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The Americas
The Economist July 9th 2022
Colombia
Rafting with rebels MIRAVALLE
Some ex-farc guerrillas have become tourist guides. But not everyone has swapped pistols for paddles
I
t feels like fl oating down the nave of a fl ooded cathedral. Sheer walls of rock rise from placid, muddy waters, echoing with dripping vines and squawking par rots. Then the river widens and quickens, occasionally blocked by boulders that de mand bicepburning bursts of paddling to swerve. Waves of cold water smash over the raft as it bounces through foamy rap ids. Eventually, it glides to a halt on a beach, where a local family waits with sug arcane and guava juice. “We’ve exchanged our rifl es for oars,” grins a soggy Frellin No reña, who was steering the raft and goes by the nom de guerre of pato, or duck. “You’d have to be mad to prefer war over peace.” Mr Noreña is a former fi ghter of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (farc), a guerrilla group. Some 7,000 of his comrades gave up their weapons after a peace deal in 2016 that formally brought to an end the longestrunning domestic con fl ict in the western hemisphere. He now works as a guide with Caguán Expeditions, which brings tourists to hurtle down rivers near Miravalle, in Caquetá, a remote corner of Colombia where outsiders have scarcely trod for decades. Backed by the un, the ini tiative aims to reintegrate former guerril las by putting their knowledge of the Ama zonian region to better use. Several such projects exist. Exguerril las off er birdwatching, hiking and hearty campfi re cuisine as part of Tierra Grata Ecotours in La Paz, a town near the border
with Venezuela. Over a twoday hike along boggy mountain paths, Jhonni Giraldo, a former farc footsoldier, leads hardy tour ists to Marquetalia, a hamlet. In 1964 the military bombed an armed commune founded by refugees here into oblivion; the survivors headed to the hills and the farc insurgency was born. There is not much to see other than the rusted remains of a downed helicopter. Mr Giraldo is mulling over reconstructing the house of Manuel Marulanda, the founder of the farc. Lodging with local farmers provides tourists with a window into the stubborn poverty that the accord of 2016 was sup posed to tackle. There are no roads and doctors visit rarely, says Fredy Conde, who A long road to peace Colombia, violent deaths, ’000 100 80 60 40 20 0.2
1985* 90
95 2000 05
10
15
*Total up to and including 1985 †To May 31st Source: Registro Único de Víctimas
0 22†
laboriously transports his cheese on mules to sell at a local market. “In Colombia, the countryside is abandoned.” Staying in the farc resettlement camps, set up after the peace deal to rehabilitate exfi ghters, also off ers a glimpse of the strains of demobili sation. Miravalle, daubed with murals of farc leaders and perched above a lush val ley, boasts a fi sh farm, an organic green house and a small museum as well as the rafting project. The rowing rebels have even competed in Australia. But some river guides have decided to work instead as bodyguards for their for mer comandantes, says Mr Noreña (some 300 demobilised farc fi ghters have been killed since 2016). Many still revere their former commander, Hernán Darío Velás quez, better known as El Paisa, who aban doned Miravalle and returned to the jungle with a handful of men in 2018, leaving be hind girlfriends and young children. El Paisa, reportedly killed in Venezuela in De cember last year, was a drug traffi cker who murdered scores of civilians, counters Se bastián Velásquez of the Colombian Feder ation of farc Victims, an ngo. Partly because such tensions remain, these exfarc initiatives are unlikely to be come a highlight on the international tour ist trail. Just 10% of Caguán Expeditions’ clients so far have been foreigners, says Mr Noreña. The whitewater rafting at San Gil, a sevenhour drive from the capital, is more exhilarating, he concedes. The Marquetalia Route will mostly interest his tory buff s and coff ee fanatics (the region’s volcanic slopes pullulate with the stuff ). Battle scars But these initiatives are keeping a few fam ilies on the straight and narrow. And that is no small thing in a country where the scars from the armed confl ict are still fresh. In its fi nal report on June 28th, Colombia’s Truth Commission, set up in 2016 as part of the peace agreement, found that over 450,000 people were killed between 1985 and 2018—double previous estimates. Paramilitaries often linked to business elites and landowners were responsible for nearly half the killings; the farc and lesser rebel groups, a quarter. Some 7m people fl ed their homes. The newly elected leftist president, Gustavo Petro—himself a former guerrilla, with the m19 group—has promised to im plement the commission’s recommenda tions, including reforming the armed forc es and regulating the drug trade. Even a squaddie who briefl y falls in with Mr Giral do on the trail to Marquetalia argues that the state has so far failed to honour the promises of rural development. “Confl ict isn’t good for anyone,” says the former re bel, trudging uphill to where it all began. The soldier concurs. “Not for civilians, nor the government.” n
