Since 2012, the Colombian Government and the FARC rebel group have been negotiating a way out of the conflict and a peace agreement. After more than five decades of civil war, finally some regions in Colombia can say that they are close to a state of calm and peace.
Putumayo is one of the biggest states in Colombia. The Amazon jungle has traditionally been the home of some of the South Block of FARC rebel group fronts. Life inside the camps during the truce declared by the FARC is calm, and sometimes boring.
Drinking beer and soda, eating snow cones, and playing soccer matches and practicing in photographic exercises, are some of the activities that these rebels do on a daily basis. They also spend their days sewing, writing poems, hanging out, and perhaps too imagining what it will be like when they leave a lifestyle set in the jungles and move to a civil life and what it entails.
My work documents these moments of transition and aims to show what it feels like to be living the last days as an armed group ready to transition into a civil life. The anxiety, sense of expectation, and the different activities that they do on a daily basis marks the end of an era and the beginning of one that is challenging and unknown.
These photographs were taken three weeks before the final signing of the peace agreement that will take place in Cartagena, Colombia, on September 26th, 2016.
About the author:
Gerald Bermúdez (Geraldkurt) was born in 1980. He is a Colombian documentary pgotographer and freelance photojournalist. His work is about victims and colombian civil war. He worked for international press agencies and colombian newspapers.
