Guillermo Torres has decided that his final responsibility will be as mayor of Turbaco, a municipality of 114,000 inhabitants an hour from Cartagena de Indias. He will honor the vocation of his entire life that made him known as a FARC singer in the more than 30 years he spent as Julián Conrado in the guerrillas that laid down his arms in 2016. That’s why he’s expectant and anxious on the morning of Thursday, October 12, two months before the presentation. While taking part in an interview with EL PAÍS in an office on the outskirts of the city, he waits for the arrival of accordionist Jaime Arrieta. He insists that he and his friend must find the perfect tone to make the guitar and accordion work in harmony.
The musician’s arrival leads to a radical change in the atmosphere in the office, where consultants come and go. Guillermo Torres leaves the momentum with which he repeatedly says that Simón Bolívar and Jesús de Nazaret were insurgents like him and that they taught him the importance of defending the people from oppression. He no longer tries to justify the fight of his life – even when he is not asked about it – but rather surrenders to the music that has accompanied him since his teenage years in Turbaco. He seems happy with the guitar, the anecdotes and the energy he radiates in his political lyrics.
Guillermo Torres, current mayor of Turbaco.Santiago Mesa
He begins to sing of his successes, under the watchful eyes of his advisors, just a few meters from his paintings of Bolívar and the liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. “My health was ruined, we restored it,” “I already talked to Gustavo about it [Petro]“Let the sewerage of our beloved Turbaco be done.” He also denounces corruption and assures that he did not steal a peso: “The corrupt in Turbaco do not stop insulting me,” “How much is there for us, told me a city council”, “In Turbaco there is dignity that we don’t know any more rules”. He says he is satisfied with his government or at least that he did his best: “I ruled with a lot of love, that is my happiness, my legacy.”
The new compositions mix with the old ones. Torres can easily sing the song with which he protested against corruption in 1973: “They bought a dump truck for the city of Turbaco. “I haven’t seen it for a while because it was already stolen”, “the mayor stole it when they were going to throw it away”. He explains that the police accused him of disturbing public order because people had gathered in the square to support him. “I understood what the state was when the police captured me. “It’s a policeman’s kick, it’s a club,” he notes. According to him, the confinement fueled the insurgent feelings that arose when he was 12 years old and his grandfather told him about the assassination of Gaitán, a politician whom Torres respected for denouncing the 1929 banana massacre.
Four years ago, the mayor became a symbol of the transition from guns to politics. He won the election with a margin of almost 20 percentage points over his main rival. He was the only former FARC fighter to win a mayoralty in all of Colombia. Turbaco celebrated: People filled the streets and interpreted the victory as the arrival of a man from the people who would bring about change, according to a report in EL PAÍS at the time. Now the mayor is taking stock of his experiences in the state he once fought against. “I’m very happy and of course there are other things that I don’t have,” he says.
Newsletter
Current events analysis and the best stories from Colombia, delivered to your inbox every week
GET THIS
Julián Conrado and the musician Jaime Arrieta rehearse the song with which he will demonstrate the responsibility of his government. Santiago Mesa
Torres lists several successes. He says he dismantled a parallel farm he discovered when he took office and that the collection increased by 5,000 million pesos (about $1.2 million) in five months. He also mentions improvements to local hospital services and the construction of soccer, baseball and softball stadiums. “Money is enough if it is not stolen,” he emphasizes. This Thursday he is happy because the Minister of Culture has just presented him with “yet another beautiful thing from this administration”: some colorful plaques with the names of the streets in the city center as well as a typical flower, local drawings and the inscription “Amando Venceremos (Amando Venceremos (Amando Venceremos (Amando Venceremos) 2020-2023)”, motto of his mayoralty and part of a song he composed while imprisoned in Venezuela.
Frustrations, on the other hand, are related to the fact that “it is not easy to govern a community surrounded by the piranhas of corruption.” “My big concern is that corruption is systemic and entrenched in the bowels of this country,” he says. He noted that there was no way to recover the 10,000 million pesos (about $2.4 million) in royalties that the Ministry of Mines withheld due to a sanction against a previous Turbaco administration. He also meets business people who ask him how much they should pay him to guarantee certain jobs. “In this government they asked me for 5%, in another case they asked me for 10%,” he remembers one of them telling him, to which he replied that he should contribute with a computer donation.
A man works on adapting a softball field in Turbaco (Bolívar department). Santiago Mesa
The major unfinished task is the construction of aqueduct and sewer networks. It has been one of the promises of politicians for more than four decades and is once again one of the main topics of the election campaign this year. “Three years passed and I was never stopped by the government of Iván Duque. 300,000 million pesos are needed [alrededor de 71 millones de dólares]“Justifies Torres. However, he emphasizes that things began to change since the coming to power of Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president and leader of the Colombia Humana party, for which he was elected in 2019. The mayor assures us that the project is finally on the right track.
An insurgent who grew up with songs
The president’s figure appears to be distanced from the guerrillas. In Turbaco he is himself a myth, a social fighter about whom his grandparents spoke and who was always perceived as someone more linked to music than to war crimes. Several neighbors know him from “Abnegación,” a composition about mothers that used to be sung at all the parties. Likewise, even those who most strongly oppose his past seem accustomed to, and even indifferent to, the fact that he is now mayor. Merchant Viviana Duque, for example, recognizes that “it wasn’t the end,” even though she would never vote for a former guerrilla because she was driven out by the violence in Antioquia.
The Torres case contrasts with the situation of Comunes, the party founded by former FARC fighters after they laid down their arms. The movement has minimal support and would have no seats in Congress without the peace seats. Turbaco, on the other hand, has elected a former insurgent as mayor and most residents do not mention their past unless asked directly.
Julián Conrado, on October 12, 2023. Santiago Mesa
The questions focus on management. Critics see Torres as someone who was an aloof figure in times of crisis, who disappeared from the city streets after reaching the mayor’s office and who did little. María Fernanda Carrasquilla, a cultural manager who works in the Conservative Party’s election campaign, commented that she voted for it with enthusiasm and that she was disappointed by the lack of implementation. “It couldn’t be done with love alone. Management requires a prepared person, passion is not enough,” he says. However, he appreciates the mayor as an honest person who had good intentions and was unable to act due to constant obstacles from the council. “He didn’t do much, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to,” he admits. “You must be frustrated to see so much corruption.”
The president’s defenders prefer to highlight the successes achieved despite all odds. Luis Germán Campo, mayor from 2001 to 2003, explains that Torres put an end to the council’s interference in municipal bureaucracy and that this led to a deadlock on issues such as the budget and land formalization. “The management wasn’t bad. “It was a government that defended itself in the midst of the tidal wave, that stood for being a different politician,” he says. Jesús Medina, a 36-year-old engineer who is running for mayor with the centrist Dignidad y Compromiso party, thinks similar things. He adds that “history will recognize the progress” on issues of transparency, sport and culture.
Complete peace
The mayor emphasizes that he will never take up arms again. He doesn’t regret doing this 40 years ago “to do justice”, but he believes that today’s conditions are different: more young people are attending universities, there are other tools to make politics – for example social networks – and Colombia has a president from the left. He says that he believes in the complete peace of Gustavo Petro, although he considers it a cold name and prefers to call it “peace with justice and love.” “I won’t give in even if they kill me. I learned something from what he said [el expresidente] Álvaro Uribe: “I prefer it if they throw lead in the mountains and not in a place where they give speeches.” That’s why I prefer to stay here,” he says.
The streets of the center of Turbaco.Santiago Mesa
However, the former FARC singer regrets the difficulties in achieving peace. He points to the precedent of the destruction of the Patriotic Union, a left-wing political party of which he was a co-founder and which emerged during the failed La Uribe peace negotiations in the 1980s. “The risk of being killed in peace is greater than in war,” he comments. According to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), 1,550 social leaders and 399 peace signatories have been murdered since the agreement was signed in 2016.
Torres has no concrete plans yet for Jan. 1, when his term ends. But he assures that he will continue to sing: “I can serve the people with an aqueduct, like I did with Cañaveral.” [un corregimiento]. I can bring joy to baseball and soccer players by building a stadium for them. But I have made people happier through singing because I make them dance, laugh, jump and jump. More than Che Guevara and Bolívar, I am a cantinflista.”
Office of Julián Conrado in Turbaco (Bolívar Department). Santiago Mesa
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia here and the WhatsApp channel here and receive all the important information on current events in the country.