NTX: Why did the FARC-EP decide to negotiate with the Juan Manuel Santos administration? What were the subjective and objective reasons for this determination?

FARC: We could refer to the rooted conception that the FARC-EP has on regards of the political solution, an idea that has always accompanied the formulations about the future of our country. Until February 2002 peace talks took place in Caguan, Andres Pastrana´s [Former president] government abruptly broke the talks, after three years of permanent delay in addressing the topics of the Common Agenda.

Afterwards, Plan Colombia [US military aid plan] took place, and then with Alvaro Uribe [Former President] Plan Patriota and other gigantic military operations were developed with which the Colombian government tried again to annihilate us.

Also read: Who can boast of the success of Plan Colombia?

War took on new levels, but even so, they didn't achieve their goal of finishing off the FARC. When Santos [current president] took office, he started talking about conversations and, despite the intensified war, the government showed certain samples of real interest in creating the conditions to reach a final agreement.

There were no constraints to the discussion; the terms of the process were agreed by both parties in an exploratory period that lasted six months.

The then president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, offered his full cooperation and the Colombian government agreed and facilitated his selfless help. Cuba was also more than ready to support all efforts for peace in Colombia to materialize.

Also read: Exploratory meetings

In our country, like a chorus, and each day with more eco, a wide range of personalities, social, political and popular organizations stood in favor of a negotiated solution to the conflict. Diverse voices within the establishment began to express themselves in the same direction. There was also an international stir in the same direction.

We acknowledged, to say in a certain way, a generalized feeling of annoyance and even repudiation towards the continuation of a confrontation that seemed never-ending. Why not then try and achieve what hadn't been achieved in the past? That’s how we came to this process.

NTX: What's the bad, the ugly and the positive aspect of the negotiation process in Havana?

FARC: The ugly thing is to discover how many people and social groups have their souls full of hatred and work towards propagating it to the entire population.

The bad aspect is to find oneself talking with an interlocutor who seems to always have a double standard, one for the peace talks, signing agreements such as the Comprehensive Rural Reform, Political Participation and Solution to the Problem of illicitly used crops, and simultaneously another one for the sectors of great capital, to which it generates business facilities that are contrary to what was agreed during the peace talks, like taking unpopular measures of police and military repression that lessens their fears of social struggle, and continuing to enact plans of forced eradication of illicit crops attacking the weakest link in the chain: the State-abandoned farmer.

Also read: 35 human rights defenders killed in 2016

The good thing is to perceive the enthusiasm for peace that communities that have directly experienced the conflict show, the joy of millions of Colombians in towns and cities because a peaceful horizon is foreseen, something which could imply -if successful- real change in the economic, political and social situation of the country.

NTX: The Final Peace Agreement is irreversible in the short term?

FARC: Everything indicates so. But you should know that the National Government insisted from the beginning on including in the General Agreement of August 2012, which is the basis of the Peace Process, the sentence “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”. That means that a last-minute unbridgeable disagreement could break everything down. We hope that this will not happen, but that governmental provision does raise concerns.

NTX: Countersignature of the peace agreements: Why a plebiscite?

FARC: On June 23, a formula was agreed for countersignature. And the Constitutional Court ruled on the feasibility of the plebiscite. But we must not forget that this can only start once a Final Agreement is reached, and that this last stage of the Peace Talks has become complicated, in terms that they want to force us to accept certain formulas based on the urgencies involved with the legal deadlines for convening and holding the plebiscite.

Also read: The future of the FARC-EP part 1