Side by Side at the Pitalito Cemetery

On October 2, 2016, Colombians narrowly rejected, by 50.21%, the peace agreement signed a few days earlier with the FARC guerrillas. Five days later, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Juan Manuel Santos. A renegotiated agreement was signed on November 24, 2016, in Bogotá. It created the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP): those who acknowledge their crimes and tell the truth avoid prison, but must make amends.

On September 16, 2025, the JEP sentenced the seven members of the FARC's last secretariat for at least 21,396 acts linked to kidnappings. Their sentence, up to eight years: demining, environmental restoration, memory projects and searching for the disappeared, with an electronic bracelet and restricted movement.

On September 21, the sentence began at the San Antonio de Padua cemetery in Pitalito, in Huila. Since December 2024, 54 unidentified bodies have been recovered there; nine have been returned to their families. Until September 30, the former commanders worked alongside army officers who have acknowledged responsibility for extrajudicial killings. Former enemies, holding the same shovel.

Nothing is settled. Relatives of people who were kidnapped doubt their loved ones lie in this cemetery and ask that the search turn to the mountains, near the old camps. In Congress, the next budget would give the JEP far less than it requested, and the unit tasked with finding the disappeared could have to close half of its forensic centres. On September 28, the UN welcomed this joint work and called for it to be funded. Because no one heals from a war alone: we heal through connection, and peace is held up by many hands.