“thank You general, as you never you had a gesture to me,” says Iván Márquez, the chief negotiator of the guerrilla –today unaccounted for-, the military retirement Jorge Enrique Mora, then receive from his hands a document during one of the extensive days of talks in Havana. “After four years, part of one is there, on the table,” answered Mora, who came to be commander of the Military Forces, in a passage of Negotiation, the long-awaited documentary by Margarita Martinez on the peace process between the Government of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) and the once-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), now disarmed and converted into a political party.

The Negotiations, originally scheduled to be on display from this Thursday and throughout the weekend in the cinema, colombian, is “the story intimate of the negotiations and the entry of the guerrilla into civilian life”, in the words of its director. The last third of the documentary is dedicated in large measure to the crisis that sparked the triumph of No in the plebiscite to approve the agreements, finally renegotiated and endorsed by the Congress, with the nobel prize of peace for the Saints on the road. “I made this documentary of five years of work to contribute to the civic debate, to provide information, context, on what I saw and witnessed,” says Martinez in a dialogue by phone from an airplane about to take off to bring her to Medellin, where he had scheduled this Tuesday for a panel discussion about the film.

The enemies sat down to discuss in Havana. But two years after the signing of the agreement, even though they have silenced the guns of the FARC, the climate of confrontation and ideological, which led to the process with the guerrilla oldest of America does not give truce. The premiere of The Negotiation was unexpectedly threatened by the controversy that sparked the former president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), the most fierce opponent of the talks, the attack on the documentary in a series of messages on Twitter, aimed directly at the company exhibition. “Gentlemen Cine Colombia: Missing you the objectivity to make it easier to accuse dr. Fernando Londoño and my person of the enemies of peace. When the No won the referendum, we proposed to modify the agreements, do not remove them. The Government ignored the plebiscite in reproach democratic”, wrote today, senator. In a fact without precedents in the andean country, the company stopped selling the tickets for The negotiation, but without cancellation official, which provoked a Bahsegel strong movement against possible censorship.

The uribismo, judging by your barrage on the social networks, it bothers me that the documentary portrays him as an “enemy” of an agreement that was always opposed. In The Negotiation, the voice of the former is present in several passages where they show their speeches, most recordings of cell that circulated publicly in their time. It also includes the famous statement Londoño, a former minister representing the sectors most intransigent of the Democratic Center, in which he talks about the need to “crush” the peace agreements. The president Iván Duque, godson politician Uribe, has pledged to correct certain aspects without getting them ripped to shreds.

The archivist Martinez, a veteran journalist who began his career covering the failed negotiation process of The Caguan, he declares himself perplexed by the discomfort of the exmandatario, because not only searched many times for that to expound their arguments before the chamber, invitations politely declined, but that this opened the doors to the visual archive of the Democratic Center. Many of the images of Uribe that appear are recorded by its own staff, and he authorized its use.

in The end, the film, which has been preceded by a promotional campaign, was covered by a wave of solidarity. The motto #IréAVerLaNegociacion became the main trend in social networks, various public figures were expressed, and at the end of the evening the tickets were again available. “The documentary is strictly objective. Opinions to the contrary have been registered in the own voice of the protagonists. A must-see and it would be serious that it may censor,” said Humberto de La Calle, the head of the negotiating team of the Government. “I am willing to give all of the democratic debates, but not to me censured,” ditch Martinez.

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