Nobody wins

For some people Colombia seems to be synomous with cocaine, warlords, guerrillas, and violence. There has been a low level civil war going on here for decades now. La violancia, as Colombians call it has been at its lowest ebb in many years as of now, but huge swaths of the country are not controlled by the state. Think about this. Imagine if living in the States, Utah was controlled by the "Mormon Liberation Front", or Scotland in the UK became subject to the "Revolutionary Armed Forces of Scotland"....or other such examples.

In Colombia there is the State (the military), the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), and paramilitaries. All fight against one another. The FARC are a long standing Marxist guerrilla group that began as a political party and morphed into a military movement after being violently suppressed by the government. Clandestine "para" military groups funded secretly by the State to fight the FARC later morphed into their own independent entities fighting both FARC and the government.

Both the FARC and paramilitaries fund their activities in large part through narcotics trafficing in cocaine, enter the narco-trafficos and cocaine warlords. All the players, the military, guerrillas, and para-militaries are responsible for human rights atrocities and war crimes. Essentially its one long complicated civil war with multiple players to this day. Much of the Amazon territories, the Choco along the Pacific coast, and various parts of the mountains remained uncontrolled, or tenuously controlled by the State and the rule of law varies by which group holds power.

I've been trying to understand all this for a long while and being here now I'm finally getting a more nuanced view, albeit with mistakes and generalizations no doubt as well, but the bare bones. Its all a lot to wrap your head around, though some things remain clear...
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In the streets of Candelaria I snapped this shot. An unknown voice painting the war game honestly on the wall for all to see. I think they said it brilliantly. Everyone take note:

No body wins.