Postcard from Colombia: land, life and lessons for peacebuilding

In Sincelejo, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, the difference between the densely forested farmland, and the shorn, bald mounds of cropland or cattle ranches is stark. On the ranches, the grass has been mowed and chewed close to the ground, its pale green reflecting the sunlight. At midday, the landscape is blindingly bright, the dryness is visceral. Standing at the edge of the mirador (viewpoint), I can feel how scorched the earth is. 

I’m in Colombia for a six-month field placement, part of my Master’s in International Peace Studies programme at the University of Notre Dame. After five months in Bogotá, the capital city, which is known for its cold and rainy weather, and rigid and uppity people, I’m now in Sincelejo, which is warm and bright, and where people move to bullerengue and vallenato rhythms. But Sincelejo and Montes de María, the adjacent region, are also infamous for the intense violence between guerillas and paramilitaries that inflicted suffering on the campesinos, or peasants.

Colombia has lived through centuries of conflict. The most recent period, known as La Violencia, was allegedly sparked by the assassination of Liberal Party presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9th 1948. This instigated clashes between left-wing guerilla groups, the Colombian government, right-wing paramilitaries, landowners, and other criminal armed groups. Unequal land distribution and contestation over territory for cattle ranching, mining, and the trafficking of illicit goods have been the main drivers of conflict. 

Montes de María saw the highest concentration of violence during La Violencia. Between 1996-2007, the region was fought over by eight armed actors, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which signed the 2016 Peace Agreement with the Colombian government, as well as other guerilla and paramilitary groups. 

Campesinos and other rural dwellers have been the ones most affected by the violence. The National Center for Historical Memory has documented over 60 massacres, though the inhabitants of Montes de María have recorded 117 as part of the Itinerant Museum’s research. The violence displaced 200,000 people, close to 60 percent of the region’s population. The armed conflict also led to assassinations, forced disappearances, and sexual violence, leaving the region with deep social, emotional, cultural, and psychological scars. 

My Master’s research has focused on how embodiment and trauma healing are used as methods of peacebuilding and reconciliation in the aftermath of Colombia’s armed conflict. I spent my six-month field placement working with an organisation in Bogotá that is putting these methods into practice, and volunteering with a grassroots peacebuilding organisation in Sincelejo called Sembrandopaz, which means “sowing the seeds of peace”. 

Once we’re in the mountains, the road evens out, and the land turns greener, opening up onto vistas of the region’s famed rolling green hills. We drive through the finca’s gates, and pass the guest cabana. Then I continue down the lane to Manuela and Narciso’s house, which Narciso has recently repainted with a fresh coat of bright fuchsia. 

Manuela and Narciso are originally from Córdoba, the neighbouring department (state), one of 32 in Colombia. They fled to Sincelejo with their son, daughter, and one-year-old granddaughter from their home in Tierralta after paramilitaries attacked Narciso, who had been facing threats as the representative of the Junta de Acción Comunal, or local community council. They sought refuge with a church, who eventually moved them to the finca, which has also provided sanctuary to other displaced persons at various points in the conflict. For the last 15 years, Narciso and Manuela have been tending to the farm, growing their family, and rebuilding their lives in Sincelejo.

When Ricardo, the founder of Sembrandopaz, bought this piece of land over 20 years ago, it was, as Narciso described, “pelado, pelado, pelado”, or peeled back in layers. Today, the finca is a beautiful forested sanctuary where Lillian, Ricardo’s partner and an agronomist originally from Arizona, carefully replants endangered tree species, and releases rescued animals. If their dogs, Rauncho, Lluma, and Linda, don’t come running up to the gate, barking and leaping, when we return in the evening, I feel like something’s missing. Manuela attributes this transformation to “el mano de Dío, a través de los manos de Narciso”, or the hand of God, through the hands of Narciso. 

The finca is part of the tropical dry forest ecosystem of Montes de María, a lot of which has been cut down for oil palm plantations and cattle ranching, and is at risk of further deforestation. Like elsewhere in Latin America, as well as in South-east Asia and other parts of the world, these large-scale ranches and monocultures are symptomatic of our insatiable appetites for growth and the desire of governments and businesses to profit from natural resources.

The Colombian government’s development policies follow the logic of “liberal peace” where market-based economic reforms and extractive industries supposedly play a key role in stabilising post-conflict societies. In this vein, scholars and practitioners have criticised the 2016 Peace Agreement for imposing technocratic humanitarian solutions that do not align with the demands of Colombia’s rural population. The Agreement has also further consolidated power in the hands of the state, which has facilitated the growth of exploitative and extractive industries—such as oil palm, teak, mining, and large-scale cattle ranching—that continue to buy up large concessions of land, further dispossessing campesinos. 

Campesino, Afro-Colombian, and indigenous communities who have been defending their homes for centuries continue to face threats to their lives. In fact, since 2016, violence against human rights and environmental defenders has escalated, with Colombia being recognised as the most dangerous country for these activists in 2019, 2020, and 2022. Since 2012, roughly 380 environmental defenders have been killed in Colombia, according to the organisation Global Witness. Colombia’s Special Justice Tribunal (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, JEP) opened Macro Case 08 in 2022, recognising the collusion between paramilitaries, Public Forces, and businesses, to dispossess campesinos in order to accumulate land. For example, investors, plantation owners and cattle ranchers were able to buy up land very cheaply, as prices were depressed by the violence. Campesinos who were also fleeing the violence, or struggling financially, were pressured into selling their land at very low prices. Data from the Eurasia Group paints a grim portrait of the relationship between criminal impunity and environmental degradation not only in Colombia but in other countries as well. 

And so, Colombia’s natural ecosystems suffer. In Sincelejo, cattle ranches and oil palm plantations draw obscene amounts of water from the region’s irrigation channels and the taps that supply these villages. So little of the scarce rainfall is absorbed by the ground and runs straight into the rivers, which are being eroded by sand mining, and then runs right into the ocean. The water table here is sinking, and people have to drill deeper and deeper to bring up water for the wells. 

As droughts intensify inland and farmers leave land that can no longer produce harvests of yuca (cassava) and ñame (yam), and sea levels rise to flood the nearby larger coastal cities of Barranquilla and Cartagena, Lillian predicts that cities like Sincelejo will become overwhelmed with climate refugees. 

On the nights when water has run out in the city, Manuela’s urbanite children bring their families to the finca so they can shower, as the finca draws its own water supply through the wells here. On weekends, her daughter, granddaughter, and son’s partner take turns hanging up their families’ laundry to dry around the vegetable garden. 

In December, I attended the region’s sixth Festival of Reconciliation, which was organised by Sembrandopaz and ERCPMM. A two-day gathering in the outdoor sports hall of a small township might seem unremarkable, but the coming together of 250 Montemaríanos from across the region is no small feat and cannot be taken for granted. The conflict drew invisible lines between communities, seeding distrust and suspicion. Over the years, Sembrandopaz and the ERCPMM have worked to reconcile communities through mediation, conflict resolution, the reconstruction of memory, human rights defence, environmental protection, and the fostering of civil society participation. When the ERCPMM was first formed, Ricardo said that only 10 community leaders met on a regular basis. That burgeoning trust has now flourished into a network of about 35 community leaders and civil society groups.

RB, a community leader, opened the Festival with a moment of silence for the events that have marked the history of the region. He then presented the mandala, or circle, composed of the elements of land, water, and light: land produces sustenance; water flows through the territory like blood; and light is a beacon of hope for Colombia’s future. In the middle of the mandala, participants placed medicinal plants that symbolise ancestral wisdom and knowledge. They also set up memorials for the regional massacres against a small banana tree. We attended dialogues between ex-combatants and victims, who spoke about the challenges of peacebuilding and their commitment to ending the repeated cycles of violence, and learned more about Peasant Reservations, which are specially designated areas for collective land management by campesinos. 

I’ve spent a lot of time studying the origins of conflict and violence; theories of how violence may be stopped, prevented, and/or transformed; and how we might achieve justice and work towards healing from an academic perspective. But I have learned more about the construction of peace simply from living here: Lilian and Narciso’s rewilding and regeneration work on the finca, the way Ricardo and Sembrandopaz show their presence and care at community events, walks through the forest with friends, and stories shared over meals and the long car rides between the office and the finca. These experiences add a dimension, a personal connection and a sense of lived-ness that could not have been achieved just by reading academic articles about the conflict and peacebuilding in Montes de María. 

The grassroots peacebuilding that Sembrandopaz engages in often goes unrecognised in comparison to liberal peace processes touted by the state. In fact, the two paradigms of peacebuilding are often at odds with each other. A strong campesino movement capable of making calls for sovereignty, reparations, and justice undermines the interests of political and economic elites in the region. 

One of the fathers of peace studies, Johan Galtung, who passed away on February 17th, distinguished between direct, structural, and cultural violence. Direct violence is akin to physical violence, and points to armed conflict and assault. Structural violence refers to the way that injustice is built into legal institutions, education policy, markets, religious organisations, and other systems. Cultural violence reflects the way that violent attitudes and beliefs pervade societies by becoming cultural norms. As Jom mentioned in a recent “Singapore This Week”, structural and cultural violence are what enable manifestations of direct violence in the first place. Readers will know very well the types of violence in Singapore that fall into the latter two categories, such as forced conscription for men, the inability to recognise and criticise racism in Singapore, the enforcement of heteronormative family structures, the erasure of “unofficial” dialects and narratives, and the violences that are displaced onto other countries and bodies. 

Peacebuilding for us then, is not just about eliminating the presence of direct or physical violence (what academics call “negative peace”) but creating the conditions that reduce inequity and injustice, and promote human flourishing and dignity. The slow reconstruction of peace in Montes de María, is therefore not just about a Peace Agreement signed between the state and an armed group, but the reweaving of relationships, and the fostering of conditions necessary for a dignified existence.

On Sunday morning, I chatted with Manuela in the kitchen, as she chopped up papaya for the children that will soon arrive at the finca for Escuela en el Bosque, or Forest School. Narciso calls them campesitos, or children of campesinos. Many of their parents work on or for large cattle ranches, and through the armed conflict, have lost their relationships to the land, which is now a mere economic resource. 

Every Saturday, a local teacher brings the children through the forest to meditate, learn to identify different types of mushrooms and leaves, and so on. Around the finca are signs she has painted—“Somos bosque” (“We are forest”), “Soy porque somos” (“I am because we are”), “Eres magia” (“You are magic”)—that emphasise the connections between humans and nature. Escuela en el Bosque also brings in local campesinos who also help out on the finca, a young self-taught animal rescuer and rehabilitator, as well as collaborators from Sincelejo University’s biology department, who teach the campesitos to recognise bird species, and rescue and release endangered animals into the sanctuary. The Escuela aims to re-establish the relations that have been broken by the conflict and the region’s extractive economic model by teaching these children how to relate to themselves, each other, and the environment, in a more loving way. Lillian tells me that some of these boys used to shoot down birds with slingshots for fun, but are now invested in birdwatching. Lillian and Nadia hope that by providing opportunities for this generation of children to care for the forest, they will be able to foster a more harmonious relationship between Montemaríanos and the environment. 

As I watch the children, I wonder what spaces there are for us, in Singapore, to love and care for the environment, and how we can preserve them as we lose what was once wild and natural to housing and industrial development. What will this mean for future generations who grow up without the conditions that generate care for each other and our common home? 

Writing this essay away from Singapore, something else I’ve learned from the people of Montes de María—the campesinos who stayed and those who were displaced and returned to rebuild—is that the connections we form with place, and the care that arises, are iterative and intentional. 

The Sembrandopaz team travelled to La Pelona, a hamlet near the coast for the closing ceremony of a reparations process, where state representatives came to announce the collective monetary, material, and symbolic reparations that they awarded as compensation for the assassination of their leader and the displacement that resulted. We sat in a clearing in the forest, listening to the guttural wailing and witnessing the grief for the father, uncle, and leader who had been killed, as well as for the loss of home and territory. But many—community members, allies, and companions—also spoke about the pride they had for the community that had returned and rebuilt themselves after returning, growing to a 118 people. After the ceremony, one of the elders brought us to a lake where they now cultivate tilapia and showed us an overgrown plot of land they will soon clear with a tractor given as part of the reparations. 

Choosing to return is not a given, as the land restitution process itself brings new threats to families, from plantation owners and landowners that refuse to cede their ill-gotten land. Many who return feel unable to live in peace, as they have lived with suspicion and been betrayed by neighbours, or been stigmatised and attacked for being “on the other side”. And so every act of trust, of re-commitment to the land, and of solidarity with other campesinos, is a risk and an act of love that I’ve learned not to take for granted. 

At another event, a massacre memorial service in Pichilín, a group of women shared how they had been “abandoned by the state”, and had not received any resources to develop their community. Two staff members then decided to drive 20 minutes into the mountains to buy eggs from one of the women’s farms as a gesture of support. Hundreds of Montemaríanos gather for the Festival of Reconciliation each year, overcoming the distrust and suspicion that has separated villages for decades. Yesterday, knowing that I’d been sneezing and dizzy from the intense heat, Narciso made me a bath of medicinal plants, including oregano, toronjil, and the leaves of orange and soursop trees. As I washed myself in the thick liquid, I felt warmed, not just by the water, but by the thoughtfulness and care I’ve experienced here, as well as the knowledge that the healing properties come from the land, which has been cared for and restored over the years. 

In Singapore, despite our own losses, albeit quieter and more insidious than the outright armed conflict in Colombia, I see spaces for peacebuilding growing too, such as the Deep Time Walk co-hosted by SG Climate Rally and the Deep Time Walk Project; bringing Singapore residents and migrant domestic workers together through urban gardening and ethnobotany with Sayur Story; the growing number of voices that call for Singapore to recognise its complicity in regional and global issues such as (what I believe is) Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and energy transitions that impact our neighbours unequally. Peacebuilding in both countries means finding ways to re-establish, maintain, and strengthen the conditions for justice between people, communities, and the environment. 

Aleithia Low is a Singaporean peace studies graduate student. She is currently in Colombia researching restorative justice, environmental justice and trauma healing in the country’s post-Peace Accords context.

Additional contributions by Bill Kakenmaster and John Lee.

Letters in response to this piece can be sent to sudhir@jom.media. All will be considered for publication on our “Letters to the editor” page.