After more than 20 years as a guerrilla — the last five in prison after being wounded and captured — Juan Vicente Carvajal wanted to start life over.
Freed last year under the peace agreement that ended five decades of civil war between the government and his rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, he moved to this village of about 500 people where his sister owns a grocery store.
He bought a 90-acre farm outside town with a loan from his brother, planted plantain, corn and manioc, and started building a house. He also joined the local village council that settles property disputes and identifies needed public works projects. At 41, he was newly married.
“He wanted to become a totally different man,” said his sister, Luz Maribel Carvajal. “He didn't want to hear about arms, guerrillas, fighting, anything like that, because he had suffered for 24 years and didn't want that life or to be reminded of it.”
But his past proved inescapable. In the early evening of May 7, he was riding his motorcycle from his farm to the village when somebody shot him six times with a high-caliber rifle.
He died on the spot from massive head wounds — one of 64 former combatants killed since the signing of the peace agreement in November 2016. The FARC, which has handed over its arms in a transformation from guerrilla movement to political party, says that 17 relatives of ex-rebels have also been slain.
