Side by Side at the Pitalito Cemetery

On September 21, at the San Antonio de Padua cemetery in Pitalito, in Huila, former FARC commanders began their sentence.

Until September 30, they worked there alongside army officers. These officers have acknowledged responsibility for extrajudicial killings.

Former enemies, holding the same shovel.

Since December 2024, 54 unidentified bodies have been recovered in this cemetery. Nine have been returned to their families.

This cemetery lies at the end of a long road. On October 2, 2016, Colombians narrowly rejected the peace agreement signed a few days earlier with the FARC guerrillas.

The "no" won with 50.21%. 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, the JEP.

Its principle: those who acknowledge their crimes and tell the truth avoid prison. But they must make amends.

On September 16, 2025, the JEP sentenced the seven members of the FARC's last secretariat. It held them responsible for at least 21,396 acts linked to kidnappings.

Their sentence runs up to eight years. It includes demining, environmental restoration, memory projects and searching for the disappeared.

They wear an electronic bracelet. Their movements are restricted.

Nothing is settled. Relatives of people who were kidnapped doubt their loved ones lie in this cemetery. They 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. 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. Its High Commissioner for Human Rights saw in it:

No one heals from a war alone: we heal through connection, and peace is held up by many hands.