Clocks and Total Peace

For millennia, scholars of philosophy and contemporary social and human sciences (Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Heidegger) have invited us to reflect on the diversity of times in human experience, on its incidence in the definition of identities and the organization Social. Reading the most classic authors reminds us that, from the point of view of reflecting on the future of power, creating a political community, a nation, a city, a common territory, among other possible spaces for shared life, implies connecting the various perceptions and functionalities of time.

There are subcultures or life groups that are configured in frank opposition of times: there are those who inhabit millenary rhythms and temporary measures; there are those who are possessed by the eagerness for watches, there are those who organize their daily life based on the invention of the calendar, there are those who inhabit past schedules like antique dealers and there are those who only see themselves in the mirror of future times; however, the ways of organizing personal and collective life have as an existential assumption, as a condition of possibility, the reasonable integration of times. That is to say, there is not a single time, they are plural, as many as the existing identities; However, in each historical moment, the aim is to establish articulation of these diverse times, in a common horizon that manages to gestate shared histories. A dimension of politics lives in this possibility of convergence in common situations, associated with the emergence and negotiation of tensions and social and civilizing fractures; On this horizon, raising awareness of the times, their tensions and management, is essential to advance in the processing of contemporary conflicts.

There is the impression, regarding the political efforts that seek to mobilize a concretion of Total Peace, that the first transversal issue that must be clarified and mobilized are the times of those agendas; Articulating all the fronts that are opening up requires characterizing the various spaces and the appropriate rhythms to make diverse processes converge in a superior design enunciated as the right to peace of Colombians. Let me just take you through an example associated with the peace table established between the ELN and the national government, which has recently been the subject of multiple expectations and debates among public opinion.

This week began with the presence of the various actors and companions of the table in Caracas, the Humanitarian Caravan in Cali and the Colombian Pacific; The institutions and the insurgency announced it in principle as the start of humanitarian relief; the media received it as a possible response to the announced bilateral ceasefire; The receiving communities in Cali, Dagua and Buenaventura, especially indigenous people, peasants and Afro-descendants, coming from the San Juan and Bajo Calima rivers, have awaited the visits with relief and with concrete solutions to their situation of exhaustion and urgent search for vital answers. ; On the ground, the actors of the caravan have immediately delimited that this first moment simply implies a space for listening, because the agreements have not yet materialized at the table in Caracas; meanwhile, the mass media put even more pressure on precise gestures and actions; While this is happening, the conflict in the villages and neighborhoods continues to intensify, with the gasoline from coca, weapons, shootings, controls and constraints on various territories.

There is undoubtedly, putting this brief example in mind, a need to clarify the concerted and public agenda on each of the delicate processes that could lead to a scenario of Total Peace.

With those actors who are going to be linked to the common purpose of peace, based on submission to justice, it is necessary to clarify the specificity of this route and define an agenda that involves transforming their armed actions, their criminal practices, the relationship with their support bases, which undoubtedly have them, to move towards a viable scenario that generates confidence; In this same effort, the government must also align the conditions over time so that the State as a whole can act from the same letter and on the same page.

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In the case of the ELN, its scenarios in Caracas and the implications of these dialogues in the territories, the good intentions would have to be tempered more with the management of the diversity of times

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Returning to the case of the ELN, its scenarios in Caracas and the implications of these dialogues in the territories, then good intentions would have to be tempered more with the management of the diversity of times; And that can only happen if the parties come together in defining plausible rhythms, in which facts, progress, and results for the country can materialize. For example, it is key to understand the need to moderate the effects of the confrontation with a bilateral ceasefire and in that it is understandable that the government speeds up the clock; however, it will not be achieved if the discussion and the implementation methodologies are not given an end, because after the current tension due to the unilateral announcements of the government, there is a risk that even in agendas in which the parties of the table agree, other actors in society and institutions are not in tune with them, because their rhythms and needs are different (let us think for just a moment about the anxieties of the Wounaan and Afro-descendant communities confined and mostly displaced in shelters in Dagua and in the Coliseum, the Matía Mulumba and R4 de Buenaventura)

It is also necessary to consider the times regarding the more substantive negotiation agenda: energy, the environment, land, reparation for victims, territorial justice, urban peace, are issues that should not be addressed in a linear rhythm; It could be in simultaneous teams, so that at least initially the first agreements can be harmonized with the provisions of the new development plan, since in the short term this plan is a tool for progress; It does not imply that all the substantive discussion ends there, but some short-term agreements could favor progress in the medium and long term.

In short, with respect to Total Peace, it is key to map out the different times that are at stake and try to harmonize them so that the sum of temporary disagreements does not happen to us to continue keeping us in different channels: some in the antiquarian past, others in the anguish of a gloomy present, and a few glued to a futuristic ideal, but distant, due to the stubbornness of the violent events of everyday life. Perhaps in all of this the strategic is translated into what is done today so that there is a tomorrow.