of spatially located political practices in relation to the peace agreement signed in 2016. Although not very common in the Colombian case, narratives have been a relatively common source in social, political, and geographical research since the mid-1970s. Thus, Prokkola (2014: 442) highlighted their importance in geopolitical research in that they “make sense of experience and construct meaning.” That is, they enable researchers to immerse themselves in the description of the contexts and the strategies of the actors who produce the discourse, reconstructing a systematic knowledge of how meanings and political processes are interpreted and represented.

In this paper, we have opted for semi-structured interviews with prominent members of the formerFARC-EP, who subsequently, with different trajectories, became key spokespeople, first in the Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común, (Common Alternative Revolutionary Force, FARC) and later in its current version known as Comunes. The interviews are presented in the form of frame analyses, either diagnostic (causes, possibilities and problems related to territorial peace), prognostic (focused on offering solutions to strengthen the implementation of territorial peace), or the examination of motives (Snow and Bedford, 1988).

Territorial peace is a particular way of understanding the territory and our relationship with it. Based on an open and dynamic identification process, it draws on social roots in which peace is projected as a political product resulting from the interaction of sociopolitical and territorial agents and structures. Such interpretative frameworks never express an objective reality because every narrative is ideologically charged and behind the discourse there is always an intention to stabilize or disrupt social expectations, to alleviate or exacerbate social tensions, and to strengthen or weaken consensus.

The interviews were carried out in accordance with the criteria of heterogeneity, representativeness, and saturationin orderto gather a sufficiently diverse range of viewpoints for characterizing and critically reflecting on the different positions that exist within the former FARC-EP. Among those interviewed were four of the five senators currently serving in the guerrilla successor party (Comunes): Griselda Lobo (“Sandra Ramírez”), Jorge Torres (“Pablo Catatumbo”), Israel Zúñiga (“BenkosBiohó”) and Judith Simanca (“Victoria Sandino”). Other interviewees were associated with the House of Representatives, such as former congressman Benedicto González (“Alirio Córdoba”) and Ansisas García (“Pedro Baracutao”), of the Department of Antioquia for the 2022-2026 term. There were also interviewees who stand out for their relevance, both during the guerrilla period and later in the political party: Ubaldo Enrique Zúñiga (“Pablo Atrato”), former president of Ecomún ⁴ ; Tanja Nijmeijer (“Alejandra Nariño”), FARC-EP negotiator in Havana, and Germán Moreno (“Rafael Malagón”), current manager of Ecomúnand a member of the National Directorate.

All interviews were recorded with the express permission of the interviewees with the caveat that their content could be quoted in academic contexts, to which they gave their full consent. The interviews took place between February 13, 2021 and April 20, 2021, and their duration ranged from 40 to 100 minutes. All the interviewees were asked to reflect on and discuss the territorial peace envisaged in the agreement both in terms of its necessity and relevance, as well as the expectations and problems associated with its proper completion. Although there was common ground on the need for territorial peace in Colombia, some discrepancies emerged with regard to identifying the aspects hindering theproper implementation of the agreement.

Territorial Peace: A Concept Overshadowed By Non-Compliance

Once the agreement was signed, the years 2017 and 2018 were to be when arms would be laid down and the definitive ceasefire would take place, and the regulatory and institutional framework would be developed to facilitate subsequent implementation. Thus, since 2019, the agreement was to have gained momentum in its most purely transformative dimension, although, the Kroc Institute report (2021) acknowledged a mere 2 per centincrease in compliance, from 26 per centto 28 per cent.

In relation to the first point of the agreement, the Comprehensive Rural Reform (in 2019), after many months of delay, the government managed to pass 16 action plans for regional transformation and their corresponding roadmap in the framework of development plans with a territorial approach and a program with an ethnic territorial approach specifically for Chocó (signed in August 2018). Progress was also made in obtaining a US$150 million loan from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to support the creation of a register (cadastre) that was to formalize the lands provided for in the agreement: an important aspect but of little use as long as there were delays in setting up the National Land Fund, which was only able to secure 925,000 hectares out of the planned 3,000,000 hectares (Kroc Institute, 2020). By November 2020, of 104 promised provisions, only 4 per cent had been fulfilled (Kroc Institute, 2021), with 13 per cent in an intermediate stage, 64 per centin a nascent stage, and 18 per cent that had not even been started (Kroc Institute, 2021). The first point of the agreement is fundamental in that it gives priority to land titling in the areas hardest hit by the conflict and promotes investment in the cooperative and solidarity economy, technical and legal assistance, income and credit generation, association networking, labor formalization, and social protection, as “Sandra Ramírez” put it (interview, Bogota, February 13, 2021):

What is the Development Plan with a Territorial Approach (PDET) included in the first point of the Agreement? It’s nothing more than the transformation of the worst hit regions of our territory. It is about the state re-engaging with these regions. It is about the state getting there. Bringing what it has never delivered. It has only brought crumbs, but it hasn’t brought real rural reform, with land distribution, with support for the peasants. It hasn’t brought education, it hasn’t brought health care.

The second point of the agreement with the second most links to the territory is related to illegal drugs (point four). In this regard, the comprehensive national program for the Substitution of Crops for Illicit Use has experienced significant delays in its implementation, added to a notable difficulty in creating spaces for dialogue with civil society and a considerable increase in targeted violence on the part of armed groups and criminal structures. Between 2017 and 2021, the departments in which these criminal organizations were most present were the same departments with the most violent acts committed against former guerrilla fighters and social leaders (Indepaz, 2021a; UN Verification Mission, 2020, 2020b, 2021). For example, Antioquia, Caquetá, Cauca, Meta, Nariño, Norte de Santander, and Putumayo alone, with some of the largest numbers of armed structures (Ríos, 2021), also account for 90 per centof Colombia’s coca trade(UNODC, 2021).

To this end, in 2018, Iván Duque’s government declared the goal of reducing by more than half the total area affected by illicit crop cultivation. At that time, the figure was 171,000 hectares, while today it is 143,000 hectares. Although there is evidence of a downward trend, there are indicators that do not encourage great optimism, such as potential cocaine production, which rose to 1, 228 tons in 2020 – 8 per cent more than in the previous year (UNODC, 2021). In addition, under Duque’s presidency, there was a total absence of the consensus-building policies aimed at the communities in coca-growing areas, as foreseen in the Agreement, and the controversial and unsafe practice of aerial spraying with glyphosate was reinstated, which has blurred the meaning of territorial peace (Pablo Catatumbo, interview, Bogota, February 28, 2021):

The problem is not in the coca leaf, the leafis not to blame; the problem with drug trafficking lies in the commercialization, distribution and, above all, in the accumulation of capital and money laundering. But that’s never addressed, that’s never touched; the weakest link in the chain, which is the peasant farmer, is always targeted; the peasant farmer is not a drug trafficker. Most of the peasants who grow coca leaf are farmers with 1 or 2 hectares. The vast majority. So, we say “Hey, if there are 500 hectares of crops in Colombia, why don’t you start there? Fumigate those.” What’s more, the government hasn’t delivered on the quota and given them the money to start a different crop, but one that’s profitable, and which guarantees, that they will gradually be able to leave this illicit market.

The points of the peace agreement that were most extensively developed, excluding the last point, which deals with the implementation process and institutional support, are the second (political participation), the third (end of the conflict) and the fifth (victims). For several interviewees, many of the agreement’s most important provisions had barely moved beyond the normative leveland were not reflected in public policies that could truly transform violent environments. As for political and social participation, by November 2020, barely 12 per cent out of a total of 94 provisions had been fully satisfied, while 54 percent had some degree of implementation and 34 per cent were about to be started (Kroc Institute, 2021). Very little progress had been made in the hoped-for achievement of a more inclusive and effective democracy. By 2021 only timid advances had been made in electoral promotion, community broadcasting and specific actions in favor of transparency and the fight against corruption.

The greatest resistance revolved around the political reform bill. In this regard, the government withdrew the draft bill after excluding the issue of closed lists and gender equality, ignoring all the amendments proposed by the Special Electoral Mission created by the agreement. The 16 congressional seats in the above-mentioned support of the transition to peace were also put on hold until May 2021, when they were again taken into consideration thanks to appeals brought before the Council of State and the Constitutional Court. In addition, organizations in favor of political dialogue such as the national and territorial councils for peace, reconciliation and coexistence were relegated to a marginal position, while the different measures to regulate the rights to protest and social mobilization were also ignored. In other words, territorial peace from a strictly political perspective was distorted, as Victoria Sandino says (interview, Bogota, March 9, 2021):

Territorial peace is also determined by action and by the direct and effective participation of the people living in the territory, from the social movements, social organizations, and from the communities. Also in point 2, we agreed to dismantle paramilitary structures or the successors of paramilitary organizations. In practice, this has not happened; on the contrary, they have been strengthened. These paramilitary structures are also dedicated to and related to drug trafficking and therefore continue to operate freely in the territory, a very complex situation, very difficult in terms of security for the communities and for the social leaders in the territories.

The point on which most progress was made, according to the monitoring reports (Kroc Institute, 2020; 2021), was related to the ending of the conflict, especially because it encompasses all the components of demobilization, the surrendering of weapons, and reintegration into civilian life. Of a total of 140 provisions, 49 per centwere completed, 19 percent were in the intermediate phase, another 19 per centwere in the initial phase, and only 14 per centwere yet to be started. While the component relating to the cessation of hostilities and the surrender of weapons were 97 per cent satisfied, substantial progress was also made in reintegrating former guerrilla fighters into civilian and political life (59 per cent). Conversely, the biggest delays were in ensuring the security of ex-combatants (17 per cent), and a comprehensive approach to mine action was in the process of being implemented. Despite the strengthening of the early warning system to guarantee the security of ex-combatants, the murder of an extremely large number of former guerrilla fighters (United Nations Verification Mission, 2021) made it urgently necessary to reconsider an aspect without which any hope for territorial peace was impossible (Rafael Malagón, interview, Bogota, March 22, 2021):

Implementation is going through a very complex situation, and the security problem must be highlighted. The security problem is very serious. To date, 261 comrades have been murdered. And we have the problem of massacres, where the majority, I mean, it’s not only against the signatories of the process, this is a problem of a terrorist state and a terrorist government against an entire society that wants profound changes in this country.

Another important problem related to this third point lied in the barriers to land access for former guerrillas, given the lack of security guarantees and procedural delays in a reintegration process that features a high degree of agrarian vocation. Although Decree Law 902 (2017) empowers the National Land Agency to purchase and adjudicate land for the reintegration of former guerrilla fighters, in July 2021 the majority were still working on leased land. As of November 2020, only 86 collective productive projects had been approved for 3, 353 people, and another 2, 214 individual projects for 2, 692 ex-combatants, equivalent to less than half the former guerrilla population (Kroc Institute, 2021). Territorial peace was also conceived as the transfer of resources and capacities in order to ensure the successful reintegration of former guerrilla fighters into full civilian life (“Sandra Ramírez,” interview, Bogota, February 13, 2021):

Today, for example, we still don’t have land for agricultural production projects. If anything, perhaps there are two areas that already have their own land, but because the guys managed to buy it themselves. This lack of commitment to reintegration on the part of the government has also caused uncertainty among the people (. . . ) So the governmenthas devoted itself to individual projects in our production project process. They prefer doing it this way here. You’re given 8,000,000 pesos. That’s nothing here in Colombia. Since people don’t have capital, that capital disappears, that capital is consumed and you’re left with nothing. But if we’re going to carry out a collective project, then they put all the obstacles you can imagine in our way. This has a goal: to bring us down, to disperse us, more than anything else.

With regard to the last point of the agreement, the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparations and Non-Repetition met fierce opposition from the Duque government. From the outset, there was a delay in the approval of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace Statutory Law, because although Congress had completed the process of sending it to the president for approval on February 8, 2019, two days later the president presented objections to the law which, despite not prospering, delayed its enforcement until June 6, 2019. There was also little progress with the National System for Comprehensive Victim Support and Reparations and the comprehensive reparations policy that accompanies it. As of September 2019, the Search Unit for Missing Persons in the context of the armed conflict had only been able to offer advice to 870 people, and as of November 2020, the Comprehensive Collective Reparations Plans had been completed only for 15 of the 755 identified beneficiaries of collective reparation and 736 individuals (Kroc Institute, 2021). This, together with the exceptional situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the delays accompanying Law 1448 (2011) (the Victims Law), and the difficulties in delimiting and expanding the status of victims, resulted in very little progress in implementation.

Threats And Difficulties Surrounding The Peace Agreement: Comunes, Dissidents, And Saboteurs

The backbone elements of territorial peace, according to the interviewees, consist of investment and the building of socioeconomic and institutional capacities, political participation at the local level, the mitigation of the impact of the drug trade on communities, and the safeguarding of the lives of former combatants in the process of reintegration. Almost all the accounts coincide in accusing Iván Duque’s government of being the main saboteur of the agreement. Since the referendum, Uribismo staunchly opposed any dialogue with the FARC-EP, arguing that it would open the door to a scenario of Castro-Chavismo, adopting a purely socialist economic model (Cairo and Ríos, 2019). Once Duque became president in August 2018, the “peace with legality” maxim was upheld. The political leaders who supported Duque expressed doubts about the full scope of the agreement and felt that a large part of its contents could contravene the constitutional and legal framework (even though the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the Council of State had ruled against this presumption) (Gutiérrez Sanín, 2020).

Under these circumstances, the Duque government gave priority to individual reintegration, while collective initiatives were deemphasized and delayed. Similarly, the 16 congressional seats designed to give a political voice to the places hardest hit by violence met with resistance on the grounds that such representation would benefit the former guerrillas, despite the fact that this is expressly forbidden by the agreement. Moreover, Duque objected to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and in June 2019 reduced the budget intended for the fifth point related to victims by up to 30 per cent. This measure ruled out the incorporation of the peace agreement into the national development plan and thus prevented the agreement from having its own financial resource allocation in the national budget (Pablo Atrato, interview, Quibdó, March 18, 2021):

The first ones to sabotage the peace agreement are the government because they’re the ones who aren’t delivering. They’re just beating about the bush, using speeches and images and figures that don’t reflect the real situation. So that’s sabotage. If they aren’t working towards this territorial peace and they aren’t making investments, they’re sabotaging the implementation of the peace agreement.

The governing Democratic Center party stigmatizes the agreements, it ignores them, distorts them, and it doesn’t fulfil them as it’s obliged to do. The Peace Agreement that we signed was made with the Colombian state, not with any government. And those who have really sabotaged compliance with the agreement are the governing Democratic Center party. The peace agreement has been greatly damaged by being stigmatized and defamed by the Democratic Center who say they would be delivering the country into the hands of Castro-Chavismo (Pablo Catatumbo, interview, Bogota, February 28, 2021).

Most of the interviewees presented a common approach to addressing the problem of paramilitarism in Colombia, which they saw as an impediment to territorial peacebuilding. Since the end of 2008, once the demobilization of the former Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC) had been completed, armed structures began to proliferate in the same areas of influence and support of the defunct paramilitary project – even including well-known mid-level commanders and some former commanders. The Caribbean region, Antioquia and Chocó ended up being enclaves where this type of threat directly affected the proper implementation of the peace agreement.

Our country is full of “Águilas Negras” [the Black Eagles], the ‘Águilas Verdes’ [Green Eagles], the “Caparracos”, the “Rastrojos,” and I don’t know what. Often, we don’t even know who the commanders are, but we’re getting threats and pamphlets from the “Águilas Negras” here. We never know who they are. Where is the ghost who keeps sending us these threatening pamphlets? But then these pamphlets also become a reality. And they become a reality in the territories with the killing of leaders who defend the territory, leaders who defend the wildlife, leaders who defend the communities (Sandra Ramírez, interview, Bogota, February 13, 2021).

Today paramilitarism in the territories where the insurgency used to have a presence has been strengthened, logically, with a change in the way they operate, but operating in and controlling the territories. An example of this is the killing of more than 260 comrades and ex-combatants who signed the agreement. (Alirio Córdoba, interview, Pondores, February 16, 2021).

A very important issue that arises in the interviewees’ accounts has to do with the emergence of dissidents and groups that, five years after the signing of the agreement, continued to fly the FARC-EP flag. These dissidents are now key actors in Colombia’s violence, although there is wide disparity when it comes to justifying and understanding their proliferation. The only common denominator in discursive terms is the accusation that the state is also to blame for their growth, since they are ultimately seen to be the result of a failure of the state to comply with the peace agreement (Pedro Baracutao, interview, Medellin, April 20, 2021):

The only one responsible for this situation is the Colombian state. We kept our word in agreeing to the transitional points for normalization. So, we went and laid down our arms there. The responsibility from then on was for the Colombian state. The FARC-EP was responsible until July 2017. Then it started being sabotaged with the “Santrich” and “Márquez” cases. They started sabotaging the peace agreement against the people who gave everything for it to be signed.

Indepaz (2018), the Ideas for Peace Foundation (2020), and more recently Ríos (2021) have identified three different types of dissidents in their relationship with the FARC-EP. First, the groups formed by “Gentil Duarte,”former commander of the 1^st Front who was critical of the agreement before it was signed, was accompanied by prominent fellow sympathizers who even today support him in his goal to “keep the revolutionary legacy of the FARC-EP alive.” Such is the case of Iván Mordisco or ‘Jhon 40,’ with whom ‘Gentil Duarte,’ from the former 1^st and 7^th Fronts, was co-opting other structures, such as the former 28^th Front (Casanare), 10^th Front (Arauca) and the 33^rd Front (Norte de Santander), especially in the east and north-east of Colombia. This group, claiming revolutionary continuity with the FARC-EP, is motivated by the drug business and the benefits of the illicit economies associated with armed conflict.

As mentioned above, the dissident group known as the “Segunda Marquetalia,”was created by those who led the Havana peace process, Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich, in August 2019. Formed in Venezuela, it attempted to recast the guerrilla formula, motivated by repeated non-compliance with the provisions of the peace agreement, and in doing so represented a complete break with the leadership of the Comunes party. Of all the dissident groups, and as recognized even by the most critical sector of Comunes, this group is the one with the most coherent political discourse. It arose as a direct consequence of the impasse that the peace agreement underwent during 2018 and 2019, and the priority for participating in elections adopted by the party heir to the FARC-EP, led by its former commander, Rodrigo Londoño, “Timochenko.” Likewise, its political discourse evokes the need to recover the sense of territorial peace that was lost with the failure to implement the peace agreement.

Thirdly, there is an intricate array of residual groups and small structures that have proliferated in the coca-growing enclaves of the south (Caquetá, Putumayo) and southwest (Nariño, Cauca) and in departments such as Antioquia under the banner of the FARC-EP, although they operate as enablers of the illicit activities of more important structures, such as the ELN, “Clan del Golfo,” or the “Gentil Duarte” dissidents. It was against the latter type of residual structures that the greatest opposition was perceived among all the interviewees (Alirio Córdoba, interview, Fonseca, February 16, 2021):

There are structures that have been organized or are led by former militia, people who were not guerrilla fighters as such but who did have armed support in some territories. Other structures are made up of people who were deserters from the FARC-EP and were therefore familiar with the terrain, the handling of weapons, with the population, and with the business that takes place in these territories, including drug trafficking, but these people weren’t exactly related to the FARC-EP. However, for the press and in the language of the military, they are all dissidents.

A very different assessment is made with regard to the “Gentil Duarte” dissidents and the “Segunda Marquetalia” dissidents between those who are currently part of the leadership of the Comunes party and those who have been relieved from positions of responsibility because of their criticisms with regard to the functioning of the party. There is a greater degree of acceptance and legitimacy among the latter, as they see these dissenting views as a result of the failed implementation process and the demand for a much more structured political discourse–- closer to the essence of territorial peace:

I only call Gentil real dissidence. I see the case of Iván Márquez and Santrich more as a victim of the Colombian’s state’s failure to break the force with which peacebuilding from the territories was being positioned in Colombian society (Benkos Biohó, interview, Quibdó, March 5, 2021).

Gentil’s group has a certain political legitimacy, and I would really call them dissidents of the peace process, wouldn’t you? Because they were born out of a discontent that many of us feel with the agreement and above all with its implementation. And with the feeling that this wasn’t going to work. (Tania Nijmeijer, interview, Cali, March 16, 2021).

When they give it the name “Segunda Marquetalia” they’re saying: “What we’re defending is our origin.” I see it as a very isolated project, militarily speaking, very small. Iván is a politically very adept man who knows how to think big in politics. It’s possible that by changing this government, this structure will have a chance to open up a new space for talks in the future (Alirio Córdoba, interview, Fonseca, February 16, 2021).

These considerations, however, have little to do with the responses to the same question posed to the senators who belong to the current national leadership of Comunes. They express a critical position with respect to what such dissident groups represent:

“Gentil Duarte,”“John 40,”and Iván Mordisco were before the process. They said, “We’re leaving, this is a betrayal, you are going to lay down your arms.” They didn’t see, they didn’t calculate, they didn’t understand what signing this agreement was all about. Regarding the “Segunda Marquetalia,” it’s a betrayal. A betrayal by the head of our delegation and the signatory of the agreement, Jesús Santrich (Sandra Ramírez, interview, Bogota, February 13, 2021).

Finally, another discrepancy within the former FARC-EP involves the role played by the Comunes party in protecting and demanding the implementation of the agreement. The provisions in the second and third points of the agreement facilitated the creation of the party, which was initially constituted under the acronym FARC “Common Alternative Revolutionary Force” after its founding congress in August 2017. The selection of the first national leadership of the party produced conflict since the most votes went to Iván Márquez, whose positions clashed with those of the former guerrilla commander-in-chief “Timochenko.” The latter, who favored a more moderate approach, had to accept that Márquez and Santrich would head the lists for the Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, in order to become the party’s president. Likewise, he had to accept the adoption of the FARC acronym and the so-called “April Theses,” which applauds “the political work and action of Marx and Lenin and Bolivarian emancipatory thought.”

The legislative elections of March 2018 and the departmental and municipal elections of November 2019 resulted in very little electoral support and an inability to forge inter-party alliances. Throughout 2020, tensions divided the party between supporters and opponents of “Timochenko.” The latter group protested that the party was more concerned with maintaining political relations with the Colombian establishment and obtaining electoral gains than with taking a more critical stance on the implementation process. This critique was embraced by the senators and former members of the National Directorate of Comunes Benkos Biohó and Victoria Sandino, but also by other important figures such as Alirio Córdoba, Pablo Atrato, and Tania Nijmeijer (Alirio Córdoba, interview, Fonseca, February 16, 2021):

There’s no real willingness in the current national directorate to tell the government “You are not complying.” There are no demands or claims of non-compliance. With their, let’s say, weak, almost begging attitude, it’s impossible to get the adversary to comply.

In fact, several of them agree that this party position is the cause of a loss of support within the actual party, as Pablo Atrato acknowledges (Atrato, interview, Quibdó, March 18, 2021):

They say in their statistics and reports that there are more or less 3,000 or so people who are militants of this party. But actually, there were 13,000 or so of us who signed the agreement. In other words, where are the other 10,000? Some because we were expelled, some because they made us become militants, others for whatever reason or because they went back to the fight. Right now, this party does not represent the defense of the agreement, because they are only talking about 3,000 people, of the 13,000 of us who signed the agreement.

In contrast, the dominant sector of the Comunes party, whose national directorate includes the interviewees Pablo Catatumbo, Sandra Ramírez, and Rafael Malagón, considers that the threat to the correct implementation of the agreement lies rather in the weakness of the party as a result of its internal fracture. This fracture was consolidated at the beginning of 2021 when, with the renewal of the national leadership, the party’s leadership structure was strengthened with people close to “Timochenko,” in favor of a more moderate, pragmatic, and, to a certain extent, realistic agenda (Rafael Malagón, interview, Bogota, March 22, 2021):

No one was expelled, that must be made clear. They simply said, “Look, comrades, you aren’t complying because of this or that, because we have held plenary meetings here where political guidelines have been laid down and you haven’t complied with them. The internal affairs of our political organization are dealt with in the spaces we have, and you have taken them to the public prosecutor’s office, to Caracol Radio, to RCN, etc. You’re playing into the hands of the other side, so for now, comrades, you are no longer members of the leadership.”

Conclusions

This article has pointed to the relevance of territorial peace as a new approach to be considered in future peace-building experiences, as recognized by Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute and the United Nations. This approach is based on the conception of building peace from below, prioritizing the participation of the most affected territories and removing socioeconomic and institutional constraints in order to strengthen local democracy, as formally recognized in the peace agreement. However, the different aspects of territorial peace as embodied in the Agreement – decentralization, greater generation of local resources, promotion of regional political participation and the rebuilding of the social fabric – all underpinned by a constant dialogue between the different levels of government, were marred by poor implementation of the agreement during the Duque presidency, and the continuation of violence, which increased in time.

There is a degree of consensus among the various representatives of the former FARC-EP that territorial peace can in fact be conceived from many different overlapping perspectives. It involves not only political and institutional capacity building at the local level, but also the creation of employment opportunities and socioeconomic possibilities for the regions hardest hit by the violence and for the former guerrilla fighters in their full reintegration into civilian life. Territorial peace is an expression of the demands associated with the violence that have been neglected by the country’s political decision-making bodies, and the full guarantee of the lives of former combatants and social leaders and the proper functioning of local democracy. Most important, territorial peace calls for state intervention to control violence and drug trafficking.

There are other notable sticking points. The same territorial peace incorporated in the agreement is the subject of discussion within Comunes. While the sector led by “Timochenko” has assumed a position of relative acquiescenceas a result of its electoral prioritization, the more critical sectors support a more combative position in view of the non-compliance with the peace agreement. Dissident groups such as the “Segunda Marquetalia” have largely legitimized themselves by questioning the excessive preoccupation with participating in elections while showing less concern for the territories most affected by violence.

Nevertheless, there are points of agreement in addition to the differences. It is widely agreed that Iván Duque’s government was the main saboteur of the agreement, along with the successors of the post-paramilitary movement which threatened the lives of former combatants. However, the biggest differences can be found in two specific aspects: the determination of the dissidents to uphold the legacy of the FARC-EP and the political role of the Comunes party in relation to demands for compliance with the agreement.

With respect to the first phenomenon, members of the former FARC-EP display a relatively equidistant position, while the most critical sectors are more receptive to the pursuance of the armed struggle in a context where peace is impracticable. Regarding the role played by the Comunes, the most dissenting voices accuse the party of maintaining a weak, even condescending position with respect to the government’s repeated non-compliance. In contrast, the FARC-EP members reject this notion, arguing that this division weakens their stance on demands related to territorial peace in Colombia.

A need exists for research that explores the qualitative dimension of peace in Colombia that integrates the narratives and views of the actors closest to the peace agreement. The contradictions, tensions, and perceptions of the different social groups and political actors involved in peacebuilding, as recognized in recent years by critical peace studies, can only be explored through the study of the accounts and narratives of the actors directly involved in analyzing peace and addressing the challenges it poses. At the same time, other dimensions that are closely related to territorial peace should also be analyzed, such as ecological-environmental or ethnic-cultural aspects, which this article has not addressed, and other social, political, and economic aspects whose territorial representation and interaction with local communities can be both specific and heterogeneous. Furthermore, the evolution of the Comunes party itself should be taken into consideration. In 2021, it redesigned its national leadership precisely to avoid fractures in its political message and to strengthen its unified stance on the peace agreement and its implementation, among other issues.

This study focuses on the discursive production of an elite, but in future studies these opinions should be contrasted with those expressed by actors from the territories most affected by the violence, without neglecting the views of government stakeholders or military forces. These views can enable us to reflect more critically on a topic that even today provides countless possibilities for study and analysis.