MESETAS, Colombia — As United Nations inspectors slammed shut a shipping container filled with rifles, fighters from Colombia’s largest rebel group cheered on Tuesday morning when their leader declared that they had laid down their arms after 52 years of guerrilla war.

It may yet be some time before every weapon the rebels fired in Colombia is accounted for. But the ceremony signaled to the country that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials as the FARC, would no longer threaten Colombians as it had for generations.

“Goodbye, weapons! Goodbye, war!” Rodrigo Londoño, the FARC leader known as Timochenko, shouted to the fighters.

The rebels have abandoned their battle camps for demobilization camps like the one in a lush stretch of countryside near Mesetas — temporary settlements of tents and drywall buildings where the rebels have been slowly handing over their weapons, 7,132 at last count.