Peace-building: Insights into a university’s ‘special role’

In the seven years since the 2016 Havana Accord put an end to the more than half-century old insurgency by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Colombians have witnessed some remarkable and positive developments.

They include the demobilisation of insurgents in exchange for amnesty, transformation of the FARC into a political party, the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and a land reform process.

Colombians have even seen the implementation of a pathway for former guerillas to access universities and a university preparatory programme.

Still, despite such progress, on 23 March 2023, Father Luis Fernando Múnera, SJ, rector of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ) in Bogotá, Colombia, knew the seminar being held that afternoon was like no other in history of the university established almost 400 years earlier.



In a lecture hall usually used for chemistry or mathematics lectures, sitting on the stage, not four feet apart, were Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, the former commander of the FARC and Colonel (r) Luis Fernando Borja, who as a former commander of the Colombian army-led the forces that hunted Echeverri when known by his nom de guerre Timoleón Jimenéz or Timochenko.

Múnera knew that much of what the former commandants would say would be difficult to hear. After all, the war had claimed 450,000 lives (government soldiers, FARC, other insurgents and civilians).

“You could feel the tension in the room when Echeverri explained his decision to sign the peace accord and embrace a transitional justice tribunal based on restorative justice as a path to reconciliation,” said Múnera.

“Colonel (r) Borja narrated [the experience of having to] face his family and tell them that he was not the hero they thought he was. On the contrary, he acknowledged his participation in the assassination of innocent civilians that were later presented as killed in combat.

“Many of our students are from regions where violence was rampant and lost family to the war, or they themselves were victims. Naturally they are very sceptical of the peace accord and its restorative approach to justice,” Múnera told University World News.

Later, on September 10, 2023 another dialogue took place. This time between Rodrigo Londoño, and Luis Fernando Borja, and some of the people they victimised during the war.

Peasants from the municipality of Tolu Viejo heard how the colonel gave the order to kill their husbands and sons. They were innocent farmers who were presented as guerrilla combatants. People kidnapped by the FARC also had the opportunity to face its last commander, and to tell him about their suffering and the impact on their families.

“It was and is important for us to have victims of the armed conflict as well as Rodrigo Londoño and Luis Fernando Borja facing each other in dialogue, to show our students that dialogue between enemies and with victims is possible; to bear witness, as the Gospel commands us, to a greater truth than opposing political positions.

“It’s important for Pontificia Universidad Javeriana to do this, to be a relevant actor in society, and we can because we have a special place, academically and socially.

“Pontificia Universidad Javeriana is a small representation of the country; the tensions and polarisations that are outside the university are here. But by bringing these men here, by providing a place, both we at the university and they can see that the ‘other’ is just a person – a person with mistakes, bad projects and with hopes,” said Múnera.

One university’s dialectical role in peace

As befits a university founded and governed by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), which for centuries has been the most intellectual of the Roman Catholic Church orders, PUJ’s role in the Colombian peace process is a dialectical one: the university has developed programmes to foster peace and rural development, while programmes beyond the university’s gates have altered its intramural pedagogy.

By way of example, Múnera pointed to the Integral Ecology programme, which is informed by both the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.”

“Integral ecology,” wrote Francis (himself a Jesuit), “calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology”, including the dignity of labour and, importantly, the idea that “the notion of the common good also extends to future generations”.

This last point undergirds PUJ’s commitment to working in dialogue with local groups to understand their worldview, which has led to a profound and comprehensive transformation of the curriculum, the formulation of learning outcomes, syllabi as well as disciplinary lines of research.

In practical terms it means more than simply working with local people in research projects assigned to the Javeriana Amazonian Programme, the Javeriana Water Institute or the Doctorate in Environmental and Rural Studies, where, in each case, PUJ helped with community actions for integral ecological development.

It also involves an axiological and epistemological reorientation of how PUJ conceived of ecological studies that foregrounds the ecological knowledge held by people indigenous to the area.

“We’ve been working on ecology since the 1970s,” said Múnera. “The view had been rural development and contact with the real world. For us now, ecology is not conservation only; it is the relationship, especially with the rural population and nature, that is very important.

“What is different now is that before developing an ecological plan, we meet with and listen to the local people who know the land and water, and ‘map’ what they tell us. Solutions grow out of their knowledge, to which we can add the science and technology to make the projects – many designed by our students – successful.”

Equally important is what Múnera called the “transversal” effect of integral ecology, which in addition to altering what PUJ’s cafeteria buys and impacting on PUJ’s investment decisions, changes disciplines.

“It means that anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science are all working with the idea of sustainability at their centre. The research students and professors undertake is under this model, which is informed by both ecological and intercultural precepts,” he said.

Engaging the ‘different other’

In 2014, PUJ established the Instituto de Estudios Interculturales (IEI) to strengthen conflict transformation efforts in the country. The IEI focuses on helping Indigenous communities who make up (3.4% of the population), peasants, Afro-descendants, who make u p(10.5% of the population), and rural women exercise their civil rights.

“The aim of these efforts has been to stabilise situations of high tension and open violence to rebuild deep layers of relationships in Colombian society … and to contribute to establishing the basis for a country where conflicts emerge without violence” and which is “capable of resolv[ing] differences without the need to physically, morally or symbolically suppress the other,” says the IEI’s prospectus.

Perhaps the most corrosive outcome of the six-decades of war and the social conditions that led to the insurgency in the first place is the lack of trust between Colombians, with only 5% reporting that they trust their fellow citizens. Such a high level of mistrust “makes it difficult to weave together collaborative networks to promote actions that promote social cohesion and territorial development,” says the IEI prospectus.

To establish the trust that is the sine qua non of the conditions for the groups previously excluded from power to become active in civil society, the IEI enacts in communities beyond the university’s walls principles inspired by St Ignatius of Loyola (1556) – ie, rather than ignoring differences and lack of trust, informed dialogue can lead discord to reconciliation.

In sessions designed to replace a “culture of war with a culture of peace”, participants such as political and social leaders with completely opposite views on politics are given the opportunity to experience the “different other” as a possible ally by working through agendas that include extensive processes of dialogue towards the building of a platform for the transformation of conflict.

“By carrying out an agreed upon agenda, by working together on small issues such as humanitarian support for communities affected by violence in peripheral areas of Colombia, people who have no trust in each other can learn to exercise trust.

“This allows them to visualise scenarios for the future and specifically transform options about where everyone fits in and wants to live in the community,” said Giovanni Calvano, PUJ’s director of international affairs, who noted that these sessions are carried out under the aegis of the Havana Peace Agreements.

Changing mindsets so that “society rehumanises herself and heals her wounds” requires “accepting that conflict is present and that collaborative relationships are not completely harmonious”, notes the IEI, quoting Collaborating with the enemy: How to work with people you don’t agree with or like or trust (2017) written by Adam Kahane, a director of the Montréal, Canada-based Reos Partners, an international social impact company that “helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues”.

“The generation of dialogues between diverse actors, opponents and enemies is the foundation for reconciliation in societies with deep divisions and pain,” said Múnera, referencing the IEI programme documents.

“These dialogues allow us to reduce the symbolic violence that legitimises direct and structural violence – opening spaces for the resignification of differences in actors [eg, Indigenous Colombians or rural women] whose relationships have historically been asymmetrical.

“This encourages a moral awakening, a collective curiosity that allows the search of new paths to transcend the already known landscape proposed by violence,” according to Professor Angela Lederach, who teaches at the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and the Department of Peace Studies at Chapman University (Irvine, California), quoted in the IEI document.

A course offering different perspectives

The “Columbian Truth Commission” is one of PUJ’s most important courses devoted to advancing post-conflict reconciliation.

According to Professor Ingrid Paola Cruz González, academic leader of Continuing Education: State, Communication, Society and Culture and Peace and Reconciliation at PUJ, helping to lessen the possibility of “recriminations and allegations” that would detract from academic tasks such as analysing the implementation of the peace accord is the fact that representatives of the national government, former FARC members and individuals from civil society know each other from previous courses.

“This ensures,” wrote Cruz via email, “that the students understand the importance of restorative justice, truth [ie, the history of the civil war] and the role of reconciliation in the relevant instances”.

Cruz’s students interrogate the peace agreement, its implementation and the political structures of post-accord Colombia from different perspectives: territorial, ethnic, racial and gender.

The course learning materials include reports produced by NGOs, universities and independent commissions, each one from a different perspective. The course provides the students with the opportunity to interview people who were part of the signing of the final peace agreement.

Students also learn about cultural and economic projects created as a result of the agreement. These include the House of Peace, a project related to the process of re-incorporation of FARC members and others who signed the peace agreement, Cruz told University World News.

The course title (“Columbian Truth Commission”) notwithstanding, two of the course’s learning objectives look beyond the nation bordered by Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. Cruz aims for her students to “identify international experiences in the implementation of peace agreements” and to “examine from a comparative perspective how more effective and inclusive peace agreements are reached and implemented”.

Human and spiritual steps to peace

Since 73% of Colombians are Roman Catholic and PUJ is a Catholic university, I asked Cruz about the role of Catholic doctrine in her course and in the healing and forgiving necessary for reconciliation.

The first part of her answer addressed the question of academic freedom while the second part drew attention to the human and spiritual steps necessary for post-conflict Colombia to continue on the path of peace.

“Although we are a Catholic university, we believe in the principle of university autonomy [academic freedom] and in the fundamental principles based on respect for human rights and international law. It is from this perspective that we base the study of the different issues addressed in the course.”

“However,” she added, since “reconciliation processes have a large human component, beyond talking about the role of the church, we talk about the importance of human and spiritual transcendence by the actors in the conflict as they walk the path of reconciliation. The transformation addresses truth, justice and forgiveness – but with historical memory so as to keep in mind that these acts of violence cannot happen again.”

The problem of corruption

At the end of my interview with Múnera, I asked about the loss of faith in democracy in Colombia. His country, he said, “is a state, under construction, that is deeply divided”. The root cause of this division, he continued, surprisingly, was less the decades of civil war than the kleptocratic nature of Colombian political and economic structures, which corrode trust in the state.

“Corruption is the only way to have access to the resources of the nation. We lack trust in institutions because of corruption.

“Corruption is the root of violence because the acceptance of violence as a way to do politics means that people don’t feel that the state helps them to build their lives and opportunity,” said Múnera. Nevertheless, he believes that by bringing the Ignatian teachings into its classrooms and extramural activities his university can foster the dialogue necessary for post-conflict Colombia to move forward.

In the interests of full disclosure, in August 2017 the author of this article met with the Colombian ambassador to Canada to discuss how, following the American Civil War, the United States reintegrated the states that had seceded and avoided a continuance of hostilities by guerilla forces.