Colombia
Colombia is a megadiverse country in cultures, flora and fauna, thermal floors and climate zones, a marvellous country.
Colombia is a megadiverse country in armed conflicts, economic interests obtained and defended by paramilitary; a country where the repressive institutions such as the police or army defend the interests of international companies against the rights of the Colombian population.
Colombia, a Caribbean country that explodes with joy so easily that kidnappings, murders, drug trafficking and corruption all blend in. The paramilitaries support drug traffickers and land traffickers who finance them, although the Guerrilla is also involved in drug trafficking, with hundreds of kidnappings from all social strata.
There is a basic rule, where there is asphalt the level of violence is low, where one travels on dusty roads the danger increases and in the jungle one is at the highest risk.
Now this is all changing. The FARC is surrendering their weapons and ELN is negotiating. The paramilitaries have been reduced for quite a while in small military leaders at the service of the mines, landlords and drug traffickers.
At the end of the 1990s I was able to travel to Colombia several times with the Latin American correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel. We met Raúl Reyes at the demilitarized zone in San Vicente de Caguán and Carlos Castaño from the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) and learned about the tragedy of millions of internal refugees, visiting the camps in the Apartadó en Urabá zone.
Here are some of the protagonists with the hope of living a clean and long-lasting peace process, but with a living memory of what happened during the past five decades.
