(Carlos Lozada, a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in Bogota, Colombia, March 6, 2017.REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga)
With the ratification of a peace deal late last year and their move to demobilization camps earlier this year, Colombia's left-wing FARC rebels are well into their transition from Colombia's biggest rebel group to legitimate citizens and political actors.
The shift from fugitives in their own country to normal Colombians has been fraught for FARC rebels and their leadership.
More than a half-century of violence is not easy to leave behind, and the shift to normal life will continue to present challenges.
An anecdote in a New Yorker profile of Carlos Antonio Lozada, a FARC member since 1978 who has been a main leader during the group's peace talks with the government, underscores how the rebels' long existence outside of Colombian society complicates their efforts to move back into it.
"Lozada said that a Colombian army general involved in the peace process had invited him to join LinkedIn. He had tried, but had been stymied by the online membership form," Jon Lee Anderson writes.
"'It asks for your 'curriculum, professional contacts and qualifications, and references,' Lozada exclaimed, erupting in a fit of laughter. 'Job description—commander for the FARC! References—Timochenko!' Lozada said, referring to the alias of another senior FARC commander.
(FARC rebel leader Rodrigo Londoño, known as Timochenko, center, and other leaders sing during at the camp where ratified a peace deal with the government, near El Diamante in Yari Plains, Colombia, September 17, 2016.Thomson Reuters)
According to Anderson's profile, though FARC rebels have struggled with LinkedIn, they've taken to Facebook and WhatsApp, which they've used to reconnect with friends and loved ones they've long been separated from.
But other apps have proven vexing. Lozada and Timochenko appeared on a talk show in late November, a landmark event after their decades of war against the Colombian state. Interest was immediate.
"As people tuned in," Anderson wrote, "the host, Maria Jimena Duzan, looked at Twitter on her phone and exclaimed, 'We’re trending!' Seeing her guests' confusion, she chuckled and said, 'That’s a good thing.'"
Since Colombia's legislature approved a revised peace deal at the end of November (the original deal was narrowly defeated in a nationwide plebiscite in October) thousands of FARC rebels traveled across the country to UN-organized camps where they were set to begin demobilizing and disarming.
(FARC rebels harvest chontaduro, or peach palm, at a camp in La Carmelita near Puerto Asis in Colombia's southwestern state of Putumayo, March 1, 2017.(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara))