This is what community leader Josefa exclaimed in 2017 when I visited her in her community of former internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Chibolo, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where I had been researching the gendered dynamics of Colombia's Victims’ Law of reparations and land restitution since 2015. This Law provides survivors of Colombia's conflict with individual and collective reparations and the rare measure of land restitution, thus aiming to address the situation of the millions of IDPs resulting from Colombia's conflict. Together with Josefa and her husband, I watched the historic handshake between Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC]) leader Timochenko and President Santos, after signing the peace accord on victims’ rights in September 2015. This agreement paved the way for the final peace agreement signed in December of the following year, which brought an end to over 50 years of armed conflict between the Colombian state and the FARC. Various other guerrilla movements, as well as the paramilitary, had already demobilized, while other guerrilla and criminal groups remained active. Although the peace deal with the former FARC guerrillas would not directly change the situation of Josefa and her community, who had been displaced by paramilitary groups, its signing did instil hopes for a better future, and for a government that would finally guarantee a dignified life for all of its citizens, including in remote and rural parts of Colombia.

The historic 2016 peace agreement led to the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of the FARC. This DDR process has received much attention nationally and internationally, not only for involving one of the oldest guerrilla movements worldwide but also for adopting a collective and rural approach, and for its connection to yet another ambitious transitional justice (TJ) package by the Colombian government. Since 2018, I have studied the FARC's reintegration process in the collective reincorporation zone in La Guajira.