FOR TWO BROTHERS, COLOMBIA'S WAR IS FAMILY AFFAIR

Guillermo Is a Guerrilla With a Price on His Head; Roberto Is a Peacemaker

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Roberto and Guillermo Saenz were the youngest and
middle of seven children born to conservative schoolteachers half a
century ago. As a war between the army and Marxist guerrillas
gathered force, Roberto recalls being sheltered by Guillermo and his
other siblings in a childhood full of "studying, futbol and fiestas."
Then when Roberto was entering the university and Guillermo was
nearing graduation, Guillermo broke some news. " 'Man, I don't see
any sense in all of this,' " Roberto recalls his brother saying. "
'I'm going.' " Guillermo fled into the jungle to join the largest
leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or FARC, eventually rising to the rank of "ideological leader" of the
seven-member ruling secretariat. Today, he's one of the most wanted
men in the Americas, with a price on his head of $2 million from the
Colombian government and $5 million from the U.S.

Guillermo Saenz, also known by his nom de guerre Alfonso Cano, talks
to a government negotiator during failed peace talks in 2000. Roberto
pursued a political career, one that brought him to a quite different
leadership position: He's the designated peacemaker for the
government of this capital city. The municipal agency he heads, the
Reconciliation Network, works in Bogota's barrios promoting
nonviolent solutions to social conflicts, holding candlelight vigils
and petition drives, encouraging young people to express their
opinions peaceably in graffiti art and rap music. "Our mission is
showing that creative protest is more effective than picking up a
gun," says Roberto, who is 50 years old. Millions of Colombian
families find themselves divided by the country's interminable
conflict, but few are at such odds as the Saenz brothers.

While Roberto collects signatures to put a disarmament referendum on
the ballot, Guillermo, 58, faces criminal charges from the Colombian
government of blowing up pipelines and bombing villages.

While Roberto manages a program to aid families of those kidnapped by
the FARC, Guillermo is charged with masterminding abductions. While
Roberto uses politics, sports and music to try keeping youths out of
the orbit of violent drug traffickers, Guillermo faces a U.S.
indictment alleging that he helped "set the FARC's cocaine
[trafficking] policies" and arranged the murder of hundreds of people
who got in his way. The indictment handed up in Washington last March
accused 50 senior FARC guerrillas of shipping cocaine valued at more
than $25 billion to the U.S. and other countries. 'Wrong Path'
Roberto says he tried -- without success -- to get Guillermo to
renounce violence in their last meeting back in 1991, when FARC
leaders left the jungle for peace talks with the government held in
Caracas, Venezuela. "To my brother, I say, 'I hope you're in good
health and don't have problems' " Roberto says. "But to the
guerrilla, I say, 'Give up this war because it's the wrong path.' "

Though Roberto says he hasn't tried to contact Guillermo since their
meeting 16 years ago, he has found that having a rebel comandante in
the family is a hard thing for an antiviolence activist to live down.
"Even though in Colombia nobody gets surprised by anything anymore,"
the newsweekly Semana said last year, Roberto's position "doesn't
fail to attract attention." Roberto believes his phones are tapped by
intelligence operatives hoping for some clue that could lead them to
Guillermo, who is generally referred to by Colombians, including
Roberto himself, by his nom de guerre, Alfonso Cano. In revenge for
abductions carried out by Guillermo, another Saenz brother, Jose
Ricardo, was kidnapped in 1996 by right-wing paramilitaries, which
oppose the guerrillas and are involved in drug trafficking and other
criminal activities. The kidnappers had intended to seize Roberto, he
says, but he had already left Colombia for a diplomatic post in
Europe after getting death threats.

Hoping to win his brother's release, Guillermo, from hiding, issued a
statement saying Jose Ricardo, a teacher, had no links to the FARC.
"My intense fraternal pain is mingled with the pain of many
Colombians wearied by similar or worse tragedies," Guillermo wrote.

Jose Ricardo was freed after eight months in captivity. The family
drama doesn't seem to have shaken Guillermo's revolutionary fervor.
In position papers and interviews with Colombian journalists over the
years, he has maintained that violence is justified because of
inequities that are built into Colombia's economic and political
systems. "We guerrillas have been obliged to take up arms to find
peace," Guillermo once wrote. "It's the great contradiction and a
terrible truth." Peacemaking Tradition Roberto allows that while
violence is one truth in Colombia, the country also has a peacemaking
tradition that is often overlooked. He and Bogota's leftist mayor,
Luis Eduardo Garzon, set up the Reconciliation Network in 2005 to
train people for making peace even as a military boot camp would
train people for making war. In classes the Reconciliation Network
has started offering for community leaders, there are lessons about
Colombia's pacifist Paez Indians, who once halted a firefight between
guerrillas and rural police by walking into the no man's land
carrying only ceremonial palm staffs.

In addition, the Network encourages activities such as Golombiao -- a
variation of soccer pioneered by other peace-promoting groups -- with
a scorekeeping system that weighs teamwork and respect for opponents,
as well as the number of goals put in the net. Teams must be coed
and, for it to count, the first goal must be scored by a female
player. The Network also helps run a protest and public-information
campaign to press conservative President Alvaro Uribe to swap FARC
prisoners held by the government for hostages held by the guerrillas.
Deyanira Ortiz, whose husband, an ex-legislator, was kidnapped by the
FARC five years ago and is still missing, doesn't hold Roberto's
brother against him. "Colombia is an odd place," Mrs. Ortiz says.
"It's possible for a single family to produce a soldier, a priest and
a guerrilla.

We all appreciate Mr. Saenz's support." The Network's staff of 16
social workers, from philosophy graduates to ex-guerrillas who now
renounce violence, work on projects in rough neighborhoods like
Ciudad Bolivar. In 2005, paramilitary gangs murdered 150 Bolivar
youths who violated their curfews and other directives. "Nice kids go
to bed early," read the chilling paramilitary graffiti, "and those
that don't, we'll put to bed." The Network's man in the barrio, Jairo
Vargas, worked with youths and community leaders on a campaign of
marches, late-night parties held in defiance of curfews and painting
sessions in which youths covered paramilitary graffiti with murals.

The number of youth killings in Bolivar fell to just 40 last year.
Bolivar young people like 16-year-old Jhon Castro are enlisting in
the nonviolent cause.

About a year ago, Jhon's best friend was killed by paramilitaries.
But rather than seeking vengeance, Jhon says he channeled his anger
into a Network protest last September aimed at getting a local
university to admit more poor youths, who otherwise might be drawn to
armed gangs. The first couple of days no one noticed the
demonstration involving scores of students.

Then they brought in a rapper and a sound system. "It was still a
nonviolent protest -- just much louder," Jhon says. In no time, the
university dean came out to cut a deal expanding access to poor
students. Guillermo, however, continues to cast a shadow over
Roberto's peacemaking efforts. With President Uribe escalating the
offensive against the guerrillas, Roberto has to deal with refugees
streaming to Bogota from war-torn provinces like Tolima -- the very
operating area of the Central Bloc of the FARC that Guillermo helps
command. Last month, the army announced that it had killed a
guerrilla fighter who had been Guillermo's chief bodyguard and was on
the trail of the comandante himself. Roberto says both his parents
died resigned to the path Guillermo had taken, and Roberto himself
holds out little hope for a late-life conversion. "He'll likely die
fighting," says Roberto.