Girls, boys and adolescents from five spaces for reintegration have received training in photography and multimedia to tell the stories of their territory from their perspectives. The goal is to tell the stories of more than 10,000 boys, girls and adolescents who are part of the families of peace signatories.

Alexander Castañeda Palacios, 14, is shooting a short film. A general shot shows an arid landscape with brown drywall houses and zinc roof tiles in the background. Location: The Former Territorial Area for Training and Reintegration (TATR) La Variante, about four kilometres from Tumaco, Nariño, near the border with Ecuador. In his words, the short film tells the story of “a group of young people who are threatened and forcibly displaced by other young people.”
 

Photo by: Juliana Peña/UN Verification Mission in Colombia. 

In Manaure, Cesar, about 1,700 kilometres away, in northern Colombia, Lionel Rueda, 10, runs around a small classroom, just like his namesake, Messi. Instead of kicking a football, he is holding a camera and trying to take photos of his friends. He keeps running until Shaira, his 12-year-old cousin, asks him to stay still so she can listen to the class. Shaira is learning chlorophyll printing, the art of printing photos on tree leaves.
 

Lionel Rueda, participant in the Seeds of Peace project in Tierra Grata, Cesar. Photo by: Esteban Vanegas/UN Verification Mission in Colombia. 
 

Lionel and Shaira do not know Alexander, but they have many things in common: the three of them participated, roughly on the same dates (between 24 June and 6 July), in the ‘Semillas de Paz’ project, which trained 135 people from five departments in photography and audiovisual arts. They are among the 10,342 boys, girls and adolescents who are members of the families of peace signatories in the country, according to figures from the Information System for Reincorporation and Reintegration (SIRR) of the Agency for Reintegration and Normalization (ARN).

Most of them—96 per cent—are children of peace signatories, just like Shaira and Alexander. Forty-four per cent are under five years old, 31 per cent are between six and eleven years old, and 26 per cent are between twelve and seventeen years old.

 

La Rotativa

Marcos Guevara arrived at the Tierra Grata TATR in Manaure, Cesar, nearly eight years ago as a peace signatory. He brought an old camera and set out to capture the memory of the peace process and teach his fellow signatories and their children and their relatives the art of photography.
 

Seeds of Peace Project in Tierra Grata, Cesar. Photo by: Miradas Collective. 

With this goal in mind, which he later expanded to include shooting documentaries and large format photos, Marcos—Shaira’s father and Lionel’s uncle—launched an audiovisual project he called La Rotativa.

“This community is relatively new,” explained Marcos. “It was created out of the Peace Agreement, and we want to make photography and the visual arts tools to show it, to tell the stories of this community that wants to build memory through images and strengthen youth leadership processes.”
 

Photo by: Esteban Vanegas/UN Verification Mission in Colombia. 
 

With his experience, and together with María Fernanda Pinilla, he had the idea to create a photography incubator for girls and boys. The pilot was launched to resounding success last November in Tierra Grata.

 

A seedbed of peace 

Marcos is also a member of Colectivo Miradas, a group of experienced community photographers and videographers who conduct peace education through photography and art. Miradas is a group of fifteen photographers, eight of whom are peace signatories. They developed the idea of conducting a second version of the training incubator in Tierra Grata and expanding it to five other departments, which they did. With the support of the European Union Delegation through the European Peace Fund, Corporación Reencuentros, the Ministry of Culture, Fundación Compaz, and the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia, Colectivo Miradas held, almost simultaneously, six photography and video workshops in Cesar, Caquetá, Putumayo, Antioquia, Nariño, and Cauca.
 

Seeds of Peace Project in Tierra Grata, Cesar. Photo by: Esteban Vanegas/UN Verification Mission in Colombia. 

The first five were successfully held, but unfortunately, according to Gina Parra, leader of Colectivo Miradas, the one scheduled in Argelia, Cauca, had to be cancelled at the last minute for security reasons. “We dream of going to Cauca despite the security conditions and threats of armed groups against the communities. We tried. The team led by a peace signatory arrived at the territory, but on the day the workshop was supposed to begin, bullets clouded the sky, and we had to cancel it to avoid putting the population at greater risk," she explained.

According to Gina, although the workshops focus on photography and multimedia and seek to teach professional techniques to boys, girls and peace signatories, they also address issues related to the Peace Agreement, such as reconciliation, community attachment, the gender-sensitive approach, memory and search for persons deemed missing.

 

Attachment and territory

Alexander, 14, says that when the workshops began in Tumaco, Nariño, on 27 June, he created a short film about attachment and forced displacement because he had seen the pain that leaving one’s territory causes people.
 

Alexander, a participant in the Seeds of Peace project in Tumaco, Nariño. Photo by: Miradas Collective. 

“He has lived half of his life in a space for reintegration, so he is very aware of peace and violence issues,” said his mother, Maria Fernanda Palacios, a renowned and admired teacher in La Variante, mainly because she looks after the toddlers in the Community Assistance Unit (UCA), which is the local nursery.

Alexander dreams of being a famous film director and making a film about his mom’s life.

Maria Fernanda is from Cali, Afro-descendant, and 44 years old. Seven years ago, she arrived at the TATR to work as a teacher in the ‘Arando la Educación’ programme, a strategy to provide the peace signatories, their families and the neighboring community with the opportunity to study in person without leaving the territory. There, she met Eddy Antonio España, a peace signatory and participant in the program who spent 16 years in the FARC-EP. Together, they decided to form a new family.

She attributes this relationship to the Peace Agreement, which resulted in new families and provided communities with access to goods and services.
 

Donation of books to the library of the former TATR La Variante in Tumaco, Nariño. Photo by: Juliana Peña/UN Verification Mission in Colombia. 

 

The dividends of peace

According to figures from the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which funds ‘Arando la Educación’ in partnership with the Ministry of Education, this program has trained 16,705 people: 3,560 peace signatories and 13,145 residents from neighboring communities. “To date, 5,611 people have graduated from high school, and the social fabric has been strengthened in each of the areas where community reintegration is implemented harmoniously with the neighbouring communities,” reported the NRC.

Somehow, thanks to this program, Alexander also arrived at this new territory. According to María Fernanda, he has not fully adapted yet. “There’s not much for young people to do here,” she admitted. María Alejandra appreciates these pedagogical spaces “because they teach art and offer new visions of the world to the boys and girls living here.”

These stories, which often go unnoticed by many, are the stories that the young participants of the Peace Incubator want to capture to show the country how peace is built in the territory from a different perspective.

With this objective in mind, Colectivo Miradas intends to produce a web series on each theme developed in these territories for reintegration. “We are going to upload it to our website,” said Gina Parra. “Each territory will have an episode, and then we will undertake the dissemination process to showcase the work done in the incubator. We want to hold a biennial photography exhibition to invite both the children, young people and peace signatories who participated, and the tutors and photographers who have assisted us in the process. The biennial is our window to show Colombians the dreams of the more than 200 people who are currently part of ‘Semillas de Paz’.”
 

Participant in the Seeds of Peace project in Tierra Grata, Cesar. Photo by: Esteban Vanegas/UN Verification Mission in Colombia. 

Perhaps there we will see Alexander's film or meet young people like Lionel and Shaira and see that their stories, struggles and challenges are, in many cases, common to thousands of young people who live in these new territories of peace.

 

Miradas, a collective that sows hope in the territories

Colectivo Miradas is formed by eight photographers who are peace signatories and seven community photographers from various parts of the country. They found a window of opportunity for reintegration, reparation and reconciliation in photography and art.
 

Participants of Semillas de Paz in La Carmelita, Putumayo. Photo by: Miradas Collective. 

They met in Bogotá during the 2020 Pilgrimage for Life and Peace. One year later, they conducted a national documentary photography workshop in the former TATR of Tierra Grata in Manaure, Cesar. The participants included 35 grassroots, alternative and rural photographers from 15 departments. In 2022, they held a new workshop with 95 participants from 17 departments.

Also in attendance were renowned photojournalists such as Bolivia's Sara Wayra; Federico Ríos, a permanent contributor to the New York Times; and photographer Jesús Abad Colorado, among others, as well as some artists and actors who have also supported these peace initiatives, such as Santiago Alarcón.

Semillas de Paz participant in Guaviare, Colombia. Photo by: Miradas Collective. 

Thus, workshop after workshop, and with the support of the European Union and the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia, among other entities, they created a network of photographers that later replicated this model. Last year, in August, they launched the 'Film and Photography Journey for Peace,' which included ten workshops in Yondó, Antioquia; Los Palmitos, Sucre; Mutatá and Carrizal, Antioquia; Icononzo and Planadas, Tolima; Villavicencio and La Julia, Meta; Miravalle, Caquetá; and La Variante in Tumaco, Nariño.

This year, they embarked on ‘Semillas de Paz.’ In the words of Ginna Parra, the collective’s leader, this is the realization of all they learned in previous countrywide processes. “We are sowing knowledge around memory, peace and reconciliation. We are also sowing dreams in those territories where the State has a precarious presence but where the armed actors of the conflict are present. We want to get there with alternatives based on peace,” she added.

 

By: Jorge Quintero
Public Information Officer
United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia