Trouble brewing for Colombia’s fragile peace deal as Covid hits rehabilitation projects
The pandemic has dealt a further blow to efforts to reintegrate ex-Farc fighters into mainstream society
Ex-Farc fighter Alexander Monroy brewing beer
Credit: La Trocha
Five years ago, Alexander Monroy was an urban militant living clandestinely on the outskirts of Colombia’s capital city, Bogotá. He was a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), then the country’s most powerful leftist guerrilla group, fighting a half-century-long armed conflict that cost the lives of more than 260,000 people and internally displaced more than seven million.
But today, life cannot be more different: Mr Monroy can be found brewing craft beer at Bogotá’s Peace House, home to La Trocha, a microbrewery he set up with nine other ex-Farc combatants.
A GROUP of 10 ex-combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) have been slowly growing a craft beer start-up since they signed the peace deal with the government in 2016. They are now leading a fundraising campaign to acquire a headquarters in Colombia’s capital Bogota. It will be known as the House of Peace, and the ex-combatants wish for it to be a place where you can have a beer whilst talking politics, organising, educating, and planning the construction of the yearned-for Nueva Colombia.
Despite four years of government backpedalling and the assassination of close to 300 of their comrades who also signed the peace deal, La Trocha beer was growing in popularity in Colombia’s capital Bogota and throughout the country before the pandemic hit.