Nourishing hope: in Colombia, an entrepreneurship program offers people displaced by the country's internal conflict the opportunity to build new lives.

• Author: Ferro, Gerardo
• Position: Alimentos Procesados de Cartagena - Cover story

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Julio Contreras has the hands of a giant. His hands were shaped by the mud of the Unguia marshland, roughened by the shrubs of San Onofre, burned under the Cartagena sun, and made invincible by the hardship of displacement. But the ear-to-ear grin that lights up his face is that of a young boy--especially when he starts to talk about Alimentos Procesados de Cartagena, the food-processing cooperative he started four years ago and now manages as one of twelve partners.

The same massive hands that for more than three years mixed, cut, and sold butifarras--Colombia's famous meat-and-onion sausage links--on the hot streets of Cartagena's southeastern zone today point with pride to the immense industrial oven that Contreras soon hopes to have up and running. The new addition will speed up the process of cooking the more than 3,000 sausages produced every day at the business, known as ALIPROCAR. But that's not the most important consideration in Contreras's mind. "The main thing is to think about improving the quality of life of all the associates," he says, patting one side of the stainless steel oven.

Julio Contreras was 27 years old when he left his hometown, a victim of forced displacement. Today, at 35, he has become the executive director of ALIPROCAR, a successful micro-business funded with resources from the United States government, through its Agency for International Development (USAID), and implemented by the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF). In recognition of its achievements, in 2006 ALIPROCAR won an Entrepreneurship Award for Displaced Persons, sponsored by USAID and other organizations.

Unguia is a small town with fewer than 20,000 Afro-Colombian residents, located in the northwest corner of Colombia's Choco department, on the shore of a marsh in which local fishermen paddle out in their canoes to make their living. When Contreras lived there, nobody got killed, "and when someone died it was something rare--everyone talked about it as if it were an event," he recalls. People made their living through agriculture, trade, or fishing. Contreras himself tilled the soil on his family's farm. "We had more than enough food to eat. We could go up to two months without working the land because we always had enough food." But 1999 brought an end to the tranquility.

Contreras turns quiet and closes his eyes--not to help him remember, but to try not to be overwhelmed by the memories. "Then the violence came!" he exclaims, remembering the day in 1999 when guerrillas entered the town for the first time and destroyed the small plane that was bringing in money to cover the salaries of the few local policemen. Two days later, paramilitary forces came in. From then on, nothing was the same. Fear floated through the streets of Unguia like vapor expelled by the muddy waters of the nearby swamp. People started to leave. "They would kill up to 60 people a day," Contreras says. "If we stayed, they would say we were guerrillas, and if we left, the guerrillas thought we were paracos [paramilitary fighters]." Biliardo Contreras, Julio's older brother, was one of those who died in the crossfire engendered by such absurd conjectures. "That was our downfall," Contreras says, "because after that my dad was really scared."

Contreras's eyes take on a teary sadness when he talks about those days. The hardest part of being displaced has been having his family scattered. "In Unguia the whole family lived together, but since they displaced us we haven't been able to be together again." That was the first time Contreras had left his hometown; he had never been far away from his marshlands and his...