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  • The Christian Science Monitor

    Yesterday, he sang for guerrillas. Today, he’s one town’s mayor.

    Jan 22, 2020 6 minutes
    Guillermo Torres walks around his hometown of Turbaco, Colombia on Jan. 19, 2020. The town suffers from mass unemployment, and many people rely on motorcycle taxi-ing to get by.

    Guillermo Torres walks the sweltering streets in this bustling northern Colombian town like a celebrity. Teenage boys ask for selfies, children hug him like family, and throngs of men and women earnestly shake his hand.

    Mr. Torres has been famous for decades. Under the alias Julián Conrado and nickname “the singer of the FARC,” he was a key member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia for 30 years. The guerrilla group is accused of crimes ranging from kidnapping to drug-trafficking, and until a 2016 peace accord was locked in a bloody civil war with the Colombian government for half a century.

    But last October, Mr. Torres made headlines for something new. He was elected mayor of Turbaco, becoming one of the first ex-FARC combatants to win an election by popular vote.

    As Colombia struggles to emerge from years of conflict, the  singer is a symbol of these broader tensions as demobilized guerrillas seek to

    Lasting ‘stigma’ of the FARC‘Armed with a guitar’Escaping his past?‘Tired of war’ – and the FARC

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