You are not well informed. In Colombia the majority of the victims of the conflict support the peace process. You can easily see it in the map of how the people voted and you’ll notice that those territories where the war was actually fought got the big majority of the votes supporting the peace treaty.

The process didn't legalize the crimes nor allow the guerrilla to keep their drug dealing money. That's just FUD. The kind of FUD that made uninformed people vote no.

Uribe fought the guerrilla fiercely, but he did it by getting alliances with paramilitary groups that were even worse than the guerrilla.

The peace treaty is not perfect, and yes, there were some concessions made to the guerrilla. Like the possibility to have 10 out of 270 positions in the congress even if they didn’t get the votes, but only for two periods. It’s not easy to negotiate after 50 years of crude war, but all the lives saved with it are completely worth it.

What about the monthly alimony every FARC combatant was to receive?

I would probably still have voted 'yes' but I have a hard time to denunciate people for thinking otherwise: that paying someone to not terrorize you anymore amounts to "extortion money".

For how long would they receive the money?

Economically it makes sense. You will have thousands of people which only work skill is to combat. With the end of the guerrilla, they won't immediately find jobs. If they don't have money, they will become thugs.

2 years. It's cheaper to do that than to continue the war.

Well if that's true I give up. It's indeed a cheap price. Instead of alimony the term "grant" or "transition backing" would be the better fitting word.

Still. Morality is often on bad terms with money. If you want to talk with people about principles they often become fundamental money-wise.

This is darn cheap. I can't understand how someone in her senses can be against it.

The process forgave atrocities and put some of the offenders into government jobs. I haven't seen a site that says otherwise. Sure their crimes aren't legalized but forgiveness isn't the same thing, it just acknowledges the crimes were crimes and won't be prosecuted.

Negotiating with terrorists where they get off the hook and even allowed to be part of government is not truly a good idea. Most likely the current regime went this way because of the incredible foreign aid they are betting on once a peace process is hammered out, I doubt they truly care that six million or so displaced people want to come back and there is no guarantee with a peace deal they actually will be able to do so.

It worked really well with the M-19. This is the movement that took over the Justice Palace once. And now they are part of the democracy, being a strong and necessary opposition party to current and past governments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_of_April_Movement#Demobil...

Is it possible the map looks like that is because a lot of the people affected by the attacks left the afflicted areas, and the voters that remain are ones benefiting from the guerrillas?

You don't benefit from mines, hard work conditions, no access to anything and the risk of getting bombed by planes or being in cross fire. I understand the logic for your question but once you check the facts of those parts of the country it's obvious that only the guerillas and huge land owners could be benefiting and they don't had enough control in this situation to affect the result of the vote.

>You can easily see it in the map of how the people voted and you’ll notice that those territories where the war was actually fought got the big majority of the votes supporting the peace treaty.

Or maybe because people in those territories support the guerrillas?

No, I'm taking about territories that were attacked by the guerrilla. Like Toribio Cauca, that got more than 600 guerrilla attacks since the 80s. 81% of them voted yes to peace treaty.

I'm uninformed, but is it possible the vote was basically a choice between "war" and "not war"? Maybe people voted for anything but more of the same?

I'm Colombian and this is not about peace or war, many victims lost family members and they don't know where they are, this treaty wanted to compensate those victims by having the guerrillas give total information about crimes to those victims. the only way to get amnesty was by giving 100% of that information to the victims.

The treaty was voted down because some political movements lied to the people in the cities (not the victims), telling them that Colombia would become Venezuela, that their income will suffer by new taxes, and that the treaty had Gender equality points (which is true).

The people who vote against claim they are not in favor of the war but in favor of another agreement. There's very few people in everyday life that want "the same". However, through many lies popular believe is that we can close the conflict making things even, like there's a better amazing deal we are missing altogether and need to stop and rethink it all. There's no full justice we can achieve as a country as there will never be anyone who can repair all the WWII deaths, destruction and suffering. That didn't mean that Europe couldn't recover and that Jews, as the most clearly affected group by size, where not able to cope and forgive in many cases. That's the point that voter against don't see and think they can easily get through another agreement.

I live in Colombia.

No, they weren't in "his knees", that's a lie perpetuated by Uribe himself.

Being elected doesn't give them any power over any territories, they will be just part of the Congress, so they will have power to vote there, but not over "specific" territories.

By the way today an scandal is up in Colombia where one of Uribes friends declared all the tactics to emotionally manipulate the people to vote against the treaty with lies and overly exaggerated claims (https://www.google.com.co/amp/amp.noticias.caracoltv.com/acu...)

Thank your for a reasonable comment! There is indeed a lot of ignorance from the outside. There's a logic to many points and theories but definitely people should be more informed even here in HN.

You can't end a war without leaving the past behind. And that means you have to make concessions. You make the comparison with Germany at the end of WWII. Not every Nazi or was punished, on the contrary, the majority escaped what uou call justice. Yes, it's unfair and hard to accept, but that's what makes every peace process so damn hard.

> You can't end a war without leaving the past behind.

I found this article[1] on the idea well worth reading. The thesis is that long memories keep longstanding grudges alive, so the "forget" part of "forgive and forget" is itself important -- whatever that may say about respect for previous generations, leaving their battles behind can make your life better.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/02/cult-of-me...

Nazi not punished ? Most of them died in the war.

Oh and none of the allies war criminals were punished. You forgot to mention that.

Plenty of Nazi scientists and war criminals were given amnesty in the US after the war in exchange for their knowledge.

> Plenty of Nazi scientists and war criminals were given amnesty in the US

Let me remind you that ALL the Allies war criminals were also basically given amnesty everywhere, just because they were victors.

if you think that's fair, well that's your call.

I wasn't justifying it.

I don't think it was right.

You're alluding to the atomic bombings? Sorry, honestly not familiar with this argument.

Torture, rape, mass executions of civilians and prisoners of war, the usual.

The atomic bombings are the most prominent examples, but there were also the horrible. 'conventional' bombings of German cities like Dresden.

And fire bombing of most of Japan, knowing very well that they would torch hundred of thousands of civilians including women and children.

And the ongoing killing of prisoners who surrendered (a US army speciality in the Pacific, no prisoners, just kill them all)

We would be ok with granting amnesty to lower level FARC scientists, but the Hitlers, Eichmanns, Goebbelses, Goerings, Heydrichs, Himmlers, Hoesses and Mengeles of the FARC must see some jail time.

Plenty of high-ranking Nazis had good careers after the war and were not punished. In Germany and everywhere else. Look at Wernher von Braun, the "father of the moon rocket".

> Plenty of high-ranking Nazis had good careers

My point was that plenty (and the majority) of Nazis were killed during the war. You know, the ones who actually fought on the battleground. If we call the regim Nazi Germany and Hitler had more than 90% popularity, then you should assume that most of the fighters were Nazi as well. Which proves my point.

We evan had a nazi soldier become a Pope. But you're right, none of the allies war criminals was punished.

Do you say that Joseph Ratzinger was actually a Nazi, or just that he was a German soldier in Second World War? There's quite some difference.

The German army was just German army, not specifically a "Nazi army" even though the country was lead by Nazis and even though modern click-baiting headlines equate the two.

As far as I know, Ratzinger had nothing to do with National Socialism beyond what was compulsory and unavoidable under pain of death in Nazi Germany (i.e. being drafted).

> The German army was just German army, not specifically a "Nazi army"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Wehrmacht

German army was not "clean". They were involved in various atrocities. Other armies also were not "clean". But saying that each and every conscript soldier serving in German army was a Nazi is hyperbole. Even if you did not like Nazis, it was perfectly understandable to like their main adversary, the Soviet army, even less, and fight for your homeland.

That's just a poor article. The English Wikipedia in general is a horrible source on anything related to the Nazis.

He was conscripted into the Hitler Youth, which I think was required by law at the time.

Also relevant is the fact that Uribe and his family have longstanding ties to the criminal groups that control the drug trade (as well as extortion, illegal gold mining, and human trafficking.) From Escobar to the AUC to the BACRIM who have filled in the vacuum most recently.

Some enlightening/depressing background for context: http://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/bacrim-and-their-...

Lost in most of the US/European coverage is the huge threat the peace process represents to the Colombian political elite: when guns are put down, eventually their long history of collaboration with criminals will come to light. (E.g. in August Uribe's niece and her mother were extradited...)

Sadly, the corruption runs very, very deep and it goes straight to the top.

I fully supported the Yes vote (I'm not Colombian) but I also recognize that the government vs. FARC battle is only one front in a much larger war under which the Colombian people continue to suffer.

Can you make some parallels with the Amnesty Law in Spain after Franco died? [1] I think that amnesty was much worse than the Colombian peace process.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Spain)

What you wrote is a belief shared only by people in Medellin and other areas with strong support for Uribe, and it is far from the truth.

For a start, there were parts about restitution, and that means some people bought lands very cheap because the wars made their rightful owners displace to Bogotá or somewhere else. These lands are in the hands of capitalists and they are a big group supporting the NO.

A big part of the campaign was disinformation, proponents of the NO where saying we would become just like Venezuela. They proponents of the NO did a big campaign about how a big part of the agreements were about LGBT rights and abortion (that was not true), and the backwards conservative people believed that.

And, to further disagree with your 'it makes the Guerrilla a "democratic" party', we had another peace process 25 years ago, with the M-19 Guerrillas. And in fact some of them have been some of the best politicians of the last two decades, like Antonio Navarro, who won the distinction of being the best Colombian mayor, when he was mayor of Pasto.

The people supporting the NO are: clueless people, religious fundamentalists, yuppies who never leave the city and the owners of lands that could lose some terrain in the restitution process.