Peace as a symbol:Peace talks in colombian armed conflict

Abstract

Signing the peace agreements with the FARC-EP, as well as their implementation, has aroused mistrust, pola-rization, and animosities among Colombians. While some academic fields in the country are focused on addressing peace from its legal and legislative elements, human sciences, especially psychology, are called to comprehend, construct and reconstruct the social fabric, collective memory and every cultural dynamic that correspond to this time. Thus, with the aim to analyze the role that symbolic constructions have played and will play around peace, this article retrieves the theory of symbol from Ernst Cassirer and Paul Ricoeur as a referen-ce point to comprehend the symbol and its role when giving sense to the past and building the future. Under this analysis, it can be observed how through the dialogue with the FARC-EP, the symbol of peace in Colombia has been loaded with meanings associated to division, ingenuity, mistrust and exclusion. In this sense, the success when implementing the agreements and constructing a stable and durable peace should lie, to a large extent, in the capability of Colombians to construct and reconstruct a symbolic fabric that can resist the political segregation or polarization that has marked it.