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Colombia’s Peace Treaty Is Big News For Investors

Well-Deserved Peace At Last In This Country Of Promise

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Dec 04, 2016
in Colombia, Investing
0
someone holding up their hand with the word peace written in black ink,the colombian flag in the background
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When I began paying attention to Colombia, in 2008, the country was maligned, misunderstood, and mistrusted for two reasons—Pablo Escobar and the terrorist group known as FARC.

Even back then, Pablo was long dead (he’d been shot by Colombian police while fleeing across the rooftop of his aunt’s home in Medellín in 1993 in the climax of a now legendary gunfight immortalized in typically voluminous form by Medellín artist Fernando Botero).

However, Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Guard of Colombia, carried on their terrorizing… as they have been doing now for more than half a century.

During my first visit to Colombia, I met with an attorney in Medellín, Juan Darío Gutierrez. Juan Darío has since become a trusted advisor, business partner, and great friend.

During my first conversation with him years ago, Juan Darío made a prediction:
colombia is keen in ending years of violence with FARC groups.

“The FARC have horrified and terrified my country for decades,” Juan Darío told me, “but they are becoming obsolete. Our country has made a priority commitment to education. We are teaching ourchildren, training them and preparing them for good jobs… as the economy is growing and more jobs are being created.

“This is our plan,” Juan Darío continued, “for making the FARC irrelevant.

“Historically, the group has been able to grow in number and in power by appealing to the uneducated and the unemployed… especially unemployed youth who saw little future and were easy targets for FARC’s false promises.

“We’ve found over decades that fighting FARC is a losing proposition. Fighting them means going to them, finding them, rooting them out in the jungle.

“Better to deprive them of their life’s blood… which is new recruits.

“Already, their numbers have been reduced by tens of thousands.”

For the past 15 years, Colombia’s economy has expanded steadily, averaging better than 4% growth per year, year on year.

Depicted: Colombiás Santa Marta. A Little but booming town, like much of it's country.

A growing economy means more jobs. A better educated population means more people to fill those jobs. Colombia’s unemployment rate today is a record-low 8.3%.

More people with jobs, especially more young people with jobs, means fewer folks up for hiding out in the jungle thinking up ways to torment and terrorize the general population.

As Colombia has worked for years to marginalize the FARC, its President Santos has engineered another, more direct approach to ridding his country of the terrorist cancer. Since taking office in 2010, Santos has been working to reach a peace accord with FARC rebels. For his efforts, he was the sole recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

After long months at the negotiating table with FARC leaders in Havana, Cuba, Santos thought he’d achieved an agreement earlier this year. Then, in a vote that surprised the world, on Oct. 2 Colombian voters rejected Santos’ proposal in a national referendum.

Displaying his typical open-minded optimism, Juan Darío wrote to me following that vote to say:

Peace talks have been a divided topic for the people, as the majority thinks FARC was getting the upper hand in the latest treaty.

“This is the type of news that can’t be catalogued as good or bad easily. For all of us who were rooting for the ‘Yes’ vote, the news isn’t that bright.

“For the other half of the country, the news is brilliant.

“It is too soon to be forecasting what will happen now, but at least two signs of hope have emerged. First, FARC has stated directly that they are not considering raising arms again.

“Second, the ‘No’ coalition accepted an invitation from President Santos to sit down and discuss their concerns with an eye toward reopening the peace talks…”

Now, this week, we have the news that Colombia’s Congress has approved a revised peace deal with FARC in a vote that should be the final word. By pushing the new deal through Congress, Santos has bypassed the need for another referendum.

President Juan Manuel Santos Signing the peace treaty with FARC. This earned him the 2016 nobel prize.

“When the first deal was trashed,” Juan Darío wrote me the morning after his country’s Congress voted to approve the new agreement, “we all expected a new proposal to be negotiated and eventually approved.

“I don’t think anybody was counting on the renegotiation happening so quickly, though. However, it appears that this could be the real thing…”

For decades, Colombia was written off by foreign investors and the world’s tourists… for good reasons.

Now both of those reasons—both Pablo and his cocaine-trafficking goons and the terror-spreading FARC—seem officially history.

I enjoy rooting for the underdog. I guess that’s one reason I’ve developed the attachment I have to this country these past eight years I’ve been getting to know her. She and her people have been down… but never out.

Now they’re showing the world what they’re made of. As one of Colombia’s most enthusiastic supporters, I couldn’t be more delighted.

A country at a turning point is an interesting place to spend both time and money.

Heads up: Colombia is at a big-deal turning point.

Kathleen Peddicord

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Tags: farc peace dealinvest Colombianobel peace prize 2016Pablo Escobarpeace deal Colombiapresident santos
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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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