“I am not thinking about war right now…” says Don Félix Arango, guide of the Tierra Grata Ecoturs tourism project, while walking through the mountains of the Serranía del Perijá in northern Cesar — the same mountains that five years ago hosted rebellion. Instead the area is now home to an ETCR, providing tourist income to ex-combatants and insights into conflict for outsiders. Less than a kilometer away from the area where the ex-combatants live, there is the recreation of a guerrilla camp: a place where one enters into the morphology of life in the jungle and that comes to life with the narration of many people who live in the Tierra Grata area.
The voices of Cecilia, Diana, Patricia and Marisol add to the experience, reiterating that they do not want to return to the experience of war. In their simple dialogue, they narrate with emotion and nostalgia what they like most about this new camp: seeing it as a symbol of peace, reconciliation and tranquility; a space where they can once again feel from memory the experience of solidarity and camaraderie that always characterized the movement, making it possible for people from outside, tourists and visitors to get closer to the history of this people or, in the words of “Alex Mohamed”, former announcer of the Voice of the Resistance of the Caribbean block, “to let others know that we are human, that our smiles and our tears are also valuable, just as we all deserve to be known and heard.”