These are the stories of people who reflect Colombia’s diversity and who are united by the pain wrought by the armed conflict, and through a shared hope for a true and lasting peace.

Guillermo Gutierrez is the architect behind the future construction of the Peace University.  “Before drawing an infrastructure, you need to study the territory so that man and nature’s work can generate an atmosphere of reciprocal cohabitation”.  His work focuses on building housing for indigenous and afro-descendant communities through diligent anthropological study.  “Environmental sustainability is not rhetorical at all; for our work it is obligatory, which often escapes us at the moment of drawing. The pencil is a very powerful instrument, with a simple line you can destroy or construct”. To achieve these objectives which move him to act, he considers that autonomous integral development is important, from a starting point of cultural recognition.  “In the rural and mostly peripheral lands of this beautiful country the State is absent.  Times are changing, and what we need now is more of a social State than a controlling State”.

Delphine and Mario wrote the stories for the ‘Beautiful madness’ after a trip to the Naya river basin in June 2016.  During that journey they accompanied the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission (CIJP) and met with women and men from indigenous, Afro-descendant and farming communities from around Colombia, and witnessed the inauguration of the University for Peace’s first campus, the beginning of an initiative that seeks to generate initiatives that will bring peace to the territories.