ABSTRACT
After its signing in 2016, the historic peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) became a source of major division in Colombian politics, between those who felt the accord represented a reasonable basis for peace and those who felt it was too forgiving of the FARC. The agreement included a scheme of transitional justice; a plan to improve life in rural Colombia; some ways to open up the country’s democracy; and a program of illicit crop substitution. More recently, this harsh division has begun to lessen as the accord has gradually grown institutional roots. New problems include the pandemic and a wave of migration from Venezuela, as well as long-standing problems such as social and economic inequality. Despite ongoing violence in several regions, FARC have turned into a party with seats in Congress, the transitional justice system is delivering truth and indictments on human rights violations that took place in the course of the conflict, and social investments are geared toward regions that have been hardest hit by violence and illegal economies. Colombia today is dealing with socioeconomic and other political issues that were brought to the fore by the pandemic and made visible by the gradual waning of armed conflict from the public agenda. In the coming years, the country must grapple with these new axes of division as the peace agreement ceases to stand as the basis for political debates and the country braces to address multiple other transitions.
