Colombia's Peace Experiment: 'Collective Reincorporation' by Maria Atuesta - USIP's 'The Olive Branch'
Many ex-combatants are sticking together to build communities rather than demobilize on their own.
Up an unpaved track, about a two-hour drive from the nearest town in the eastern Andes, sits a small village that could be mistaken for a Colombian hamlet of crude dwellings and vegetable gardens. But appearances aside, something extraordinary is going on here. The outpost’s population, comprised entirely of former guerrillas who fought for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, is engaged in an unplanned experiment in building peace.
The village, known as Simon Trinidad, is among a score or so of communities where FARC ex-combatants are collectively settling into new lives and economic activities, rather than pursuing individual reintegration under Colombia’s 2006 Social and Economic Reintegration Policy. In these communities, emerging on the sites of government demobilization camps after the 2016 peace agreement, the FARC is maintaining its structure and identity as it transitions from armed group to legal political party.
“If you live here you have to understand how we work as a community and join the effort,” Delia, a former FARC prisoner released under the peace deal, said during on a tour of the site. All residents of Simon Trinidad work together as a single cooperative, organized around production of organic fertilizers and food crops, and pig farming, she said. They also take courses to earn a high-school diploma and attend multiple workshops.
The peace accords signed by the FARC and the Colombian government provided for this novel approach to dealing with former fighters. Besides the customary individual process that has accompanied other disarmament, demobilization and reintegration efforts, the government agreed to support what is called collective, economic and social reincorporation...