Unexpected Peacebuilders: Ex-Combatants Expertise and the Search for the Disappeared in Colombia

• In Event: Peace, War, and Social Conflict Panel Session: After War

Abstract

In August 2025, an abandoned lot containing a mass grave in Palmira’s central cemetery was transformed into a memorial site honoring the victims of disappearances during Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict. The project was not initiated by the government but by Reencuentros, an organization of FARC-EP ex-combatants who dedicate their post-disarmament lives to searching for all the country’s disappeared. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with participants in the cemetery project and Reencuentros’ leadership, this paper examines how FARC-EP ex-combatants contribute to peacebuilding through unpredictable approaches that go beyond the institutional architecture established by the 2016 peace accords. I argue that Reencuentros members transform their embodied wartime knowledge—of territory, clandestine networks, burial sites, and collective organization—into a form of peace expertise for finding the missing, which both complements and surpasses state-led transitional justice mechanisms. Through these efforts, ex-combatants are not only locating missing individuals but also challenging official narratives about the war, which exclude subaltern accounts of pain and victimization, thereby shaping the contested field of Colombia's historical memory. Additionally, Reencuentros ex-combatants are forming unexpected alliances with former military adversaries, contributing to the rebuilding of the social fabric by transforming violent relations into human and friendly ones. By conceptualizing the FARC-EP as an armed social movement, this paper advances scholarship on social movement outcomes, post-conflict reconciliation, and the sociology of expertise. It shows that Reencuentros is the outcome of a larger social movement, and that ex-combatants are not only subjects of reintegration but collective agents capable of rebuilding social ties, reshaping contested memory, and creating grassroots peacebuilding efforts that institutional frameworks neither anticipated nor fully embrace.

Author

• Daniela Garcia, University of Texas-Austin