Colombian Conflict Quotes

Sometimes you hear in the United States that in Columbia there is a war between rich and poor, between people that are defending the poor and the rich.

More than 70 percent of Colombians want peace. The rest are afraid of the price to be paid. But even they will realize that their worst fears will not come true. I'm quite optimistic that Colombians do back an agreement with the FARC.

The left is being funded primarily by the drug traffickers who provide this tax money and that's why the guerrillas in Colombia, unlike the guerrillas anywhere else in Latin America, have been able to survive for 40 years because they have a hard, solid source of income.

I will protect all Colombians regardless of whether the attacks come from guerrillas or paramilitaries.

My generation has not seen one single day of peace, and my dream is for my children and the children of all Colombians to have the change to see it. I hope the guerrilla understands that the time has come to leave this 50-year confrontation behind; that the time has come to change from bullets to votes, from weapons to argumentations; that the time has come for them to continue their struggle, but within democracy.

Raul Reyes was a good revolutionary. I knew him personally.

I've not lived one single day of peace in Colombia, and 90 percent of people here say the same thing. We have gotten used to living in a war - we don't even react to massacres.

The CIA's always-useful World Fact book says that a staggering 6.3 million Colombians have been internally displaced (IDP) since 1985, with 'about 300,000 new IDPs each year since 2000,' the year Bill Clinton enacted Plan Colombia. Added up, that's 2.4 million people during Clinton's eight-year presidency.

I've been following what's happening in Colombia because it's the country of my childhood.

It was a sane, humane, and politic treaty which put an end to that horrible butchery of slaying the conquered, of giving no quarter to prisoners of war – Spanish barbarism that the patriots were forced to adopt themselves in reprisal, that had pushed back civilization, made the soil of Columbia an abode of cannibals and soaked it with innocent blood until all humanity shuddered, It was an advantage to us, fatal to the Spaniards. Their forces could only diminish; mine, augment and organize.

No one, no one has hit the FARC harder than I have.

In Colombia, women are a huge factor for reconciliation. I have seen many strong women advocating for negotiations. I remember when the paramilitary were active, there were women close to the paramilitary asking for negotiations.