It will be a long time, maybe several years, before we understand and comprehend what the Truth Commission report means in all its dimensions. There is too much testimony, too much pain, too much accumulated and written truth. An infinite violence with which we get used to living as if nothing happened. At first glance, and without knowing everything in detail, I can see that the report makes two immense contributions towards overcoming the war: it forces us to recognize the conflict and it exposes us all to what we have done , or allowed to do. War isn’t just fought with bullets and bombs.
Given the thousands of testimonies from real people, it is impossible to deny that we are witnessing a war in Colombia, AN ARMED CONFLICT, to use the words some have wanted to erase from history. Such a conflict exists and is narrated there by flesh-and-blood victims and perpetrators with their duels and their regrets on their backs. Although it sounds hard to believe, in this country marked by several generations of bloodshed, attempts were made to deny the existence of an armed conflict, and its causes and its multiple edges were unknown. We as a society have not realized that the war was and is being sustained not only by guns and money from the drug trade and all illegal economies, but also by the actions or omissions of many sectors and people who do not take up arms, but have to helped perpetuate the barbarism. That is why the Truth Commission touches nerves that ache and tremble. That’s why what he says disturbs many. In the end, each has invented a story to justify the dead they carry or applaud, and to continue surviving as violence unfolds before their eyes, fueled by injustice, corruption and ‘every man for himself’. These truths challenge us all.
For years they’ve tried to rewrite history to make us believe that everything that happened here didn’t happen or wasn’t meant to be serious. Some have said and still tell us that there are “good dead people” and that the problem is a few “criminals” who need to be killed, even though the constitution does not provide for the death penalty. Others told us it was time to hijack a revolution to “finance” it. They recruited boys and girls for war, planted mines, threw bombs, tortured… All the armed men raped women, all brutally killed , all They broke laws and lost their humanity as they lose them. Always the warriors. On all sides they turned poor young people in civilian clothes or uniforms into war participants. And although these fighters left many dead, 80 percent of the victims were unarmed civilians .
They wanted to deny this war, and this attempt to erase history became the seeds for more violence. Well, the Truth Commission report tells us what we knew and didn’t want to see or understand. There is the portrait of war with all its ingredients: death, cruelty, dehumanization, humiliation, abuse of civilians, social, racial, gender-based violence. “A wounded and broken nation,” as the report pointed out in its first presentation.
We must value the spaces opened up by the Commission for victims and perpetrators to meet and look each other in the eye. You had to cry and curse. You had to have that collective catharsis. The leaders of opposing factions also spoke to each other and told each other truths. The paradox is that while some of those directly responsible for the war have spoken out, acknowledging their crimes and apologizing to the victims, others who made the war a political contributor choose to continue with hate speech and others to blame without accepting that politics have also stained their hands with blood. As sectors of the economy, the state and the media have been tainted. In each of them there is duel and guilt because they all have victims and perpetrators without weapons. In this woven quilt of a thousand parts, each one demands that its truth be known, and so it should be, for there are many and varied beatings it has received and a great need for repairs. What is most glaringly missing is that we collectively accept the level of responsibility we have for making this happen. What is missing is the understanding that such a long and bloody war is not just about the gunmen. At some point this country will have to demobilize if it doesn’t want to repeat its history over and over again.
It is a report that is called to stimulate a debate that must be studied calmly and rigorously by those who want to tell for the story what has struck everyone. We journalists from our corner will have to demand truth and justice for our dead, threatened and exiled victims of reporting on the conflict. And we will also have to accept guilt: acknowledge that we have found formulas to say, to tell and not to say without words, to fill pages and hours of radio and television with war stories that often justified the tragedy or aggravated. The horror became part of the landscape in the story. And then, in recent years, when they wanted to erase the truth of the conflict from history, many bought an official version because it was easier than trying to understand what is happening to report on it. It is easier to turn the other into a monster to cheer his death than to see ourselves in the mirror of our own war-degraded humanity… With truth first, the time has come to close within ourselves looking to get out of the “mode of war” proposed in the commission report and to understand that “if there is truth, there is a future”.
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