By the late 1960s, insurgent guerrilla groups attacked military outposts, villages were leveled, and drug trafficking tightened its grip on the nation’s underbelly. La Violencia – already recorded in history books as one of Colombia’s most cataclysmic eras – had not simply ended; it had metastasized. What had begun as partisan bloodshed now mutated into a full-scale insurgency, laying the groundwork for The Revolutionaries Armed Forces’ (La FARC) rise.

​

As Cold War imperialism fueled conflicts across the globe, Colombia became yet another battleground where foreign intervention and economic exploitation deepened an already extractive government. What had once been confined to the countryside bled into every corner of life, a conflict that refused to remain on the margins. For millions, it meant mass displacement and endemic fear; for Fernando Araujo, it arrived with its own dose of brutal intimacy.

​

—

​

When Fernando Araujo awoke on his wife’s birthday, their first as a married couple, he had every reason to believe the day would be like any other. His tenure as Minister of Development under Colombia’s Conservative President Andrés Pastrana had ended, and he had turned his focus toward a private consulting venture, a deliberate step away from a political arena that had grown perilous. Yet on December 4, 2000, as Colombia sank further into socio-economic turmoil at the dawn of a new century, Araujo’s illusion of safety came to an abrupt end.

​

At noon, Araujo received a call from Ruby, his former spouse and the mother of their four children, her voice echoed unease. “I worry about this country and the future of our family,” she admitted. Still, Fernando reassured her, confident that President Pastrana’s peace process would restore stability, insisting “We have nothing to fear.” And with that exchange, he laced up his shoes and set off on his daily run.

​

La FARC’s struggle was not born from a single grievance. It was the culmination of centuries of inequality: land disputes tracing back to the Spanish crown, the collapse of agrarian reform, systemic corruption, a failing education system, and entrenched polarization.

​

In the early 2000s, Colombia was the epicenter of the global cocaine trade, supplying up to 90 percent of the world’s supply. The FARC fueled its guerilla through drug production, trafficking, and levying taxes on coca farmers, generating an estimated $500 million to $800 million annually. Kidnappings, while a less reliable source of income, remained a brutal instrument of war. But this was more than statistics or history. The violence was a living force – relentless and inescapable – pulling people into its grip and shaping their fate. On that December afternoon, Fernando became its next victim.

​

“And then, they got me,” he recalled.

​

Two men stepped out from the shadows – one from the front, the other from behind a wall. Araujo had no time to react. In an instant, they seized him, shoving him hard against the trunk of a van. The doors slammed shut. As the vehicle lurched forward, he lay motionless, a handgun pressed cold against his temple, a submachine gun hovering over his chest. Beyond the van’s steel frame, the city receded into darkness. And somewhere, far from this moving cage, the fragile peace talks between President Andrés Pastrana and the FARC collapsed, the guerilla declaring negotiations indefinitely suspended.

​

That night, Araujo lay awake, his mind flooded with questions: Where am I? What do they want? How long will they keep me? What about my wife? My children? There would be no answers. His captors had their orders. If he attempted to escape, they were to kill him on the spot. If they failed to carry out that order, they would be killed themselves. There would be no furtive negotiations. The lines between hostage and guard had been drawn in blood.

​

And then there was the ransom. Twenty million dollars. An impossible sum. The mere mention of it caused Araujo to faint on the spot. 

​

Days passed. Then weeks.

​

On the night of December 31st, as the world outside prepared to ring in the new year, Araujo turned to one of his captors. “Peter, it’s New Year’s Eve,” he said quietly. “A day for family.”

​

Peter’s voice was steady, his expression unreadable. “I don’t have a family,” he replied. “The guerrilla killed them.”

​

Araujo saw it then – the lifeless like pain in Peter’s eyes. And with it came the realization: his captivity would not be the fleeting, negotiable inconvenience he had once imagined possible. He was here for the long haul. The rules of engagement, if they could be called that, had already been set. He could resist, fight, curse, see red. Or he could take a different approach.

​

—

​

As he rocks back in his chair, surrounded by books that trace the tortured path of Colombian history– the cycles of war, the half-hearted peace attempts, the intergenerational violence – Araujo reflects on his thoughts that New Year’s Day.

​

“At that moment, my primary goal was to determine the kind of relationships I aimed to cultivate during my time there.  I could meet their aggression with my own, lash out, ignore them, let anger fester. Or, I could choose something else – patience, kindness, even positivity. Maybe, just maybe, conversation could plant a seed, though I soon discovered it was nearly impossible.”

​

At first, he and the guerrilleros barely spoke. Suspicion lingered like low-hanging fog. Still, captivity has a way of forcing proximity into familiarity, and over time, the ice thinned. Particularly, with Gabriel.

​

Gabriel arrived at camp that December, nineteen years old, but war had long since stolen any trace of youth. Recruited before his eleventh birthday, he had been forged in the FARC’s ranks. Not as a young boy, but a soldier. War was all he had ever known, and he spoke of it with the certainty of someone who had never been given the chance to know anything else. Until, the shrapnel. 

​

After a mine explosion, a fragment of metal lodged in his skull, and with it came the migraines – merciless and inescapable. His rifle felt heavier. And the FARC had no patience for weakness. His command was stripped. The war machine pressed forward, but he was left behind. And so he arrived at Araujo’s camp, not as a leader, or a soldier, but something lesser. During long, restless nights, Gabriel sought refuge in conversation.

​

“Violence breeds more violence,” Araujo would murmur, as if saying it aloud could start a conversation or make the violence stop altogether. Some of the guerrilleros listened. Others scoffed.

​

“Oligarch!” they sneered. “A man like you could never understand.” And perhaps they were right. 

​

Araujo understood then – his survival would not come through words, but through adaptation. The FARC’s doctrine exalted self-reliance; collaboration was weakness, an invitation to be exploited. But Araujo, unlike Gabriel, had not been shaped by war. He knew that even in captivity, small gestures of solidarity could carve out spaces of humanity. And so, he adjusted.

​

He shouldered supplies on brutal jungle marches, deciphered radio instructions for the guerrilleros, and taught English to those who wanted to learn. He even ghost wrote a love letter on behalf of Gabriel to his lover – an eloquent, heartfelt plea from a soldier who had never been taught how to articulate longing but felt it all the same. These acts were minuscule in the vast machinery of war. And yet, in the granular reality of captivity, they were everything.

 

Five years passed.

 

On New Year’s Day, 2006, under the light of a full moon, Araujo seized his chance and fled. When he emerged from the jungle, he found the world had moved on without him. The peace talks were long dead. And the new president, Álvaro Uribe, had cast aside negotiation in favor of an all-out military pursuit. Araujo returned to a country still gripped by war, yet he no longer saw it in the stark binaries of hero and villain that others clung to.

​

“I do not justify the FARC’s acts in any way,” he said when asked about it later. “But I understand their human condition.”

​

Gabriel, too, left the FARC. He traded in his rifle for peace and reintegration. The war had taken his childhood, but he refused to let it claim the rest of his life. 

​

Today, he and Araujo work together, transforming their own scars into a way forward. To this day, Colombia remains caught in its endless cycle, its history a pendulum swinging between hope and relapse. But some wars do not end with treaties or gunfire. Some wars end in the quiet reckoning between two men who were meant to be enemies – and instead, against history, against expectation, against all odds, choose to see each other as something more.