Character traits
Janeth
Janeth lives alone in one of the houses in Iconozo. Since she gave birth to her daughter Samantha, she chose a life independent from the baby’s father; recently they celebrated her first birthday. Janeth vindicates the egalitarian status of women in the group she joined as an adolescent, since in the mountains material activities were distribute equally between women and men. She comes from the countryside and reaffirms her love for life in community even after the peace agreement, when she had the opportunity to celebrate Christmas with her mother. In the ranks she worked as a nurse and just got a diploma as pharmaceutical assistant.
Luis David
used to take his, by then, recently born daughter to the chicken hatchery he made in Iconozo, exactly where the weapon container handed out to the UN, as an international guarantor, stood before. Every time they came back home from that walk, he put her to sleep in a hammock, with Mozart’s music playing in the background. Months later he was able to start working as a bodyguard thanks to a project made possible by the peace agreements. He took on all the challenges of any regular working man with a family and makes an effort to be very careful with his expenses, in order to save money and make the payments for the housing loan he acquired.
In the last years of the war, he dedicated himself to write poems, a romantic novel titled “Un Amor a Pesar de la Guerra” (A Love Despite War) and some autobiographical stories. Nowadays he lost interest in writing because of the uncertainty of publishing his texts.
William:
William Sánchez is about 50 years old. In his face you can see the marks left by 25 years of war. He only finished elementary school, since he was forced to work in his land and later had to try luck “scraping” coca leaf.
He doesn’t express any personal ambition, beyond satisfying his basic needs. He remembers very well the non-compliances and treasons of the government in peace processes that took place before, and questions the withholding of money destined for projects dedicated to reinstall members of FARC into society. Disappointed, William decides to go back to Boyacá, department he left 25 years ago, in order to take care of his sick mother. Just like Luis David, he took the bodyguard and warden course, but was not selected for the job. Carrying a gun is one of the few options of formal work expected for the reinstated
Fabián ("Fardey")
Fabián was renamed “Fardey” when he joined FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army), he was about ten years old when that happened. He grew up around guerilla warfare since many of his uncles on his mother’s side, his oldest brother (Oscar), and his sister also enlisted; she was 18 years old when she died. He is the creator of the handmade “caleta” models (individual spaces for sleeping that include a little trench) as part of a project dedicated to keep memory of this particular insurgent group. After the peace agreement with the government, he looked for a man that was captive when he served as jailer for the guerilla; Fabián managed to ask him for forgiveness and dreams about playing another match of chess with him, in the same board they used while the man was kidnapped
There are other voices that amplify the vision of the complex “end of the conflict”.
There is a figure, an urban character, that became a reference over time and embodies a critical and committed spirit: María Valencia G, granddaughter of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a popular leader assassinated on the 9th of April of 1948, event that started a political conflict that lead to the formation of the guerilla known as FARC.
She participated in the mobilizations in favor of the peace agreement, and later in the ones against the non-compliance of several of its points during the government of the “Centro Democrático” (Democratic Center), party that has ruled since mid-2018. At the beginning of the documentary María holds a banner containing a different picture of her grandfather in each of its faces. She also expresses the horror produced by the new extermination of social leaders and the ex-members of FARC. Just like it happened in historical processes that took place before, were the guerrillas gave up their weapons, for instance: the betrayal of Guadalupe Salcedo and the extermination of the “Unión Patriótica” (Patriotic Union) political party.
She meets up with Fabián when he visits “Fragmentos” (Fragments): an artistic space located in downtown Bogotá, and they discuss the family imprint that marked them: in her case the liberal revolutionary one, and in his, the rebellion against the state.
