From guerrillas to entrepreneurs

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nearly a decade has passed since the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the Farc, the largest left-wing guerrilla group in Latin America. Thousands of Farc fighters came out of their jungle and mountain hideouts, handed in their weapons, and returned to civilian life.

The state has helped them reintegrate into the workforce, find jobs, and start businesses, so how has that process gone?

We talk to former members of the Farc who spent years in the guerrilla organisation and in jail, who are now doing jobs like beekeeping and selling beer. How have they found the transition? And we hear from a woman whose mother was kidnapped by the Farc, and who questions why the state is spending so much time and money on former members of a group that committed terrible atrocities.

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]

Presented and produced by Gideon Long

(Picture: View of bottles of craft beer made by former Farc rebels. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Gideon Long, and today I'm reporting from Colombia in South America.
0:06.0	In 2016, the government signed a peace agreement with the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia,
0:11.3	the FARC, the largest left-wing guerrilla group in Latin America.
0:15.2	Thousands of FARC fighters came out of their jungle and mountain hideouts,
0:19.0	handed in their weapons and returned to civilian life.
0:22.1	The state has tried to help them reintegrate into the workforce, find jobs and start businesses.
0:27.5	How has that process gone?
0:29.3	That's what I'm exploring on this edition of Business Daily from the BBC World Service.
0:33.9	In the programme, you'll hear from former members of the FARC on what readjustment has been like.
0:39.1	For me, it's been very rewarding because I'm enjoying my freedom, my release from jail,
0:44.2	but it's also been a challenge, this process of economic and social reintegration.
0:51.4	People have attacked us, of course. Someone tried to kill me in my own house in 2023.
0:57.8	And we've been followed and we've received threats.
1:01.4	And you'll hear from a victim of the FARC
1:03.3	who questions why the state is spending so much time and money
1:06.3	on former members of a group that committed terrible atrocities.
1:12.5	They've had more economic help than the victims,
1:16.2	because the state gave them a salary and it gave them money to start businesses.
1:21.4	The vast majority of the victims of the FARC in Colombia haven't been given that.
1:27.3	That's the reintegration of Colombia's former FARC guerrillas here on Business Daily.
1:36.7	It's early morning here in Colombia's third largest city, Cali, in the southwest of the country.
1:42.5	We're just heading out of town now to visit a
	...

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