Drawing the way to their future

The article "Postcard from Medellin" that came out on the TIME website on April 23 gives (what I think is) an accurate insight into the way that the armed conflict in Colombia is irreversibly affecting the country's youth. One of the most important points the author touches on is noting the reasons children join the guerrilla or paramilitary forces. Along with forced inscription including kidnapping, the desire to seek vengeance against the group who has killed their family is, from my experience, the most powerful force driving civilian involvement in the conflict. When a young child watches their parents and siblings being tortured to death, not only are they left with no fragment of their former life but also with the mentality that they have nothing to lose--why not fight for revenge? This has created a culture of violence so entrenched in rural Colombian society that I see no way of it changing unless the conflict ends and people are given generations to breed out the hatred as integral to their blood composition as hemoglobin.

Although I am not working with former child soldiers, the art projects that I conduct at the shelter yield equally as powerful results. When asked to draw a self-portrait, very few of them portray themselves smiling, and many draw incomplete family portraits because they don't know where their father or older brothers are after watching them be kidnapped and taken from the family home. The part of the story that the reporter leaves out in the article is what happens to the boy's mother who appears on the guerrilla hit-list. This is a common war tactic, where every week or month the armed forces post a list of names on a public building warning people who will be the next targets of violence. They then either choose to stay and risk murder, or they flee to a nearby municipality or settlement, thus becoming displaced. Anyone who collaborates by advising a neighbor that their name is on the list or giving them a few pesos for the bus fare becomes an enemy of the armed forces and the cycle persists. Where will it end?