As a war-hardened veteran of Colombia’s Farc guerrillas, Roberto Méndez isn’t given to showing much emotion. But his eyes watered and his heart pounded in his chest when he heard the man who had led him in war talk about a future of peace.



“It was very emotional hearing [Farc commander-in-chief] Timochenko and imagining what peace will look like,” said Méndez, a member of Latin America’s largest rebel group which has vowed to give up its guns in a peace deal with the government.

The Farc leadership and delegates from its units across the country came together in this remote region of Colombia this week for their 10th “guerrilla conference” to ratify the peace accord reached last month, to plan their future – and to party.

Timochenko, whose real name is Rodrigo Londoño, opened the conference by telling his troops that there were no winners or losers in the war they have fought against the state for 52 years.

“For the Farc and our people, our greatest satisfaction is that we won the peace,” he said at the opening of the conference held on a muddy hillock surrounded by grasslands that dip into tropical forest.

While the rebels held their weeklong conference, President Juan Manuel Santos presented the peace deal to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the General Assembly in New York, where he declared “There is one fewer war in the world and it is Colombia’s.”

Both events came ahead of the official signing of the peace deal on 26 September, 26th in the Caribbean coastal city of Cartagena, which will be attended by Ban, Latin American leaders and US Secretary of State John Kerry.



In contrast to the signing ceremony, which will be held amid the colonial splendour and tourist hotels of Cartagena, the Farc conference was held in the remote and poverty-stricken southern province of Meta, long a rebel stronghold.

Previous Farc conferences have been secret affairs where rebel leadership decided the group’s plans for war. Here they were plotting for peace and presenting a new face to the world.

Daylong deliberations ended with nightly concerts on a huge outdoor stage complete with a smoke machine. The guerrillas sang along with fervor to staples of Latin America’s revolutionary repertoire such as El Pueblo Unido (“The People United”) and swayed their hips to the cumbia rhythm of an all-guerrilla band called the Rebels of the South whose songs speak of the end of the war and impending peace.

“It’s a strange mix of an internal consultative process about the peace accord … and a mini Farc Woodstock,” said Alex Fattal, an American anthropologist from Penn State University studying the Farc’s media strategy.

Rodrigo Londoño, AKA Timochenko, the top leader of the Farc, is embraced by singers of the Rebels of the South guerrilla band during the concert. Photograph: Ricardo Mazalan/AP

As word of the conference spread throughout the region, dozens of families trekked to the camp looking for sons, daughters, brothers and sisters who had joined the rebels.

As soon as Judith Sánchez, 57, heard that Farc troops were concentrating in El Diamante, she made the 14-hour trip looking for her son Willington, who left home six years ago to become a rebel fighter. “The reunion was very emotional. I was so happy to know he’s alive,” said Sánchez. Four other children of hers who joined the Farc had died in combat, she said.

The Farc invited hundreds of journalists to “live like guerrillas” in camps, sleeping in upgraded versions of the makeshift huts the rebels usually live in. Rebels were relaxed to the point that they left their AK-47 automatic rifles hanging on posts by their beds while they bathed in a river.

They are not quite ready to give up their guns completely. After the official signing of the pact next week and a plebiscite on the deal on 2 October, the Farc guerrillas will be concentrating in specified zones throughout the country to begin their demobilization. The last weapons are due to be handed over to a UN mission within six months.

Guerrilla fighters arrive at the conference in El Diamante. Photograph: Action Press/Rex/Shutterstock

But not all of the estimated 7,000 fighters will be disarming. Some dissident Farc fighters have already declared that they will not lay down their weapons and declined an invitation by the rebel leadership to attend the conference.

For all the festivities, the Farc leaders have taken the meeting seriously, as it marks the end of the group as it has existed for more than half a century.

One of the main issues under discussion is what the Farc’s political movement will look like – and what alliances it will seek with other sections of the left.

Pastor Alape, a member of the Farc’s ruling secretariat, said the transition to politics will not be hard, but claimed the guerrilla group has always been involved in Colombian politics.

“Before we did it clandestinely. Now we are going to do it openly,” Alape said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.

Discussions among the commanders were held behind closed doors, but delegates said many questions have been raised about the system of transitional justice that has been agreed with the government to try war-related crimes.

Under the accord, guerrillas responsible for the Farc’s worst crimes – such as kidnapping, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, child recruitment and forced displacement – who confess will not face jail time. Instead, they will be sentenced by a special tribunal up to eight years of “effective restrictions of liberty” and to offer reparations to their victims.

But by the end of the conference on Friday, the Farc will ratify the peace accords in a vote and call the first congress of their new political party, which has not yet been named.

Whatever it’s called, Méndez, a guerrilla who has spent the past nine years in the ranks of the Farc, plans to be part of it. “I will continue in the movement,” he said.

But first he wants to complete his education, as he only managed to complete the first grade before joining the rebels. “After that, maybe someday I could run for councilman of a town – or even mayor.”