Walking and listening attentively, like fallible pilgrims, eager to correct errors of faith, allows for discoveries.
For example, it is discovered that forgiveness has been overvalued by the official culture and even by the authorities.
The magistrates of the Special Peace Jurisdiction (JEP) were surprised by the resistance to forgiveness by the residents of a town in Bogotá notoriously hit by the war and called, as an act of faith, Sumapaz.
Anticipating the forgiveness of victims towards their perpetrators as the first step of restorative justice forces violated people to assume an additional ethical and emotional burden, instead of shedding their suffering by expressing their resentment.
Absolving inhuman abuse is humanly impossible, and requiring it aggravates the damage instead of mitigating it.
However, the farmers of Sumapaz clarify that this unacceptable step of apologizing does not prohibit them from collaborating.
The difference illuminated the path of the JEP.
They listened carefully and allowed themselves to be guided.
How does one come to want to collaborate with people who don't know each other?
Well, by walking together with other pilgrims and depending on the knowledge and hospitality of unknown inhabitants in areas that have been unattractive or difficult to get to know.
More than a space, the path is an activity, a verb before a noun.
Denotes movement instead of goal.
One
does
, for example, the Camino de Santiago.
The pilgrimage is valued not so much for its destination—scheduled and predictable—but for the discoveries that occur along the way.
To be a walker is to undertake a spiritual adventure, to set out on “a dark night of the soul,” according to Saint John of the Cross, to make a somersault through a world made invisible by sins and insecure.
Embarrassed and perplexed, the pilgrim spends many days on his long and eventful journey, tired and sore, before clearing up doubts and enjoying the enlightenment.
Walking is persevering, practicing, resuming the healing adventure day after day.
Inspired by the pilgrims who for centuries have traveled the Camino de Santiago to achieve a spiritual goal, we propose to do the
Caminos de Paz
.
It will be a practice and a gradual process that will lay the foundations for sustainable peace.
Both in Colombia and in other countries violated by so much war and misery, peace has been misinterpreted as a goal, objective, purpose, when it should be redefined as a continuous and vital activity.
The task does not end with agreements, nor with conventional reparations—monetary ones that will never be enough, legal ones that depend on implementation that is sometimes reluctant and even unfulfilled, or symbolic ones, rarely effective when they involve setting up monuments and putting up plaques. .
These conventional measures will be necessary, but they are insufficient, band-aids that cover the sore that does not heal.
Sometimes they serve to avoid looking at those who are beaten, so as not to hurt the eyes of the more fortunate fellow citizens who consider the matter of peace to be over.
Achieving lasting peace means changing the vision unaccustomed to seeing territories forbidden by violence and acquiring the will to collaborate and contribute.
The turn of the JEP occurred in 2021, during the fifth and last session that year of Pre-Textos, a program of interpretation through creation, in which both magistrates and farmers participated.
In the first session, we had tackled an essay on transitional justice and we all asked questions about the text.
The law doctors heard good questions from the farmers;
and the farmers realized that the doctors also had doubts.
Horizontal complicity developed, through creative activities, until generating the inspiration to undertake
Paths of Peace
, to continue talking, getting to know each other, collaborating.
We understood that peace is forged as we go, that the path is a verb and is made by walking.
Peace is not established all at once by laws and sanctions, but is earned daily, as nutrition is gained by eating.
They are vital and precarious activities, renewable and potentially long-lived, if they do not end.
Paths of peace
, furthermore, is a response to the rise of tourism in Colombia.
(Mikhail Bakhtin astutely remarked that every speech act is a response.) The entrepreneurs of new tourism companies are often ex-combatants who had restricted the roads for years.
Attracting curious tourists, perhaps morbidly, deserves a pilgrim alternative, more ethical and interesting in the long term, the
Paths of Peace
.
It is a call to get to know the territories and the people to fall in love with the country and take responsibility for its inhabitants.
It's strengthening ties instead of snooping.
It is a practice that is repeated and transmitted, of walkers who embark on the adventure of discovering territories hitherto ignored.
The pilgrims depend on the inhabitants who may be reluctant to forgive, but willing to collaborate.
The Caminos
will probably begin with the JEP's “Restoring Us” program.
It allows those appearing to reduce their obligations with the work of clearing land and planting trees, first in Usme and Ciudad Bolívar.
Adding the peace paths — in which teachers trained in Pre-Texts will participate to facilitate interpretation sessions with their students, residents of the area, along with those present engaged in improving the environment — will seed lasting collaborations.
The National Library takes note and prepares to accompany.
Possibly you will take the first steps of the Caminos Antioquia, thanks to the leadership of the EAFIT University.
They will tour both the metropolitan area of Medellín and the remote areas of the Department.
Spiritually guided by outstanding guides of citizen culture, Antanas Mockus from Bogotá and Sergio Fajardo from Medellín, we will set the example of knowing the territory and loving it as active citizens.
The first stage will be to go out and listen to problems and proposals.
The second is to make contributions of resources and services, whether to collaborate in the construction of schools, clinics, or cultural centers, or to develop new work and educational practices.
The routes await!
Both Colombia, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, among others, Latin American countries continue to be fragmented between safe metropolitan areas - with a majority white population - and other areas of Afro-descendant and indigenous people, ignored by institutions and lacking services and resources.
Let's take an urban bus or the one that goes to a sidewalk, to visit a still unknown place and pilgrimage in heterogeneous groups (students, professionals, community leaders, businessmen, industrialists, public officials, and others) who share the willingness to listen and cooperate. .
The year 2024 is crucial to lay the sustainable foundations for the desired peace.
The
Paths of Peace
through Antioquia suggest a challenge: What route will you follow?
Doris Sommer
is a professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at Harvard University.
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