Colombia’s elusive peace: perspectives for a peace process in Colombia

Abstract

Why the enthusiasm for peace faded? What are the perspectives for peace in Colombia? How peace came to be understood as the opposite to security? In this paper I want to make sense of the first two questions, leaving for another time the third one. But I would like to say, that peace and security are not opposites, for peace without security is unstable, and security without peace is authoritarian and undemocratic. In the first part of this paper I wish to show a brief history of past peace processes in Colombia in order to highlight the elements that have led to success or failure in the past. In the second part I focus on Andres Pastrana ́s peace process to show how it set the bases for the discredit peace processes currently have and then I analyze how peace became a dirty word in Colombia ́s political conversation and the possibilities of recovering peace as part of public discussion.