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cover of episode From guerrillas to entrepreneurs

From guerrillas to entrepreneurs

2025/4/30
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Business Daily

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Hello, I'm Gideon Long and today I'm reporting from Colombia in South America. In 2016, the government signed a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, the largest left-wing guerrilla group in Latin America. Thousands of FARC fighters came out of their jungle and mountain hideouts, handed in their weapons and returned to civilian life. The state has tried to help them reintegrate into the workforce, find jobs and start businesses.

How has that process gone? That's what I'm exploring on this edition of Business Daily from the BBC World Service. In the programme, you'll hear from former members of the FARC on what readjustment has been like. For me, it's been very rewarding because I'm enjoying my freedom, my release from jail, but it's also been a challenge, this process of economic and social reintegration. People have attacked us, of course.

Someone tried to kill me in my own house in 2023 and we've been followed and we've received threats. And you'll hear from a victim of the FARC who questions why the state is spending so much time and money on former members of a group that committed terrible atrocities. They've had more economic help than the victims.

because the state gave them a salary and it gave them money to start businesses. The vast majority of the victims of the FARC in Colombia haven't been given that. That's the reintegration of Colombia's former FARC guerrillas here on Business Daily.

It's early morning here in Colombia's third largest city Cali in the southwest of the country. We're just heading out of town now to visit a beekeeping project in the hills above the city but this is no ordinary project. First of all all of the people working on it are women and secondly they're all former members of the FARC.

I'm here to meet four of the women. As we pull up, I can't help noticing they've brought security guys along with them too. We drive on a little further and then leave our cars by the side of a country road and we start walking into a thick forest. We've walked a couple of hundred metres off the road now and we've come to a little clearing where there's about 20 beehives.

I speak to one of the women, Ana Milena Cortes. She was 19 when she joined the FARC. She was a nurse and in her part of Colombia, the guerrillas were in fierce battles with another rebel group, the ELN. Ana Milena treated wounded FARC fighters and spent the next nine years with the guerrillas. But in 2014, the Colombian army caught up with her unit and she was detained.

She spent three years in jail before being released in 2017 as part of the peace process. When I left jail, I went to the government demobilization camp. But I didn't want to be there, so I went home. I wanted to see my family. It had been so, so long. I met the man who's now my husband, and we came here to work on a farm. That was when I first heard that the government could help us set up our own projects.

They held a meeting and this cooperative grew out of that meeting. The women who run this project have dressed me up in a full beekeeper's outfit, complete with a face visor. We're covered from head to toe and we're going to go in and look at the main beehives now.

The beehive consists of around 10 panels which can be lifted out of the hive and Milena is just lifting them out now and each time she does thousands of bees just come rushing out absolutely swarming around us. They're covering my recorder and microphone.

Projects like this one are controversial and there's been a backlash against the former guerrillas, as Ana Milena has experienced firsthand. People have attacked us, of course. Someone tried to kill me in my own house in 2023. And we've been followed and we've received threats. And threats.

This beekeeping cooperative is one of thousands of projects that former members of the FARC have set up, with help from the state, since 2016, which was a momentous year in Colombia's history.

After nearly 50 years of conflict, the Colombian government and the left-wing guerrilla group FARC have agreed a peace deal. More than 260,000 people have been killed in that time and an estimated 7 million internally displaced. Juan Manuel Santos was Colombia's president at the time. His message? No más guerra. No more war.

But after the euphoria of the peace deal came the job of implementing it. How do you bring over 12,000 battle-hardened left-wing rebels into civilian life and into the workforce? Many had no schooling, let alone labour skills.

After handing in their weapons, each FARC member received a one-off payment from the state of around $2,000. A government body, the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalisation, or ARN, was given the task of reintegrating the former guerrillas. It's a role it still plays today.

Hello, Guido. Nice to meet you. Welcome to Colombia. Thank you very much. In her office on the 19th floor of a building in Bogotá, I meet the ARN's director, Alejandra Mila. We have had some very successful projects, particularly agricultural projects. The FARC was fundamentally a rural guerrilla group. It recruited people from the countryside.

So a lot of their projects revolve around farming, fishing and livestock, and some of them are also producing coffee. Other than that, some former members of the FARC have set up a company called La Roja, which produces craft beer. So those are some of the biggest successes. And I imagine there are also examples of projects that haven't worked. If they haven't, why not?

Yes, we have.

We have had a lot of projects that have failed, for sure. Generally, they are the smaller ones, and it's been due to a lack of seed capital or because they haven't had economies of scale. Some of these projects are in really remote areas too, so the people involved in them found it difficult to market their projects and they couldn't carry on.

When the men and women of the FARC demobilised, many of them had been living in the jungle, living in the mountains, in some cases all their lives. So they didn't have much education, they didn't have much training. What has the agency done to help those people? What they do is support these people.

What we are doing is helping these people who in some cases didn't know how to use a credit card or how to make a doctor's appointment or even how to read and write. We're helping them find work or set up their own businesses.

and also with their education. More than 5,500 of them have now completed their school studies and 350 have started university. Many of these projects are agricultural projects and that involves land. I'm guessing that many of the people who demobilized from the FARC didn't have land. So how has that process worked?

How have you managed to give them land so they can start these agricultural projects? This government has incorporated them into its agrarian reform program. So in two years, the people who signed the peace agreement have gone from having 1,000 hectares of land to having 14,000. We have come a long way, but there is still work to do.

There are people in Colombia, as you know, who will say, look, these were FARC fighters who took up arms against the state for years. They killed thousands of people. Why is the state helping these people now when maybe they're not helping other Colombians who would also like to start agricultural projects or beer production or whatever it may be? So what do you say to that criticism that really these people don't deserve to be helped in the way that they're being helped?

Well, we're talking about a peace process. And the whole point of a peace process is that it allows people who caused harm in the past to re-enter civilian life. We need to ensure that these people don't take up weapons again. That's our central task, to ensure they remain in peace and they never return to arms. This is Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

I'm Gideon Long, and today I'm looking at Colombia's efforts to reintegrate former members of what was once Latin America's most feared armed group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, and to bring them into the workforce.

I'm in Bogota and I'm standing outside what looks like an ordinary family house, other than the fact that there are a few murals painted on the outside walls. But other than that, you would not know that this is a bar, a cafe and a cultural centre. But that's what it is. It's called La Trocha, La Casa de la Paz, the House of Peace. I'm going to go inside and take a look around.

You'd never imagine from the outside what this place is like inside. There's a little library, there are bookcases packed with books, all of them related to Colombia's long civil conflict. And hanging from the ceiling there are over 400 butterflies, all made from cloth, and I'm told that each one of those represents a former member of the FARC who has been killed since they signed up to the peace agreements in 2016 and since they handed in their weapons.

And I'm here to meet one of the women who runs this place. She's Doris Suarez. Doris was a member of the FARC for over 15 years until she was arrested by the security forces in the early 2000s. She was sentenced to 40 years in jail for terrorism offences. She served 14 years in different prisons...

before her release in 2017 as part of the Peace Deal. And since then, along with other former members of the FARC, she has formed and run this little bar, cafe and cultural center in the heart of Bogota. Hi Gideon, welcome to the House of Peace in Bogota, the best beer in Colombia.

It's now eight years, more than eight years, since the peace accord was signed. How has it been for you returning to civilian life after those eight years? For me, it's been very rewarding because I'm enjoying my freedom, my release from jail, but it's also been a challenge, this process of economic and social reintegration.

If we measured its success by what we've done here at La Trocha, we'd say it's going well. But in other parts of the country, they're really screwed because unfortunately the violence continues. So Doris, tell me about this project. Let's start with the name. Why did you choose this name, La Trocha? What does it mean? La Trocha is a path that you cut with a machete. The guerrillas use them to avoid the enemy. But if the path isn't used, the undergrowth grows back.

So we choose the name because if the path to peace and reconciliation isn't trodden by lots of people, it will grow over again and violence and war will increase in our country.

Can you tell me what help you have received from the state and where does that come from? Does it come from the ARN, the state agency that oversees these projects? Under the peace agreement, each of us received 8 million pesos when we demobilised. Nine of us put our money together so we had 72 million pesos, that's around $20,000. But

But apart from that, we haven't been given anything. Sometimes when you're given something, it makes you weaker and more dependent. So paradoxically, we think that not being given anything has made us stronger. I wondered if people, when they came to the bar for a drink or some food, were always aware of its connection with the FARC. I don't know if you noticed the entrance to the house. There are no signs. People know about us from social media.

Some come out of curiosity, others because they want to support the project. We never ask about anyone's ideology. Everyone's welcome and we think we've managed to dispel many of the myths about us, that we're all terrorists, drug traffickers and murderers. People see our human side and they can make up their own minds about the truth. People can drink our beer and get to know the story behind the product. It's an indirect way of contributing to peace building. They contribute to the construction of peace.

But not everyone in Colombia is a fan of these reintegration projects. The FARC killed thousands of people during its war with the state. It kidnapped and extorted thousands more. It forcibly recruited children and was heavily involved in the drugs trade.

Ximena Ochoa has a long history with the FARC. The group kidnapped her mother in 1990 and only released her for a ransom. For years, Ximena's family, cattle ranchers in rural Colombia, were harassed by the group. There were loads of cases of extortion, threats, persecutions, so many that you start losing count.

These days, Ximena is the president of an association of victims of Colombia's left-wing rebels. When I meet her in a cafe in Bogotá, she turns up with a bodyguard. Some things in Colombia haven't changed. Ximena, part of the peace agreement that was signed in 2016 involved the state helping and financing projects run by former members of the FARC.

What's your view on those projects, the projects that are overseen by the ARN? Those projects suffer from a problem which comes from a lack of understanding of the FARC.

The government of Juan Manuel Santos saw the FARC as a monolithic organisation. It thought the leaders had the same objectives as the rank-and-file members. That was a big mistake. The leadership of the FARC were criminals. I don't know where this idea comes from, that someone who is a criminal ceases to be a criminal just because they sign a piece of paper. I don't know where the idea comes from, that a criminal ceases to be a criminal because he signs a paper.

So you're talking there about the senior members of the FARC, but do you accept that there were also junior members of the FARC who did need help to reintegrate themselves into civilian life? They've had more economic help than the victims because the state gave them a salary and it gave them money to start businesses.

The vast majority of the victims of the FARC in Colombia haven't been given that. The victimizers have had it easier than the victims. How much clarity has there been around the budget, the financing of these projects?

No clarity at all. We haven't been given enough information. I ask the authorities, tell us clearly what are these projects? Where are they? How many people are benefiting from them? How much money is invested in them?

And I asked the citizens of Europe who pay taxes that go towards funding some of these projects in Colombia to demand clarity and transparency from the governments over the use of those funds. And have you seen any positive examples of former members of the FARC who have reintegrated into civilian life and are playing a positive role in Colombian society?

Of course I know of positive examples, but not from the projects overseen by the ARN. But yes, there are individual cases. I know of former guerrillas who demobilized and who are studying. Some of them have rebuilt their lives and are good citizens.

But what about us, the victims? It seems that the victims in Colombia don't count, especially the victims of the FARC.

How fair are those criticisms? Having spoken to former members of the FARC, like Ana Milena and Doris, and a victim of the FARC, Ximena, I thought I'd seek out perhaps a more neutral, dispassionate voice. Jorge Restrepo is the director of SERAC, Colombia's Conflict Analysis Resource Centre. It monitors the peace process. I asked him how successful these projects have been. Not very successful.

Now, one has to take into account that this is the most difficult part of reintegration, individual or collective economic projects.

The former combatants do not have the skills, the knowledge, nor the capital to be able to become successful entrepreneurs or economically successful citizens in Colombia. But you have to take into account that it's very difficult. It's almost impossible to bring hundreds of these projects to become successful and self-reliant. Now, it depends also how do you measure a project.

If it is a project of one of these persons to have a crop of cocoa or coffee, with that measure, it's very likely that hundreds, if not thousands, of these individuals have managed to get a sustained source of income which is non-dependent of government subsidies.

or international community support. In that sense, I would say that they have been successful. The large majority of ex-combatants and members of the FARC are in peace. They abandoned crime and violence. And using that measure, we have been extremely successful.

There was another thing I wanted to ask Jorge. The US government funds many aspects of Colombia's peace accords. We've seen what Donald Trump has done with USAID, the US International Aid Agency. With Trump in the White House, how secure do you think US funding for the Colombian peace process as a whole is, and specifically for these kind of projects?

What is important is that the American government considers the need to support legal livelihoods. Withdrawing the support for legal opportunities for Colombian peasant communities would be simply stupid. It would be to deliver those communities to the hands of the criminal organizations.

Back at the beekeeping project in southern Colombia, I had a couple more questions for Ana Milena, the nurse who joined the FARC aged 19 and spent years with the gorillas and in prison. When you were in the FARC, when you were in jail, could you have ever imagined that you would end up working on a project like this, beekeeping and producing honey?

When I was in the guerrilla movement or when I was in prison, I never imagined I'd end up doing something like this. Because I trained as a nurse and I didn't know anything about working with bees or producing honey. But with this project, I feel like I'm giving something back to nature, protecting the bees and the forest and the trees. And so what does it mean personally for you to be involved in this project?

For me personally, it means a lot because I've been able to start a family. I have a husband and two children now, so it's given me so much. Where did you go?

And talking to these women, you really get the sense that this project has been transformational. Many of them have spent most of their lives in the FARC, in the jungles and mountains of Colombia. Some of them have been to prison. And now here they are beekeeping and producing honey.

And more than eight years after the Colombian peace agreement was signed, that reintegration process continues. That's all from this edition of Business Daily with me, Gideon Long. If you've enjoyed this programme, check out the Food Chain from the BBC World Service this week. It's looking at businesses around the world that are employing staff with a history of criminality or addiction and trying to give them a fresh start. Thanks to all my guests and thanks to you for listening. Goodbye.