 recognition hearing in the JEP and it's a Spanish acronym which is going to learn about from Ligia Maria Vargas who joins us from Bogota, Colombia. Hi Ligia. Ligia. Hi. How are you? Good. Buenos tardes. Buenos tardes. Buenos noches. Buenos... Oh! Okay, okay. All right. I forgot the time difference. It's going to be around 10 o'clock at night, isn't it? Nine. Nine o'clock. Nine, okay. All right. So you are a... Well, tell us who you are. You're involved in the reconciliation process, the Truth Commission in Bogota and we need to know a lot more about that because I see it, and you've got to correct me if I'm wrong. I see it not only as affecting Bogota, not only as affecting Colombia, but as a model that might affect other Latin American countries. So what you do, what you learn, what you achieve in this Truth Commission reconciliation process is valuable in other countries. Am I right about that? You are. You're very right about that. What I do, I mean, I am a lawyer, I work, I'm a teacher also, and I work in an institution, and a state institution, I'm a public servant, who works in the peace process in the whole system. We check not only the Truth Commission, which is part of the system, but we evaluate the process in the HEB, which is jurisdiction, special jurisdiction for peace in Spanish Policicción Especial para la Paz, that's what HEB means. And what we try to do is that we try to make a process that is as new as you will find one, and it's different because there's not only the Truth Commission. Trying to guarantee that our victims and the whole society gets Truth, Justice, reparation, and we would like to guarantee that this will not happen again. So we have a whole system designed to achieve those goals. And in that process, the whole world is looking at us because this is the first time in the whole history of transitional justice that we make a process as complete and as complicated as this one. So the acronym is JEP. Yep. So what does that stand for in Spanish? Special jurisdiction for peace, jurisdiction Especial para la Paz. Okay. And you're also associated with PEJ, which is actually YEP spelled backward. PEJ is Procuradoría General de la Nación, P-J-P-G-N, which means Procuradoría General de la Nación. Okay. But I'm not a prosecutor. It's just the same name. You, I know you stress that point. You don't want to come off as a mean and nasty prosecutor, do you? Imagine the process where two enemies from 50 years they come together and they're telling us the truth. And then you see the prosecutor in the middle. This is not, it won't work that way. I'm not telling who was good and who was bad. I'm telling them, like all of you, you did good things. You had good intentions, maybe, but you're coming international crimes and very grave international crimes. This is something you need to acknowledge and we need to repair our victims. So if you don't, if you do it like in a criminal process where everyone is bad and I'm the judge, it won't work. Because why do you, why do you do this? When I said this, right, Legia? Legia? Why are you doing this? Why are you dedicating your life to this? I came actually by accident to this work. I started, I mean, I'm a lawyer and I started studying criminal law and I ended up in Spain. I did a PhD in Spain, an international criminal law. And then I came here and I wanted to. You know, I heard a Spanish Spanish Spain accent with you. You are, you are, you have a certain accent from Spain. How long were you in Spain that you might have gained that? Around between five and six years. Oh, OK, OK, there it is. That explains everything. I'm sorry, I was OK. So I came back to Colombia and I wanted to be a teacher and I started teaching in University of Los Andes. And then because life is like that, one day someone invited me to see the process and there was a vacant in a job here. And I started working and then I just like getting involved in it. And I love it. I really, I believe in what I do. I mean, I know it's difficult. I know we have huge problems and risks in this and that it won't make everyone happy. Everybody is not going to tell you this is perfect and we have a perfect process, but I do think we're doing what we can as country, as a society and and I believe in that, you know, like I really believe that we're doing something good. Well, yeah, you have a direct benefit in the sense you live in that in that society. And if it deteriorates, you'll you'll be a victim of the deterioration. So you want it to be civilized around you. So, you know, what was the but what is the what is the problem, though? You had 50 years of what rebellion, violence, crimes against humanity, atrocities. That's a pretty serious breakdown, isn't it? And you survived you, meaning, you know, Colombia survived. At least to the point where you could, you know, reexamine yourselves. But it sounds like a pretty serious problem. And it sounds like a problem that exists in other Latin American countries, too. It sounds like a breakdown of the society. Think of how much more affluent Colombia would be had it never had this experience and the people that didn't have to cope with it. And so so I guess, you know, what is the origin? OK, of the breakdown that that lasted all that time and that resulted in all those all those bad things and that you are now trying to fix and reconcile. What is the origin of the problem? I'll say that we have a very special characteristic. And this is that I like to say there's no one Colombia. We are several Colombias. And if you travel around the country, you'll find that there are several Colombias. So when you tell someone Colombia has no one, it has five or six are complex. And then people go like, what? How? Because in each region, we have different conflicts, different inequities, different situations which make people use violence as their resource. And I don't know the first one or the last one they use, but we are a violent country. And in that scenario, our violence has changed. And and the reasons why we have the conflicts in plural that we have are very, very different and it depends on the region you are in. But you say Colombia survived because maybe not all Colombia had the conflict. For example, I lived in Bogota. I was born here. I grew up here. And I never saw the conflict before I worked in what I work. When I was growing as a child, I was perfectly comfortable at home. I had my school, I learned through languages. I lived in Europe. I our conflict was not everywhere. We are not at this, I mean, a disrupt society. It's like they're focused on some places. And that is what gives us the opportunity to rebuild our country and to search for opportunities for those who had a different experience that the one that I had when I was growing. To what extent does, you know, the whole experience with the drugs in Colombia, what effect did that have? And what effect did the American, what do you want to call it, the American involvement in all of that have? It has like 100 percent responsibility. But the drug problem is like, you know, is like what gives the money to the armed groups to do what they do. And if we don't have that fuel, if we would be able to take that out, then they wouldn't be able to do what they do. They wouldn't have the weapons. They wouldn't have the interest. They wouldn't need the lands and they won't have forced displacement and we won't have disappeared because they just they wouldn't need it. So I always say this, the best thing that can happen to Colombia is legalize what we call illegal drugs. And if we pay taxes over that, I mean, we will be like the richest country ever. You're talking about party, you're talking about cocaine or both? Both and everything. I mean, people if people want to use it, they use it. And they don't care what the criminal code says about it. And they don't care what law says about it. And it's this simple. You don't kill someone else, not because it's prohibited by law. You don't kill someone because you think it's wrong or because you learn it was wrong because religion, because your family, because your education with drugs is the same thing. People who consume or people who don't use them, they don't do it or they do it not because of the law, they do it because they believe or they don't believe in that because they want or they don't want. You consume alcohol and you know alcohol will kill you and will ruin your day and you'll have an horrible headache the next day. And then while you say so, most of the situations that you leave and that most of the things you do, you don't do it because of the law. Well, is that changed now? I mean, for example, if you talk to the person in the street, not necessarily in Bogota, but elsewhere in Colombia, is he or she going to be still A, using and making and maybe exporting and also involved in violence over it? I mean, that is, it's still unlawful and there's still money coming in for weapons. I mean, those factors, do those factors still exist? Yes, I know. It depends on the place we are talking about. There are places where, yes, it changed because the guerrillas retire and they are involved in this peace process. So there are places who had recovered peace, but there are other places where other groups are fighting for the roots and the lands and the business. And in those places, it hadn't changed. Or you can find places where it actually it's worse now because what people, you'll find people who will tell you, we had control. I mean, they because part or family studies or whoever was it had control over the land and the business, they don't kill anymore. So we were like in this valley, you know, like the violence went very high and then it stabilizes because they don't need it anymore because they had the business. Now they're gone and these new groups are going back to where we were. But this is happening only in some places, Catatumbo or Cauca, not in the whole country. So yes and no. Well, we had this this agreement with the FARC, which was which was touted as being a great success and a remarkable, you know, a remarkable contribution to to to civil society in Colombia. But is that agreement still working? Is that agreement still helping? Or is that agreement less effective than it was when it was first made? No, it's it's still working. It was made. What happened was is this it was made for something and then they sell it as something else. So it was made. It was a peace process with FARC only, which means in between twelve thousand and thirty thousand members of the guerrilla who gave their their weapons and their surrender to justice and they become entered like to society. So for that, it is working. We don't have FARC anymore. That's true. But it's not the peace, the Colombian peace process. I mean, Colombia is not in peace as a whole because we have other groups, other stations, other interests that were not negotiated in La Habana. And there are now we have still five armed conflicts that are on like alive in the country. So it's working. Yes, we have thirteen thousand people, less combat thirty thousand combatants, less now that we had in 2016. But it's not Colombia is in peace. And from now on, it will be a perfect country and a perfect society is not that, but it's working. So let me understand the the initiative as it exists. First, of course, it's it's the agreement with FARC to the extent that, you know, as far as it goes. And then you have the Truth Commission, which tries to find out what really happened because while it was happening, while these atrocities were happening, people weren't necessarily aware and nobody was making them aware. And now we have to look back and, you know, understand why there was atrocities and victimization. And then you mentioned compensation with some people lost. Love ones that were killed or tortured and they would be compensated in some way. I'm not sure how that works. And then finally, you know, the steps to be sure that this isn't going to happen again, probably have to include some retribution. Some somebody has to go to jail for, you know, doing crimes, especially recently, when they should have known better. I mean, even after all the experience. So are all these things in play right now? And is is this initiative well accepted? Yes, except for the jail part. No one is going to jail. So this is what's going to happen. We have a system. That system, which is called the system for justice, truth, justice, truth, reparations and non-repetition. It has several institutions and you've mentioned some of them. We have the Commission of Truth. We have a special unit who searches for disappeared people and we have the jurisdiction for peace. And then we have other units like the victims' units, that is the one who pays for like the intermination for people who lost and reparations and that part. And then what the HEP is going to do is that they work all together to get justice and truth. When people come to the HEP, they're going to tell us the truth. That's the basic part. That's the start point. You tell the truth and then if you do tell me what you did and the whole truth and the victims tell me that that is the whole truth and it's complete and is what they needed to know, then we're going to impose something that's called a special sanction and that sanction has two big components. One, that is retribution, but it's not jail. We are restricting rights. But the way in which we are doing that is that we're taking these persons to make reparations and restitution to the people they offend with their crimes. So, for example, a victim tells me my father was kidnapped and he was he was killed during the kidnapping. And Farke comes and tells me, yes, we kidnapped that person because this and this and this and it happened this way and whatever. So then the victim says, I need to feel that you repair what you did. I need you to build for and this is a real case. We want what we want is a school in the place where you kidnap our parents because we want education as a way in which we can tell what happened and we can help the country to not do it and that it won't happen again. And we think that education will we will obtain that through education. So these people from Farke, they will go to this place and they build the school and that's the way in which they will pay for what they did, not not going to jail. When will they go to jail if they don't tell us the truth? If they say I didn't do it and then the victim comes and says, yes, you did it, I saw you and here there are the proofs. Then having that will tell that person, OK, you don't want to tell the truth. Then you are going to jail from five to 20 years. Oh, OK. So she was I mean, are people who were the victims satisfied with this because they're not getting a pound of flesh, are they? No, they're not. We have and I want to be clear about this. We have 10 million victims in color. So I cannot tell what's the total population in Colombia. More or less between 50, 55 million. OK. So we don't I can give you a yes or no answer to that because you'll find a lot of different perspectives. Victims are not a unit and something that I've learned in this work is they don't think the same, not because they were all victimized. They think the same. So there are, for example, in the head, we have participating actively in the process around I think for by now we should have. Eight thousand, more or less, between eight and ten thousand. These numbers changes every day. So I'm not pretty sure about today's number, but it's between more or less ten thousand. And then we have 10 million victims. So there's a lot of people that they just don't want to participate because they don't believe in the process or because they just closed that episode of their lives. And this is very frequent. We are talking about people who suffer victimization training or 30 years ago. They didn't want to talk about this anymore. They don't want to reopen the wounds. So there there are victims who are very satisfied, who participate, who trust in the process, who trust in the head, who comes every day and ask for the rights. And we have the other side. We have victims who or they don't want or they don't trust in the process or they want revenge. And there are a lot of people who think that they have a right to see these people in jail and like I don't want them to see the light of the sun anymore. So we have everything. I think what we need to understand as a society is that there is not by the way because Colombia is not able to have a criminal process like the ones we see in the movies for this amount of crimes. And how serious they were, because we are not talking about they stole my cell phone. We're talking about they kill a whole population. I mean, we have entire towns who were destroyed. What about what about recount and what about people who are recidivist? In other words, they go back and do it again. Do you have a lot of that in Colombia? If they go back and do it again, they're out of the system and they go to ordinary criminal process. And we have sanctions here in Colombia up to 60 years of jail. Oh, they go back to what like criminal process, ordinary criminal process, that's the sanction. If you go and do it again, then you're sanctioned by getting exposed from the process. And when you say it, you mean atrocities. It's not just crime, but but crimes against humanity kind of crimes. Yes, and genocide like we all trust it. We are international crimes. What about the compensation strategy? What what about, you know, some process where a victim or a victim's family is paid some for damages? The compensation is, I mean, it's that huge that the state is going to do it or is doing it by a different institution in the system, which is called. We have a big name for everything. It's called Unidad para las Víctimas Unit for the Victims or Victims Unit, which is a special institution designed just for compensation. And what it does is that it takes the money and the resources from the different armed groups. They one of the obligations in the peace process was to gave that money or everything they had lands, cattle, everything to the to this unit. And it receives resources from state and from other states. We have an international, a lot of international support in this. And that unit is compensating the victims. And it depends on the type of crime you people suffered or the age that happened. And there's a lot of criteria there, but they are receiving some kind of compensation. It's not the same as if you go to an ordinary process because there's not enough money to do this, but they are receiving some kind of compensation. Who's that money come from? Part, part, they gave as part of the peace process what they had. And they do have coming from narcotics a lot. So what we have here is a multi pronged. It's it's it's pretty creative and sophisticated to try to expiate the guilt, correct the process, correct the way people think and act in the country so that this ultimately won't happen again. So I have two questions. One is, is it working? You know, you have a lot of years left in doing this, if you want. Do you think this is going to solve the problem in Colombia and that you will have a democratic society where you don't have violence? I think it's working. I think we are we have a lot of work to do, but I think it's not enough. And that's the sad part. Well, is it better than it was five years ago? Yes, it is. It is better. We have less violence. We have less conflict. We have the longest guerrilla in the whole country, in the whole continent is now unarmed, and that's a huge achievement. But it's not enough because we have other problems. And so Colombia won't be a country without violence in five or ten years. I don't think so. But I think we needed this. So I want, if I'm a Colombian, I want the economy to be good. I always want to have a job and a roof over my head. I want to be able to have a family and feed the family. I want my kids to go to school. I want to travel, I want to be middle class and have a car and a phone TV, all the things that middle class people have, you know, and they may have those things in Bogota, but they don't have them in the in the in the rural areas, I guess. Of Colombia and in many other Latin American countries. So how do you get there? How do you create this? And I'm warning you that when you've answered that question, I'm going to ask you, how do you create this in other countries? I would love to have that answer, but I don't. And I don't because it's such a complicated situation. And we are such a different country. I mean, if you go just three hours from Bogota to choose, you'll find another country and you find people with things different and their culture is very different and they want different things and they are used to the things differently. So I don't know. I can give you, like, how to say this, like a common answer, like, yes, we need to create more work and we need to improve education. But how to do that? Like, really, how do you do that? I don't know. I think what we are doing is a good start. There are the peace process in Colombia. It's very complicated because it doesn't just goes to far give me your arms and tell me the truth. It goes to what we call rural reform. And what we are trying to do is to change the rural area. Like, absolutely, completely distribute our land. It goes to the drug problem, which is a structural central problem in Colombia. So if we can do that, it's a start, but it won't be enough. And I don't have the answer to how we solve the Colombian problem. So I don't have the answer to how we solve the Latin American problem. But I'll ask anyway, you know, what about the government? You know, the government could help the government. If the government does a little, you get a little result. If the government does a lot, you get a bigger result. How committed is the government of Colombia to this process? The government doing everything that you would like it to do to support and develop the process. OK, so here's the simple answer is that public servant, I can talk about that and we can change the question. And then I can say that I think they're doing some things and you cannot say that it's everything bad. But there's much more to do. And I think they could have done it better, but they are changing. We are having elections next month, so they're changing. And then I don't know what would happen because we have a very complicated election elections next month. There are. Would you say that Colombia is a democracy? Yes, absolutely. I won't doubt about that. OK. So now my next and my last question, really, which is a hard one is I never promised you a rose garden. So you have all these other countries which have similar problems, you know, of violence and failure to get things together and have a decent economy, have a decent and secure life and so forth. Are they are they in fact watching Colombia? Is Colombia a model for them? Do they see Colombia as a model? And are they satisfied that Colombia can lead them? Can show them the way? And if they follow the way, they can emulate at least what you hope to achieve. I think, yes, I think they saw us better and with more hope in 2016. I think if you look what we were and what we promised the world in 2016, we I mean, the world had lots of expectations on what we will achieve and time and political changes show us that it wasn't as easy as we thought. But I think we are still and the world is still looking at us, especially in some some things like international criminal law, transitional justice. There is a lot of expectation in that, too. I don't think people in any place will think that Colombia is now in peace and we have like this perfect country that we thought we will have. But of course, we have some things to show to the world. And I think that's that's good. If Colombia can lead the world to be a better place, I don't know, I think that we can if we can lead ourselves to be a better country, I will be more than satisfied with that. Well, you know, I talked about sending people to jail for breaking the law and all that in the United States, where people say, oh, we're a nation of laws and all that. And they they wind up putting people millions of people in jail. And what I get is that what you have learned in the Colombian experience is that doesn't necessarily make a better society. That doesn't necessarily work. You have to look at it, maybe with a more forgiving open mind. And you have to see humanity and society perhaps different than, you know, who's breaking the law, who's violating the law and who's not. And you can't just put millions of people in jail. I guess that's the bottom line of our discussion. You can't put millions of people in jail because that doesn't work. So this what all that you're doing is, I mean, the all the things that you are doing are another option. They're of an option, which is probably better in order to repair the wounds in order to create a society where there isn't so much violence and crime. And that does not necessarily include punishing them. At least not by the punishment they're receiving is not jail. And I want to tell you something to to finish this. I started my life as a lawyer studying criminal law and criminal law. It's about Yale. It's all about me. And today I don't believe in it. I don't I've seen the process. I've seen these people came out of our jungles because Colombia, if you come and travel someday and you're very invited, you'll find that we have these huge mountains full of jungle. It's like like the movies and then they came here and they start the process and they recognize their victims and learn and understand what they did and change their lives in a way that it gave me hope. And that is what really gave me hope. And I think that when you are involved in the process and you learn what people and how people is changing and what they are doing, then you can believe that humanity have some hope and that we really can be different if we try. It's not easy. It's not perfect. Not everybody will, but we are not as lost as we think we are. And that's good. And I don't believe in jail because it doesn't change anyone. We say here that jail is the school for criminals. You go to jail and you came out you came out worst. Yeah, it's a whole it's a whole ethic. It's a it's a it's a morality we are still experimenting with. But it's really critical in so many places in the world. Lucia, it's really nice to talk to you. It's encouraging. And I want to say I've made a little conclusion and my conclusion is that you are going to heaven. Thank you very much. You're so sweet. I know I'm going to heaven, but I will sleep tonight. So maybe after that. Well, thank you for joining us today. I hope we can check back with you later, see how you're doing and how the program is doing and how Bogota and Colombia are doing and how Latin America is doing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation. That's really, really a very nice night. The same. Thank you. Aloha. I think that kawaii.com Mahalo.