FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION . .

Comments by Catalina Ceballos* in Cambio Colombia (translation by CPNN)

Last week there was a meeting at the University of the Arts (Public University) in Guayaquil on culture and economy. for several days it was discussed how culture serves to understand violence and conflict, particularly now, when it is necessary to confront the violence that arises from drug trafficking. The issue caught my attention because I have always said that culture should be seated on the Ecopetrol board of directors and at the dialogue tables with the ELN. It is not a question of thinking about culture as defined by García Márquez, as the social use of knowledge, I prefer to think of the definition of Néstor García Canclini: “The set of interventions carried out by the State, civil institutions, and community groups organized through order to guide symbolic development, satisfy cultural needs, and obtain consensus for a type of order or social transformation. And what social transformation is more important than the peace we seek!

In fact, since 1998 at the UNESCO Yamoussoukro Congress, the culture of peace has been promoted to promote values, actions and projects to avoid violence and find peaceful solutions to conflicts. From there arose the Declaration and Program of Action on a Culture of Peace that has been incorporated into the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia.

Add to this the time dedicated by the Truth Commission in its art and culture component, the work that Commissioner Lucía González did with the legacy, a rational and emotional device with tools to understand conflict and to move towards coexistence. and reconciliation. It is worth remembering the words of Father Francisco de Roux: “Through culture, conditions are created so that human dignity can be fully lived.”

(continued on right column)

(Click here for the Spanish version of this article.)

What is happening in Colombia, Is peace possible?

(continued from left column)

Peace through culture includes understanding conflict from the loss of indigenous reservations, understanding the economic transitions when one goes from cultivating potatoes to coca, understanding the ancestral dimension of a river through which in addition to the navigation of boats, have been rivers of blood. Understanding the role of the Maroon Guard in the historical processes of resistance. It is about seeing Guadalupe from the Fifties of the Teatro La Candelaria over and over again. Listening to the Girl singing La Sentada “they stuffed the war to the bottom of our trachea” reading aloud Los Ejércitos by Evelio Rosero, or simply dancing cumbia until dawn to forget the pain that seeps into our bones from this interminable and absurd war.

Well, precisely, in Medellín, a few days ago, the vice-minister in charge of heritage and regional development, of the Ministry of Culture, Adriana Molano, presented the draft program on culture of peace in which, as a principle, it is assumed that local knowledge, the various expressions arts, cultural heritage and citizen participation are essential elements in the construction of peace and territorial development. Those who work in this sector know that cultural public policies result from a co-creation effort between civil society, institutions and the cultural movement. This is the origin of transversal, sectoral and territorial policies. Working in deliberative participation roundtables on issues related to peace is just enough, regarding the year that marks the delivery of the Final Report of the Truth Commission.

The program will strengthen artistic and cultural experiences aimed at triggering reflection processes on the causes and effects of the armed conflict and the different forms of violence, as well as the ways in which conflicts are addressed in our society. The program seems to have resources, in my view, the most important thing is that it remain as a public policy document, that it goes through the memory and reconstruction of the conflict. May its transversal axes be human rights and a healthy democracy. I hope it contributes to the creation of fairer and less violent communities, that the creators who participate have aesthetic and ethical intentions and that sensitivity is a path and a place of arrival.

* Catalina Ceballos is an anthropologist specializing in International Resource Management. She has more than 23 years of experience in the strategic design of cultural and media projects. She has been Deputy Manager of RTVC Radio, manager of Canal Trece, director of the Master’s Degree in Cultural Management at Universidad Ean, consultant in public policy, media and cultural and artistic projects, and Communications consultant for the Truth Commission.

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION . .

An article from Prensa Latina (translation from Prensa Latina English – first five paragraphs – and by CPNN – rest of article)

The agreements between the Colombian Government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) in the third cycle of dialogues in Havana became a significant issue this week for the country and Latin America.

This Friday (June 9), at noon from Havana, Cuba, the parties formalized the bilateral ceasefire agreement, which will last 180 days (six months).

This new pact expands prohibited actions and provides for a robust UN monitoring and verification mechanism, with the accompaniment of the Catholic Church and social oversight, as well as the participation of the guarantor and accompanying countries.

This ceasefire will also allow the territories to have the conditions of tranquility required by the people and communities in the process of participation of society in the construction of peace that has been agreed upon during this cycle.

For the first time, the State and the ELN reached an agreement that implies the block treatment of the first three points of the Mexico Agreement, where the second cycle of talks took place; the participation of society in the construction of peace, democracy for peace and transformations for peace, Senator Iván Cepeda said.

– – –

The agreed cessation has progressive phases. The first, enlistment, is immediate. Then, on July 6, the end of offensive operations begins until reaching full validity, of 180 days, as of August 3, while monitoring and verification will begin soon.

(continued on right column)

(Click here for the Spanish version of this article.)

What is happening in Colombia, Is peace possible?

(continued from left column)

A National Participation Committee will also be created, which will have the participation of 30 sectors of society to contribute to the transformation of the country and the achievement of Peace.

“We reached a partial agreement with the ELN like never before, which will be progressive until the final agreement in May 2025,” said President Petro.

The priority will be to achieve the protection of the civilian population in the conflict areas, starting with children, he added.

The head of state assured that human rights and international humanitarian law guide the agreement. He stressed that the participation of society will be fundamental, as well as the proposal for a great National Agreement that his government supports.

The parties thanked Cuba for its role as guarantor and for facilitating its territory to reach these agreements that will alleviate the communities affected by the internal conflict.

“The main effort in this process we owe to Cuba. Without that effort it would be impossible to be here,” said ELN commander Antonio García, at the closing of the Third Cycle of the Dialogue Table.

Likewise, Pablo Beltrán (the ELN negotiator) assured that the inclusion of Cuba on the US list of countries sponsoring terrorism is an injustice, while he thanked the Cuban government and people for their vocation for peace.

President Petro also described the inclusion of Cuba on that list as a profound injustice.

“I was telling President (Joe) Biden that if there has been an act of profound diplomatic injustice… a stab in the back… it was that Cuba ended up in that abject designation. From here I tell President Biden that this act of injustice must be amended, “he stressed.

Prior to this agreement, considered a milestone in Colombia, and one of the most significant achievements within the Total Peace policy of the Government of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, a forceful mobilization of the people took place in support of the mandate of both leaders and their change proposals.

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION . .

An article from the United States Institute of Peace

Nine months into new efforts by Colombia’s administration to achieve “total peace” with remaining armed groups following decades of civil war, that process should make room for the nation’s thousands of grassroots and community organizations to strengthen peace locally when the fighting stops, says a prominent civic leader from one of the country’s most violent regions. Stabilizing Colombia, where migration toward the United States and other countries soared last year, will require steady support from U.S. and international partners, said Maria Eugenia Mosquera Riascos, who helps lead a Colombian network of 140 civic and community organizations working to end violence.

President Gustavo Petro vows to expand Colombia’s implementation of a six-year-old peace accord with what was the country’s largest rebel group, and his administration has begun pursuing accords with other armed groups. Yet “the government cannot make peace alone,” thus a major initiative is needed from civil society, Mosquera Riascos said in an interview. Mosquera Riascos traveled from her home in Colombia’s economically impoverished and violent Pacific coastal region to Washington this month; she met U.S. officials and peacebuilding practitioners focused on Latin America after having last year received USIP’s Women Building Peace Award.

Mosquera Riascos’ struggle for peace carries resonance well beyond Colombia’s borders. Helping Colombia achieve lasting peace is integral to reducing the mass migrations across Latin America that are fueled notably by violent conflicts, poverty, and environmental damage, and to shrinking drug trafficking that exploits Colombia’s instability. U.S. officials counted more than 125,000 Colombians among those stopped at the U.S. southern border in 2022, up from about 6,000 the prior year.

In 2016, “after the peace accord was signed” with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), “the world got the impression that Colombia was now at peace,” Mosquera Riascos said through an interpreter. “But we can’t speak about a ‘post-conflict’ Colombia because the conflicts continue.”

Implementation of the accord has lagged for years, she noted. Modest improvements in rural governance, plus development programs and land distribution to rural populations, were meant to stabilize impoverished rural communities by helping people, including former guerrillas, pursue nonviolent ways to earn adequate incomes. But those changes came slowly and were never fully resourced.

“After the [2016] accord, we expected that state institutions would come and fill the voids” of governance across the rural regions where FARC had ruled, Mosquera Riascos said. Instead, “many different armed groups have filled those voids,” fighting for territory and control over illicit commerce that FARC once ran. Land distribution has operated in reverse in areas where those with arms or money have seized holdings from small farmers. The battles for rural control have included a surge in deforestation, violence and impoverishment in Colombia’s Amazon and Pacific coastal regions.

Colombia’s Violence: A Grassroots View

Mosquera Riascos helps lead a network called Communities Building Peace in Colombia (or CONPAZCOL) from her home region on the Pacific coast. In rural areas, Colombia’s main armed groups — the National Liberation Army rebel group (or ELN), the paramilitary Gulf Clan (also known as Gaitanistas) and dissident factions of the former FARC — are fighting to control lucrative smuggling routes for cocaine or illicitly extracted minerals or other natural resources, Mosquera Riascos said.

In the region around her home city of Buenaventura, these armed groups “have locked down entire communities along the rivers — many of them Indigenous people — preventing them from going out to fish or farm.” The combatants have forced some communities to leave the region altogether, she said. Violence in Buenaventura includes urban gangs that seek to profit from cocaine or other contraband that can be smuggled through its seaport, one of Colombia’s busiest.

(continued on right column)

What is happening in Colombia, Is peace possible?

How can just one or a few persons contribute to peace and justice?

(continued from left column)

The Pacific region is a center of Colombia’s Black population, descendants of the country’s former African slaves, and of the poverty that makes Colombia “one of the most unequal countries in the world,” according to the World Bank. Armed groups threaten or kill civilians, many of them Afro-Colombians, whose land or compliance they want, Mosquera Riascos said. Gunmen seize people “who simply disappear,” she said.

The new government of President Petro “offers a lot of hope that we can now make better progress” on peace, Mosquera Riascos said. A signal of that hope, she said, is that Vice President Francia Marquez is an environmental and human rights activist — and the first Afro-Colombian to hold such a senior office. Afro-Colombians heavily supported this government’s election last year, Mosquera Riascos noted. Along with the Pacific region they are receiving heightened attention that she hopes will extend to support for the efforts of grassroots peacebuilders.

Seeking Better Strategies for Peace

To advance peace, the government will need broad support from both Colombia’s grass roots and its international partners, Mosquera Riascos emphasized. A top priority in coming months needs to be a national process of dialogues among Colombia’s thousands of community-level civil society organizations, she said. Groups working to build peace, justice, rule of law, economic development and the rights of marginalized ethnic groups, women, LGBTQ communities and victims of the war’s violence all need “to unify and synergize our proposals for working with this government,” she said. “We need to be able to say to the administration, ‘we are the civil society, and this is our proposal to support your program and build a real peace.’ That can help make progress toward peace sustainable.”

Petro has promised to pursue a “total peace” by seeking negotiated agreements with armed groups nationwide. A recent government estimate counted four major organizations and 23 urban gangs with more than 17,600 members, including more than 7,000 active combatants. The Petro administration quickly opened peace talks with the largest remaining rebel group, the National Liberation Army, and offered a new year’s truce with the paramilitary Gulf Clan, which pursues drug trafficking and operates as the de facto government in swaths of Colombia. The government halted that truce after 11 weeks because of what it said were the group’s continued attacks on police.

Mosquera Riascos voices support for the government’s overarching goal but stresses that too broad or unfocused an effort risks failure. She seeks a calibrated strategy across Colombia’s widely varied landscape of conflicts, many of them localized. In Washington, she met nongovernment organizations and U.S. officials focused on Colombia, urging a strategy that focuses first on localities where the conditions are most ripe for progress, with state capacities reinforcing civil society and local peacebuilders — an approach she calls “comprehensive peace.”

Why put local peacebuilders at the fore in this process? Mosquera Riascos gave examples of how such activists can use their local roots to build the customized initiatives required to advance peace in their localities — and can do so at lower cost than outsiders. One such effort, the Casas de Madre, has built six community-based dialogue centers across the country that host representatives of disparate groups that are key to local peacemaking, and who otherwise have no safe and organized place to meet. Local dialogue projects are vital not simply to lay foundations for peace but also to offer hope of better options to youth who are readily recruited by combatant groups, Mosquera Riascos said.

USIP has similarly found over decades that community-level dialogues are cost-effective tools for building peace. A series of dialogues in areas of Colombia previously ruled by the FARC rebels helped strengthen governance in areas that faced rising insecurity and other challenges amid a relative power vacuum following the 2016 peace accord. Courageous, creative local civic and government leaders are pursuing such projects, which can reinforce the conditions for peace and strengthen the country’s social fabric and trust in government.

While Colombia requires leadership from its grass roots to stabilize from the longest civil war in the western hemisphere, that process will require broad, sustained support from the United States and other international partners, Mosquera Riascos said. For one thing, Colombia’s government already “cannot afford the [financial] costs of the commitments in the 2016 peace accord,” she noted.

President Petro’s reception in Washington last month, when he met President Joe Biden, “was extremely important to us,” Mosquera Riascos said, “and we need the strong diplomatic support for the peace program to continue.” The presidents “discussed the ways to build peace and also to protect the environment” — twin efforts that need to advance in tandem, she said.

International organizations should bolster their focus on human rights in Colombia, particularly on continued threats and assassinations targeting civic leaders like herself who stand up to armed groups and powerful interests. International recognition of frontline peacebuilders, such as the USIP award she received last year, provides an “umbrella” of protection for those at risk, Mosquera Riascos said, and facilitates financial and moral support for their work. Especially, she added, Colombia’s partners should sustain their support for the country’s energetic peacebuilding efforts by women. Women struggled for years to achieve an unprecedented level of recognition and influence in Colombia’s peacemaking that has made the process a model for other countries in conflict.

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article from Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato ( translation by CPNN)

For the State Government it is a pride to announce that the city of León will host the First Ibero-American Meeting of Voices for Peace and the First Ibero-American Meeting of Journalism for Peace, to take place from June 1 to 3 at the Cultural Forum.

This was stated at a press conference by the State Government Secretary, Jesús Oviedo Herrera; “Promoting the Culture of Peace will always be a priority; it is a task of great importance where society and government must work together,” he added.

The General Coordinator of State Social Communication, Alan Sahir Márquez Becerra, stressed that Guanajuato will become the epicenter of the culture of peace in Mexico and Latin America.

In organizing these events, the Government of the State of Guanajuato joins efforts with the Civil Association Somos Iberoamérica Periodismo por la Paz -SOIPAZ-, with the purpose of bringing together global leaders and journalists from around the world to deliver their messages for peace, he added. .

The President of Somos Iberoamérica Periodismo por la Paz, Jorge Robledo Vega, thanked the State Government for its hosting and for its commitment to promoting the culture of peace.

Achieving world peace is a prevailing necessity in the face of the intolerance and violence that are multiplying in all corners of the planet, he pointed out.

He explained that the program of activities expects the participation of voices such as: Shirin Ebadi, Activist for human rights and democracy and the first Muslim woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and from Colombia Andrés Pastrana, former president of Colombia with a doctorate from the Center for International Affairs of Harvard University.

In addition, Alberto Pelaez, journalist, novelist, columnist, speaker, correspondent for 20 wars, as well as the Mexican journalist Pablo Latapí, will participate.

The General Director of Tv4, Juan Aguilera Cid, highlighted the importance of the issue of peace as one of the guiding principles of the State Government with the presence of leaders and journalists for peace.

(Article continued in the column on the right)

(Click here for the original Spanish version of the article)

Journalism in Latin America: Is it turning towards a culture of peace?

Is there progress towards a culture of peace in Mexico?

(Article continued from the column on the left)

For TV 4 it is a pleasure to receive and support this initiative that combines the passion of communication with journalism and emphasizes our social responsibility, he added.

In these events, analysis tables and workshops will be including Journalism for peace, investigative journalism, documentary journalism and digital journalism.

From Spain: Ana Barrero, Journalist and Director of the Culture of Peace Foundation in Madrid and President of the Spanish Association for Peace Research (AIPAZ) will participate in the workshops and analysis tables. From Chile will be Gonzalo E. Cáceres, Co-Founder of Deutsche Welle TV in Germany.

From Mexico: Luis Miguel González, Editorial Director of the newspaper El Economista, Daniel Moreno, Director and founder of the digital portal Animal Político, Francisco García Davish, Director and founder of the information agency QUADRATÍN. Also directors of Código Magenta as well as journalists from local, national and international media will be present.

Eréndira Saldaña Quintero, President of the Voces por la Paz Organizing Committee, commented that the program also includes a cycle of conferences in a TED-type format with topics related to peace, journalism, inclusion and human development.

Likewise the First Ibero-American Meeting of Journalism for Peace will be the setting for the delivery of the Grandeza de Mexico award, to journalists from Guanajuato, whose careers have transcended borders.

Today we extend the invitation to all representatives of the media, committed communicators, opinion leaders and journalists to join us in these two days of work, aware that in our words we have the power of peace, the power of the culture of peace, he said.

To promote the culture of peace, we must work with the new generations, therefore, it is essential to include the youth of Ibero-America. For this the meeting will include the space “A thousand young people for peace/” It will be addressed by Roberto Martínez, author of three bestselling books, content creator and host of the Creativo podcast with over 11 million followers on social media.

The meeting will mark the entity of Guanajuato as a pioneer in the meeting of Ibero-American personalities in favor of peace Through this meeting, global leaders and journalists of the world will showcase unity for Peace.

The complete program of activities can be consulted through the web portal https://www.soipaz.org and the soipazoficial social networks, all events will be free.

Antonio de Jesús Navarro Padilla, General Director of the Institute for the Development and Care of Youth of the State of Guanajuato, stressed that young people of Guanajuato and other entities that attend this Ibero-American Meeting will be a fundamental part of the meeting and each one will be able to become an ambassador of peace, bearing positive messages.

“From Guanajuato, for Mexico and Ibero-America, we will seek to plant in the collective consciousness the importance of promoting a culture of peace, with examples of great young talents honoring our State and our country,” he added.

Finally, the Secretary of Government on behalf of the Governor of the State, Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, reiterated that it is an honor for Guanajuato to host these events that will become an ideal setting for the exchange of experiences, information and actions promoting peace.