Can an unlikely love story overcome divisions in Colombia?

In an office overlooking the high-rise buildings of downtown Bogotá, on a recent afternoon, a married couple sit holding hands and laughing playfully. They make an unusual match.

He is the son of Víctor Julio Suárez Rojas, better known as “Mono Jojoy,” one of the most feared commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a now-defunct Marxist guerrilla group. He fought alongside his father in the jungle, but laid down his arms in 2016 as part of the contentious peace agreement between the FARC and the Colombian government. He remains a leftist at heart.

She is a right-wing influencer and a staunch ally of former President Álvaro Uribe, a conservative who waged a brutal crackdown on the guerrillas. Her family lost its fortune during the decadeslong conflict, living in constant fear of bombings and kidnappings. This is partly why she voted no in the 2016 referendum, against a peace deal with the FARC.

Politically, they could not be more different. Yet, despite ideological divides, Jorge and Catalina Suárez are united by love. After more than six decades of conflict and deeply ingrained stereotypes about “the other” in one of the most polarized countries in the world, this couple’s ability to find common ground is no small feat. It’s something they hope their compatriots can learn to emulate.

“Marrying Catalina changed my life. Not my ideas,” Mr. Suárez says. “We feel our differences enrich each of us.” The duo say they constantly talk politics, but part of the success of their relationship is that they don’t try to conclude who is right or wrong.

Love versus “deep pain”

Colombia celebrated eight years since the peace deal with the FARC late last year. A handful of armed groups and dozens of criminal gangs continue to kill, kidnap, and extort nationwide, however, and although Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, has promised “total peace,” divisions are still front and center more than halfway into his presidency.

Ms. Suárez recalls growing up amid constant threats to her safety. Her family was extorted by guerrilla fighters, and she says she bears the deep scars of bombings, kidnappings, and killings in her country, many of which she blames on the FARC. “Everyone speaks from their own experiences; in mine, there were security difficulties. I have seen my family being extorted,” Ms. Suárez says.

“More than distrust, there was a deep pain from the damage that so many Colombians, including myself, lived through because of who the FARC were,” she says.

Mr. Suárez is scarred, too. He vividly recalls the day in 2010 when he learned his father had been killed in a military bombing in his bunker in the jungle, just 500 feet from where Mr. Suárez had been sleeping.

Since Mr. Suárez signed on to the peace deal and demobilized from the FARC, he has forgiven those who killed his father. He says peace requires second chances. He believes his father would be proud of the decisions he has made since his death, including his marriage to Ms. Suárez.

Ms. Suárez’s upbringing made her a devout supporter of Mr. Uribe, the country’s right-wing president from 2002 to 2010. She was in high school when Mr. Uribe came to power, and she remembers feeling that “companies started to rise again; investor confidence returned. ... People no longer feared traveling on the roads; kidnappings were no longer happening on every corner.”

Mr. Uribe’s foil is in many ways the current president, Mr. Petro, who used to be a guerrilla himself in the M-16, a Marxist group. Mr. Petro is the leader whom Mr. Suárez admires most.

“We have learned that neither of us married to convince the other,” Ms. Suárez says.

A pessimistic culture

The Suárezes’ love story stands out as something of an exception in Colombia, where few have been able to overcome the sizable ideological hurdles and traumas of the past 60 years. They met at a karaoke night in 2020, and Mr. Suárez told her about his guerrilla roots on their third date. “Love is for the brave,” read a sign at their wedding in 2021.

“The story of Jorge and Catalina is inconceivable,” says Miguel Suárez, director of peace building at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Colombian think tank, who is not related to the couple.

Colombia is not only a polarized nation, but also a pessimistic one. Apart from an eight-year period under Mr. Uribe, a majority of Colombians consistently believe that things are getting worse, according to a 2024 poll by Colombian pollster Invamer.

Colombians “think things are going badly even when they are actually going well,” says Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a consultancy. Analysts point to the civil conflict, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced nearly 8 million from their homes, for what has become a culture of pessimism and distrust.

“It is a conflict entirely created by economic situations, political dynamics, and perpetual exclusions,” says Mr. Gúzman. And it has defined how Colombians relate to each other, he says, with people failing “to recognize that ‘the other’ is a compatriot, that ‘the other’ is a neighbor, and that ‘the other’ matters in the same way.”

Almost a decade after the peace agreement was signed, some 83% of Colombians in conflict-affected areas say they would not want an ex-combatant as a neighbor. About half of all business owners express reluctance to hire victims of the conflict, defined as anyone who suffered collective or individual damage from the armed conflict, and 78% would not employ former combatants.

The vote on the peace deal in the fall of 2016 also led to a decline in trust in government institutions: About 5% of the population says it trusts Congress, and only 32% has a favorable view of the Supreme Court. The vast majority – 90% – say the only institution they trust is their own family.

There’s little space for open, public debate, says the civil society worker Mr. Suárez.

“There is no middle ground,” he says.

“In a country that has always been at war, it is not easy to understand a relationship that is born out of a peace agreement,” says Ms. Suárez. “Our culture has always taught us that you cannot sit down and have a conversation with someone who thinks differently.”

Unity as a path ahead

But bridging divides often starts with personal connections, says Mr. Suárez from the Ideas for Peace Foundation. He ticks off the ingredients for reconciliation: honesty, kindness, cooperation, good faith, and the ability to find commonalities.

His foundation conducts surveys and focus groups to better understand expectations and relationships among citizens. It also organizes workshops to bring Colombians together around common needs like fixing local infrastructure, forming civil society associations, or organizing educational workshops and festivals.

These types of projects offer a space for Colombians to get to know one another on a personal level, and gain trust in the idea that it is possible to work together despite their differences. But small-scale projects aren’t enough to heal Colombia’s larger divisions, Mr. Suárez says. What Colombia urgently needs are targeted public conversations and well-funded public policies that can foster long-term reconciliation.

Mr. and Ms. Suárez have set a powerful example for fellow citizens, he says. “They show that it’s possible” to set political differences aside.

They have dedicated their lives to their love story in many ways, today working together to teach Colombians through a project called Respect Amid Differences that friendly disagreement is not only possible, but also important for family and community relationships.

“I think love can overcome anything,” Ms. Suárez says. “It’s also about learning to build some rules together, some life, and relationship norms.”

Mr. Suárez from the Ideas for Peace Foundation puts it this way: Change and understanding will come when Colombians spend more time with people who think differently from how they do.