The World’s First Nonviolent Municipality
High in the mountains of western Antioquia, Colombia, where the mist settles into the coffee fields each morning and the air smells of wet earth and woodsmoke, exists the rural municipality of Caicedo. Approximately 60 miles from Medellín, Caicedo is home to around 10,000 campesinos, of whom only about 2,000 reside in its small urban center.
Something incredible takes place here. The people have chosen peace. Not once, in a moment of hope. But over and over again — through decades of terror, through kidnapping and murder, through grief so deep it could have swallowed them whole. They chose it at the ballot box.