Noticias

The weapons once used by Colombian rebels to wage war have been turned into a monument in the country’s capital, as the country grapples with its bloody past.

That deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc) formally ended 52 years of civil war that left 260,000 dead and over 7 million displaced. Other leftist rebel groups and state-aligned paramilitaries contributed to the bloodshed.

Last year the Farc turned in 37 tonnes of rifles, pistols and grenade launcherswhich the artist Doris Salcedo has had melted down and recast as tiles that line the floor of a new gallery space just a block from the presidential palace in Bogotá. The work, called Fragments was inaugurated on Monday. Leer más...

MAGDALENA RIVER VALLEY, Colombia — For Colombia, peace has come with caveats. In 2016, guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) finally laid down their weapons, ending over half a century of conflict. Thousands of fighters had spent decades occupying Colombia’s forests, and most got up and left their secret mountain hideouts. Families who had fled the fighting started to return. Old farms re-opened, and new ones sprang up. Gold and coal miners moved in.

The forests had protected the FARC fighters from attacks and surveillance. In turn, FARC’s presence in the Magdalena River Valley, nestled between the central and eastern Andes, kept the forests intact. At the end of the conflict in 2016, with the signing and ratification of a historic peace deal, that started to change. Leer más...