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An ex-FARC fighter runs through the camp of former guerrillas with his baby
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
A man with crossed arms, nicknamed »Nider«, is sitting on a plastic chair in the mountains of Colombia and is wondering whether he should convert entirely to organic farming.
"The Europeans want everything eco now," he says, pointing to the opposite hill where the avocado fields are.
He is currently having some fruits fertilized with self-made trout droppings as part of a pilot project.
"If things go well, we go one hundred percent organic."
"Nider", whose real name is Jhan Carlos Moreno, was a guerrilla fighter in the Colombian jungle for most of his life.
Now he is the director of an agricultural commune consisting of 437 ex-fighters.
Behind him are a herb garden and a vegetable field, a few chickens scratch the ground.
A large German shepherd sneaks around his legs.
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Farm director Jhan Carlos Moreno
Photo: Nadège Mazars / DER SPIEGEL
A few barracks stand in the middle of the landscape, the walls painted with birds and fighters in camouflage suits.
The camp of former guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is an unreal place that you get to when you follow a serpentine road through the mountains of the Cauca, over gravel roads, through bamboo forests and villages with mud houses, up to a hill where the Way ends.
When the FARC made peace with the government in 2016, several hundred former rebels founded a commune here and named it »Nuevo Mundo«, new world.
But five years after the Treaty of Havana, peace in Colombia is little more than a nice idea from the past in many places.
In the camps of former rebels you meet disaffected people, left alone, at the mercy.
"The state does not adhere to the conditions of the peace treaty," says Leonardo González from the NGO Indepaz in Bogotá.
"The ex-guerrillas are not adequately protected."
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Graffiti with the face of Che Guevara on a house wall in Caldono, Cauca, a province in southwest Colombia
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
Even the way to the avocado farm leads through enemy territory.
"Farc" is smeared on the walls and street signs and the name "Dagoberto Ramos".
Ramos is the leader of a group of Farc dissidents who have resumed the fight and now call themselves Farc.
They mark their territory with graffiti.
No police, no military, the state is largely absent in rural areas.
Others have filled the power vacuum: armed gangs of ex-guerrillas who earn their living from drug trafficking and paramilitary groups like the Aguilas Negras, the Black Eagles.
They hunt down those who have made peace.
Ex-fighters who now tried to lead a civil life would be threatened, excluded from society and have a hard time making money, says González.
"Most of the projects don't work." That's why many would gradually join the armed struggle again.
"We hardly have any losses," says Moreno, however.
Some families even joined the community.
Why is this project so much more successful than others?
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Ex-fighter Libia Stella Nene is responsible for the avocado plants
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
“Strategy and location,” says Moreno.
In 2016 they commissioned a market analysis, he explains and pats the German shepherd, "the avocado had growth potential for the next three decades and increasing export opportunities with each passing year."
The 30-year plan of the Marxist ex-guerrillas also includes 2000 pigs as well as a fish farm and a green electricity system.
Moreno is currently looking for an engineer to build them.
He also wants to hire an external marketing director and five psychologists "to improve the well-being of our people."
A man in a tank top walks past.
He used to be a famous commander.
He's been missing a hand and an eye since a land mine exploded beneath him.
Screws and a metal plate are stuck in his shoulder and upper arm to heal a gunshot wound.
He nods gently.
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Ex-commander Julio Eduardo Gutierrez lost an eye and a hand when a land mine exploded beneath him
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
With the peace treaty, every fighter who laid down their arms received up to eight million pesos from the state,
around 2000 euros.
The founders of the municipality paid the money into a community fund in order to be able to work as avocado farmers in the future.
The fruits are to be sold on the world market, in France and Germany.
»This has nothing to do with capitalism«, Moreno assures us, »us
convict
the military structure in a corporate culture. «It is not that simple, however.
His people are used to following orders.
But now it is important to take personal responsibility.
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Jhan Carlos Moreno shows a photo of his son who is growing up with his grandparents
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
Moreno's transparent cell phone cover contains printed family photos, on which he can be seen with his wife and son.
His son, six years old, grows up with his grandparents, as it used to be for the guerrillas.
You make a lot of phone calls and see each other once a year for his birthday.
"We have hundreds of children," says Moreno.
Many of the ex-fighters do not sleep in the camp, but with their families in the nearby villages, and are approaching a normal life.
"We're trying to be happy here," says Moreno.
But since the peace treaty, no year has started as bloody as 2021.
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The municipality's avocados are to be exported to Europe
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
"Too many are trying to destroy the peace process," says Moreno, "they are afraid of the truth." After 50 years of civil war, it is now slowly coming to the surface.
As a farc, they asked people to forgive them for the suffering they caused.
Ex-guerrillas meet three times a week with people from the villages in the town hall of Caldono for a kind of therapy session.
They light candles.
The fighters talk about their lives and apologize to mothers who have lost their sons.
Sometimes they hug.
"But we also know what we haven't done," says Moreno.
A large part of the murders of civilians, for example, was carried out by paramilitary groups, according to the United Nations.
The military also committed human rights crimes.
Many are still unexplained.
"They're killing anyone who can help solve the problem," Moreno believes.
A total of 261 former FARC fighters have been murdered in Colombia in the past five years.
Human rights activists complain of impunity for the perpetrators;
the right-wing government of Iván Duque rejects this.
Moreno's people have already been hit several times.
In November of last year, murderers lured one of his comrades into an ambush: He was also making some money for his family by delivering food on his motorcycle.
His killers placed a false order and riddled him with machine gun shots.
Moreno points to the wooded mountains.
“You're up there somewhere.
And they are constantly trying to poach us. ”The offer would be between around 500 and 2500 euros
the armed groups monthly, depending on how high one was once in the hierarchy of the FARC.
If you refuse, the family is threatened.
"Who are they?" He asks.
The guerrillas never paid wages, it was about an idea.
“You're not going to stop making offers to us.
They know that we have the best fighters. "
Moreno leads into his eat-in kitchen.
His wife, Alba Valencia, 39, with the Farc for more than 20 years, is preparing coffee.
They met back then in the jungle and have been a couple ever since.
The walls are plastered with maps.
Moreno shows where in the area his fields and stables are - and where not.
“I can't go here, everything is full of coke fields.” He points to a region circled in red, “It doesn't work there either, a train line is being built there, we already know that there will be violence;
It doesn't work here either, multinational companies have palm oil grown here, they would send the paramilitaries and drive us out «.
At one point there is a red-headed needle in the card.
At that time, you could choose the location for the commune, says Moreno.
It is a strategically ingenious place: on a well-arranged hill, only six hours from one of the largest ports in Colombia in Buenaventura and in a protection zone where the indigenous people are strong.
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An indigenous woman near the farm at Caldono
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
The Nasa indigenous community controls the area around the town of Caldono.
They do not tolerate commercial coke cultivation or weapons on their territory.
With the Guardia Indigena they have a kind of police of their own, albeit unarmed, which tries to keep the criminal groups as far away as possible.
95 percent of the ex-guerrillas in the community have indigenous roots themselves, and they come from the Nasa community.
"The indigenous people have decided to take the fighters back," says Carolina Buitrago, 24, a psychologist from Bogotá with strict glasses and perfect make-up, who suddenly appears in this eat-in kitchen as well.
Buitrago works as a volunteer for the state agency that takes care of the ex-fighters in so-called »reintegration zones«.
"This is the jewel in the reintegration process," she says, "and the indigenous peoples are the key."
The community is subordinate to the local leaders of NASA.
They come running up the hill with their traditional wooden sticks and woven bags to meet Moreno and Buitrago, whose job it is to "strengthen the social fabric between ex-combatants and indigenous peoples."
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Ex-fighters Katherine Rodriguez and Alba Valencia chat on their mobile phones.
Valencia only sees their six-year-old son once a year for his birthday
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
A little indigenous girl sits at the kitchen table and eats a salt cracker.
"Everyone here looks after the children together," says Buitrago.
About 20 live in the camp, the youngest are still babies.
Many of the former combatants whose children were born during wartime had to give their daughters and sons to grandparents or neighbors to protect them.
Now they still can't be with them.
They continue to fear for their safety.
"The women suffer a lot," says Buitrago, "but through the community children they can also act out their maternal instinct."
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Miller Fernandez: “The jungle was always tense.
Now I relax, and then come the pictures «
Photo: Nadège Mazars / DER SPIEGEL
A few kilometers further down in the valley, Miller Fernandez, 34, opens the gate to the commune's pigsty with loud squeaks and grunts from the animals.
The floors and animals are clean, the side walls are open, the view falls on banana palms and wooded hills.
The pigs are divided into boxes according to age, the older ones on the left and the very young ones on the right.
"Before it was our job to fight, now it's our job to produce," says Fernandez.
He was 13 years old when he joined the FARC.
Compared to then, he says, “this is no work”.
He learned a lot about the pigs and was amazed at how much one had to take care of them.
He likes the animals, they are "sensitive beings".
He felt sorry for them because they were being killed.
"I try to make your life as comfortable as possible," he says.
Every day he washes them all off with a hose.
Sometimes, in the quiet moments, memories of the war crowd into Fernandez's mind.
“One was always tense in the jungle.
Now I relax and then the pictures come, ”he says.
His family help him let the past rest and focus on the future.
He is also proud of his work, of improving the group's life.
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Libia Stella Nene and her boyfriend Luis Eduardo Caso in their bedroom, behind them on the wall photos from their time as FARC fighters in the jungle
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
"We have no psychological problems," says Moreno, the director of the commune.
"Many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, but they don't show it culturally," says psychologist Buitrago.
Then, at the end of March, Dagoberto Ramos's group sent a letter to the community of Caldono: “We declare the mayor, the indigenous police and all the leaders of the local neighborhood aid to be military targets.
You have 42 hours to leave the territory, otherwise we will have to take up arms.
With greetings from the mountains. "
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Cuba Atazú, 49, has spent practically her entire life with the Farc.
She has four sons
Photo: Federico Rios Escobar / DER SPIEGEL
"Todo tranquilo," says Moreno.
Everything is fine.
The first avocado harvest will soon be due.
This year the municipality wants to pay out wages worth around 330,000 euros.
From politics, says Moreno, he doesn't expect anything.
But the FARC decided to make peace.
So that is their job now to keep the peace process going.
It is about healing this land.
Sometimes he thinks of the many people who have died, relatives, friends, friends, comrades whom he has lost.
Then he imagines the dead alive and thinks about how best to use them on his farm, whether they should plant onions or harvest avocados, feed the pigs or tend the fish.
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