End of conflict in Colombia proves peace is possible

Many years ago, when the Marxist guerrillas plaguing Latin America were young, there was no assurance whatsoever as to who would actually win the bitter civil wars against the old oligarchs and military. Indeed, the rebels were already sweeping in a vicious arc from Guatemala to Peru to Colombia and beyond.

I particularly recall one day during the guerrillas' "victory parade" years, when it was uncertain whether a major country like Colombia would follow Cuba's march into Fidelista communism. Indeed, the Marxist guerrilla groups were attracting the most brilliant and unlikely of the Colombian youth.

Of all of these, Father Camilo Torres was the prize. Good-looking, with curly hair and an ethereal smile, "Camilo" would become the hero of the Marxist guerrillas. Women swooned when even his name was mentioned. What possibly better than a handsome priest and a holy "pirate" as well?

I had an interview with him at 7 in the morning in his little apartment in downtown Bogota, and then he was off "to the mountains," but not before proclaiming grandly:

"I consider the work of a priest is to take a person to God, to work toward the love of one's brother. I consider there are circumstances that do not permit a man to offer himself to God. A priest must fight those circumstances ..."

On Feb. 15, 1966, the government announced that Father Camilo Torres had been killed in an encounter with Colombian troops. The wars went on; Camilo became the revolution's holy mascot.

At the time, we who were covering the story wondered: How long would these "wars" between the disaffected, nihilistic young and the wealthy landowners and priests who ran Colombia actually last? Five years? Ten? Maybe even - God forbid - 15?

In fact, these wars have lasted 52 years, with 220,000 dead on both sides, and with the 6,800 or so Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known always as FARC, ruling over 18,000 peasants. In the isolated valleys and rivers of that mountainous land, they were using the peasants in part as a workforce for coca, and thus cocaine, production.

As the stories now start to come out, one by one, of Colombian teenagers and sometimes children being kidnapped by the FARC into those vast jungles to live their lives out there, hating and fighting "el gobierno," we begin to see the world that Father Camilo, probably unknowingly, helped to create.

First you picked a new name, a "nom de guerre." This was meant to cut you off from your past, rupturing any love you had for family, for friends, for a man or for a woman. Many picked the names of favored soccer players. One chose "Prometheus." They put on plays out there in the jungles, plays about Karl Marx and Lenin. You were there for the leader now, and you did as he or she said. Essentially, you created a parallel universe.

This is exactly what was done in, for instance, Cambodia, when the French-trained Marxists of the Khmer Rouge marched into the country in 1975. Those insurgents were forced to take the letters of the alphabet as names, as they savagely wiped out all the human signs of a nation. This is one of the themes of the brutal cadres of our times.

Indeed, that is another reason why it is so important that Colombia - always one of the most dominant countries in Latin America, historically, culturally and economically - is about to make peace, not with its neighbors, as in most wars, but with itself!

What has happened is this: The Colombian government, which now has liberalized considerably since the early days of the conflict, has been negotiating with the FARC for nearly four years to end the conflict. Oddly enough, the negotiating went on in Cuba, which is where the guerrillas were almost all trained to fight the Colombian government. And Cuban President Raul Castro facilitated the meetings - he was then head of the Cuban armed forces that trained and created the FARC.

Without question, it has been the United States, with its "Plan Colombia," with its aid to the Colombian military and, now, with its promise of $400 million in aid to cement the peace treaty, that has made the difference. Maybe it was the fact that so little coverage was given these events made it possible for it to succeed, in veritable silence.

Now, IF the Colombian people approve the agreement in a referendum on Oct. 2, some amazingly creative programs and policies in what is now called "transitioning justice" will bridge over the past and create a new future. The FARC is to assemble its 100 units into 23 "concentration zones." Weapons will be turned in to the United Nations. It is a complex web of amnesties, of punishments and, most important, assured seats for certain FARC members in the Colombian congress for many years.

While our presidential candidates snipe at each other, and as we still fight baselessly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and God only knows where else, some countries and peoples - and yes, our diplomats - are doing wonderful things.

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

© 2016, Universal