Jose Miguel Sokoloff is many things; first and foremost, however, he is an advertiser who loves his home country of Colombia.
For roughly an hour, we experienced a condensed version of Colombia’s history and its war with the guerrilla movement. Beginning with the Cold War, Sokoloff laid the groundwork of the guerrillas’ ideological foundation, followed by a gradual shift to an economical role after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The key to ending Colombia’s war with the guerrillas, he stressed, was realizing that the members were as much victims of the organization as the general populace.
We watched the growth of the advertising campaign against the guerrilla’s–from it’s missteps at the beginning to the enormous successes it has achieved in recent years. Always, the message remained the same: “Demobilization is the way out” / “desmovilización es la salida”
What struck me most was how successful Sokoloff and the nation of Colombia was with its advertising campaign, and its intersection of art and politics. Realizing that genuine testimonies were more important than professional actors, the campaign would always “speak to the human” in an effort to convey the message that the war would eventually end anyway.
The government concentrated on Christmas and family, because that was when the members were most vulnerable. Soldiers decorated trees in the jungle with Christmas lights. Glowing balls with heartfelt messages floated down the waterways that the guerrillas used for travel. The military sent soccer balls all over the country to remind the guerrillas what they were missing.
Most touching of all was a campaign involving mothers, in which they stated “Before being a guerrilla, you are my son” / “Antes de ser guerrillero, eres mi hijo”
Overall I loved this talk. This was explicit proof that we don’t need extensive peace talks or military campaigns to dissolve the potency of a violent movement. Instead, this advertising campaign appealed to the hearts and humanity of the guerrillas in the jungle, and it worked.
