Stephen Ferry for The New York Times
In Toribío, in the Cauca region, where guerrillas are defending drug routes, security is high and gunfire is common. Many buildings still show bomb damage.
EL HORNO, Colombia — For the first time in a decade, rebels and the government of Colombia came together for formal peace talks on Wednesday, with the goal of ending the longest-running war in the Western Hemisphere — nearly 50 years old and counting.
Despite three previous rounds of failed negotiations since the 1980s, many observers say there are reasons to hope that this time things could be different, including recent military successes by the government that have the guerrillas on the defensive.
But the negotiations must not only convince members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, one of the world's most tenacious armed groups, to finally lay down their weapons. They also aim to dismantle a major criminal enterprise that derives much of its income from drugs and is a prime source of cocaine to the United States.
For many in the organization, known as the FARC, the drug profits may be simply too rich to leave behind.
"The trick is to get the guy who is in charge of a front that's getting tens of millions of dollars a year, has a lot of local power and is doing business" with other traffickers "to actually give it up," said Adam Isacson, a senior associate of the Washington Office on Latin America, a research group.
Here in the Cauca region, the dynamics of the war are inescapable. Sandbagged bunkers, roadblocks and tanks are regular sights along highways and roads. Fighting is so intense here, army officers and police officials say, because the region is important for producing and transporting the drugs the guerrillas rely on for income. In the mountains, coca, the plant used to make cocaine, is grown openly.
Verónica Truque, 11, woke one day this past summer to the pop of gunfire, but she did not think much of it. Fighting between government troops and guerrillas had been breaking out every few days in this drug-producing region, and she had grown accustomed to the sound.
Suddenly, her family's small tin-roofed house across from a coca field was caught in the cross-fire. With a tremendous bang, a grenade punched fist-size holes in the wall. Shrapnel hit her wrist and the back of her head. A brother and a cousin were hit, too.
"I thought they were going to kill us all," Verónica, a wide-eyed girl in a school uniform, said of the battle in July. "I want peace," she added. "And for them to go away."
This volatile mix of drugs and war is evident in the FARC's leadership. The group's top commander, who took over late last year and uses the alias Timochenko, has a $5 million bounty on his head in the United States. According to the State Department, he helped set the group's policies for "the production, manufacture and distribution of hundreds of tons of cocaine," and for the killing of hundreds of people who interfered.
Beyond that, two of the FARC's peace negotiators have been named in a 2006 federal indictment, charged with helping make the organization a narcotics powerhouse responsible for more than "60 percent of the cocaine sent to the United States" and for "vast numbers" of murders.
Even if the guerrillas are willing to end the conflict, much depends on another factor that cannot be decided at the bargaining table: are Colombians, aching from years of kidnappings, bombings and indiscriminate killing, ready to let FARC members re-enter society and politics?
"They say, 'What if Timochenko gets elected to Congress?' " said Andrés Pastrana, a former president who led the last round of peace talks from 1999 to 2002. "I hope he gets elected to Congress."
Mr. Pastrana added, "If we are not willing to forgive, the peace process is going to be a failure."
Atrocities have been committed by both sides, but far more people blame the FARC, which is widely labeled a terrorist organization, for a war that has claimed thousands of lives. A peace deal would almost certainly include a mechanism for FARC members to avoid prison.
"They have done lots of damage to the country, they have murdered, tortured, kidnapped," said Brayan Ortiz, 26, a student in Bogotá who opposed letting FARC members who committed crimes go free. "A single word of apology is not going to be enough."
Leading the chorus of detractors is a former president, Álvaro Uribe, who stepped up the war against the FARC, and his political allies.
Jenny Carolina González contributed reporting from El Horno and Bogotá, Colombia, and Victoria Burnett from Havana.
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