After the seminar, held on August 3 and 4, Rueda said “the country we want, the country we dream of is expressed in new social movements, in new environmental movements, women and students movements”.

Danilo Rueda is a journalist and secretary of human rights organization Colombians for Peace, made up by personalities like former senator Piedad Córdoba, who has played a key role in the release of war prisoners by the guerrilla and demanded the opening of a space for dialogue and negotiation that will lead to peace.

Rueda talked about the need to have political and social dialogue that will bring peace to the country and will stop the human rights violations of thousands of people in Colombia.

“They take advantage of the fact that there is no peace for investors because the guerrillas target infrastructure and the operations of transnational corporations. This opens up the problem that militarization has neither solved the armed conflict nor its causes”, he said.

The communicator said the building of a social, environmental and cultural agenda for peace by the society and the social movements would help them win some space in the creation of an inclusive country.

One of the issues put forward and discussed during the seminar was the difficulty in calling more sectors of the Colombian society to popular mobilization and taking over spaces controlled by mass media.

As this regards Rueda said “we need to come up with a media strategy that will simplify the messages to have an understanding with other sectors”.

Towards the Peace Congress

The political seminar and the peace congress were presented as the first steps towards the coming together of different processes and social organizations that suffer the war in Colombia.

Setting up Caloto municipality as the host of the event was strictly linked with the indigenous uprisings and the situation in the region. As regards to the relation between the actions of territorial control taken by the indigenous movement and their repercussions on the social movement to find a political solution to the social and armed conflict of Colombia, Rueda said that “society is suffering the effects of the armed conflict and it is capable of expressing the need for building humanitarian agreements”.