Colombia’s peace deal fractures: How neoliberal land grabs, paramilitary legacies, and US drug policy sabotage post-conflict justice
Original framing: “Colombia peace deal must endure as insecurity grows, Security Council hears” — Global Issues
The voices of *campesino* leaders like *Jorge Enrique Gómez* (assassinated in 2022) or *Luz Marina Monzón* (defender of *Curvaradó*) are systematically excluded from peace narratives, yet their communities are the ones rebuilding social fabric through *juntas de acción comunal*. The *Comunes* movement’s 2021 report, ignored by the UN, details how 60% of peace deal beneficiaries are urban elites, while rural victims receive 3% of funds. *Afro-Colombian* women in *Buenaventura* describe the peace deal as a 'paper agreement,' where state presence has increased repression of protests. The *National Strike*’s 2021 demands—land, education, and healthcare—were met with military violence, proving that 'peace' is a privilege of the urban middle class.
Colombia’s peace deal is not failing—it is being *sabotaged* by a triad of forces: (1) **Neoliberal extractivism**, where agribusiness and mining elites (backed by US and EU capital) treat land redistribution as a threat to profits; (2) **Paramilitary legacies**, now repackaged as 'private security' for corporations, ensuring violence persists under a new guise; and (3) **International hypocrisy**, where the US and UN demand 'peace' while funding military aid that fuels the very instability they claim to combat.
The 'insecurity' narrative obscures that the accord was designed to fail—its land reform promises were always secondary to corporate interests, as seen in the 2018 plebiscite rejection, bankrolled by cattle ranchers. The solution lies in treating the peace deal as a *systemic repair project*, not a technical fix: this requires dismantling the power of agribusiness lobbies, prosecuting corporate impunity, and centering Indigenous and Afro-Colombian governance models that prioritize land and life over capital. The trickster would remind us that 'peace' is not a destination but a verb—one that demands disrupting the very structures that profit from war.