For a peace more active than all wars

Open letter from the International Poetry Festival
of Medellín to the national Government, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
the National Liberation Army (ELN)
and the Colombian people

On Monday October 2nd President Alvaro Uribe authorized the High Commissioner of Peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, to look for a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas to demilitarize a zone in the department of Valle del Cauca, with the purpose of negotiating a humanitarian exchange of detained civilians with imprisoned guerrillas.

On the same day, the FARC expressed in an open letter addressed to the three branches of the state its intention of building a rapprochement with the government to lay down the foundation of a just and lasting peace, once the humanitarian exchange is realized.

In a new, short reaction, President Alvaro Uribe remarked two days later that he would meet with members of the FARC Secretariat, if this contributed to the eventual holding of a peace process.

All of this takes place in the context of a situation in which there is progress in a new phase of negotiations between the Colombian government and the ELN.

Colombians and the international community are hoping for a generous outcome forged by both sides, which will undoubtedly be the base for the emergence of a new country for all Colombians.

The Managing Committee of the International Poetry Festival of Medellín has been awarded the 2006 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize. The importance that culture and poetry have in the search for peace has, facing the whole world, deserved this recognition, which honors our country. But it would be a much greater honor for a country in peace.

This award implies a reassertion of our compromise with art and poetry in the search for an honest and democratic peace, with social justice and the full exercise of all rights and sovereignty, as well as a valid defense of natural resources for the welfare and self- determination of the Colombian people.

The jury has based its decision to award the 2006 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize to the International Poetry Festival of Medellín for having proved that “creativity, beauty, free speech and community can flower and overcome even all the most deeply rooted fears, as well as violence”.

In this respect, our organization wishes to express to the National Government, the FARC, the ELN and the Colombian people, the following:

1) The present war has lasted almost half a century. There is no definitive victor in the field of battle that Colombian cities and countryside have become, where the number of dead, widows, orphans, wounded, disappeared, displaced, disabled and kidnapped persons, keeps growing.

2) One can say that our country has never known peace. To the war between centralists and federalists in 1812 and 1813, were added the civil wars of 1828-1831, the War of the Convents in 1839, the War of the “Supremos” from 1840 to 1841, the civil wars of 1851, 1854, 1860-1862, 1876-1877, 1885, 1895, the War of Thousand Days which took away from us Panama and the lives of 120,000 countrymen, among a scarce population of 3 million. And other nine civil wars in the twentieth century. And as if these were not enough, a war against Ecuador and another against Peru. A popular insurrection and hundreds of thousands of dead since 1948. The creation of guerrillas liberales and paramilitary groups. Coups d’état. Bombing of Marquetalia and countless other places in the national geography, which led to the founding of the FARC in 1964. Founding of the ELN, the Popular Army of Liberation (EPL), the Revolutionary Army of the People (ERP), the “Quintín Lame” and many other armed groups. The “Lazo” Plan, the Colombia Plan, the Patriot Plan. Genocide of leaders and members of the Patriotic Union (UP). Three million displaced persons. A river of blood continues flowing under the bridges. It is the oldest war in the world and one of the longest lasting conflicts in human history. No one knows how many lives have been uselessly lost in the armed confrontations between Colombians, since the Independence until our own time. One can truly say, then, that our country has never known peace.

3) The efforts of a rapprochement between the Colombian state and the FARC and ELN are encouraging. It proves that the war path is not the only way to reach peace. That a civilized dialogue can recover a new and better impetus. The clamoring for an immediate humanitarian agreement must be heard. We heartily wish that this rapprochement lead to a great process expressed in a new Constitutional Assembly that can broaden democracy, human rights, inclusion and tolerance.

4) We Colombians can not be condemned to suffer the terrible wear of being always under arms, while unemployment, hunger and displacement grow. It is necessary that we reject being used to the horror of the war under which we have suffered for 176 years of independent life. To achieve a peace more active than all wars, with no ambiguity whatever, Colombians must activate the exercise of our political will, and move in mass to support the successful development of negotiations with the ELN and the achievement of an immediate humanitarian exchange between the Colombian state and the FARC, to open the way for a creative political dialogue towards a political solution negotiated between the sides in conflict, so that at last Colombia can achieve its first and definitive peace, based on national independence and social justice.

So that our country is transformed —at the end of this nightmare or shooting range our homeland has become— into the exemplary, material, cultural and ethical power the whole world waits and wishes for.

Fernando Rendón
Direction Committee
International Poetry Festival of Medellín
2006 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize