It looked like the longest war on this side of the planet had finally ended.
For 52 years the Colombian government has been fighting a civil war against the FARC,
the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, a marxist guerilla organization.
That have been bloody, and horrible, and have cost over 220,000 lives and displaced over
5 million people.
This has been going on since 1964.
And peace negotiations have been in progress for four years in Havana, Cuba.
Finally, in June, there was a breakthrough.
Signed a ceasefire agreement today, for more on this I'm joined by...
In September, President Santos of Colombia and Timochenko, the leader of the FARC both
sides signed the deal.
It was a historic peace agreement.
Leaders, heads of state all over the world came together, it was a massive celebration.
All that was left was to put it to a vote, to the people.
It was a formality, part of the deal.
The polls showed it winning.
The deal was going to pass.
And it didn’t.
Everyone was wrong.
The polls were wrong.
It was a really close vote - 50.2% voted against it.
Why would Colombians vote against such a momentous peace agreement?
There are a few reasons.
To understand, let’s go back to 1964.
In the mid 60s, there were a lot of leftist, marxist, communist type rebellions, particularly
in South America, and Latin America.
You might recognize this guy.
Or this one.
They took over nearby Cuba.
The FARC claimed to represent the interests of the rural people in Colombia.
There was intense inequality.
Here's an example: 0.2 percent of farms owned 30% of farmland.
This inequality had fueled a previous civil war from 1946-1958, too, with 2 million peasant
farmers forced off their land.
Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda took up their cause, forming FARC in the 60s after a government
assault on communist groups.
He wanted the government to redistribute land back to the poor, and rid the country of multinational
companies.
But they ended up funding their fight in horrifying ways.
The FARC specifically got especially powerful and wealthy from capitalizing on the drug
trade.
Taking a lot of the wealth from the drug trade and using that to kind of funnel back into
the rebellion.
They used kidnappings and ransoms this way too.
Some of the kidnapped were forced to fight.
They recruited child soldiers.
There was a lot of sexual violence, a lot of rape.
All this should give you a sense of why many Colombians opposed the specifics of the peace
deal.
The FARC agreed to end their drug trafficking, to give away their weapons.
They’d do community service removing their landmines.
They'd have turn over all of their weapons to special UN inspectors who would be on the
ground.
But in return, they’d face no jail time.
The Farc would also get 5 guaranteed seats in each of Colombia’s two houses of congress,
and financial aid for fighters who demobilize.
The groups on the right and the government also engaged in plenty of crimes, so it wasn't
just the FARC.
This sounded like justice and forgiveness to some.
But to others it sounded like surrender.
The previous president of Colombia, Uribe, led the campaign to vote against the deal.
He said repeatedly that he wasn’t against peace, he wasn’t against a peace agreement
in principle.
In fact he had led a crackdown on the FARC that had brought them to the negotiating table
in the first place – with heavy support from the US government.
Top leadership was killed, a lot of people demobilized, disarmed they went from 20,000
fighters at their peak down to 6 or 7,000 fighters currently.
It was effective, it kind of brought them to the negotiating table.
Uribe clearly wasn’t satisfied by their outcome.
This tweet is representative, “With these agreements, there is no justice, nor truth.”
But the thing is, if you look at a map of how people voted, some of the areas that were
hit hardest by the conflict?
They voted yes most strongly.
In Bojaya, the site of one of the FARC’s worst massacres, bombing a church and killing
119 people, 96% voted for the peace agreement.
And now everything is in complete disarray.
It’s unclear what's even going to happen.
But at this point, they cannot implement the peace agreement as agreed.
At least one thing is sure: the FARC and Colombia have not gone back to war.
At least not yet.
And Santos, the current president, and Uribe, the former, met for the first time in 6 years
and vowed to work toward peace.
Given anyone under 60 in Colombia has basically only known a country at war, let’s hope
they succeed.