LA PAZ, Colombia — On a coca farm hidden in the jungle, a half-dozen day laborers slip out of hammocks and head to work, harvesting the shiny green leaves that will become cocaine.

In the nearby village of La Paz, chalky white cocaine base serves as currency, used to buy bread or beans. And in the community pavilion, propaganda on the wall pays homage to an insurgency that, in villages like this one, never ended.

Scenes like these were supposed to be a thing of the past in Colombia.

Five years ago, the government signed a peace deal with the largest group of rebels waging war, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, signaling the end of a conflict that had raged for half a century and left more than 220,000 people dead.

The rebels agreed to put down their arms, while the government promised to fold long-neglected rural communities into the Colombian state, offering jobs, roads, schools and a chance at a better life. By addressing poverty and inequality, the peace pact was supposed to extinguish the dissatisfaction that had fueled the war.

But a third of the way into the deal’s 15-year time frame, much of that help has still not reached the Colombian countryside. Armed groups still control villages like La Paz.

And, experts warn, Colombia’s window to achieve the lasting peace envisioned in the accord may be closing.

“They spoke of benefits,” said Jhon Jiménez, 32, a coca farmer. “It was a lie.”

Colombia’s 2016 peace pact was among the most comprehensive in modern history, earning global applause and a Nobel Peace Prize for then-president Juan Manuel Santos. The United States, which had spent billions of dollars supporting the Colombian government during the conflict, was among its biggest supporters.

Since then, more than 13,000 FARC fighters have laid down their arms. Many are integrating into society. The deal also established an ambitious transitional justice court that is investigating war crimes and indicting major players.

After five years, many scholars consider a peace agreement a success if the signatories have not returned to battle. By those terms, the treaty is a success: While dissident factions remain, such as in La Paz, FARC as an institution has not rearmed.

But many scholars and security experts warn that the transformation of the long-neglected countryside — the heart of the deal — is perilously stalled. By failing to gain the trust of rural people, experts say, the government is allowing violent groups, old and new, to move in and perpetuate new cycles of violence.

“There are too many things that have not been done,” said Sergio Jaramillo, a top negotiator for the government in 2016.

President Iván Duque, a conservative who since his election in 2018 has been in the uncomfortable position of implementing a deal opposed by his party, called the criticism unfounded.

“There is not a slow implementation whatsoever,” he said in an interview. “We have been not only implementing, but the issues that we have been implementing are going to be decisive for the evolution of the accords.”

To secure poor farmers’ rights to land, his office has granted thousands of them land titles, he said, and approved more than a dozen regional development plans.

But Mr. Duque’s party is allied with powerful landholders who have the most to lose if land ownership rules are rewritten, and many critics accuse him of slow-walking the effort.

According to the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, which monitors the deal’s progress, just four percent of the accord’s rural reform measures are complete. As of June, another 83 percent either had just started, or had not been started at all.

A gram of coca paste is used as currency equal to 75 U.S. cents. This fish cost almost 5 grams. 

Source: Read Full Article