La paz en el territorio

The book Peace in the territory: local power and post-conflict in Colombia represents an important guide for the stage that Colombia is beginning to live. This book is the result of reflections on the present and future of Colombia in the face of peacebuilding after a conflict of more than five decades. Therefore, the study of both the difficulties and the window of opportunities for the implementation of the Peace Agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is a contribution to generations of peace and retribution to the victims and the society in general.

After the peace dialogues in Cuba, these first contributions from the academy are necessary to understand the role and challenges that Colombians, the institutions and the different actors involved in the conflict must assume in the implementation phase of the Agreement. The responsibility for developing a new territoriality must not only fall in the hands of the State, but also in those of civil society and individuals, axes of reconciliation and the peacebuilding that is beginning.

 The project of a new resilient society capable of overcoming the consequences of armed conflict or new forms of violence will be the result of the consolidation of a territorial peace in harmony with what was agreed in Havana. But the text of the Agreement is nothing more than a seed for what the country must do in the stage it is beginning to go through.

Colombia cannot limit itself to understanding that the termination of a war conflict with a specific armed group is the last link to achieving a country at peace. The country urgently needs to eradicate violence in all its expressions: society must eliminate attitudes, beliefs and sectarianism that crystallize into conflictive practices. Only the absence of tacit violence is not enough to have a peaceful country, a normal country.