Mauricio Artiñano, a former mission planning officer with the United Nations, has worked to bridge the gap between former combatants and civilians with a pretty wild idea - white-water rafting.
Mauricio Artiñano, a former mission planning officer with the United Nations, has worked to bridge the gap between former combatants and civilians with a pretty wild idea - white-water rafting.
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Shelby Stanger:
Here on Wild Ideas Worth Living, we talk a lot about the healing power of nature. By finding quiet, reflective moments outside, we can be better equipped to handle anxiety, grief, and trauma.
In 2016 on the Pato River of Colombia, a different type of healing took place. Surrounded by lush trees, a deep valley and rushing rapids, former guerilla combatants came together with civilians in a step towards peace and reconciliation.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Just sitting down with a person that's different from you, when you have a lot of stereotypes and a lot of preconceptions about people from a different race, religion, class, gender identity. When you sit down and you have a conversation, all those things change because you recognize the humanity in other people.
Shelby Stanger:
For more than 50 years, civil war raged in Colombia. It was a complicated situation. Simply put, the Colombian government was fighting left wing guerilla groups. Finally, six years ago, a peace agreement was signed.
Since then, former guerilla Combatants have been returning to Colombian society. That's a little easier said than done. Civilians have been taught not to trust rebel soldiers and vice versa.
But Mauricio Artiñano, a former mission planning officer with the United Nations, has worked to bridge the gap with a pretty wild idea... Whitewater rafting.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production.
Mauricio Artiñano grew up in Costa Rica, but much of his career has been focused on achieving peace and reconciliation in Colombian. He worked with the UN for nearly 10 years, something he wanted to do since he was a kid.
How did you get involved in becoming a researcher and worker, peacekeeper at the United Nations? That's a wild idea in itself. Did you go to school for policy or political science?
Mauricio Artiñano:
So I remember perfectly, even though I was very young when I was about nine or 10 years old, my mom gave me an illustrated children's version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And I was very impressed by the notion that all human beings have rights just inherent to our humanity. And that's when I first heard of the United Nations. I have a small anecdote that I guess makes me really proud of who I was as a kid.
One time I remember that some of my cousins were telling xenophobic jokes about our Nicaraguan neighbors.
Shelby Stanger:
You're Costa Rican.
Mauricio Artiñano:
I'm Costa Rican.
Shelby Stanger:
Born and raised in San Jose?
Mauricio Artiñano:
Born and raised in San Jose. And my cousins were basically repeating stuff that they had heard. But I called them out on it. I said, "That's not right. That's racist. That's xenophobic." And I got really angry, and somehow I found a mailing address for the United Nations, and I sent a letter.
And a few months later, my father's name is also Mauricio Artiñano, and so we received an envelope with a United Nations address. And so my dad thought it was for him, and then he opened it up. And it was actually a message from the Under Secretary General of Public Information from the UN, acknowledging that they received my letter and sending me a little pamphlet on how to combat racism. I still have that letter.
And in high school, I got involved in model United Nations programs.
Shelby Stanger:
Of course you did.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Of course I did.
Shelby Stanger:
Such a nerd, but it's so cool.
Mauricio Artiñano:
I was. I was. And I graduated from high school with the dream of working for the UN one day. And about six, seven years later, I got really lucky. But I also like to think that it's something that happened because of my own efforts.
Together with some friends, we were 24, 25 years old, and we led a campaign in Costa Rica to plant 5 million trees. And when we planted the symbolic final tree, we did it at the office of the President of Costa Rica.
And after that activity, the foreign minister came up to me and he asked me, "Costa Rica just got elected to the UN Security Council for a non-permanent two-year term." And I said, "Of course, yeah, congratulations." And he said, "How would you like to work with us there?"
And I remember my intestines fell out of me. I was like, "What's going on?" And he gave me a phone number and I called the next day and the secretary thought I was crazy. But about a week later, I received a call back. And so when I was 25, 26 years old, my dream came true. But in a way that was completely crazy because it was at the UN Security Council, the primary organ for international peace and security.
Shelby Stanger:
During his time with the United Nations, Mauricio worked in countries like South Sudan and Somalia, but helping keep the peace in Colombian has definitely become the focus of his career. Reuniting the country hasn't been easy because the Colombian conflict was long, bloody, and complex. It was spurred on by social and economic inequality and a history of political violence.
Mauricio Artiñano:
A key challenge for Colombian peace and development is its geography. It's a country that's crisscrossed by three large mountain ranges that make the urban areas completely separated from most of the rural areas. And since Colombian's independence, it's been a big challenge to bridge that gap.
In the 1960s, groups of peasants, campesinos, in different parts of Colombian started demanding more attention from the state, more investment. And they began setting up what they called independent republics to sort of manage their own affairs. And in the Department of Tolima in the southern part of that department, one of these independent republics was attacked by the Colombian military with the support of the United States.
After that operation, about 60 or 70 of the individuals who were trying to defend that area escaped to the mountains and formed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. And they decided to take up arms against the Colombian state.
Their stated political objectives were agriculture reform, land reform, rural reform. And over the course of the next 54 years, they fought the Colombian state. The conflict became even more complicated in the 1980s when paramilitary groups were set up to defend land owners and to basically counter advances that the guerrilla groups were achieving.
Even though the different groups had political objectives, things became very muddled by issues such as kidnappings, drug trafficking especially. And there were many attempts at peace negotiations over the course of the decades, which failed for a variety of reasons.
But in 2012, the FARC and the Colombian government began negotiations in Havana, Cuba. And after four years of negotiation, they signed a peace agreement and they requested the assistance of the United Nations to monitor the ceasefire and to support the lay down of weapons.
It was the longest armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere. Lots of suffering, displacement, sexual violence, gender-based violence. It was a conflict where the Colombian population suffered so much.
I think they had reached a point of exhaustion. And even though there were different perspectives on the peace agreement and the different parts and components, I think for sure Colombian society was ready to turn the page.
Shelby Stanger:
Over the course of the conflict, more than 250,000 people died and more than 7 million were forced from their homes. The damage was devastating on both sides.
After the peace agreement was signed, ex-guerilla fighters began to rejoin civilian life. For decades, these people lived on the outskirts of society, building their own settlements in the jungles and mountains of Colombia.
But as they laid down their weapons, they had to make a choice about what they were going to do with their lives. They needed to build homes and find jobs. While many ex-guerillas have pursued agriculture, some have turned to adventure tourism.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Eventually, I was the special assistant to the head of the mission. And it was actually during that time that I developed an interest in two things.
First, how young people in Colombia could support peace building efforts. And second, I visited one of the reintegration areas where the former guerrilla fighters were undergoing their reintegration process. And I found out that they had bought a raft and were thinking of going down a river, the Pato River, which used to be basically a frontier, a boundary between the military and the former FARC. It was a river with a history of conflict in a region that is particularly at the heart of the Colombian armed conflict.
And when I saw that they had bought a raft, I was fascinated. It's interesting that they were thinking of getting into tourism. Most of the projects that former fighters around the country were doing were agriculture.
So there was this incipient rafting project, and then my interest in young people getting involved. So I decided to take a group of young leaders from Bogota to visit this project.
This was in 2018. The reintegration process was just getting started, and most of these young people, they kind of had to lie to their families because they were going to go spend the night with former guerrilla fighters at one of their camps in an area that is synonymous to all Colombians as - San Vicente Del Caguan, it brings up so many images of the conflict. And so I brought this group of young leaders. We had a great time.
Shelby Stanger:
When you say young, what do you mean? How old?
Mauricio Artiñano:
They were in their late twenties and thirties. Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
When you think of guerilla fighters, I always think of these scary men in crazy outfits like hiding in camouflage in the jungle.
Mauricio Artiñano:
So first, not just men.
Shelby Stanger:
Yes, exactly.
Mauricio Artiñano:
In the FARC, there were between 30 and 40% of fighters were women. And that has its own... The reintegration of women former fighters, it has to be handled in a very gender sensitive way. But in any case, I think that stereotype was exactly what most of these young leaders had when they were going on this trip.
And it was fascinating to see the conversations that happened over the course of less than 36 hours. They confronted some of the guerrilla fighters with the crimes that they had committed. The former combatants reacted a bit defensively, which is something that they've evolved. It's interesting to see how they've changed their narrative.
But yeah, at the very beginning, during that first visit, the conversations were very profound.
Shelby Stanger:
But they were having these conversations while they were going whitewater rafting?
Mauricio Artiñano:
We went rafting once. And then that night we set up a bonfire and people started sharing their stories. It was very, very meaningful.
Shelby Stanger:
It's interesting how people open up a little bit more after they've done something like whitewater rafting together and sitting at a bonfire.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Exactly.
Shelby Stanger:
There's something really powerful about a bonfire.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Yes, indeed. And sports in general, the former combatants were the rafting guides. So the young leaders were dependent on former fighters to take care of them while they were going down a river with class 3, 4 rapids. So of course, that by itself produced a lot of bonding.
And what I think most of them concluded after we had a reflection session when we came back to Bogotá is that just sitting down with a person that's different from you, when you have a lot of stereotypes and a lot of preconceptions about people from a different race, religion, class, gender identity. When you sit down and you have a conversation, all those things change because you recognize the humanity in other people.
And I think because of what they saw in the media and what they know that the former FARC did, it was very different once they talked to some of these people, they heard why they joined the guerilla group. They heard how some of their families suffered, how some of them suffered.
They heard them being apologetic and feeling sorry for the mistakes that the FARC committed, they called them their mistakes, and the mistakes were killings and massacres and human rights violations. But it was very powerful to just witness that coming together.
Shelby Stanger:
I get goosebumps hearing about how the ex-guerilla fighters and civilians paddled down the Pato River together. CNN even called it "a river that builds peace."
When we come back, Mauricio talks about how Costa Rican rafters trained the Colombian River guides for the International Rafting Championships. He also tells us how rafting has changed the lives of these former combatants.
Mauricio Artiñano is not a rafter, but he knew about the power of working as a team to build peace. When he saw the bonding that happened between the young adults from Bogota and the ex-guerilla fighters, his mind started turning.
Mauricio grew up in Costa Rica, which is famous for whitewater rafting. He decided to reach out to Rafael Gallo, a Costa Rican who was a pioneer in the rafting world. Rafael was one of the founders of the International Rafting Federation, and he started the largest whitewater rafting company in Costa Rica.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Following that first experience, I got in touch with Rafael Gallo. I told him about the project, and three weeks later, he paid for his own ticket to go to Colombia with his son to visit this river. Immediately he said it was an amazing river, one of the top 10 he had ever seen. And he got really excited because the International Rafting Federation was actually founded in the late '80s or early '90s with an effort to bring Soviet and American rafting teams to do some rafting in Siberia.
So it's really cool that the IRF, the International Rafting Federation, was founded with the idea of rivers and sports as mechanisms to build peace and reconciliation.
So Rafael said, "Of course, I'm going down to Colombia." And he offered to bring two Costa Rican rafting instructors to help train the former combatants and members of their local community because it wasn't just former combatants.
Shelby Stanger:
For those who don't know, Costa Rica has some amazing whitewater rapids.
Mauricio Artiñano:
We do.
Shelby Stanger:
So you bring these two Costa Rican guides down to Colombia , and they're expert rafters because they're used to guiding tourists, and Costa Rica's rafting... If I went in 1996 and it's now 2022, and the rafting tourism industry was booming in '96, it's obvious these guys are dialed.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Correct. And for them to go and spend a month and a half living in a former combatant reintegration area was an amazing experience for them. And after a month and a half of just nonstop training, they got certified as rafting guides.
Shelby Stanger:
Colombians.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
Colombian former guerilla fighters.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Yes. The original team consisted of five former fighters, all men and three members of the local community, including one single mother. And so that was the original team.
When we had the ceremony, when they got their certification with the support of the UN and of the Colombian government, Rafa, through the International Rafting Federation, he said, "You know what? We're going to invite you to the World Rafting Championships in Australia in 2019." And immediately... There's a wild idea, right there.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah. I mean, they've only been rafting for like a year.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Not just that, but they're former combatants, so how to get them to Australia. Anyway, when Rafa said that, I remember like my brain exploded because I got excited, but I also knew that it was going to be crazy, just a wild adventure.
But I thought, "What a cool idea. This would be amazing. So inspiring." So we actually got the majority of the funding here in Nosara, where we are right now, where we're recording this podcast.
Shelby Stanger:
So you had a private donor just give you the money?
Mauricio Artiñano:
Correct.
Shelby Stanger:
I think it's really cool. There's some people that have resources and they use their resources for good. That's incredible.
Mauricio Artiñano:
It was half the money right there. So that was half of the hill we had to climb.
Shelby Stanger:
How much money did you guys need?
Mauricio Artiñano:
We needed about $40,000 for the plane tickets mainly. And the registration fee was waived by the International Rafting Federation, but we needed health insurance. Here with 40 grand, we took eight people who, some of them, many of them had actually never seen the ocean, and they did for the first time when we arrived in Australia. Some of them had never even left their department, which it's sort of like a state. They had never seen Bogotá, the capital city, and now they were going to Australia.
The process of getting them there was crazy. We had to get visas. It was very challenging. But we had the support of the Colombian government. We had the support of the Australian government. But we did get the visas at four in the morning the day we flew out at 10:00 AM.
I almost had an ulcer that last week. I was so nervous because we had already bought the tickets, and we were thinking, what's going to happen if we don't get the visas? I remember the relief I felt. I just started crying because it was very nerve-wracking. I actually didn't tell the team that this was happening because I didn't want to get them nervous as well. But yeah, we did it. We got the visas, we got the money.
But the most important thing we got was the formal support of the Colombian government and from the Colombian rafting community for this team to officially represent Colombia as their national team at the championships.
I still get goosebumps thinking of the moment when the Colombian Minister of Sports gave the Colombian flag to the team captain, a former guerrilla fighter, to represent Colombia in an international sports tournament. So this was a former combatant that had fought the Colombian state for 20 years, and now the Colombian state was telling him that he and his teammates were going to represent the country. It was an incredible moment.
Shelby Stanger:
The Colombian rafting team named themselves Remando por la Paz, which means rafting for peace. They performed well at the rafting championships, especially considering that they had never rafted this kind of obstacle course before. Heck, they had never been rafting on any other river other than the Pato, and they'd only been rafting for a year.
But more importantly, their experience at the International Rafting Championships represented something much bigger; peace, reconciliation, and the ability to come together after so many years of upheaval.
Do you have any stories about how whitewater rafting changed the participants' lives? I mean, I'd love to just hear some examples of some of the kids who were impacted and some of the participants.
Mauricio Artiñano:
So in general, I think the whole team and the surrounding community just received an important injection of hope; hope in the future, hope that with tourism and with sports, they would be able to support local development in their area, in their community.
I think at the beginning, so many of them were very shy, very apprehensive about going before a microphone or talking to people. I think it's incredible now to see how much more confident they are, to see them talking to a group of people, sometimes talking to the media, that in itself is incredible.
One of my favorite stories is Lorena, the first woman from the team. She was very shy and she had to deal with some sexism from some of her teammates. And a lot of Latin American societies, unfortunately, still have a lot of sexism that we need to overcome. But she remained steady and strong and kept going, and then she took it up... This was actually during the pandemic that this happened. So I wasn't there. I only heard about it once it had actually happened.
She got some other women and teenagers and started training them to be a woman's team and to be rafting guides. And I couldn't believe it when I was there, and I was so proud of her. And now the community has two male rafting teams and one female rafting team.
And Michelle, all of her brothers, her father was a former fighter. She remembers how difficult life was before the peace agreement, and now she just can't get enough of rafting. And she's so excited about becoming a tour guide and getting into tourism and the exposure of going to rafting tournaments.
So yeah. I think if out of the members of the original team, it's great to see how much they've grown and changed. And you can definitely see how sports and getting involved in rafting was key to their process of reintegrating to civilian life.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, that's incredible. What's next for them?
Mauricio Artiñano:
So after we came back from Australia, it was very cool because the Colombian rafting community requested the team to organize the National Rafting Championships in Colombia in 2019. And so this was a very big deal, and that's when the community really started seeing so many of the fruits of this project because there were so many visitors down there. And the river's actually really cool for people to see. So many people from the local community came out and they were cheering for their teams, and it was really exciting.
After that, they've organized two subsequent rafting festivals, always in November, and they kept receiving tourists. Since they set up their tourism venture, they've received about 1600 tourists so far.
One thing that makes me very proud is that the Colombian Vice Ministry of Tourism has this tourism campaign called Yo Voy, which literally means I'm going there, sort of. And so it's like the hashtag [Spanish 00:25:08] and there's billboards and things all over the country.
And for the Department of Caquetá, the billboard is a photo of the rafting team; so Rafting for Peace, that's the name of the team. And again, just the fact that through this whole Rafting for Peace venture, the Department of Caquetá and the region of San Vicente del Caguán is now getting known more and more for rafting.
And you land in the airport in San Vicente del Caguán and the first thing you see when you get out is a huge billboard saying San Vicente Municipio de Rafting. So San Vicente, the municipality of rafting. So the municipality itself is now branding itself.
Shelby Stanger:
The town is now a rafting town.
Mauricio Artiñano:
Exactly.
Shelby Stanger:
That's so crazy.
Mauricio Artiñano:
And to think that this happened because of a project that was led by former combatants whose priority and objective was peace building and reconciliation is really, really cool.
Shelby Stanger:
Rafting for Peace is just getting started. Their adventure tourism business, Caguán Expeditions is thriving, and they're looking into expanding with activities like canyoneering and ziplining.
The future is looking bright for these Colombian rafters, but the conflict is not completely resolved. Fighting continues between the government and remaining armed groups and criminal organizations that refuse to recognize the peace agreement.
There are also ex-FARC members who have laid down their weapons, but still don't have the government protections they were promised. While there's certainly still work to be done, I love knowing that outdoor adventure has been even a small part of the effort for peace and reconciliation.
Mauricio, thank you so much for fitting in an interview in your busy schedule. In addition to rafting. The community in San Vicente del Caguán is looking into other adventure tourism options like canyoneering, ziplining, and jungle hikes. So if you're wanting a little adventure in your life, maybe a trip to Colombia is in your future.
You can check out the team's tour company, Caguán Expeditions on Instagram at Caguán Expeditions. That's C-A-G-U-A-N Expeditions.
If you want to learn more about Rafting for Peace, you can follow them on Instagram or Facebook at Remando por la Paz. That's R-E-M-A-N-D-O P-O-R L-A P-A-Z.
Also, a special thank you to the Harmony Hotel and their Artists in Residency program in Nosara for introducing me to Mauricio.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fasler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Chelsea Davis, and our associate producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby.
As always, we appreciate when you follow this show, when you rate it, and when you take the time to write a review wherever you listen.
And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest idea.