A photo “moment”

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The peace talks in Havana haven’t given us many photo “moments”. In fact, Henri Cartier Bresson, would be flabbergasted at the lack of spontaneity of the images captured in Cuba and sent to photo editors across this country.

To say, that these conversations have been sour photographically is a gross understatement as one only has to wait when a “cycle” of rounds begin (or end) to receive yet another hardly-uplifting image of the chief negotiating team dashing through a corridor looking far too glum.

In all fairness though, De la Calle, Jaramillo, Mora and team, have the daunting prospect of having the face the FARC everyday and this can be hardly encouraging, especially, as everyday, seems to bring with it another crisis of public opinion, some gross miscarriage of essential human decency and an attack on some remote village in Colombia (which until the attack) nobody even knew existed.

No matter how dire our reality is getting (and it has been dire for some time now), a smile from the negotiators would do the photo community some good. One photo, however, did knock my socks off recently when the government’s chief negotiators decided to hoist their pant legs in solidarity with landmine victims and shortly after news came in that yet another child, this time a 7-year-old girl, was killed by a landmine planted by FARC.

But the picture could have been much more powerful if the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia negotiators had followed suit, flashing their own legwear in comradeship with all those whom they have maimed during fifty years of a still on-going conflict.

Even though there are many who insist FARC’s senior rank and file should serve jail time for their atrocities they have committed, the only way forward – and for these talks to have any guarantee of success- is for Colombians to try and close and chapter on their past; roll up their shirts (and pants for that matter) and move towards a more confident and bold future.

The peace process remains a highly-contentious issue, which has cut through political lines, strained friendships and resulted in many a heated debate around the family table. President Juan Manuel Santos had tried to stick to Roosevelt’s Big Stick ideology when dealing the FARC’s escalation in attacks, and which has resulted in a counter offensives by the military.

While the country has witnessed the worst escalation of violence since the process began more than two years ago and the government has stated publicly that it could thrown in the towel any moment, progress is being made on another front – landmine clearance.

As bombs continue to destroy our infrastructure and erode at the resolve of Colombians, the military and FARC have come together in an unprecedented show of unity to begin sweeping four areas of landmines and with maps provided by the guerrilla organization. Just a week after the sock revelation, chief negotiator De La Calle stated that the decommissioning of mines “had become a reality.”

If FARC explosives experts and the Colombian Military can scour the countryside together in search of these “perfect soldiers,” then this exercise pulls the rug from under the feet of the debate that the only way to deal with the 12,000-strong rebels, in a post-conflict scenario is to lock them all up and throw away the key. Colombia needs more humanitarian initiatives, rather than inmates if it wants to guarantee a lasting peace.

When Colombia faces an invisible enemy it rallies together. We saw this with during the early 1990s when the Medellin cartel was planting bombs in Bogotá and Medellín. During the mass kidnapping spree orchestrated by FARC’s military commander alias ‘Mono Jojoy,” Colombians outraged, took to the streets in giant rallies, demanding ‘No Más!’ It worked.

It’s time to come clean on the issue of landmines. If the experiment in Antioquia works, it’s a model must be applied to many other regions of this mine-ridden country. Let’s not be afraid of showing our colours. And never our socks!

 

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