“I must admit that the State did not have the capacity to fill the territories dominated by the guerrilla”: Monsignor Luis José Rueda

This Monday, April 11, begins Holy Week, a Christian celebration that seeks to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus and, in addition, calls for the reflection of the faithful on repentance and the questioning of individual actions. In Colombia, a mostly Catholic country, different actions are carried out such as: processions, masses, rituals and so on. In this context, the newspaper of El Tiempo held a talk with Monsignor Luis José Rueda, archbishop of Bogotá and primate of Colombia, in which the religious spoke about the current situation in the country and called on Colombians to empathize with the pain of others.

First of all, the Monsignor emphasized the greatest sin of Colombian society and related it to the normalization of acts of violence, corruption and others that affect the most vulnerable: “After sharing and listening carefully to communities in different places, I can say that the greatest sin of omission in our society is certainly the indifference and apathy to so much pain and suffering that there are in so many sectors,” he noted.

He added that one of the drawbacks to combating everything that grieves forgotten Colombia is the lack of visibility of the problems: “I have been in contact with the dramatic realities of all kinds of deficiencies; very little is said about that profound Bogota, with its own sufferings and shortcomings. And I also hear the cry of the bishops of areas where fear and despair reign, regions abandoned in the hands of groups that exercise all kinds of violence against populations and prevent them from living their lives safely and freely. We have become accustomed to living with our backs to these realities.”

In this regard, Archbishop Rueda noted that Colombia still needs to work on forgiveness, which is directly related to the violence that the country has experienced throughout its history and which it reconfigures based on the emergence of armed groups, lack of opportunities, absence from the state and other factors. He added that we currently have the tool of the peace agreement to combat this, but that it must be viewed in a comprehensive way.

“We have to strive for a comprehensive vision of the peace agreement because its implementation can be the answer to very urgent situations experienced by populations related to humanitarian crises and the recomposition of armed groups. What we are experiencing with the increase in forced displacement, assassinations of social leaders, instability in territories hit hard by the conflict makes us see the urgency of a comprehensive implementation of the agreement,” noted the religious.

The exacerbation of violence is attributed to the lack of state attention in areas where the extinct FARC had a historical presence and that could not be addressed once they left their arms, coupled with the Government's inability to fully implement what was agreed in Havana.

“The post-signing phase of agreements to end armed conflicts is often difficult and challenging. We are living in times of recomposition of armed groups and, above all, of struggles for territorial controls. I must admit that the State did not have the capacity to socially copate the territories that were dominated by the guerrillas, and today we are experiencing the consequences of this vacuum of social presence of the State,” added the Monsignor.

Although the picture is not very good, the Archbishop of Bogotá is positive and believes that there is still room to transform the negative scenarios and make use of the peace agreement: “Much can still be done to ensure the integration of regions and social sectors that have suffered from the war”.

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