Colombia’s first leftist president was elected in September and many are hailing a fresh start, yet the country’s barbarism beyond involving Pablo Escobar could hinder progress, according to a senator.
The South American country has suffered a war that has killed some 450,000 civilians and displaced more than 8 million people from its territories, a country plagued by drug traffickers and illegal armed groups.
Previous right-wing presidents failed to solve the problems of brutal militarization, but they managed to drive thousands of others out of work and homelessness.
President Gustavo Petro is now pushing for a “genuine and definitive peace” in the Andean country and has plans to advance negotiations with guerrilla groups.
The National Liberation Army and two splinter factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rejected a 2016 peace deal with the government, and Petro now expects guerrilla and paramilitary forces to lay down their arms.
“I am concerned about the excessive barbaric violence that society has suffered,” Colombian MP Maria Jose Pizarro told the Mirror on a stopover in London.
“Everyone talks about the TV series Narcos, everyone knows the story of Pablo Escobar. We have a history of senseless violence, but now we are in a new one and we have an opportunity to protect history that has been overlooked and denied,” said Ms. Pizarro. he told the Mirror, excitement shining in his eyes at the prospect of a new Array
Ms. Pizarro’s relationship with him is longstanding.
His father, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, a former guerrilla commander, intelligent friend of President Petro and candidate for president before he was assassinated in 1990.
But is a four-year period too short to get to the bottom of the same complex web of deep-seated disorders that have been ubiquitous for decades?
“The big challenge for us is to convince a part of the electorate that did not vote for us to lose that fear,” Pizarro said.
But hope is on the horizon as militias of nefarious extremist teams have stepped ahead and accepted peace talks.
Colombia and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the ELN, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States. and the EU have announced they will resume peace talks next month for the first time since 2018.
Analysts say a ceasefire is possible, but there is an option that one armed organization could be temporarily replaced by another or that those in peace talks could not keep their promises.
“This comprehensive peace plan has triggered a major reorganization in the configuration of the conflict,” Beth Dickinson, a Colombian analyst with the International Crisis Group, told the Guardian.
But for Ms. Pizarro, the long term is sacrosanct: “We are still out of violence and I know we are in a country at war where peace has yet come, but we need to build it.
“Yes, we are in the same country that had a center of conservatism. But we were told it was to replace and we replaced it. This conservative society is a thing of the past.
Mexican cartels and Venezuelan gangs have also crossed borders, further complicating matters and cocaine production in Colombia has recently skyrocketed, reaching levels four times higher than when Pablo Escobar ran his infamous cartel in the 1990s.
Pizarro denounced the “period of pity” in his country and said there will have to be an “urgent verbal exchange on the war on drugs. “
It has caused deaths and criminalized “peasants” who still have no choice to “grow the drug that is just a plant. “
She continued, “They plant the seeds and go to jail. This is a global verbal exchange and we have the legitimacy to offer that verbal exchange.
New hopes will shift farmers away from coca crop production by providing crops of choice to grow instead.
A group of experts based in Bogotá, Indepaz, doubts that such a brutal history with drugs can be erased in 4 years. But he hopes that the new government that addresses armed confrontation at its root, basically poverty, rather than militarization, will be a massive step towards progress for Colombians.
“We want attention and education about fitness,” Pizarro says.
She continued: “We have millions of displaced people, endless violence and thousands of other people killed. But we also have a beautiful generation that, despite everything, has noticed that their voice disappears and I am very happy that other people now have the opportunity to live.
“The world is at war, but Colombia is marching towards peace. “
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