Former Guerrilla Fighter Runs to Keep Colombian Senate Seat

At 16, Griselda Lobo Silva left her family's struggling Colombian farm to join armed rebels fighting for a fairer country. Thirty-five years later, she sits in the nation's Senate under her combat name, Sandra Ramírez, working for the same goals without firing a shot.

Sandra's path to politics began when she watched FARC guerrillas walk through her family's land in La Paz as a child. The disciplined group, led by a woman, treated her 17 siblings kindly and never stole from their modest farm, sparking a fascination that changed her life.

The 2016 peace agreement between FARC and the Colombian government gave Sandra and nine other former combatants seats in Congress. She brought decades of understanding rural struggles directly into lawmaking, focusing on land rights and connecting isolated communities to essential services.

In the Senate, Sandra fought to give peasant farmers constitutional rights and pushed for agrarian courts to resolve land ownership disputes. She championed comprehensive rural reform that goes beyond distributing land to include roads, healthcare, education, and credit access for farming communities.

Her work extended to voluntary crop substitution programs, helping farmers move away from growing coca without forced eradication. Sandra argues that international drug consumers share responsibility for the problem and calls for a global conference on drug policy.

The Bright Side

Despite a hostile media environment and a right-wing dominated Congress, Sandra and her colleagues made real progress. They advanced pension reform, labor rights, education, and healthcare while building cooperatives and solidarity unions in rural areas.

The peace agreement's success faces serious challenges. More than 500 former combatants who signed the deal have been murdered, and others fled their homes due to lack of security.

Now Sandra runs as a candidate for Comunes, the left-wing party that emerged from the guerrilla movement, fighting to win back her Senate seat in the March 8 election. She campaigns on self-determination and continuing the work she started in Havana negotiations that brought "the voice of reconciliation and truth" to Colombia.

Her candidacy represents something remarkable: a person who spent decades in armed conflict now trusts democratic processes to achieve the same dreams. From caring for siblings on a struggling farm to fighting in forests to debating in chambers, Sandra's journey embodies the promise that warriors can become peacemakers and lawmakers can be revolutionaries.

The girl who once watched rebels pass through her family's land now asks Colombia to let her keep fighting for dignity through ballots instead of bullets.