By rights, November 24 should have been a day of celebration in Colombia. After 52 years, it was the end of a bloody conflict that left more than 200,000 casualties, forced more than six million people from their homes, and saw thousands kidnapped and tortured.
That day President Juan Manuel Santos and Rodrigo Londoño, alias Timochenko, signed the final peace agreement to end the war, something most Colombians thought they’d never see. But on the day of the signing ceremony emotions were muted. The road to peace had been so long and ragged that most Colombians went about their daily business with only a few hundred turning out on Bogotá’s Bolivar Square to watch on large screens as the president and the rebel leader signed away the war.
